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Points of ViewThings You Never Knew About Western Civ
By ALBERT S. LINDEMANN
(Editor's note: Teaching Western civilization for 30+ years has enriched historian Al Lindemann's collection of hilarious examples of misspellings and misapplications of the English language. Appended to the bloopers, not all of which are from students, in brackets are Lindemann's own responses. He said he hopes that "making something humorous out of errors helps all of us to remember not to make them." Most of these bloopers have previously appeared on the professor's Web site.)
"During the Renaissance, man began to reach out and explore himself." [Until he found out that it might make him dim-witted, to say nothing of giving him deep circles under his eyes.]
"The fear of whiches was widespread in the eighteenth century." [However, the fear of whences did not come until later.] From another student: "The witch hysteria got rid of considerable people and made them more secure." [From the same people who brought you better dead than red.] From yet another student: "Witches were punished for contorting with the devil." [One meaning of progress: Madonna now makes millions for doing the same thing.]
"In 1898 France was shaken by the Dryfuss Affair." [It was pretty bad, but nothing compared to the Wetfuss Affair, after the rains of 1901.]
"When it was found that a French military member was sending secrets to the Germans, many people were quick to blame Richard Dreyfus, a Jew, even though evidence was weak." [Even weaker than you think.]
"Perhaps this is to be the destiny of all great economic as well as political revolutions, to enter with a bang and get perverted with a whisper." [Someone kept whispering to the Bolsheviks, Hey you! Feelthy peectures?]
"President Wilson arrived in Paris with fourteen pointers." [There was such a scene when they met up with the Alsatians and Dalmatians.]
"Under the new constitution voting was to be by ballad." [And a little tra-la was not enough; if you couldn't hold a tune, you didn't even bother to vote.]
"The olive blithe which struck Italy caused untold damage." [Yeah, but compared to the grape fungus it was a pretty frivolous matter.]
"In 1937, Lenin revolted Russia." [Well, what do you expect? Nobody smells that good after being dead for thirteen years.]
"Leon Blum stayed out of the Spanish Civil War because the working class anarchists were revolting." [They hardly ever took baths and had not yet discovered a man's deodorant.]
"In Berlin, all kinds of sexual deprivations were practised." [No grass, no massage oil -- I mean, times were tough.]
"It is difficult for us to understand the feelings among Germans that the Third Reich illicits." [Difficult, sure, but you can understand that they were cheap feelings.]
"Hitler was the Fuhror of Germany." [He was, like, all the rage.]
[Once again giving evidence of the validity of the generalization that each generation rewrites history in its own way and in its own language, one of my students wrote on her final exam that] "Hitler had a plan to take over, like, the larger corporate shopping malls and fill them with small craftsman."
"Sir Francis Drake circumcised the globe with a 100-foot clipper." [What mohel would not sigh in envy and admiration.] "Magellan disproved the theory of a flat earth by circumventing the globe." [Maybe those who want to disprove Darwin's theories have something to learn here.]
"Jews were hated because their laws said animals could be eaten only if killed in a specific manor." [And it was a drag, 'cause some of the manors were miles away.] (from the Wilson Quarterly journal)
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