When they say there is nothing new under the sun, they really mean it. Take, for example, LOLcats. Those goofy cat pictures with the silly captions are thought to be an invention of the modern Internet, but as it turns out, there’s a history there that extends far beyond 4chan or I Can Has Cheezburger?. In fact, what is thought to be the ancestor to the modern LOLcat was found.
The story is the picture, actually a postcard, was found by someone named Tracy Angulo in a Seattle, Washington, antiques store. It dates from 1905 and while this LOLcat uses proper grammar, it is still in all caps, is still a cat picture with a goofy caption, and most importantly, still reminds cats everywhere that they can’t has cheezburger. It’s nice to know that it’s not just people on the Internet who find these kinds of things funny, and that LOLcats aren’t some symptom of modern day education gone horribly wrong.
Tags: Internet culture, Internet memes, lolcats, the world’s first lolcat, I Can Has Cheezburger?, pictures, funny pictures, Tracy Angulo, Seattle