World History
According to Kids' Bloopers

by
Richard Lederer



One fringe benefit of teaching English or History is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. It is truly astounding what havoc they can wreak upon the chronicles of the human race. 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. - RL



Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies, and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants had to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert were 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.


Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks were a highly sculptured people. 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 Iliad, by Homer. Homer also wrote The Oddity. Actually, The Oddity was not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.

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 them 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 calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long.

Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him. Dying, he gasped out: "Tee hee, Brutus."

Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlics in their hair.

Rome was invaded by ballbearings, and is full of fallen arches today.


Then came the Middle Ages, when everyone was middle aged. 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 burnt to a steak. She was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw.

The Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature. One popular story was about 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.

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.

It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and 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.

Shakespeare was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies, errors, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. 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 died 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 this was called Pilgrim's 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 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. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.

Delegates from the original 13 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 two 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. His farewell address was Mount Vernon. 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. 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, John Wilkes Booth. 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 falling off the trees. Johann Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was a big composer. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music.


France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. 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 Napoleon's 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 couldn't have any children.


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. Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.

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 rain.


The First World War, was caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist, and ushered in a new error in human history.

[source unknown]
(abridged by David Van Alstyne)



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