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30 People Share Historical ‘Facts’ That Have Been Proven Wrong Long Ago, But Many People Still Believe In
A smart man once said, "What is history but a fable agreed upon?" The idea is that history reflects the ideals and beliefs of the one who's teaching it and not necessarily what happened. Repeat a lie a thousand times and someone might actually start believing it.
Last week, Redditor u/throwaway000689 decided to find out which of these myths are the most popular and asked other platform users: "History buffs, what is a commonly held misconception that drives you up the wall every time you hear it?" People immediately started submitting their answers and provided valuable insights into our collective ignorance.
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#1
That the further back in time you go the more sexually suppressed everything was or the more racist everyone was or the more misogynistic everyone was - basically any perception that the entirety of history can be charted as a steady progression. All of these things fluctuate. Women in Medieval Europe had more rights than women in 18th century Europe, our concept of racial superiority based on skin color would have come off as insane in many other eras, and I want to tear my hair out every time I hear someone claiming that it would have been scandalous to show an ankle in 19th century Europe. Hell, even in living memory none of these claims are accurate. The 70's were more sexually liberal than the 80's, and you would have to be dumber than a bag of sh*t to not see how much we're backsliding on human rights right now, especially women's rights - and yet people still overwhelmingly cling to the delusion that we're constantly marching ever and ever forward on all of these issues, each day more progressive than the last. It's just not true.
Karin Jansen 4 years ago
When I was a kid (late 80's, early 90's) I remember most women at the beach, a lot who had grown up in the 70's, being topless. Now when I do it, I'm often the only one and looked at like I'm a paria. Sucks really, seems like we're going backwards.
Random Panda 4 years ago
I'm about the same age and I think it's also becoming increasingly unacceptable for women to look natural - no make-up, body hair, etc. It's weird. I also get creeped out by the kinds of clothes little girls wear, it's all too sexualised.
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David Andrews 4 years ago
As a generalisation, societies always swing back and forth between more "liberal" and "conservative" ideas, it's a natural reaction to one that will feed off the other. Just looking at the UK, the regency period overall was a very liberal period, which was followed by a much more conservative period under Victoria. After WWI society swung back to being a lot more liberal in the 20s and 30s, followed by a very conservative period in the late 40s and 50s, liberal again in the 60s and 70s, back to conservative in the 80s and early 90s, before becoming more liberal again in the late 90s into the 2000s. All swings are roundabouts
Nancy Baldauf 4 years ago
Even the clothes go in cycles. I was perfectly in style at college in the late 60's, wearing my mother's college clothes from the late 30's, though I did have to shorten the skirts few inches.
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Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
anyone who thinks we're not backsliding on human rights hasn't been paying attention.... and that's just in the US.
Vuun 4 years ago (edited)
I'll get downvoted, but whatever. I think this one is kinda BS. Firstly, all of these things do fluctuate, but the long term trend is a positive one. For example, the human rights we are "backsliding on" right now have only recently been applied to absolutely everyone, not just all land-owning adult males or some such. Secondly, in my experience it is not widely accepted that things are improving. I usually get incredulous looks whenever I suggest it. EDIT. If you do downvote, please take the time to also tell me why I'm wrong. I'm open to opposing arguments.
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
@Vuun, in fact, we have no solid empirical measures of enduring change, and we're still not yet applying basic human rights to ALL, so there goes your foundation argument there. See; UN reports on human rights; Amnesty International; Universal Rights Group; et al. for reports on the many places and cultures within which people still haven't gained what you say they have. Unless you only mean EU, of course?
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Isabella K 4 years ago
Plus: you have to take into account this all varies not just when you lived, also where you live is essential: my middle european livestyle and freedom as a woman is nothing alike as one from the middle east or texas
Stephanie Keith 4 years ago
So what is being said is, it was crap back then and it's still crap now? But with the illusion of us being free now. Yup.
Ellen Ranks 4 years ago
Also think about the reverse of progress in countries like Iran (Persia), Lebanon and to an extent, Afghanistan, that used to be much more progressive in the past. And not just re: woman;'s rights. In my own country weed used to be more or less fully legal in the past and there was more freedom generally.
Vuun 4 years ago
The period of relative liberalism in those countries was recent and brief. The Taliban, for example, probably draws more from ancient tribal traditions than the Koran.
