Earth (Mostly Harmless) was a pretty big place with a lot of history that built up over the years. Most of it was an utter mess, with such things as Hitler and Pol Pot and the rest. Basically the whole of Earthling existence was made up of tea, lunch, breakfast and sometimes brunch and editing wikis. A very meaningless existence if I should say so myself.

Earth had a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions had been suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. Many Earthers, otherwise known as humans, were increasingly of the opinion that they had all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

Contents 1 History of Earth 1.1 Origins 1.2 Prehistory 1.3 Recent history 2 Orbit and rotation 3 Demographics 4 Things to consider before visiting Earth 4.1 Pros 4.2 Cons

History of Earth Edit

Origins Edit

Interestingly enough, while Earth was commonly called a planet, it was not a planet at all, but a gigantic computer of such amazing complexity that organic life formed part of its operational matrix. It was designed and programmed by another computer named Deep Thought, in order to find the Ultimate Question for a group of hyperintelligent, pan-dimensional beings who had recently found the Ultimate Answer to be "forty-two". It was built by the planet-manufacturing civilization of Magrathea and placed in orbit around a miserable yellow star called Sol, deep in an unfashionable backwater of the Galaxy where it was most likely to be left alone. It was also, coincidentally, placed in a Plural zone, which can only be attributed to a planning oversight. The program was to take ten million years to run.

Prehistory Edit

After eight million years had passed on the young planet, an arkload of fifteen million moronic Golgafrinchans, expelled from their home planet, crashlanded into a swamp in prehistoric Europe. Only a few hundred thousand Golgafrinchans survived the impact, but with their complete lack of respect for local wildlife and their admittedly superior technology, they eventually wiped out the indigenous cavemen - and a respectable portion of the Ultimate Question program, distorting the eventual output from the correct Question to read "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"

Another two million years passed. The Golgafrinchans evolved and spread, forgot their extraterrestrial origins, and became the dominant life-form on planet Earth. Though the program still somehow continued to run, it had become utterly corrupted.

Recent history Edit

So far as we know, the Imperial Galactic Government decided, over a bucket of jeweled crabs one day, that a hyper-space expressway was needed in the western spiral arm of the Galaxy. This decision was rushed through channels ostensibly to preempt traffic congestion in the distant future, but actually to provide employment for a few ministers' cousins who were forever mooching around Government Plaza. Unfortunately the Earth was in the path of this planned expressway, so the remorseless Vogons were dispatched in a constructor fleet to remove the offending planet with gentle use of thermonuclear weapons.

Orbit and rotation Edit

The Earth was the third planet in the Sol star system, although the inhabitants were more likely to call Sol, their sun, The Sun, most likely because very few people had figured out exactly how to pronounce "Sol," but even more likely because they rarely talked about other suns, except as stars.

The Earth rotated on an axis at an angle, and orbited Sol in an elliptical orbit, the result of which was that the inhabitants felt different seasons, where, depending on their exact location, the average temperature would dip or rise, and various department stores would hold something called "Sales Events" as a form of acknowledgement to the passage of time. The Earth rotated on its axis once every 24 hours, and spent 365.25 sets of 24 hours (each set was called a day) in orbit, before reaching its original point, which isn't wholly true, as it is well known that the entire Sol star system is moving through space at an uncomfortable velocity, so uncomfortable that most people tend not to think about it, and, as a result, are not usually affected by it.

And to dismay any contrary opinion, to human conception, the Earth was indeed spheroidal, though not a perfect sphere in and of itself. Why this was is not important to most hitchhikers, however, and is left to brainy types, who have nothing better to do than to calculate the dimensions of planets.

Demographics Edit

For some truly outstanding figures about the planet Earth, you may wish to consult a recently published world almanac, which will give very interesting tidbits of information about the Earth, such as its size (approximately 24,900 miles around, with a surface area of 196,938,800 square miles), its moons (one, commonly called The Moon), and other things like the fact that Julia Child was born in Pasadena, California, on August 15th, 1912, and that, in 1987, the tallest building in Des Moines, Iowa, was the Ruan Center, which stood at an entirely uncolossal 457 feet tall.

Things to consider before visiting Earth Edit

Any hitchhiker wishing to make a living on Earth should consider these good and bad things about the planet.

ProsEdit

1. Earth had an atmosphere so you don't collapse and die.
2. Earth had many facilities, including acceptable toilets, which sometimes you had to throw a round flat stone in to use.

ConsEdit

1. On Earth you were governed by the powers that be. This means France; the country that hosted the Hadron Collider that would supposedly produce a black hole that would devour the planet; as well as Iran, whose leader kindly stated his wishes for a Nuclear Holocaust to begin with the bombing of Israel, another small, insignificant country in the Middle East.

1. The Earth was destroyed by Vogons, so if you went there you would be flying around rubble anyway.