[Original Author: Richard Lederer, St Paul's School]

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 in 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 pyramids 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, 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 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 intollerable. 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
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 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 cannonized by Bernard
Shaw, and 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 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 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. When
Elizabeth exposed herself before 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 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 Hote. 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 was 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 squabs 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 in the 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 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. 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 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
supposingly 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 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.
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 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. Madman 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.