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The person who ignited the discussion, u/throwaway000689, came up with the idea for it quite spontaneously. "I was thinking about the conversation I had with my friend where he said that the reason for the downfall of the Roman empire was because of the rampant hedonism," the Redditor told Bored Panda, adding that they find this assessment completely wrong.
One might think that such talks are of little importance. After all, people live in the present, they plan for and worry about the future, but history is the study of the past. Why bother with what has been?
Peter N. Stearns, a professor at George Mason University, where he had been provost for 14 years, said the reason is quite simple: there's much to learn from the bygone days.
"In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave," Stearns wrote. "Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about experiences in the past?"
u/throwaway000689 agrees. "History [not only teaches us about the] mistakes of the past, [but it] also allows us to learn more about the world we live in which helps expand the mind of the average individual."
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#2
That people from the past were just less intelligent than modern people. Fact is, humans from even 15,000 years ago were just as intelligent as modern humans (intelligence being the ability to learn and apply knowledge). They just had different things to worry about and had not discovered everything that we know today.
The whole of modern civilization is built on discovers made thousands or tens of thousands of years ago. Our ancestors, starting with nothing but stone tools and basic survival skills, created agriculture, writing, mathematics, standardized language, the wheel, metallurgy, ship building, architecture, trade routes spanning all of afro-eurasia, currency, banking, cross breeding of animals and plants to create better strains, the list goes on.
If I plucked a human baby from thousands of years ago, properly immunized it to modern diseases, and raised it as any other child today, you would be unable to tell the difference between them or any other child.
Fact is the only difference between us and our ancient ancestors is the discoveries, philosophies, technology and effort performed, created and understood by the hundreds of generations between us.
Our ancient ancestors were simply smart in different ways because we only really learn what we have to. Ancient Polynesians literally memorized the night sky for navigating the innumerable islands of the Indo-Pacific and Oceania, Norse people's built ships capable of sailing from Europe to America using only hand tools, wood, linen, nails and rope. Ancient east Asian cultures built massive temples out of wood using only precisely crafted wood joints and no nails. Rome built, well, Rome, with hand tools and hand calculated math. Same can be said of the wonders of Egypt, India and mesopotamia.
Then there is Göbekli Tepe, an amazing structure of precisely placed monoliths, engraved walls and cobblestone paths built nearly 12,000 years ago. Which is nearly 6000 years prior to our earliest records of advanced civilizations.
We stand on the backs of thousands of years of knowledge painstakingly collected and handed down for millennia to us who have taken it and created wonders our ancestors would attribute to gods.
Yet we ignore the gargantuan effort that our long dead kin have contributed to our success and even view them with distain. Calling them savages, ignorant and fools. Truly we are the ungrateful child looking down on the gracious teacher that our ancestors were.
We are the summation of all of humanity, just another step in a long history of advancement, not a separate holy being above it or separate from it.
Fred Van Der Zee 4 years ago
This. I once had a discussion with someone who thought the pyramids could only be built by aliens because the people in the past were too stupid to build them.
Bear Hall 4 years ago
Well, the people today are definitely not clever enough to figure out how the heck they were actually built.
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Ellen Ranks 4 years ago
Huh. Do people really believe this? Am surprised. Fun fact: I married an illiterate man from West Africa who was living in a "backward" society and never had any education. Nevertheless he was fully able to understand how binary code works and he had an impressive memory. Definetely not a "dumb" man.
Paul Davis 4 years ago
We have people today screaming about how the Earth is flat, vaccines have microchips in them, and birds are all robots made by the government. I think it's more the reverse -- the lack of selective pressure brought about by civilization has allowed the population of stupid and mentally unbalanced people to explode. So am thinking people in the past were probably smarter than today, statistically speaking.
Johnnie Bravo 4 years ago
Lack of war, famine, and death does have consequences.
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Sky Render 4 years ago
Just remember: every generation has believed itself to be superior to those who came before them. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. One day we will be the ones on the receiving end of the "ignorant and primitive savages" designation.
Valisbourne Spiritforge 4 years ago
Anyone who has studied how aqueducts were dug through a mountain, from both ends, with ancient tools and measuring (to be off by only 1 inch when the two sides met) will know the ancients weren't dumb.
lara 4 years ago
Actually, we have pretty much, today, become much more ignorant than our ancestors. And it is by choice.
