Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television series that aired on BBC from 1969 to 1974, is widely considered as one of the finest and most hilarious series to come out of the Queen's land, or indeed anywhere in the world. The Pythons and their antics have resulted in a cult following that swears by their work and probably quotes them very often in their day to day lives, much to the annoyance of their acquaintances. Apart from that, the group's influence on comedy in general has been huge, and has often been compared to the influence that The Beatles had on music! Their unique style which did not rely on punchlines and a fixed structure shattered the stereotypes of British humour completely. And if that was not enough, the Pythons have also influenced popular culture as well, as we shall soon see (if we decide to read further, that is). This post is unofficially titled 'The Things Monty Python Should Get Credit for... but often aren't, the poor things'.

Spam. We now recognize it more as a term for unsolicited email rather than it's original usage, which is an abbreviation of Spiced Ham. How then, did the term get applied to email? If you have even just passed kindergarten, you must have figured by now that the Pythons had something to do with it. Yes, one of the Python's most famous sketches, The Spam Sketch (oh what an apt title), is placed in a restaurant scene where the actors spew out the word spam mercilessly about a hundred times in just a few minutes. When unsolicited email first appeared in bulk, the Spam sketch was often referred to by users on bulletin boards and forums to describe the relentless nature of the mails. Lo and behold, the term was coined and in place!

People who are familiar with the term spam probably are also familiar with a famous email that has been forwarded a lot especially among the younger generation concerning the word Fuck. This hilarious little article describes the versitality of the word and its usage in everday english (find the article here, or a complete animation here). Once again, this work is often credited to a sketch of Monty Python, although the claim is not verified. The voice in the animations and audio files is that of Jack Wagner, a park announcer for Disney World, but the original story is perhaps written by Monty Python.

This one is super cool (for geeks, that is). The Python programming language... no I'm not kidding ! The name derives from Monty Python. It's even on the official FAQ! Apparently the creator of the language Guido van Rossum was reading Flying Circus scripts at the time and so decided on this name.

And now for something completely different:

A snake in Australia was discovered in the early 1980s, of which the Latin name is Montypythonsidesriversleighensis!