The True History of the Blackadder (67 page)

Pitt the Younger’s insistence on war with Napoleon could not have been mentioned in his maiden speech as Prime Minister, as Napoleon did not rise to power until a decade later – the French Revolution preceded Napoleon’s threat.

William Pitt’s younger brother died before he took office. Also, Pitt could not have been bullied at school, as he was tutored at home.

The first edition of
Who’s Who
was not published until the nineteenth century.

Samuel Johnson completed his dictionary before the birth of George IV, and did not receive his doctorate until ten years after that.

The Earl of Sandwich of bread-based-snack fame was christened John, not Gerald.

Nelson was not made a Lord until 1798.

Wellesley and Nelson only met on one occasion, just prior to the latter’s death at Trafalgar. The former was not made Duke of Wellington until a decade later.

Mark Twain wrote
The Prince and the Pauper
in 1881.

George III, even in his worst bouts of porphyric insanity, never ended sentences with the word ‘penguin’, preferring instead the expostulation ‘peacock!’

If Captain Blackadder had been in the British Army for fifteen years by 1914, he would have received promotion to Major in 1915.

Captain B imitates the Shipping Forecast, which was not first broadcast until six years after the end of World War I.

There was no such position as Air Chief Marshal for the Royal Flying Corps, it being a subsequent RAF invention.

The US Army entered WWI in April 1917, more than six months before the Russian Revolution.