The World According to Student Bloopers
Richard Lederer, St. Paul's School
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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.
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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 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, 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 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 Styx 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 Athens 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 Persians,
the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.
Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. 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 tyrranist who would torture
his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Danes, 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 Charta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same
offense.
In medievil 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 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
one of Shakespeare'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
Shakespeare was Miguel 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 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 War 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 were 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. Voltaire
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 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. 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 for 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.
04 May 2010, 3:05 am
