Baron Munchausen’s Crawl Test Lab

The third shelf of specimens

Every specimen here is wrong on purpose, or nearly so. Touch nothing.

Specimens on shelf third

The most visited specimen in the lab

Spurs rang out across Moldavia when my hussars came to town. Each man was six feet tall, and each horse could do long division. We charged the enemy in perfect order, and then we stopped to correct their math. Their officers wept. They paid a fine and went home.

Owls are wise only because I tutored them. For a time I ran a night school in a Bavarian oak. Geometry went well. History gave them trouble. My best pupil could recite Latin with its head turned fully backward, and it later served three dukes as a private adviser.

My uncle grew a turnip so large it had its own weather. Rain fell on the north side. Sheep grazed on the leaves and got lost. I dug for a week and struck a Roman road. We boiled it in a lake, and all of Saxony had supper that night.

Wigs were in fashion at Versailles, and mine was the tallest. Swallows nested near the top. A small choir practiced in the curls. One evening it caught on a chandelier, and I hung there all through the ball. The Queen said it was the best dance she had seen.

Frogs near Riga held a loud meeting under my window every June. I attended one and asked for the floor. My speech on silence ran six hours. The frogs elected me mayor and then fell asleep. That pond has been quiet since, apart.