In a speech in March, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a possible Republican candidate for president in 2012, identified New Hampshire—instead of Massachusetts—as the “state where the shot was heard around the world.” And in 2008 when he was the Democratic candidate for vice president, Joe Biden declared that Franklin D. Roosevelt (who became president in 1933) had educated the nation about the 1929 stock market crash—on television.

Photo of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota by AP Photo/Jim Mone