07/07/04

The following excerpts are actual answers given on history   
tests and in Sunday School quizzes by children between 5th   
and 6th grade ages in Ohio. They were collected by two   
teachers over a period of three years. Read carefully for   
grammar, misplaced modifiers, and, of course, spelling.   

   
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. Since then no one ever found it.   
   
Ancient Egypt was old. It was inhabited by gypsies and mummies   
who all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert.   
The climate of the Sarah is such that all the inhabitants have   
to live elsewhere.   
   
Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea where they made   
unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients.   
Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandos. He   
died before he ever reached Canada but the commandos made it.   

Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.   
He was A actual hysterical figure as well as being in the bible.   
It sounds Like he was sort of busy too.   

The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we   
wouldn't have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a   
young female moth.   
   
Socrates was a famous old Greek teacher who went around giving   
people advice. They killed him. He later died from an overdose   
of wedlock which is apparently poisonous. After his death, his   
career suffered a Dramatic decline.   

In the first Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled   
biscuits, and threw the java.  The games were messier then than   
they show on TV now.   
   
Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul.   
The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going   
to be made king. Dying, he gasped out "Same to you, Brutus."   

Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was canonized by Bernard   
Shaw for reasons I don't really understand. The English and   
French still have problems.   

Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a   
success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all   
shouted "hurrah!" and that was the end of the fighting for a   
long while.   
   
It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg   
invented removable type and the Bible. Another important   
invention was the circulation of blood.   

Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented   
Cigarettes and started smoking.   

Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper   
which was very dangerous to all his men.   

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare.   
He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He   
never made much money and is famous only because of his plays.   
He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic   
pentameter.   
   
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   
discovered electricity by Rubbing two cats backward and also   
declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." He was   
a naturalist for sure. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.   

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... Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by   
signing the Emasculation Proclamation.   
   
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. They believe the assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a   
supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.   
   
Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a   
large number of children. In between he practiced on an old   
spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750   
to the present. 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.   
   
Bethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf that   
he wrote loud music and became the father of rock and roll. He   
took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for   
him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.   
   
The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and   
inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started   
reproducing by machine. 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.   

Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbits but I don't know why.   
   
Charles Darwin was a naturalist. He wrote the Organ of the Species.   
It was very long. People got upset about it and had trials to see   
if it was really true. He sort of said God's days were not just 24   
hours but without watches who knew anyhow? I don't get it.   
   
Madman Curie discovered radio.  She was the first woman to do what   
she did. Other women have become scientists since her but they   
didn't get to find radios because they were already taken.   
   
Karl Marx was one of the Marx Brothers. The other three were in the   
movies. Karl made speeches and started revolutions. Someone in the   
family had to have a job, I guess."