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

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. The Greeks were highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't
have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a young female moth.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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."

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

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couple. They lived in
Italy. Romeo's last wish was to be laid by Juliet but her father was having
none of that I'm sure. You know how Italian fathers are.

13. 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.

14. Delegates for 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.

15. 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 theatre
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.

16. 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 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.

17. Beethoven 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.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. Madman Curie discovered radio. She was the first woman to do what she
did. Other woman 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.

___________________

quote:

I sought refuge in a house on fire I took shelter in a wall of flame I built a prison in my own subconscious There's nothing else left Nothing else left to blame Nothing else left

- House on Fire by Assemblage 23