True stories behind four tongue twisters

Tongue twisters with funny pictures have the double benefit of keeping kids engaged and developing speaking skills. But did you know these 4 twisters, popular all over the world, are about real people?   

She sells sea shells by the sea shore 
This is a classic favourite. ‘She’ was a real person, Mary Anning (1799 – 1847) who lived in Lyme Regis, England. Her father introduced Mary and her brother to sea shell collecting and hunting for probable fossils. Mary discovered the remains of the Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus and Pterosaurs, along with other fossilized remains! Recently, a movie has been made about the life and works of Mary.  

Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy was he, was he?  
This fun tongue twister has a very scary story to it. The Hadendoa tribe of Sudan gave British colonial soldiers a tough time. Their elaborate hairdo gave them the nickname of ‘fuzzy wuzzy’, and they were so well-known for bravery that they became immortal through a tongue twister for kids! Sudanese can still have fuzzy and elaborate hair-do’s even now.  

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper 
That’s the first line of another tongue twister with a real history. Pierre Poivre (1719 – 1786) was a French botanist and horticulturist. Spices were called ‘peppers’ at that time and Poivre started a botanical garden with these which is now a vast park in Mauritius. What’s more, he worked with pirates to smuggle spices like nutmeg and clove out of the clutch of colonialists and grow them for all.  

I scream, you scream, 
We all scream for ice cream 
In 1905 a company selling ice cream freezers in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, advertised: “I Scream, You Scream, We all Scream for Ice Cream! This is certainly Ice Cream Weather. Have you a good Ice Cream Freezer?” They had probably stolen it form a similar advertisement a few months earlier. But this became very popular when a number of Hollywood stars included it in a song in 1927, and a jazz hit in the 1940’s.