Annnnd We’re Officially In Reverse 4 years ago
I'm actually afraid we are getting collectively dumber as a people
Stephanie Keith 4 years ago
There's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is knowing how to burn down a house. Wisdom is not doing it. Someone can be super smart and have knowledge of many things. But have absolutely no wisdom at all. Knowledge improves our brain but wisdom improves our hearts/humanity. We think smart an educated people are somehow more deserving, then those who are not smart in educated. But I'll tell you right now random knowledge will never be more important than wisdom and I think many people confuse the two. I know plenty of uneducated people who have wisdom but can't read or write. Humans are so misguided and most times can't see what truly matters. I'm guilty of it myself.
#3
That white people were the only ones that traded in slavery. Forgetting about north and east africa where natives sold others mostly to the middle east. White women brought high prices and were often shipped great distances. Women in russia were also traded to the middle east.
Cecily Holland 4 years ago
Africans did a roaring trade. It was the perfect way to get rid of an inconvenient rival or family member
Monday 4 years ago
"Oh you won't let me marry your daughter? Fine! I'll just sell her off then!"
Load More Replies... Hayley Futter 4 years ago
People reading this as "therefore slavery wasn't that bad!" Instead of "there are more people at fault for this!". No one is saying oh it's okay then for crying out loud.
Katchen 4 years ago
That’s because this exact argument *is* employed by white nationalists to excuse slavery. I’m not going to visit Stormfront.com to check, but I’m 100% sure this view is expressed on that website.
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Ryan Deschanel 4 years ago
For a long time, it was not even about race at all. Slaves were just slaves.
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J. F. 4 years ago (edited)
It's currently trendy to blame caucasians for everything - I would say this is not a misconception but more conscious ignorance
Lyone Fein 4 years ago (edited)
And in fact black slave owners still proliferate throughout Africa today. War lords enslave armies of kidnapped children to fight their drug wars for them. Gangs of African Muslims attack entire Christian villages where they kill the adults and forcibly convert a hundred adolescent girls at a time in order to "marry" them. Pirates roam the waters off the coast of eastern Africa, looting boats and taking prisoners to work or to sell. There are many more examples. Africans have been enslaving each other for millennia. And they are still doing so, quite brutally. Sorry the facts don't fit into the blame-whitey narrative.
classbag 4 years ago (edited)
The fact that you feel the need to use the phrase " blame-whitey narrative" tells me that you aren't really interested in truth or reconciliation but in framing this as a black vs. white conflict. Slavery existing in Africa does not excuse the horrible atrocities committed against Afticans by Europeans, Lyone. No one blames white people for every atrocity that's ever been committed on earth, but that doesn't mean we can gloss over the fact that white Europeans enslaved millions of people, committed genocide, destroyed cultures, fabricated racist narratives of humanity and human origin, and committed acts that still have highly negative repercussions on the world and people of color today. Take some responsibility instead of becoming defensive and whining about people "blaming whitey." You should be capable of having a conversation about history without trivializing what people suffer today and going full-on racist.
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Ryan Deschanel 4 years ago
White people bought black people... Because other black people sold them.
Aria Whitaker 4 years ago
You DO realize that about 60% of slaves sold to Europeans came from other Africans though, right? The rest were absolutely caught and and forced onto ships by white slave catchers...100% of the slaves that came from Africa were not sold because "other black people sold them"....
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Hugh Willie Mungous 4 years ago
Barbary pirates (I didn't choose that "Barbary" word) kidnapped thousands of people from the coasts of England and Ireland and forced them in to slavery. This is always forgotten about.
Lunar Bicycle 4 years ago
Slavery was common throughout history, but American chattel slavery was uniquely brutal and dehumanizing. Slaves throughout history were often more like indentured servants, had rights, could marry, could become part of the tribe or culture that enslaved them, etc. Over the course of four centuries, the U.S. perfected the brutality of slavery, and was a waking nightmare for those under it’s thumb.
anarkzie 4 years ago
Thank you! This is really grim reading and mostly B.S, did anyone out there actually think that through out the entirety of human history slavery only ever happened to black people? It's not an actual misconception that needed to be corrected, most people get that the Transatlantic Slave Trade was what people are referring to when it comes slavery and black people.
Load More Replies... Dave P 4 years ago
People forget Europeans were introduced to Africans as cheap slaves by the Arabs, who treated them much worse. Also when the European Powers outlawed the slave trade, it was various African Kingdoms that sent lobbyists to London, Paris, and other places to argue in favor of continuing slavery, as that wa s a major source of their income.
anarkzie 4 years ago
As far as I'm aware it was Portuguese explores that were the first to take African slaves and the Arab system of slavery was not race based, they took slaves from any conquered peoples. You can find plenty of examples of various African people and Kingdoms arguing to end slavery; what are your sources for this?
