diff --git a/Doc/reference/simple_stmts.rst b/Doc/reference/simple_stmts.rst
index c0d818241bd..60e0e993e4d 100644
--- a/Doc/reference/simple_stmts.rst
+++ b/Doc/reference/simple_stmts.rst
@@ -121,9 +121,6 @@ Assignment of an object to a target list is recursively defined as follows.
 * If the target list is a comma-separated list of targets: The object must be an
   iterable with the same number of items as there are targets in the target list,
   and the items are assigned, from left to right, to the corresponding targets.
-  (This rule is relaxed as of Python 1.5; in earlier versions, the object had to
-  be a tuple.  Since strings are sequences, an assignment like ``a, b = "xy"`` is
-  now legal as long as the string has the right length.)
 
 Assignment of an object to a single target is recursively defined as follows.