The Iran Hostess Crisis, and Other Term Paper Bloopers

Cal Thomas | Syndicated columnist | Updated: Dec 08, 2001

The Iran Hostess Crisis, and Other Term Paper Bloopers

I write and speak a lot about education, so naturally this story caught my eye.

The chairman of the history department at West Virginia's Shepherd College has assembled 20 years of student bloopers taken from the little blue exam books and term papers at two dozen colleges.

Here, we discover the Iran hostess crisis, Martin Luther King's "If I Had a Hammer" speech and Joan of Ark, who was Noah's wife.

Old testament prophets include Moses, Amy and Confuscius. Hitler shot himself in the bonker.

Zorro-astrologism was founded by Zorro and, of course, it was a "duelist religion."

World War II became the Cold War because Benjamin Franklin did not trust Lenin and Stalin. An ironed curtain fell across Europe.

The first airplane was flown by the Marx Brothers and Spartacus lead a slave rebellion in ancient Rome and appeared in a movie about it later.

It's funny, I guess, but sad that college students say these things.

The Iran Hostess Crisis, and Other Term Paper Bloopers