Science student bloopers "Germinate: To become a naturalized German." "Liter: A nest of young puppies.

." "Magnet: Something you find crawling all over a dead cat." "Momentum: What you give a person when they are going away." "Planet: A body of Earth surrounded by sky." "Rhubarb: A kind of celery gone bloodshot." "Vacuum: A large, empty space where the pope lives." "Before giving a blood transfusion, find out if the blood is affirmative or negative." "To remove dust from the eye, pull the eye down over the nose." "For a nosebleed: Put the nose much lower then the body until the heart stops." "For drowning: Climb on top of the person and move up and down to make artificial perspiration." "For fainting: Rub the person's chest or, if a lady, rub her arm above the hand instead. Or put the head between the knees of the nearest medical doctor." "For dog bite: put the dog away for several days. If he has not recovered, then kill it." "For asphyxiation: Apply artificial respiration until the patient is dead." "To prevent contraception: wear a condominium." "For head cold: use an agonizer to spray the nose until it drops in your throat." "To keep milk from turning sour: Keep it in the cow." Foreign Translations That Did NOT Work! Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea". Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron, into Germany only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "manure stick". Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: Nothing sucks like an Electrolux. In Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan "finger-lickin' good" came out as "eat your fingers off". The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, "Salem--Feeling Free", was translated into the Japanese market as "When smoking Salem, you will feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty". When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what's inside, since most people can't read English. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el Papa), the shirts read "I saw the potato" (la papa). In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into "Schweppes Toilet Water". Pepsi's "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave", in Chinese. We all know about GM's Chevy Nova meaning "it won't go" in Spanish markets, but did you know that Ford had a similar problem in Brazil with the Pinto? Pinto was Brazilian slang for "tiny male genitals". Ford renamed the automobile Corcel, meaning "horse". Hunt-Wesson introduced Big John products in French Canada as Gros Jos. Later they found out that in slang it means "big breasts". Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "it takes a strong man to make a "tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate". When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, "it won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you". Instead, the company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant". The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Ke-kou-ke- la", meaning "Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax", depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent "ko-kou-ko-le", translating into "happiness in the mouth". Three years ago, during a trip to Indiana, my folks decided to show off their new "real" Mexican restaurant, named Chi-chi's. Upon seeing the name on the marquis, my partner started to laugh. My folks asked him why 1

he was laughing, and he explained that in Central American Spanish, "chi-chi's" literally means "titties." Probably the most famous of all is John Kennedy's announcement to the people of Berlin, "Ich bin ein Berliner!" JFK thought he said, "I am a citizen of Berlin!" What he *really* said was, "I am a jelly doughnut!" ("Berliner" is German for "jelly doughnut".) My wife and I had some friends from England visit us a few years back. Their teenage daughter got a huge laugh from the name of an airline back then: The Trump Shuttle (Donald Trump's airline). They said in England, "Trump" translated into "fart"! "The body consists of three parts - the brainium, the borax and the abominable cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abominable cavity contains the bowels, of which there are five - a, e, i, o, and u." "The pistol of a flower is its only protection against insects." "The alimentary canal is located in the northern part of Indiana." "The skeleton is what is left after the insides have been taken out and the outsides have been taken off. The purpose of the skeleton is something to hitch meat to." "A permanent set of teeth consists of eight canines, eight cuspids, two molars, and eight cuspidors." "The tides are a fight between the Earth and moon. All water tends towards the moon, because there is no water in the moon, and nature abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight." "A fossil is an extinct animal. The older it is, the more extinct it is." "Many women believe that an alcoholic binge will have no ill effects on the unborn fetus, but that is a large misconception." "Equator: A imaginary lion running around the Earth through Africa." LIME IS A GREEN-TASTING ROCK Take one class of elementary school students, mix it When people run around and around in circles we say thoroughly with they are crazy. several pounds of scientific facts, then shake it up with When planets do it we say they are orbiting. a examination and you have the perfect formula for instant Talc is found on rocks and on babies. "youngsterisms" about science. The law of gravity says no fair jumping up without coming back down. The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from essasys, While the Earth seems to be knowingly keep its exams and classroom discussion; most were from distance from the sun, it fifth- and sixth-graders. is really only centrificating. They illustrate Mark Twain's contention that the "most interesting South America has cold summers and hot winters, but information comes from children, for they tell all they somehow they still know and then manage. stop." Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still Question: What is one horsepower? Answer: One knows how to change horsepower is the amount back into a sun in the daytime. of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second. One hundred humidities equal 1 rain. You can listen to thunder after lightning and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don't hear it, you got hit, so never mind. Question: In a free fall, how long would it take to reach the ground from a height of 1,000 feet? Answer: I have never performed this experiment. 2

