Rick Perry makes Revolutionary War gaffe (VIDEO)

GlobalPost

There's nothing like a U.S. presidential campaign to let us all laugh at the stupid mistakes of others.

In the gaffe of the moment, Republican candidate Rick Perry placed the American Revolutionary War approximately 200 years early in history.

Speaking to a Dartmouth College fraternity Tuesday night, he took questions from the students on a variety of subjects, Slate reports. After a student asked a question on states' rights, Perry said that one of "the reasons we fought the revolution in the 16th century was to get away from that type of onerous crown."

More from GlobalPost: Mitt Romney confident, Cain under fire and Perry forgotten at Republican debate (VIDEO)

Apparently, Perry was not aware that the Revolutionary War took place in the 18th century.

The gaffe came after Perry participated in the seventh Republican presidential debate Tuesday evening at Dartmouth.

During the debate, Perry was all but ignored by Mitt Romney, who gave a confident performance and presented himself as the best candidate to take on President Barack Obama, as GlobalPost reported earlier.

Perry's was not the first Revolutionary War gaffe made by a Republican in this election season. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) confused Concord, New Hampshire, with Concord, Massachusetts, when discussing the war's first battle while on the campaign trail, the Washington Post reports.

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DISCUSSION: Do such gaffes on the campaign trail matter to you? Does it say something about how the candidates will govern? Does it not matter, or should they just know this stuff?

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