The World According to Students

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.

~Richard Lederer ~St. Paul's School

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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 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed

him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.