MORE HOWLERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 August 1931, Page 8

MORE HOWLERS

A NEW T USE FOR COSMETICS “Sir Phillip Sidney will always be remembered in English history because he gave up his hot-water bottle to another soldier on the battlefield.” No doubt Jones Minor (or whoever was the perpetrator of his “howler”) considered it quite as great a. sacrifice as the more usual glass of water. This was one of the "howlers” received in a recent competition run by the University Correspondent. Here are some more with a historical flavour: — The battle about the penny post was fought on Rowland Hill. Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America, but he discovered something just, like it. Bannock Burn so called because Alfred burned cakes there.

Q.: Show as clearly as you can the debt that England owes to Chatham? A.: Chatham did much to help England from foreign attacks, and so England owes him £2OOO for his work. Wilberforce introduced the slave trade in Elizabeth’s reign. While the Parliament was discussing about the Bill of Rights, James II suddenly had a baby so the Seven Bishops said he couldn’t be king any longer. The knight rushed down the path where he thought ho heard the cry, but alas! his end came quickly, for turning a sharp corner, he crashed into a yawning abbess. It was a misogynistic schoolboy who wrote: “White is a colour that stands for joy; women are married in -white but men never are.” There is a similarity of ideas about this, too: “ ‘His bridle reins were golden chains' (Slave’s Dream). This means that he had just been married.” Literature is responsible for some amusing examples: The sonnet was first -written by an Italian lady called Octava Rima. The length of the sonnet is five metres. Keats wrote an ode to the “Greasy Urn.” Johnson was a great literary restorer—he practically killed patriotism and it did not last long after him. A passive verb is when the subject is the sufferer and the object the doer, as “He is married to her.” Under the heading of “Mathematics and Science” we get these: — A sextant is a church caretaker. In cases of poisoning a cosmetic is used. A matrix is a component part of a bedstead. The best way to preserve the teeth is to put. them in water overnight. Wireless valves work by eccentricity. And some defy classification: — A toadstool is a thing that looks like a mushroom then if you eat it you die and you know it is not a mushroom.

M.A. is what a lady becomes when she gets married. Levi sat at the receipt of costumes. Venus was a goddess who used to cure colds with lightning. •