High in the Alps, nestled in the courtyard of a monastary, medieval monks worked on the cloning of rats. They believed they'd uncovered the genetic structure of Happiness, and had diddled with the rat genome enough to insert in Happiness DNA. They released the rats.
However, they'd made a big mistake. These rats quickly bred with non-Happy rats, and the genetic attachment was lost in favor of Bubonic Plague, which the rodents quite happily spred where ever they travelled.
The monks worked feverishly to come up with an antidote, but succumbed to the disease themselves. One large St. Bernard bearing the research data was sent out of the monastary by the last surviving acolyte, but the skiers who discovered the dog were illiterate. Instead, they threw away the papers the dog carried, and convinced the pooch to carry their keg of brandy instead.
More History? You want more history?
We go back into the earliest cesspools of time, and you want more history?
Well, Rome wasn't built in a day, and nor was this website.
Dolly's
Cloning Emporium
The abacus counts 
grains of sand on this beach.