The following excerpts are actual answers given
on history tests and quizzes by 5th and 6th grade students, in Ohio.
Read carefully for grammar, misplaced modifiers, and of course,
spelling! Kids should rule the world, as it would be a laugh a minute
for us adults.
*****
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.
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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 his commandos made it.
*****
Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines. He
was an actual hysterical figure as well as being in the bible. It
sounds like he was sort of busy too.
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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.
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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.
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Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper
which was very dangerous to all his men.
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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 lays. He wrote
tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter.
*****
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.
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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.
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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. Bethoven 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.
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Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbits but I don't know why.
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Charles Darwin was a naturalist. He wrote the Organ of the Species.
It was very long and 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.