True Story (1)

During the Napoleonic Wars a French warship ran aground on the English coast in a storm, near the town of Hartlepool. One of the survivors was a monkey, which was immediately captured by the townspeople, accused of being a French spy, convicted and executed. Which story, it could be argued:
- Says a lot about the intelligence of the English.
- Says a lot about the appearance of the French.
- Will not change other nations' opinion of the English or the French one iota*.

In the defence of the English, however, the following points need to be born in mind:
- In those days most English people had never seen a Frenchman. Or a monkey.
- Even these days, for those who have seen both, the distinction is not always easy to make
- The monkey was probably wearing a beret and carrying a string of onions.
- The strong smell, constant gibbering and frequent unashamed public masturbation (The monkey, I'm still talking about the monkey) only helped to add weight to the prosecution case.
- Have you been to Hartlepool? Some days you can get so depressed that it seems nothing will cheer you up. Then someone says "I know, let's hang a monkey!"



*Why is it always "one iota"? Why can't you have "two iotas"? Or is it "iotae"? Or is "iota" plural, like "media" and "data"? Because then it should be "one iotum". Hang on a minute. Okay, "iota" is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. So forget all that Latin stuff earlier.
And according to the same page in the same dictionary Iowa “consists of rolling plains crossed by many rivers. There are few monkeys there, but the state capital has a suspiciously French-sounding name.” (I made some of that up.)