| The World According to Student Bloopers
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 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 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. 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 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 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
calls 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, and Joan of Arc was
cannonized by George Bernard Shaw. 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 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 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 "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a
success. Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish
Armadillo.
The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William
Shakespeare. Shakespeare 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 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 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 that was called the
Pilgrim's Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were
greeted by Indians, who came down the hill rolling their war 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
parcels through the post without 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 electricity by rubbing cats backwards and
declared "a horse 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. 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
wrote 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 torch 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 supposedly 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 falling 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 Revolution, 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
inherit 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. 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 annals of human
history.
Richard Lederer St. Paul's School
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