One frequently sees lists of odd answers supposedly given by students in school exams. This is one such list from a book published in 1916. What kinds of mistakes were being made by schoolkids nearly 90 years ago?
Magna Charta said that the King had no right to bring soldiers into a
lady’s house and tell her to mind them.
Panama is a town of Colombo, where they are trying to make an isthmus.
The three highest mountains in Scotland are Ben Nevis, Ben Lomond and
Ben Jonson.
Wolsey saved his life by dying on the way from York to London.
Bigamy is when a man tries to serve two masters.
“Those melodious bursts that fill the spacious days of great Elizabeth”
refers to the songs that Queen Elizabeth used to write in her spare
time.
Tennyson wrote a poem called Grave’s Energy.
The Rump Parliament consisted entirely of Cromwell’s stalactites.
The plural of spouse is spice.
Queen Elizabeth rode a white horse from Kenilworth through Coventry with nothing on, and Raleigh offered her his cloak.
The law allowing only one wife is called monotony.
When England was placed under an Interdict the Pope stopped all births,
marriages and deaths for a year.
The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.
The gods of the Indians are chiefly Mahommed and Buddha, and in their
spare time they do lots of carving.
Every one needs a holiday from one year’s end to another.
The Seven Great Powers of Europe are gravity, electricity, steam, gas,
fly-wheels, and motors, and Mr. Lloyd George.
The hydra was married to Henry VIII. When he cut off her head another
sprung up.
Liberty of conscience means doing wrong and not worrying about it
afterward.
The Habeas Corpus act was that no one need stay in prison longer than he liked.
Becket put on a camel-air shirt and his life at once became dangerous.
The two races living in the north of Europe are Esquimaux and Archangels.
Skeleton is what you have left when you take a man’s insides out and his
outsides off.
Ellipsis is when you forget to kiss.
A bishop without a diocese is called a suffragette.
Artificial perspiration is the way to make a person alive when they are
only just dead.
A night watchman is a man employed to sleep in the open air.
The tides are caused by the sun drawing the water out and the moon
drawing it in again.
The liver is an infernal organ of the body.
A circle is a line which meets its other end without ending.
Triangles are of three kinds, the equilateral or three-sided, the
quadrilateral or four-sided, and the multilateral or polyglot.
General Braddock was killed in the Revolutionary War. He had three
horses shot under him and a fourth went through his clothes.
A buttress is the wife of a butler.
The young Pretender was so called because it was pretended that he was
born in a frying-pan.
A verb is a word which is used in order to make an exertion.
A Passive Verb is when the subject is the sufferer, e.g., I am loved.
Lord Raleigh was the first man to see the invisible Armada.
A schoolmaster is called a pedigree.
The South of the U. S. A. grows oranges, figs, melons and a great
quantity of preserved fruits, especially tinned meats.
The wife of a Prime Minister is called a Primate.
The Greeks were too thickly populated to be comfortable.
The American war was started because the people would persist in sending their parcels thru the post without stamps.
Prince William was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine; he never laughed
again.
The heart is located on the west side of the body.
Richard II is said to have been murdered by some historians; his real
fate is uncertain.
Subjects have a right to partition the king.
A kaiser is a stream of hot water springin’ up an’ distubin’ the earth.
He had nothing left to live for but to die.
Franklin’s education was got by himself. He worked himself up to be a
great literal man. He was also able to invent electricity. Franklin’s
father was a tallow chandelier.
Monastery is the place for monsters.
Sir Walter Raleigh was put out once when his servant found him with fire
in his head. And one day after there had been a lot of rain, he threw
his cloak in a puddle and the queen stepped dryly over.
The Greeks planted colonists for their food supplies.
Nicotine is so deadly a poison that a drop on the end of a dog’s tail
will kill a man.
. . .
Shadows are rays of darkness.
Lincoln wrote the address while riding from Washington to Gettysburg on
an envelope.
Queen Elizabeth was tall and thin, but she was a stout protestant.
An equinox is a man who lives near the north pole.
An abstract noun is something we can think of but cannot feel–as a red
hot poker.
The population of New England is too dry for farming.
Anatomy is the human body, which consists of three parts, the head, the
chist, and the stummick. The head contains the eyes and brains, if any.
The chist contains the lungs and a piece of the liver. The stummick is
devoted to the bowels, of which there are five, a, e, i, o, u, and
sometimes w and y.
Filigree means a list of your descendants.
“The Complete Angler” was written by Euclid because he knew all about
angles.
The imperfect tense in French is used to express a future action in past
time which does not take place at all.
Arabia has many syphoons and very bad ones; It gets into your hair even
with your mouth shut.
The modern name for Gaul is vinegar.
Some of the West India Islands are subject to torpedoes.
The Crusaders were a wild and savage people until Peter the Hermit
preached to them.
On the low coast plains of Mexico yellow fever is very popular.
Louis XVI was gelatined during the French Revolution.
Gender shows whether a man is masculine, feminine, or neuter.
An angle is a triangle with only two sides.
Geometry teaches us how to bisex angels.
Gravitation is that which if there were none we should all fly away.
A vacuum is a large empty space where the Pope lives.
A deacon is the lowest kind of Christian.
Vapor is dried water.
The Salic law is that you must take everything with a grain of salt.
The Zodiac is the Zoo of the sky, where lions, goats and other animals
go after they are dead.
. . .