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Suze Allyn 4 years ago
Few people know that there are more slaves today than ever before in history, an estimated 40 million plus around the world.
anarkzie 4 years ago
There are more people in the world now so that's kind of a given.
Load More Replies...However, the prevalence of these misconceptions can be indicative of the fact that history is losing in the academic popularity contest.
According to statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 34,642 history majors in 2008. Fast forward to 2017, the count was just 24,266. Most of that decline occurred after 2012, with a notable single-year drop of more than 1,500 between 2016 and 2017.
However, maybe it's not yet time to be ringing any alarm bells. Northeastern University’s Benjamin M. Schmidt pointed out that the history major has had low points before. The discipline weathered a significant decline from 1969 and 1985, when the major dropped by 66 percent.
However, those numbers were linked to higher education’s boom in the ’60s that saw the discipline’s rapid expansion and subsequent bust when higher education growth slowed in the ’70s.
This drop is especially pronounced at private, not-for-profit institutions. While all demographic groups are impacted, the highest drops in the field have been seen among Asian-Americans and women.
#4
That Rosa Parks was just some nice old lady who wouldn't give up a bus seat.
She was a political activist who meticulously planned that specific instance of civil protest.
Francc 4 years ago
And what if she did? It was about time someone gave the middle finger to discrimination and the color bar of her time. I'm glad she had the courage to plan and carry it through.
CP 4 years ago
It does not take anything away from what she did. There was a really good reason she did what she did.
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Mark Serbian, PK&RG,W 4 years ago
It's important to remember that Rosa Park's activism was no less important because "it was meticulously planned" - the whole point needed to be made, and she underwent a LOT to be the one to make that point.
Bear Hall 4 years ago (edited)
That's not true. She was 42 at that time, far from being old. It was completely unplanned. Her feet hurt after a long shift, she just wanted to go home. The white bus driver telling her to stand up was the last straw. She decided she was ordered and humiliated around enough because of her color and wanted to make a stand for herself. It was MLK Jr. who saw the opportunity and elevated her personal injustice to national level.
Just JoLynn 4 years ago
Actually, that's the story that was spun to garner sympathy and support for the movement. Abhinc, is right that this happened to Claudette Colvin, and the NAACP decided that a pregnant teen that talked back to a grown white woman wouldn't sell, so they asked Rosa Parks, who worked for the Montgomery branch, to take on the role. She accepted and began taking the same bus route waiting for this type of incident to occur and delivered her lines as practiced.
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Fish Boden 4 years ago
I recommend this article! It gives a new perspective to the Rosa Parks case. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/25/claudette-colvin-the-woman-who-refused-to-give-up-her-bus-seat-nine-months-before-rosa-parks
Sapna Sarfare 4 years ago
So, if she planned it, she is wrong? I don't get it. She did to protest against something wrong. Either ways, it did make the point. You are saying as if being a civil rights protester is wrong. Fighting for one's and everyone's rights is wrong?
Chloe O'Shea 4 years ago
I hope they are pointing out the inaccuracies in how her story has been told and that she has been denied of the admiration she deserved as someone who had such determined bravery in planning to stand up to such awful injustice. There is absolutely nothing wrong with planning a protest, quite the opposite, especially when peaceful. Although I don’t know what is the accurate version of events, I think it is less important whether she planned it or took the opportunity when given it than remembering how instrumental Rosa Parks was in the ongoing fight for racial equality and the overall message everyone needs to learn from it. I think the author would do well for making this more clear.
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Robert Bailey 4 years ago (edited)
Good for her. Actually, good for all of us. Well, not the segregationists. But f*ck them.
Marcellus II 4 years ago
That... has quite a touch of the "Constitutional peasants"-scene in Monty Python & the Holy Grail... KING ARTHUR: Old woman! DENNIS: Man! ARTHUR: Man. Sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there? DENNIS: I'm thirty-seven. ARTHUR: I-- what? DENNIS: I'm thirty-seven. I'm not old. Full scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtYU87QNjPw
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#5
Cowboys were not cool white guys with endless independence!!! Cowboys were in fact largely black, Mexican, and Native American men who were in need of money and were seen on the low end of social hierarchy. Originally they used whips and dogs to control their herd. Eventually the lazo became the lasso, chaparajos became chaps, and the sombrero turned into the ten gallon cowboy hat we know today. Herding cattle was hard work and was beneath “respectable white folk”. Cowboys worked in groups of 12 or so to herd thousands of cattle over hundreds of miles, and they too had a leader called the trail boss. Cowboys were in fact not rugged icons of independence, but took orders like everyone else and made wages lower than skilled factory pay. Cowboys could also come as young as 12 years old.