Water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. There are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling because there are 180 degrees between north and south.

Water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. There are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling because there are 180 degrees between north and south.

A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind which way it which way it wants wants to go. to go. There are 26 vitamins in all, but some of the letters are Hard mud is called shale. Soft mud is called gooey. yet to be discovered. Finding them all means living forever. There are 26 vitamins in all, but some of the letters are yet to be There is a tremendous weight pushing down on the discovered. Find them all means living forever. center of the Earth because of so much population stomping around up There is a termendious [sic] weight pressing down on here these days. the centre of the Earth because of so much population stomping around Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let here these days. them know we know they're there. Lime is a green tasting rock. Some oxygen molecules help fires burn while others Many dead animals of the past changed to fossils help make water, while others preferred so sometimes it's brother against brother. to be oil. Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the A fossil is a dead bone. sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers. Genetics explains why you look like your father and if you don't why you We say the cause of perfume disappearing is should. evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the Humidity is the experience of looking for air and top on. finding water. To most people solutions mean finding the answers. Rain is saved up in cloud banks. But to chemists solutions are things that are still all mixed up. In some rocks you can find the fossil footprints of fishes. In looking at a drop of water under a microscope, we find there are When they broke open molecules, they found they twice as many H's as O's. were only stuffed with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they Clouds are high flying fogs. found them stuffed with explosions. I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do Rainbows are just to look at, not to really understand. it, and that is the important thing. Someday we may discover how to make magnets that Clouds just keep circling the earth around and around. can point in any And around. direction. There is not much else to do. 3

Cyanide is so poisonous that one drop of it on a dogs Isotherms and isobars are even more important than tongue will their names kill the strongest man. sound. A blizzard is when it snows sideways. A monsoon is a French gentleman. Thunder is a rich source of loudness. It is so hot in some places that the people there have to live in other places. The wind is like the air, only pushier. The World According to Student Bloopers

Richard Lederer St. Paul's School One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following "history" of the world from certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eight grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot. The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cul- tivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain. The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother's birthmark. Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites. Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fougth with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines. Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears in "The Illiad", by Homer. Homer also wrote the "Oddity", in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athen was democratic because the people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought the Parisians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men. Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History call people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyrany who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them. 4

Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, and the victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense. In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote liter- ature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head. The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper. The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the "Vir- gin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself be- fore her troops, they all shouted "hurrah." Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Mac- beth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel Cervantes. He wrote "Donkey Hote". The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote "Paradise Lost." Then his wife dies and he wrote "Paradise Regained." During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and the was called the Pilgrim's Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came down the hill rolling their was hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porposies on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this. One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their pacels through the post with- out stamps. During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented elec- tricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared "a horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead. George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Them the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms. 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. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He 5

said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. 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. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a sup- posedl insane actor. This ruined Booth's career. Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called "Candy". Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are flaling off the trees. 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. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this. France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolu- tion, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. Then the Spanish gorrilas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inheret his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear him any children. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. He reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign. The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pastuer discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturailst who wrote the "Organ of the Species". Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers. The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.