1891 — The “Yo Momma” joke is discovered by Moravian missionaries deep in the Amazonian rainforest. Though the expedition’s Ya_omamö guides maintain the creature is fierce and not to be approached, leader Gilliam Nitschmann succeeds in capturing and subduing the beast. The effort severely injures the evangelists’ egos, killing four.

1897 — The joke is transferred from the private collection of the Moravian College and Theological Seminary to the Smithsonian after the joke releases itself from its fetters and begins prowling the greater Bethlehem, Pennsylvania area in search of people with mommas.

1908 — The first attempt at harnessing the joke’s power in the service of art appears in turn-of-the-century vaudeville banjo soloist Fred Bacon’s wax cylinder recording, “Medley of Southern Airs”:

FRED BACON: Is your mother not corpulent?

CHILD’S VOICE: Yes, sir.

FRED BACON: (Slide whistle.)

Bacon is eventually driven mad by the effort of the performance.

1912 — Taking advantage of the Smithsonian’s recent purchase of a sturdier joke-cage, The Washington Post features a more ambitious exemplar of the “Yo Momma” joke in a criticism of Woodrow Wilson by famed columnist Jarvis Ochs Genzlinger: “[Wilson’s] bony countenance and notable ineptitude in the game of golf bespeak the overweening childhood presence of a singularly large mother — a mother large enough to be, arguably, on both sides of the family. Bam!” Genzlinger, unaware of the historical significance of his gibe, then immediately resumes comparing Wilson to “the Nipponese.”

1931 — The Great Depression fosters a sharp up-tick in the joke’s popularity, as well as a corresponding diversification of its subject matter. Popular derivatives include “Your mother is so poor,” “Your mother is poorer than my mother,” “Your mother is a migrant” and “Your mother is very poor.”

1943 — An expanding war effort sees the first use of the phrase by a governmental agency — the U.S. military incorporates a version of the joke in propaganda leaflets airdropped over German towns. A translation error, however, causes the messages to read, “Your mother is so large, she steeplechase prawn insouciant.” The popularity of seafood briefly spikes in Central Europe.

1954 — In the first televised appearance of the “Yo Momma” form, Senator Joseph McCarthy justifies his aggressive persecution of American communism by comparing Mother Russia to a pair of buttocks and, after a brief pause, executing a half-hearted pop-lock.

1967 — Timothy Leary experiences a vivid hallucination of a world “entirely taken up,” as he describes it, “by your momma.”

1978 — Celebrated disco singer Evelyn “Champagne” King releases the hit single “Your Momma (Momma Momma),” which makes up for its derivative melody line with its inspirational message (“Your momma, momma, momma”).

1985 — In what The New York Times later acknowledges may have been biased coverage of the Nicaraguan Sandinista-Contra conflict, the newspaper refers to Sandinista founder Carlos Fonseca’s mother as a “skeezy bitch,” suggesting that her vagina is large enough to accommodate a variety of unlikely objects. This marks the last time a major media outlet exhibits partiality.

1993 — Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline introduces its series of “Yo Momma” television commercials, directed at the American market. “Yo momma so fat she at increased risk for coronary disease,” states a 20-something man with spiked hair. “Adipose tissue has been decisively linked to congestive heart failure, dogg.” The campaign is criticized for being too confusing, and the corporation soon switches to ads featuring a frog riding a bicycle.

2001 — Writer Michael Chabon publishes his Bright City — a novel constructed as a single, extended “Yo Momma” joke: “Dickie sat, enveloped by the gray armchair, Historical Heirloom, as though pounded tap by tap downwards with the hammer of this opportunity. He had been taken in by the sheer optimism of the moment that plainspoken promoter had constructed, full up with Manhattan soirees and the ephemerally clad nymphs that populate New York apartments in snakelike knots, the fame that would trace his spoor as originator of such an attraction, the cash his mother could bring. He had to consider it. She was so very fat.”

2007 — After lying chained for nearly a century, the Smithsonian’s original “Yo Momma” joke escapes, savaging a convention held by the Society for People with Fat Mommas. There are no survivors.