Tower of Babel
According to the Book of Genesis in the Bible, after the Flood men again began to get wicked, and they had an awful idea. They wanted to build a tower which would go all the way up to Heaven, so they could be famous. (This may be a memory of the Sumerian ziggurats, which were built with very much this idea in mind). In the Bible story, God hates this idea, and so he wrecks the tower, and also makes everybody speak different languages, so they will not be able to cooperate on big projects like this anymore.
Here's a version of the story of the Tower of Babel told in
Fritz Lang's Metropolis:
To buy an excellent Child's Bible, click on the picture
(this is the one
I learned from, and the one I give my own kids):
