From staff
Tick tock. Back goes the clock. This is the season for setbacks. If all went according to schedule, we all set our clocks back an hour and daylight-saving time ended early this morning. It means schedules today will be a little off. Connections will be missed and appointments bypassed. The "setbacks" of setting back are part of the autumnal ritual. They are also, in the grand scheme of things, pretty minor. Take a look at a sampling of history's epic "setbacks" that make any clock cares this morning seem small.

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1971: Richard Nixon installs secret tape recorders in the White House. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

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1919: The Boston Red Sox sell Babe Ruth's contract to the New York Yankees. The Yankees become a dynasty and the Red Sox won't win a World Series until 2004.

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1865: Abraham Lincoln steps out for a nice night at the theater.

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1815: Napoleon decides odds are in his favor and takes his army on a sightseeing trip to Waterloo.

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1512: Juan Ponce de Leon set off in search of the Fountain of Youth but has to settle with discovering Florida instead.

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1066: Saxons ignore the threat of Norman invasion under the command of William the Conqueror -- despite the fact that his last name was "the Conqueror."

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65 A.D.: Rome burns. Nero may or may not have fiddled, but property values surely fell.

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1070 B.C.: Samson gets a haircut.

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3200 B.C.: Egyptians dismiss the Mesopotamian wheel as a fad and spend the next 1,200 years dragging stuff around on sledges.

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1.5 to 2.5 million years ago: Australopithecus fails to recognize the usefulness of a sharp stone and stick, leaving tool-making to Homo habilis. The rest, as they say, is human history.
-- Steven Uhles, staff writer
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See the entire timeline of history's epic "setbacks" here.