WHat Makes People Laugh LogoA day without laughter is a day wasted.
Charlie Chaplin

Choose humor by language, choose from the topic list or see the clickable map below. For a presentation on the exhibit, see below. Enter our “Complete the Joke Contest” here for a chance to have your joke published on this site.

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Welcoming Week Presentation at Beltsville Library

What Makes People Laugh

Handouts from the Gaithersburg Book Fest

These are pages you can print for children to color. The joke is on each facing page and a QR colde takes you to this page. Feel free to print and share!

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Humor Topics

Click on a word below to see jokes on that topic.

Humor Tags
Abbreviations Accidents Activities Activity Alaska Alaskan Humor Alcohol Animals Appellation Argentina Armenian Artificial Foods Artificial Sweeteners Astronomy Australia Bad Driving Bars Beverages Birds Boats Books British Humor Building Bureaucracy Businesses Canada careers Car Names Car Reliability Car Repairs Cars Character Traits Charity Children Chinese Chinese Humor Climate Clothing Communication Competition Computers Construction Conversation Crime Cultural History Cultural Reference Culture Customers Dancing Darkness Deaf Community Death Death Notices Dentists Detective Fiction Dialect Disease Doctors Drinking Driving Emotions Exercise Family Farmers Farms Fear Feet Fishing Food Footwear Funeral Future Games Geography Geolocated German Grandchildren Greetings Hairstyles Hamburgers Happiness Health Heckling Highways Hiking Historical Hobbies Hot Dogs Houses Humor Impossible events Insects Insults Ireland Italy Japan Jobs Judges Knock-Knock Law Lawyers Lectures Lies Literary Characters Literature Maps Marriage Math Mathematics Mechanics Medical Medicine Membership Mendacity Mercantile Misfortune Mississippi Mistakes Money Morning Morse Code Movies Museums Music Mythological Creatures Names Naming Natural Disaster Neighbors News Nostalgia Nuns Objects Occupations Old age Old customs Omen Orthography Parents Patients Philosophy Physics Pigs Playing cards Podcast Political Systems Politicians Politics Pop Culture Pranks Prices Professions Programming Pronunciation Pun Punishment Relatives Religion Restaurants Rewards Riddle Romance Royalty Rural Life Salesmen Salutations School Science Scientists Seasons Selling Server Shyness Sleep Snow Speech Sports STEM Stores Stories Student Students Swindles Teachers Technology Time Time Travel Tour Guides Transportation Travel United States Jokes Vampires Ventriloquism Vision Wait Staff War Weather Word Play World can be divided into Writers

Map of Jokes

View the posters created for our in-person presentation of this exhibit:

What Makes People Laugh Posters
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Fanni is Radnóti's wife
Located near the Tang capital city of Chang’an, site of the modern city of Xi’an in Shaanxi province, in central China.
Soldiers of that time commonly wore a white head cloth, similar to what is still worn by some peasants in China today.  The implication is that the conscripts were so young that they didn’t know how to wrap their head cloths, and needed help from elders.
Before China’s unification under the Qin dynasty in 221 B.C. there were several competing smaller kingdoms.  Han and Qin were two of these kingdoms. Han was located east of famous mountain passes that separated that area from the power base of the Qin dynasty, with its capital in Chang’an. The Qin dynasty itself only lasted about 15 years after unification due to its draconian rule, but soldiers under Qin rule retained a reputation as strong fighters.
The area of Guanxi, meaning “west of the passes”, refers to the area around the capital city of Chang’an.
This is an alternative name for a province in western China, now known as Qinghai, which literally means “blue sea”.  Kokonor Lake, located in Qinghai, is the largest saline lake in China.  
Before China’s unification under the Qin dynasty in 221 B.C. there were several competing smaller kingdoms.  Han and Qin were two of these kingdoms. Han was located east of famous mountain passes that separated that area from the power base of the Qin dynasty, with its capital in Chang’an. The Qin dynasty itself only lasted about 15 years after unification due to its draconian rule, but soldiers under Qin rule retained a reputation as strong fighters.
Oulart Hollow was the site of a famous victory of the Irish rebels over British troops, which took place on May 27, 1798. The rebels killed nearly all the British attackers in this battle. (Source: Maxwell, W. H. History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798. H. H. Bohn, London 1854, pp 92-93, at archive.org)
The phrase "United Men" is elaborated upon in the Notes section below.

Ghetto

An Italian word meaning “foundry.” It originally referred to a part of the city of Venice where the Jews of that city were forced to live; the area was called “the ghetto” because there was a foundry nearby. The term eventually came to refer to any part of a city in which a minority group is forced to live as a result of social, legal, or economic pressure. Because of the restrictions placed upon them, ghetto residents are often impoverished.

"You’re five nine, I am do-uble two"

A reference to the year 1959 and the year 2020.

"The Currency"

Meaning US dollars - this is drawing attention to the fact that Cuba is effectively dollarized.

"Sixty years with the dom-ino stuck"

This sentence is a reference to the Cold War notion that countries would turn Communist one after the other - like dominos. Cuba was the first domino, but it got stuck - no one else followed through into communism.

رحلنا

رحلنا, or "rahalna," means "we have left."

Habibi

Habibi means "my love."

Ra7eel

Ra7eel, or "raheel," means "departure."

3awda

3awda, or "awda," means "returning."

أهلاً

أهلاً, or "ahalan," means "welcome."

a5 ya baba

a5 ya baba, pronounced "akh ya baba," means "Oh my father."

golpe

Treece translates "golpe" as "beating", which is correct, however misses the secondary meaning of the word: "coup".

Carlos

The “Carlos” referred to in the poem is most likely Carlos Bolsonaro, a politician from Rio de Janeiro and the second son of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s current president. His and his father’s involvement in Marielle’s murder has been questioned and investigated.