King Ozymandias of Assyria was running low on cash after years of war with the Hittites. His last great possession was the Star of the
Euphrates, the most valuable diamond in the ancient world. Desperate, he went to Croesus, the pawnbroker, to ask for a loan. Croesus said, "I'll give you 100,000 dinars for it". "But I paid a million dinars for it," the King protested.

"Don't you know who I am? I am the king!"

Croesus replied, "When you wish to pawn a Star, makes no difference who you are."

Evidence has been found that William Tell and his family were avid
bowlers. Unfortunately, all the Swiss league records were destroyed
in a fire and so we'll never know for whom the Tells bowled.

A man rushed into a busy doctor's office and shouted, "Doctor!
I think I'm shrinking!" The doctor calmly responded,
"Now, settle down. You'll just have to be a little patient."

A marine biologist developed a race of genetically engineered
porpoises that could live forever if they were fed a steady diet of
seagulls.

One day, his supply of the birds ran out so he had to go out and trap
some more. On the way back, he spied two lions asleep on the road.
Afraid to wake them, he gingerly stepped over them.Immediately,
he was arrested and charged with...
transporting gulls across sedate lions for immortal porpoises.

Back in the 1800's the Tate's Watch Company of Massachusetts wanted
to produce other products, and since they already made the cases for
watches, they used them to produce compasses. The new compasses
were so bad that people often ended up in Canada or Mexico rather than
California. This, of course, is the origin of the expression,
"He who has-a-Tate's is lost!"

A thief broke into the local police station and stole all the toilets
and urinals, leaving no clues. A spokesperson was quoted as saying,

"We have absolutely nothing to go on."

An Indian chief was feeling very sick, so he summoned the medicine
man.
After a brief examination, the medicine man took out a long, thin strip
of elk rawhide and gave it to the chief, telling him to bite off, chew and
swallow one inch of the leather every day. After a month, the medicine
man returned to see how the chief was feeling. The chief shrugged and
said,

"The thong is ended but the malady lingers on."

A famous Viking explorer returned home from a voyage and found his
name missing from the town register. His wife insisted on complaining to
the local civic official who apologized profusely, saying,

"I must have taken Leif off my census."

There were three Indian squaws. One slept on a deer skin, one slept
on an elk skin, and the third slept on a hippopotamus skin. All three
became pregnant. The first two each had a baby boy. The one who slept
on the hippopotamus skin had twin boys. This just goes to prove that
the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.

A skeptical anthropologist was cataloguing South American folk
remedies with the assistance of a tribal Brujo who indicated that the
leaves of a particular fern were a sure cure for any case of
constipation.
When the anthropologist expressed his doubts, the Brujo looked him in
the eye and said,

"Let me tell you, with fronds like these, you don't need enemas."

A woman brought a very limp duck into a veterinary surgeon. As she laid her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest.


After a moment or two, the vet shook his head and sadly said, "I'm sorry, your duck, Cuddles, has passed away."


The distressed woman wailed, "Are you sure?"
"Yes, I am sure. Your duck is dead," replied the vet..


"How can you be so sure?" she protested. "I mean you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something."


The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room. He returned a few minutes later with a black Labrador Retriever. As the duck's owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked up at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head.


The vet patted the dog on the head and took it out of the room. A few minutes later he returned with a cat. The cat jumped on the table and also delicately sniffed the bird from head to foot. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room.


The vet looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck."


The vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman..
The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "$150!" she cried, "$150 just to tell me my duck is dead!"

The vet shrugged, "I'm sorry. If you had just taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20, but with the Lab Report and the Cat Scan, it's now $150."