^interesting! 1) a lot of people died in the black plague, which
   only lasted a few years. 2) All the money from the dead people
   had to go somewhere, so the few that were left over got very
   very rich 3) They needed stuff to spend their money on - clothes
   are always good. 4) Those who weren't rich - the peasants, made
   lots and lots of linen out of flax (which is cheap and easy to
   grow anywhere) 5) Lots of linen, lots of disposible income -
   suddenly, UNDERPANTS are invented. 6) Old underwear had to go
   somewhere, so the guy that used to collect bones after the black
   plague, now collected old underpants, which there was a lot of.
   7) Mills got them for free, so they decided to make: PAPER. Lots
   and lots of paper. 8) a decent printing press was born 9)
   Information revolution. Out of old underpants. Love it. oh! that
   was the interesting part: the underpants happened in the age of
   properity AFTER the black plague was over. 40 million died. The
   survivers, who were perfectly fine, got the money (relatives,
   etc) from those who died, so there was a generation of "noveu
   riche". The underpants were born simply because they had more
   money than they knew what to do with - so why not cover the
   naughty bits? Underpants get discarded after a time, and instead
   of wasting good linen, turn it into a pulp, make paper. Free
   paper easily available = lots of stuff to print on. gutenberg
   invents movable type - bingo, free paper, flexible printing, new
   educational information coming from the greeks who ran off after
   the fall of constantinople and immigrated (that's where the "new
   old greek stuff" all came from in the Rennaisance... all a neat
   chain of events that happened within a few short years.