In England during the 1700's there was a comedic actor named Joe Miller (1684-1739). After he died, a writer by the name of John Mottley (1692-1750) compiled Miller's jokes in a book and called it Joe Miller's Jests. The book became wildly popular, and John Mottley continued to add new jokes from other sources to it until it contained over 1300 of them. Mottley never claimed to be the writer and always credited the book to Miller. As it turns out, Miller only wrote a handful of the jokes and was, in fact, illiterate.

On a side note, as time went by, the jokes in the book got so overused by people that even into the 19th century, people actually called an old, corny joke a "Joe Miller." The term was so common that in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the character Scrooge says, "Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending [the turkey] to Bob's will be!"

If you ask really nicely, we just might let you take a look at the 1856 reprint of Joe Miller's Jests that we keep at the club.