This is a new feature. If you can’t figure out how it works just by reading the title, you should probably kill yourself. Let’s get started.

Today, we get from ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus to the release date of Janet Jackson’s “Miss You Much” by way of kidney stones and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Learning is fun!

Epicurus was way ahead of his time. He thought the superstitious fearmongers in his midst ought to settle the fuck down and just try to live a decent, happy life, preferably by talking philosophy with friends (which, for him, included the women and slaves he admitted to his school). That’s right: This dude admitted women and slaves to his fancy school hundreds of years before people would fawn all over that guy Jesus for merely convincing a group of law-abiding citizens not to stone a woman to death.

Speaking of stones, it’s worth noting that our man Epicurus was this unrelentingly pleasant despite suffering from kidney stones — conveniently the next step on our journey through the intertubes. I cannot bring myself to discuss the particulars of kidney stones in this space, but do click the link if for some reason you want to learn more. All you really need to know is that sometimes medical professionals zap kidney stones with lasers, and that’s the page we’re headed to next.

Lasers kick ass. They can kill you or draw your attention to something. This is where the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office comes in.

Apparently the USP&TO told the physicist who first tried to patent the laser in 1959 to fuck off, but they were very happy to grant patent No. 5,443,036 — for a totally unheard-of, laser-pointer-utilizing “method of exercising a cat” — on August 22, 1995. This method now has its very own Wikipedia page, and it’s our last stop before the grand finale: August 22.

A great many things have happened on August 22, but historians agree that the most important was the 1989 release of Janet Jackson’s chart-topping single, “Miss You Much,” in which the singer demonstrates her love for an unnamed boy through dance and spelling.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this installment. If you have suggestions for the starting point of a future SDoW, post them in comments. I might take them if they’re any good.