History's mysteries

You can never know too much history. Especially if you’re a tour guide in the historic section of Philadelphia.

The problem here is that the city wants the tour guides to take a history test to prove they actually know history.



I mean, you wouldn’t want a historic tour guide telling some tourist from Dubuque that Ben Franklin wore a funny wig and fooled around with the ladies.

OK, he did, but you know what I mean.

The tour guides, in turn, say that a test would violate their freedom to be, um, tour guides. (Especially if they didn’t pass it.)

The solution here is simple. These guides need a firm-but-fair test that separates the pros from the posers. I’d start out ’em out easy, with a couple of questions like:

-- Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?

-- What year did the War of 1812 start?

Then, just when some of the guides were getting confident, I’d bring in the trick questions. Like:

-- How long did the Hundred Years' War last?

-- What famous historical figure said, “History is more or less bunk”?

And on and on.

If a tour guide didn’t pass, you could require him to take a history course from an institution of higher learning, especially a really old one that's seen a lot of history. Or make him promise to watch The History Channel.

And by the way, if some geezer ever gives you a hard time about not knowing enough history, always hit him with the old standby:

“It was easier for you to study history when you were a kid. … There wasn’t so much of it!”