At first, she cut pieces of cloth from her dress but pretty soon, her dress was getting very short so she decided to make paper made specifically for wiping asses. She realized that constuction paper didn't work and neither did printer paper. So then she took napkins and paper towels and used those.

As for the historical significance...

If our great leaders didn't have anything to wipe their asses then maybe they wouldn't be as great as they are today. For example, let's say right before President Washington's election, he had to use the bathroom. What if he had had to sit on the toilet all through the election because he didn't have anything to wipe his ass? Then he wouldn't have been elected president and our nation wouldn't be where it is today.

So I would just like to say that we could have gone without all of the fancy electronics that we have today. But if we didn't have toilet paper then we probably wouldn't have even gotten those fancy electronics because great inventors would be discouraged by the rashes on their asses.