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- I thought you might get a kick out of the following:
-
- The World According to Student Bloopers
-
- Richard Lederer
- St. Paul's School
- (Reprinted without permission)
-
- 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 eight grade
- through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.
-
- The inhabitants of 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 cul-
- tivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge
- triangular cube. The Pramids are a range of mountains between France and
- Spain.
-
- The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the
- Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their
- children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice
- Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother's birthmark.
- Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarchs, 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 made
- without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the
- ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He
- fougth 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 Illiad", 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 Athen was democratic because the 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 the
- Parisians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.
-
- Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History call people Romans
- because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the
- guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the
- battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because they thought he
- was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyrany 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 Harlod mustarded his troops before the
- Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, and the
- victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, the Magna Carta
- provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.
-
- In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer
- of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote liter-
- ature. 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 and
- 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-foot
- 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 "Vir-
- gin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself be-
- fore her troops, they all 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 in
- 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 Mac-
- beth 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 Miquel
- Cervantes. He wrote "Donkey Hote". The next great author was John Milton.
- Milton wrote "Paradise Lost." Then his wife dies 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 the was called the Pilgrim's Progress. When they
- landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came down the hill
- rolling their was hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porposies 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 Wars was the English put tacks in
- their tea. Also, the colonists would send their pacels through the post with-
- out stamps. During the War, 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 elec-
- tricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared "a horse divided against itself
- cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
-
- George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the Father
- of Our Country. Them 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 write the Gettysburg address
- while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He
- also signed 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. On the night of April 14, 1865,
- Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in
- a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a sup-
- posedl insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
-
- Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare
- invented electricity and also wrote a book called "Candy". Gravity was
- invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the
- apples are flaling off the trees.
-
- Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel
- 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 Revolu-
- tion, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned
- heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. Then the Spanish gorrilas 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
- inheret his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear him
- any 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. He 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 for telepathy. Louis Pastuer discovered a cure
- for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturailst who wrote the "Organ of the
- Species". Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the
- Marx Brothers.
-
- The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf,
- ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.
-