No. 2352
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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper which was very dangerous to all his men.
• 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.
• It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood.
• 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.
• 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.
http://www.inspire21.com/stories/humorstories/HistorytoAmericanchildren
_____