Mike Crow 4 years ago
A little off topic, but many “wild west” towns and cities, even in Texas, didn’t allow people to carry guns inside the city/town limits. The people were sick of the gun fights and murders.
J. Normal 4 years ago
They had to surrender their weapons to the sheriff till they left town. This is the reason for the OK corral shoot out. they did not want to surrender their weapons.
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Paul Davis 4 years ago
Also people didn't do ranching and farming out in flipping deserts...I know people adore John Ford but I think he and all the people influenced by him were asses for depicting "Texas ranches" from places like Monument Valley, Arizona, where almost no living thing is able to grow. May as well depict them living on the moon for christ sakes.
Taylor Davis 4 years ago
People have been cattle ranching in Arizona for more than 300 years and farming for at least a thousand years.
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Dave P 4 years ago
about 10% were Black, 15% Tejano (not mexican, different subgroup), and about only 5% native American. the rest were White.
Aria Whitaker 4 years ago
Not sure where you got your information, but AT LEAST 25% of cowboys were Black....https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lesser-known-history-african-american-cowboys-180962144/
Load More Replies... Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
The US cavalry "buffalo soldiers" were in fact not white. And cowboys were whoever was hired on the cheap. It was a way to earn one's way from point A to point B, for example, taking a herd to a rail station to be shipped east.
Shane S 4 years ago
Unless you were a cowboy yourself, you probably wouldn’t have wanted to hang around them at all. Twentieth century Hollywood glamorized this quite gruff occupation.
Ceredwyn Ealanta 4 years ago
Similar is true in Australia - a great number of drovers were Indigenous Australian. And likewise, the lifestyle is glamorised here but involved a lot of calculations and preparation.
OhForSmegSake 4 years ago
When people think of Australian cowboys (Jackaroos) they imagine guys who look like Hugh Jackman but usually there would be only one "Hugh" and the rest were Aboriginal unpaid servants (yes, slaves) working for flour, tea, sugar, and tobacco.
Agnes Jekyll 4 years ago
They were also physically small--you can't be a huge man riding the same horse all day long.
GFSTaylor 4 years ago
Each cowhand had a string of horses, and changed mounts regularly through the day.
Load More Replies... #6
That Jewish people and other victims of the Holocaust went willingly to their death and no one fought back. While it’s true that a lot of victims did not believe the genocide was occurring and they were simply being relocated (Nazis/Hitler were very persuasive and no one could imagine a genocide), plenty fought back. There were resistance groups all over the place as well as people fighting from their homes when they were being taken for deportation. Guns were used, makeshift bombs, stolen bombs, etc. Not everyone was going to go to the concentration camps/death camps/detention centres without a fight. Been studying the Holocaust since 2008.
xolitaire 4 years ago (edited)
Maybe it's because I am German, but I have literally NEVER heard anyone say that. No one here (aside from neo nazis) believes the Jews died willingly like sheep. There is a vast number of interviews with holocaust survivors and in all of them you will here them say "And then I knew we were going to die." They knew. Most of them already knew on the trains taking them to the camps.
Marie 4 years ago
People belive the holocaust is faked... just like they belive that Corona 19 is fake. People dying by the thousands don't matter because they don't see it.
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snipergun 4 years ago (edited)
Look up Sophie Scholl as one of the examples. German student. Executed because their groups tried to show German troops and people what is happening. A lot of them still didn't know about where people were deported to.
Philippa Davies 4 years ago
I watched the movie that was made about Sophie Scholl. Incredible story.
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Lenka Smetanová 4 years ago
Well, the main amount of jews in concetration camps was woman, children and elderly. What people thinks they should do? They did not want to die, but if they fight at the start, the members of their families, which was unable to fight back would be killed in an instant... yeah, now we know it would be probably better than what awaits them, but....
Two_rolling_black_eyes 4 years ago
The word ghetto originated with the Jewish people to describe the neighborhoods they were forced into. The idea of ghetto fighting we now associate with gang violence originates with armed resistance the Jewish people put up against the Nazis, particularly in Warsaw. They were willing to fight to protect their fellow Jews and many fell because of it.
