April 4 may have been a banner day for tinkerers, but April 5 was pretty impressive as well. In 1939, another important invention made its debut — Dr. Elbert Wonmug’s time machine. Oh, there had been time machines before this, but this would be the first to transport an honest-to-goodness caveman from way back in the Bone Age right into the 20th century. The caveman 
was none other than Alley Oop, beamed in from the kingdom of Moo where for the past seven years he had been doing typical caveman things — riding around on his pet dinosaur in a furry loincloth, brandishing his big club at his many enemies, and courting the lovely Ooola.
But once in the 20th century with a time machine to beam him about, Oop was no longer bound by prehistoric limitations. He became a roving ambassador, traveling to such destinations as ancient Egypt, Arthurian England and the American frontier, rubbing elbows with such folks as Robin Hood, Cleopatra, Ulysses, Shakespeare and Napoleon. At one point he even visited the moon. Pretty impressive for a Neanderthal. Let’s see your Australopithecus do that.
The Big Oops
Time travel, if you will, back to this day in 1722, an Easter Sunday. Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, sailing with three ships — the Arend, the Thienhoven, and Afrikaansche Galey (sort of like Columbus and his Nina, Pinta and Santa Marie, but a lot more of a tongue twister) — lands on an island in the South Pacific and names it Easter Island. Along with several thousand inhabitants, he discovers a bunch of stone heads that look rather amazingly like Alley Oop. Could it be that Alley Oop got here earlier in his time machine?
Wretched Richard's Almanac 