The World According to Student Bloopers

       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 eight 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 Pramids 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 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. 

    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. 

    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 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. 

    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. 

    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. 

    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 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 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 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 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." 

    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. 

    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 without 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. 

    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 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.

    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 supposedl 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 Issac Walton.  It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when
the apples are flaling 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.  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.

    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. 

    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.