This day in history - 01:09:1213.4

01:09:1213.4 On this day Helmut Stump, self-styled Professor Stump, was born. His parents, Immelda and Horace Stump, were part of a free thinking commune that practiced astrology, crystal divining, abstract music composition and vertical gardening. The last being a truly mucky enterprise when it came to spreading the compost. 

Helmut, named after the great thinker Helmet A. Longthink, grew up in a world he could not come to terms with. From his first memory, Helmut recalled the storm of new ideas as they cascaded in brilliant sparkles of thought, etched across his brain with such intensity that he hardly had time to get them down on paper. His parents took him to soothsayers, medicine men and part-time witch doctors, certain he was possessed by an evil and malignant spirit. Eventually, and after far too many beetroot enema’s, they came to realise that their son was ‘special’ and would not survive in the real world without their constant supervision and guidance.  

This supervision lasted all of two weeks, before they lost track of him after ‘chasing the herb’ at a particularly boisterous party. By the time they had screwed their heads back on, they realised that their son was gone. Helmut Stump had run away. He never saw his parents again. Instead, working a series of menial jobs to fund himself through several universities, he becoming a master of many disciplines. He then took a series of ever more technical jobs as house magician, chief warlock and wizard 1st class, before inventing the title of professor for himself, which he thought far more fitting. He felt that the world’s reliance on magic, a power he had never witnessed, was a thing of the past. The only way forward was to study the world and all its wondrous properties. Helmet Stump is now the first ever scientist in Gurden, and probably the world. Oh, and he still hates beetroot.