Wednesday, November 3, 2010

300 Wives and 700 Porcupines


Some students have a way of writing things in a slightly different manner than intended, as demonstrated in the following excerpts from tests and essays of eight graders through college, complied by Richard Lederer, a teacher in St Paul.


The Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offense.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created by an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked, “Am I my brother’s son?”


Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.

Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.






Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. Her death was the final event that ended her reign.

The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the Pilgrims. Many died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats together. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable when apples are falling off the trees.

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 the attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present.

Handel was a great composer. He was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large.


The nineteenth century was a time of many inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up.

William Tell shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son’s head.




Bret Burquest is an award-winning columnist and author of four novels. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and where a black cat crossing your path means the cat is going somewhere. His blogs appear on several websites, including

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