Don't Know Much About History

Readers Digest, February 2013 from wilsonquarterly.com:

An anonymous professor was either so horrified or bemused by his students' papers that he collected their oddest insights:

• During the Middle Ages, everybody was middle-aged.
• The Black Death helped the emergence of the English Language as the national language of England, France and Italy.
• History, a record of things left behind by past generations, started in 1815.