National Tell a Joke Day lands on Monday, August 16, 2027, carrying on a habit that goes back at least to 1900 BC. The oldest known punch line is, fittingly, a bathroom joke.
Tell a Joke Day’s Date
It’s August 16. The person who started it hasn’t been identified.
The World’s Oldest Punch Lines
A British study went hunting for the oldest jokes in 2008. Paul McDonald of the University of Wolverhampton led the two-month project for the UK channel Dave. He counted only jokes with a set-up and a punch line.
Sumer took first place. Tablets from the Old Babylonian period hold a joke about a young bride, dated to 1900 BC at the latest and possibly to 2,300 BC.
Guinness World Records lists it as the oldest joke.
Egypt supplied an early one, too. A joke on the Westcar Papyrus, from around 1600 BC, involves a bored pharaoh and young women in fishing nets on the Nile. The study likened it to a John Barrymore one-liner.
Another, from around 1200 BC, features three ox drivers from Adab. It uses the “rule of three,” with the set-up repeated three times.
The first joke book
Greece gave us the oldest surviving joke book, the Philogelos, or The Laughter Addict, from the 4th century AD. It holds 265 gags credited to Hierocles and Philagrius, about whom little is known.
Many Philogelos jokes star a scholastikos, a sort of foolish know-it-all. Twins and a deaf man turn up as targets, too.
Former classics professor William Berg translated it. Comic Jim Bowen, then 71, tried some of the gags on a London club audience in 2008.
Some lines didn’t age well. Writer Jim Holt suggested that jokes about lettuce, for instance, lost cultural meanings modern readers miss.
Britain’s oldest recorded joke is a riddle in the 10th-century Exeter Codex. Its answer is “a key.”
The funniest joke, by science
Richard Wiseman’s LaughLab project at the University of Hertfordshire took the opposite approach in 2002. It tested jokes on almost two million people over a year.
The top joke, sent in by Manchester psychiatrist Gurpal Gosall, won over 65% of raters. A knock-knock joke came last. The results appeared in a book by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Tastes split by country. Britons and Irish raters liked wordplay, Europeans preferred the surreal, and Americans and Canadians favored jokes at someone’s expense.
Wiseman’s team even concluded that ducks are the funniest animals.
Why Jokes Deserve a Day
Old jokes look a lot like new ones. McDonald found they share “a willingness to deal with taboos and a degree of rebellion.”
Their subjects, he said, still echo in modern puns and toilet humor. A Sumerian gag about a bride would get a groan today.
Steve North, who ran the channel behind the study, put it simply: “The delivery may be different, but the subject matter hasn’t changed a bit.”
Joke-Telling Tips From History
- Use the rule of three: repeat the set-up three times, as in the ancient joke about the ox drivers of Adab.
- Pick a duck joke: LaughLab found ducks the funniest animals.
- Skip the knock-knock: it finished last in LaughLab.
- Know your crowd: wordplay wins in Britain, while Americans favor jokes at someone’s expense.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many jokes did LaughLab test?
About 30,000, over a year-long study.
What’s England’s oldest one-liner?
One from England’s earliest jest book, written in 1526.
Who laughs most in the UK?
The Welsh were most easily amused in LaughLab, followed by the English. Scots laughed least.
Did LaughLab set a record?
Yes. It earned a Guinness record as the biggest scientific experiment.