“We can’t take the Winter Palace without heavy mech support, comrade.”
The instigators, causes, events and outcome of the Russian Revolution have been explored thoroughly in classrooms across the globe, but the history books have failed to note the importance of one machine without which the revolution would have stalled. I am of course talking about the MAD-X “Marauder” from BattleTech.
Confused? So were Australian youngsters taking their year 12 VCE history exam, when the iconic mecha turned up in the background of a painting included in the Visual History of the World section. The towering machine was apparently intent on assisting the proletariat in taking the Winter Palace, the official residence of the Russian monarchs. Don’t fret, your history teachers haven’t been lying to you – at least not this time – the image is an obvious chop and shop of Nikolai Kochergin’s Storming the Winter palace on 25th October 1917. Searching for the painting on Google brings up the doctored, or perhaps improved, version as the first result, which presumably explains how it made its way into the exam. Someone wasn’t paying attention.
A spokesman for the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) admitted as much:
The Image was “sourced and acknowledged by the VCAA as coming from the Internet,” he said. “The image has been altered but the alteration of the image won’t impact on the students’ capacity to answer the examination question.”
Fortunately, some wise soul posted a picture of the exam on Twitter, otherwise we would have been spared a laugh at the VCE’s expense.
The spokesman didn’t confirm or deny whether future exams would explore the role of the T-800 in the assassination of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin’s rise to power
Source: The Age
Published: Nov 14, 2012 05:20 pm