Brick

Although the use of bricks as a weapon of war has been noted back to the times of the Norman Conquest, the use of bricks as a construction material is a far more modern invention.

“Bricks are the building blocks of our society.”

~ Captain Obvious

Bricks: a concise history

• 4000 BC : Head of the Liangzhu culture in China, Michael Potts, came up with the idea of a brick shape when seeing a reflection of his head in a river, creating the idea that structures could be made out of the shape.
• 3000 BC : The first brick in the world was invented, made out of michael pottses skull.
• 2500 BC : The Egyptian Pyramids are built of big rocks brick shaped by the enslaved people of Atlantis.
• 1837: First proposed by Count Duckula of Romania, but the technology to create bricks would not be perfected for another 50 years.
• 1888: First prototype brick unveiled by Benjamin Franklin in Boston, MA, despite being in an advanced state of deadness for several decades prior.
• 1907: World's first brick building unveiled in Rochester, NY. An Outhouse, or Brick Privvy, it was to remain standing for only 38 days. Use of bricks in buildings put on hold while investigation of the Rochester Privvy Disaster of 1907 (36 fatalities) is completed.
• 1909: The Daily Mail in London, England, offers a £1,000 prize reward for the first inventor who can come up with an invention that will allow bricks to remain safely and securely joined together.
• 1910: Count Svenson von Lego of Sweden demonstrates his prototype system for joining bricks together, however he does not win the award as judges feel his bricks are too small for commercial use. Sweden withdraws from Europe in protest, leaving Norway as an island with a tiny land-bridge to Finland in the North. Sweden will not return to Europe until 1948, after repeated assurances that people weren't shooting at each other any more.
• 1911: Count Henri Cément of France invents a method of using a hard-setting paste to 'glue' bricks together. After a certain amount of distrust, his system is widely accepted as a winner, and he indeed wins the Daily Mail prize. However, he is poisoned to death by a rotten oyster before he has a chance to claim the reward. The suspected oyster was put to death without a trial in 1916. In an unrelated note, recent genetic evidence suggests that the now deceased oyster may have been innocent.
• 1913: before entering mass production, the Count Cément invention is adapted by industry to use other materials than stink cheese to make the hard-setting paste, due to the unpleasant effect on the workers. (Scientists are still researching what process the count used to make his cement, mainly because stink cheese was invented in 1946)
• 1915: Europe's last remaining brick factory is demolished in a Led Zeppelin raid, and with it the secret of commercial brick construction.
• 1926: Brick is fused with rock to create the worlds first brick-rock hybrid. they later found that this mixture formed a living creature known simply as a Brickrock. production was stopped immediately because scientists found that they don't taste very good and were of rather low intelligence.
• 1946: Ex-Nazi scientists working within the USSR manage to successfully recreate both bricks and cement. Factories constructed to start mass-producing this strategic commodity.
• 1949: Count Werner von Braun working for NASA produces a design for a new space-age brick. Unlike previous bricks, this is based on a rectangular shape, rather than triangular. "I aim for the stars, but sometimes I make bricks" - Von Braun.
• 1960: Russian Strategic Brick stocks are deployed to build a barrier between East and West Berlin. Not, as suspected, to keep East Berliners in, but instead to demonstrate the superiority of Soviet Brick technology to the West.
• 1961: President Kennedy delivers his famous speech, promising that before the decade is out, the US will build a brick wall visible from the moon.
• 1963: Chinese finish construction of their Great Wall. Kennedy so disappointed with this failure that his head spontaneously explodes during a parade in Texas.
• 1972: IBM claim that there is a world market for approximately six bricks per year.
• 1972: Jethro Tull releases album Thick as a Brick.
• 1982: Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announces the first Brick suitable for home use, he also claims that 640 bricks are enough for anyone.

Origin of the Name

A brick.

The origin of the name "brick" is lost in pre-history, but it is thought to be derived from the phrase "Bricking Myself" - as in an expression of fear that would have been experienced by anyone on the receiving end of an incoming brick. Buttsex? Oh yes. Buttsecks.

Bricks in history

Bricks have hundreds of uses, in both olden, and more modern days. They can be used to make houses, floors, brick puppets and can be dropped on the right angle, to make it appear you are pooping bricks. More importantly than all of this, bricks are natures ransom note carriers. Ever since 64,000 BC when caveman John C. ugh (pronounced A-gu) covered a rock in blood and threw it at a neighboring tribe, bricks, and their ancestors, the rocks, have been mankind's answer to "Where's the money" (they've also been used as a long-range snipeing weapon, similar to a piece of cheese)

Uses of Bricks

• Building walls

• Lining flowerbeds

• Dropping on other people's feet

• Befriending

• Throwing at small animals, shop windows, and neon signs

• Throwing at the occasional witness to the above event

• Paying with instead of money and seeing how shop assistants will react to it

• Burning to call forth the leader of the sparrow-hawke nation

• For finding the former whereabout of hand-held shrapnel explosives

• Occasionially used as an anti-terrorist movement symbol (brick in martian means "ass-kicker")

• Often used as the main weight of pinball machines and inter-planetary missle systems

• 53,594 bricks can be used as arms for Super-Giant Japanese Robot Warriors

• They currently take up 89% of the asteroid field

Instructions on how to Throw bricks at people

1. Stand casually to avoid suspicion

2. When victim approaches, get into a pitching stance

3. Hurl brick at victim narrow part first to reduce drag, increase speed, and increase pain

4. If victim dodges or if you miss, get the hell out of there

5. If you succeed in knocking them out, dance around them and sprinkle flowers on them

6. Take your brick

7. Pour ice cold water on victim and get the hell out of there

How to get Hit by a Brick

1. Find brick heading towards you

2. Let brick enter your head

3. Ouch!

4. ???

5. Profit!

Instructions on how to drop bricks on other people's feet

(Warning, this method presents a high risk of you losing your brick and never seeing it again)

1. Walk casually holding the brick in one hand up your sleeves and supported with you hand

2. Walk casually in a crowded area

3. Walk by a person and right when you reach them drop the brick on their feet and walk away innocently as if nothing ever happened

See Also

• Hurling bricks at other people's windows
• McBrick
• Brick Wall!