By Richard Lederer
One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the
occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following
history of the world from certifiably genuine student bloopers, collected by teachers
throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level.
Read carefully and you will learn a lot.
The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies. they lived in the Sarah Dessert
and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to
live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irrigation. The
Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a
range of mountains between France and Spain.
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, GUINNESS,
Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, once asked, 'Am
I my brother's son?' God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son
of Isaac, stole his brother's birth mark. Jacob was a patriarch, who brought up his twelve
sons to be patriarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave
refuse to the Israelites. Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw.
Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread without
any ingredients. Afterward, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments.
David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a
race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives
and 500 porcupines.
Without the Greeks we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns
-- Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth
says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the river Stynx until he became
intolerable. Achilles appears in the Iliad, by Homer. Homer also wrote the Oddity in which
Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was
not written by Homer but by another man of that name. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher
who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of
wedlock.
In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the
java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athens was democratic
because people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the
mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were
doing. When they fought with the Persians, the Greeks were out numbered because the
Persians had more men.
Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they
never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlics in
their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of
March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel
tyranny who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the
age of shivery, King Harold mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of
Arc was canonized by Bernard Shaw, and the victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their
necks. Finally, Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same
crime.
In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time
was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature. Another tale tells
of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.
The renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human
being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal
indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter
Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance.
It was an age of great inventions an discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir
Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important
invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a
100' clipper.
The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult
because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the Virgin Queen. As a Queen she
was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, theyall shouted 'hurrah.'
Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish armadillo.
The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made
much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived at Windsor with his merry
wives, writing tragedies, comedies, and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays,
Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another,
Lady Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo
and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet.
Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote 'Donkey Hotel.'
the next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote 'Paradise Lost.' Then his wife died
and he wrote 'Paradise Regained.'
During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who
discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the
Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and this is known as
Pilgrims Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by the Indians,
who came down the hill rolling their war hoops before them. The Indian squaws carried
porpoises on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed along with their cabooses,
which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many
people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.
One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks on their tea.
Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. During the
War, the Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were
barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to
pay for taxis.
Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas
Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of
Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a
loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing cats backwards and
declared, 'A horses divided against itself cannot stand.' Franklin died in 1790 and is
still dead.
George Washington married Martha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our
Country. Then the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic
hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.
Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy,
and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was
President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, 'In onion there is strength.'Abraham
Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the
back of an envelope. He also freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation,
and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. but the Clue Clux Clan would
torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. It claimed it represented law
and odor. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theatre and got shot in his
seat by one of the actors in the moving picture show. The believed assinator was John
Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented
electricity and also wrote a book called 'Candy.' Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It
is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are falling off the trees.
Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handle was half
German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the
present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud
music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven
expired in 1827 and later died for this.
France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it
happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution, and it catapulted
into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in
their shoes. Then the Spanish gorillas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's
flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He
wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear
children.
The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and
the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63
years. Her reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great
personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.
The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions
and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused
a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick
invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of
a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code of telepathy.
Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles
Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the 'Organ of the
Species.' Madam Curie discovered Radium. and Karl
Marx became one of the Marx brothers.
The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a
new error in the anals of human history.