Or so says a friend of mine, who also quipped, “Who needs The Enlightenment?” when discussing the boredom of 18th Century and its encyclopedic writing, powdered wiggery, and vacuous Common Law demagoguery. For the record, I count the French Revolution as the beginning of the 19th and the Russian Revolution as the end. Those are some pretty nice bookends, and in the middle there are monacles, wide advances in facial hair technology, the Alamo, and the burning of Atlanta. So, without further ado, here’s a list (in no particular order) of 20 reasons why the 19th Century is the best century, ever.

1. Prussia

2. Nietzsche, Marx, Thoreau

3. Darwin

4. Guillotines

5. Tecumseh

6. The Crimean War, Civil War, Napoleonic Wars

7. Steamboats

8. Opium

9. Calamity Jane, Davy Crockett, Crazy Horse

10. The word “Dickensian”

11. Dostoyevski, Twain, Poe

12. Rampant piracy

13. According to Wikipedia, “The Victorian Era was notorious for the employment of young children in factories and mines.” Not sure why this is on this list. Just sayin’…

14. Daguerrotypes

15. The end of the Holy Roman Empire (good riddance)

16. John Muir / the creation of the Yellowstone National Park

17. Ibsen

18. Jackson/Dickinson duel in which Jackson gives Dickinson the first shot, Dickinson shoots Jackson, and then Jackson takes time, loads, aims, fires, and kills Dickinson on the road to becoming a drunk populist demagogue who oversaw the forced destruction of an entire native human population

19. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

20. The Republic of Texas