I feel I can post funny things about technical services since I started out in my career as a cataloger. :) I loved this history. I received it as an email from friends a long long time ago. ...
4362 B.C.
First evidence (from Scythia, modern day Crimea) of a four‑wheeled book cart. Within two generations this design was adopted throughout Europe and Asia, replacing the more maneuverable, but much less stable two‑wheeled book cart.
Spring, 3193 B.C.
First serial title attested: "Publications of the Royal Sumerian Academy".
Late Summer, 3193 B.C.
First serial title change attested: to "Royal Sumerian Academy Publications".
537 B.C.
The National Library of Babylon, finally switching to papyrus, ceases maintaining its clay tablet shelflist, but is unable to discard it for nostalgic reasons. Two years later, under siege by the Persians, the city finds a new use for the old tablets and manages to inflict severe losses on the besieging army by pelting them from the ramparts with large quantities of shelflist tablets.
43 B.C.
First attested use of an ISBN (for the special collector's edition of Caesar's Gallic Wars with an Introduction by Marc Antony): IXIVVIIXVIIIVIIIVIVII.
427 A.D.
The Library of Alexandria decides to contract out its annual weeding project. Vandal hordes are the lowest bidder.
June 21, 762 A.D.
Birthdate of St. Minutia, patron saint of cataloging. (Illustration caption: St. Minutia using a sword to split a hair:)
1066 A.D.
William the Conqueror defeats his cousin Harold at the Battle of Hastings and imposes the Anglo‑Norman Cataloging Rules, 2nd ed. (ANCR2) on his new subjects. Ten years later he commissions the first systematic catalog of selected realia (The Domesday Boke).
August 5, 1782.
Birthdate of the Werke brothers, Gesammelte ("Gus"), Samtliche ("Sam"), and Ausgewahlte ("Ossie")
1883‑4
Cattlemen at the Bar and Drum Ranch, outside Lone Stack, South Dakota, develop the "barcode" brand as a way to keep track of individual animals in the herd.
After later
Jenny
