A Brief History of ~

The ~ was invented by Marcus Tilde, a mad scientist and therefore a pretty cool dude. In 1925, he was on his deathbed. He thought to himself, "I need to preserve my essence in a thing, so that people remember me when I'm gone." It was important to remember him when he was gone because he was just that awesome. He was the life of every party, and made all the ladies laugh and want to hold his hand and buy him stuff. With the help of his assistant dwarf, Paolo, he built an Essence Transfer Machine. At his death, Paolo placed Tilde's corpse into the machine, and turned it on. On the screen flashed but one symbol: ~.

It was enough. It represented everything that made Tilde such a cool dude. The president saw it and was like, "Woah, that thing must have the essence of a cool dude in it, or something?" He declared October 27th National Tilde Day, and made sure that all typewriters had tildes on them from then on.

Isn't that great?~