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Exam Howlers Revealed: 'Darwin Discovered Sex'

Sex was discovered in the 1800s by Charles Darwin and his contemporary Gregor Mendel - at least according to one university student.

This misguided statement is just one of the bloopers lecturers have submitted to the Times Higher Education's annual exam howlers competition.

Adam Hart, a professor of science communication at the University of Gloucestershire, told how he was faced with an "unpleasant image" of an unlikely union between the two eminent Victorians when the student wrote: "Sex has puzzled biologists ever since it was discovered by Darwin and Mendel."

Another classroom clanger saw a student tell his tutor Nicholas Martin, a reader in European intellectual history at Birmingham University, that underwear was the secret weapon in General Franco's armour.

"General Franco was supported by right-wing panties," the student wrote in the paper on the Spanish dictator.

And a film studies student revealed several of Hitchcock's recurring themes arose because he was a "torched Catholic".

Martin McLoone, director of the Centre for Media Research at the University of Ulster, who submitted the entry, said: "Of course, in another era, he might well have been."

Another student at a different institution mixed up his metaphors to describe Alain Resnais' controversial Holocaust documentary Night And Fog as a "hotly contested potato".

Jackie Eales, professor of early modern history at Canterbury Christ Church University, submitted an entry which stated: "Britain under the Cromwellian Protectorate was a piranha state."

There was also some confusion about the benefits of Nigella seeds and the effect of Ebola.

In one paper a student revealed that "Nigella seeds can cure all disease except death" while another student suggested that "Ebola could lead to death, in some cases fatal".

The mistakes were submitted by staff at University of Westminster, including Keith Redway, a senior academic in microbiology and molecular biology.