How Geoffrey Chaucer invented Twitter

And you thought he was just some old guy whose smutty old-English verse is used to torture GCSE students...

But no, Chaucer invented the whole micro-blogging phenomenon. Kind of. Well, he's responsible for the first known use of the word 'Twitter' as a verb, anyway, in his 1374 translation of an obscure sixth-century Christian philosophy text.

"The Iangelynge bryd … enclosed in a streyht cage … twiterith desyrynge the wode with her swete voys” reads the relevant line. Head on over to Twitterati for the full story.