Launched in 2002 by psychologist Richard Wiseman, LaughLab was a giant psychology experiment carried out over the web. Over 41,000 joke entries were submitted and they were ranked based on over 1.5 million votes.
Here is the joke:
Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed.
The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, “My friend is dead! What can I do?”
The operator says “Calm down. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.”
There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says “OK, now what?”
Funniest British Joke, Determined By OnePoll.com
OnePoll.com ran a similar experiment to LaughLab, but with British jokes. Here was their number one ranked joke (out of 50):
A woman gets on a bus with her baby.
The bus driver says: “Ugh, that’s the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen!”
The woman walks to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her: “The driver just insulted me!”
The man says: “You go up there and tell him off. Go on, I’ll hold your monkey for you.”
Poggio’s Facetarium, the Most Important Renaissance Joke Book
Poggio Bracciolini was a secretary to seven popes and one of the most important scholars of the late middle ages, laying much of the groundwork for the Renaissance. On top of preserving many important ancient works, he composed a very obscene book of his own in Latin called the Liber Facetarium.
Poggio’s Facetarium, a collection of story-form jokes, was the most popular joke book in Western Europe during the Renaissance. The 273 jokes came from medieval bard routines, Arab-Italian novellas, and an informal comedy club of papal scribes in the Vatican called the Bugiale (“fib factory”).
Here is the only Facetarium joke that’s appropriate for a modern corporate blog:
The Abbot of Septimo, a very fat and corpulent man, on his way to Florence one evening, enquired of a peasant he met: “Do you think I should be able to enter the gate?”
Of course, he thus meant to ask whether he was likely to reach the city before the closing of the gates. But the country-man, rallying his stoutness, replied: “To be sure, you will: a cart-load of hay gets through; why should not you?.”
The Philogelos, the Oldest Existing Joke Book
The oldest existing book of jokes is Philogelos, written by Hierocles and Philagrius. It is thought to have been written in the 4th century (AD).
Most of the jokes are about character archetypes/stereotypes such as the egghead, the hothead, or the wife-hater. My favorite is a classic joke that’s been re-done plenty of times over the centuries:
A Kymean [a people stereotyped as stupid by the Romans] goes to see a friend of his.
He’s standing in front of the friend’s house, calling his name, when another voice answers, “Shout louder so he can hear!”.
So the Kymean shouts, “Hey, Louder!”.
The First Written Joke Known to Man
The world's oldest recorded joke has been traced back to 1900 BC and suggests that toilet humour was as popular with the ancients as it is today.
It is a saying of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq and goes: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."
It heads the world's oldest top 10 joke list published by the University of Wolverhampton.
A 1600 BC gag about a pharaoh, said to be King Snofru, comes second -- "How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish."
The oldest British joke dates back to the 10th Century and reveals the bawdy face of the Anglo-Saxons -- "What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before? Answer: A key."
"Jokes have varied over the years, with some taking the question and answer format while others are witty proverbs or riddles," said the report's writer. “ What they all share however, is a willingness to deal with taboos and a degree of rebellion. Modern puns, Essex girl jokes and toilet humour can all be traced back to the very earliest jokes identified in this research."