GENEVA, FROM THE ROOF OF A CONFERENCE CENTER — Humanity has officially run out of new jokes, according to an international panel that confirmed Thursday that every possible joke has now been told.
The final original joke was delivered at 1:17 p.m. Wednesday by accountant Kevin Morris, 41, during lunch with three coworkers.
It involved a pharmacist, a canoe and a divorce.
“That was the last one,” said Dr. Elena Voss, director of the International Humor Registry. “Everything after that is technically a repeat.”
Morris said he had no idea he was making history.
“I just thought of it while I was eating.”
His coworkers described the joke as “pretty good.”
The Registry reached its conclusion after comparing Morris’s joke against more than 14 billion recorded jokes, anecdotes, one-liners, memes and things people have said while drunk.
No previous match was found.
At 1:18 p.m., a woman in Chicago told what she believed was a new joke involving a dentist and a horse.
It had already been told in Belgium in 1974.
“That’s when we knew,” Voss said.
Comedy clubs will remain open, officials confirmed, although performers have been instructed to use existing material.
Several comedians said this would not significantly affect operations.
The ruling also applies to puns.
“Those ran out years ago,” Voss said.
Internet memes will continue to be permitted after regulators determined that putting different words over the same photograph does not constitute the creation of a new joke.
Parents were also reassured that old jokes may still be told to children who have never heard them.
“The joke is not new,” Voss explained. “The child is.”
Morris has since received several invitations to perform his historic joke on television.
He has declined all of them.
“I tried it on my wife last night,” he said. “She didn’t laugh.”
Meanwhile, pigeons across the world appeared largely unsurprised by the announcement.
They had reportedly suspected for centuries that humans were repeating themselves.
