wANNASKAN aLMANAC FOR mAY 26, 2020...a cAPITAL IDEA

That title looks a little strange.  Capital and lower letters, or "case", refers to how letters are written in larger uppercase form or smaller lowercase form.  This is also known as majuscule (capital) or miniscule (lower case).
Historians believe that majuscule (capital) letters were the first ones used.  Lower case letters came later.  This answers a serious question for the inquisitive.  Egg comes before egg, and Chicken comes before chicken.  I guess that will solve that conundrum.  The first alphabets were written entirely in majuscule letters.  The Egyptians are generally credited with the first alphabet.  It was created around 2700 BC.

There are two things that stand out from their alphabet.  One, it is all in capital letters.  There wasn't a need for lower case.  Second, there is a lack of vowels.  This is why Egypt's Pharaoh Patsajak was unable to get his Wheel Of Fortune TV series on the river waves.
That was a lot of attempted humor there.  Hopefully it wasn't too hard to Follow. 
Other alphabets were also developed.  Eventually smaller versions of each letter for these alphabets were created.  This was probably done to save time.  Smaller and rounder letters were faster and easier to write.  Scribes of the time would only use either majuscule or miniscule versions of their letters.  They wouldn't mix them...it just wasn't proper.  Then one day, I could just see a pair of scribes running to the printing press (which had not yet been invented) and bumping into each other.  "You got your majuscule in my miniscule," moans one.
"You got your miniscule in my majuscule," laments the other.

It became a common pickup line.  To make it work, people learned to Capitalize Words foR nO ApParent reason. It was hard to read and may have been the cause of several wars.  Wannaskan Almanac fact checkers are working to verify the above assertions.
Up until the early 18th century there were no rules when it came to capitalization in the English language.  It was however traditional for most writers to use capital letters for the first word in a sentence and for nouns.  This had been a common practice for hundreds of years.

Today there are rules that govern the use of capitalization.  For example, when texting, U can use capital letters whenever U want, especially if you are implying that you are YELLING at someone.
An interesting side note is how the letters became known as upper case and lower case.  Early print shops would keep letters that were used more often (the miniscule ones) in an easier to access "lower case" and would keep their less often used (majuscule) letters in the harder to reach "upper case".  For once I am not lying.  It might really be true!
Not all language systems use upper and lowercase letters.  The Indian, Chinese, and Japanese do not distinguish between letters.  They choose to honor all their letters, not just the big ones.  Maybe some day we will join them and get rid of all this proper noun nonsense...or nounsense as it is known in the himalayas.