"Whole Lotta History" - Girls Aloud, 2006

A favorite website of mine is Overheard in New York, which I have linked permanently on the front page of Lord Celery. Since the bulk of my readers are either from Britain or the States, I thought I might copy a favorite of their recent items. Now supposedly, everything on the site is actually overheard by somebody while in the city. I'm not sure I'm that gullible...but it's certainly true that loads of bizarre conversations are held there every single day. (While I lived there, I was lucky enough to catch a few of them myself! But that's another posting...)

Here's the posting that really cracked me up when I read it last night...

Wednesday One-Liners: a Tradition of Heritage

History buff: So, you've heard about the Boston Tea Party, right? So, what happened is this guy, Christopher Columbus, is sailing around looking for the West Indies but instead finds America. He goes back to mother England and tells them all about it, and mother England sends over all the prostitutes and criminals. So England forgets all about America, but when they check back in, all those criminals survived -- they prospered -- so mother England's like, 'You gotta pay taxes now.' But the criminals say, 'Hey, we didn't ask to get sent here anyway. We're not paying nothing.' And that's how it happened, son. You'll learn about it in high school.

--F train, Brooklyn

Overheard by: baffled colonial historian - posted June 6 2007

Well, erm, I guess dad's on the right track...well, sorta...?!?!?!

Janet