175 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
175 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
The World According to Student Bloopers
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Richard Lederer
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St. Paul's School
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One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is
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receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted
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together the following "history" of the world from certifiably genuine student
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bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eight grade
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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
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Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the
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inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cul-
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tivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge
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triangular cube. The Pramids are a range of mountains between France and
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Spain.
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The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the
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Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their
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children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice
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Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother's birthmark.
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Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarchs, but they
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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
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them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made
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without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the
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ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He
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fougth with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times.
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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
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kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth
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is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the
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River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears in "The Illiad", by
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Homer. Homer also wrote the "Oddity", in which Penelope was the last hardship
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that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer
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but by another man of that name.
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Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice.
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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
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threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government
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of Athen was democratic because the people took the law into their own hands.
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There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't
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climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought the
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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
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because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the
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guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the
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battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because they thought he
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was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyrany who would torture his poor
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subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
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Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur
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lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the
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Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, and the
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victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, the Magna Carta
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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
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of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote liter-
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ature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple
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while standing on his son's head.
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The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of
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their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg
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for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated
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by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that
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made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and
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discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical
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figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the
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circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot
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clipper.
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The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking
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difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the "Vir-
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gin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself be-
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fore her troops, they all shouted "hurrah." Then her navy went out and
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defeated the Spanish Armadillo.
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The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear
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never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived in
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Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one
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of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving
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himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Mac-
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beth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an
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example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel
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Cervantes. He wrote "Donkey Hote". The next great author was John Milton.
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Milton wrote "Paradise Lost." Then his wife dies and he wrote "Paradise
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Regained."
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During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great
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navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships
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were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims
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crossed the Ocean, and the was called the Pilgrim's Progress. When they
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landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came down the hill
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rolling their was hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porposies on
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their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their
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cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one
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for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John
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Smith was responsible for all this.
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One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in
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their tea. Also, the colonists would send their pacels through the post with-
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out stamps. During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over
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stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the
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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.
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Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the
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Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his
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clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented elec-
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tricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared "a horse divided against itself
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cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
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George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the Father
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of Our Country. Them the Constitution of the United States was adopted to
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secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the
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right to keep bare arms.
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Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother
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died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own
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hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said,
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"In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg address
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while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He
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also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave
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the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch
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the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. On the night of April 14, 1865,
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Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in
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a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a sup-
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posedl insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
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Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare
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invented electricity and also wrote a book called "Candy". Gravity was
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invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the
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apples are flaling off the trees.
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Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel
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was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large. Bach died
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from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He
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was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when
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everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for
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this.
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France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished
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before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolu-
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tion, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned
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heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. Then the Spanish gorrilas came
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down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with
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bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to
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inheret his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear him
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any children.
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The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in
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the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen.
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She sat on a thorn for 63 years. He reclining years and finally the end of
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her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final
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event which ended her reign.
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The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts.
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The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus
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McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a hundred men.
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Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pastuer discovered a cure
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for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturailst who wrote the "Organ of the
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Species". Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the
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Marx Brothers.
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The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf,
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ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.
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