Humor
The World
According to Student Bloopers
Richard Lederer, St. Pauls 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 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
brothers son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on
Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brothers
birthmark. Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons
to be partiarchs, but they did not take to it. One of
Jacobs 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 Davids sons, had 500 wives and 500
porcupines.
Without the Greeks, we wouldnt 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 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 couldnt
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 Ramones conquered the Geeks. History calls these
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 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 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 mid-evil 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
sons 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 Donatellos 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 in Windsor with his merry wives, writing
tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespears
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 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 Pilgrims 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
porpoises on their backs. 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 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. 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 Americas greatest Precedent.
Lincolns 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 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 supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booths
career.
Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time.
Voltaire 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 Napoleons 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 couldnt 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.
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Updated 22 May 1997