Agnese Purvinska 4 years ago
There wasn't enough information, noone knew for months what was happening, and it got gradually worse as the time went on. This I remember from my great uncle's stories.
snipergun 4 years ago (edited)
Sophie Scholl, sorry just thought to write it correctly if anyone reads your comment and wants to check that. Not being grammar nazi.
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#7
People didn't die at 30-40. The high infant mortality rate skews the average. If you could survive into your teen years you had a pretty good chance of living into your senior years. Obviously there are a lot of factors to consider(eg class, gender, occupation, where you lived, etc.)
Monday 4 years ago
Provided there wasn't a war...that would skew mortality rate for men quite a lot.
Steffen Rehm 4 years ago
Not only for men, they die just fast. large armies also liked to carry epidemics with them. everyone suffers in war back then.
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NsG 4 years ago (edited)
This myth stems entirely from people overlooking (and then not understanding) the key word: average. The average in this case is the mean average (add all the ages up and divide by the population). As mentioned, lots of 1 year (and younger ☹️) deaths, skews that mean average downwards. I'm of the opinion that because there is also a median average, people willfully misunderstand the use of which average to use so they can make a point, since using a mode average life expectancy of 35 does suggest what this myth perpetuates.
Steven Cook 4 years ago
This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I get visibly annoyed at people who say this or believe it. When a large segment of the population dies before 1 year old, and when women have children younger and die in delivery, this will absolutely skew the average. Plus all the disease and infections from what we would call minor wounds today. It's not that people just didn't live past 35. Oi
Stephanie IV 4 years ago
Never gets old. The amount of times I’ve had to say this is staggering.
SPQRBob 4 years ago
"Never gets old"... Just like everyone who ever lived before the Industrial Revolution, amirite? ( Just kdding! :P )
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Kathy Richardson 4 years ago
Doing my genealogy has shown me that most of my ancestors lived to at least their 60's (or longer). And I'm talking 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries.
Łukasz Markuszewski 4 years ago
Of course they did. Average die age is always calculated excluding children mortality. People were living shorter due to poor diet, poor housing conditions (glass windows are the thing for like 150 years in ordinary people's houses), poor hygiene (a lot of microbes, not washing hands), no medical prevention, poor or no healthcare and many more. Just look upon any of medieval kings bio and calculate their age when died, you will see most of them were dead at their 50's and they were the elite, living much better life than lower class, so 90% of people.
F. H. 4 years ago
That's just not true about the glass windows. In the 19th century you would have to be extremely poor if you didn't have glass windows and farmer's cottages are shown with glass windows regularly in pictures around the 16th century.
Load More Replies... #8
It’s petty, but I hate it when people say that Marilyn Monroe was a size 12/14/16. This may have been true in the 1950s, but clothes sizes have changed A LOT since then. Reports of Marilyn’s measurements by her costumers noted that she was 5 ft. 5.5 inches tall; 35 inch bust; 22 inch waist; and 35 inch hips and 118 pounds. Of course her weight fluctuated, but it is simply dishonest to think that in modern times, she would have been considered “plus size.”
In today’s sizing, depending on where she’d shop at, she would be a size 00-4.
s. vitkovitsky 4 years ago
Just a touch more subcutaneous adipose tissue. There's a pic of her lifting weights. She exercised a great deal. She had muscle, just not so appsrent.
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Caro Caro 4 years ago (edited)
Googled; While Americans have statistically gotten larger, women’s clothing has gotten smaller—that is, if the numbers on the size labels are to be believed. It’s no secret that retailers have been playing to women’s vanity for years by downsizing the sizes on garment labels, but the practice has reached an extreme in recent months with the introduction of the sizes ‘‘double zero” and ‘‘extra, extra small.” If vanity sizing continues on this path, analysts say, it is only a matter of time before clothing sizes are available in negative integers. Boston.com
Cray Melton 4 years ago
I use to sell vintage clothes. Found two dresses from the early fifties. Same dress but different colors. One was a 14, one was a 16. I measured them and calculated their sizes with a more current sizing chart - an 8 and a 10.
Gelato Cat 4 years ago
Tbh Women's clothing sizes are a joke, like the fluctuation between sizing ***facepalm***
Ágota Csere 4 years ago
Could anyone translate these dimensions in a way that Europeans can understand?
Out of chocolate 4 years ago
In my seamstress days, I gave lectures about this. People argued with me vehemently and I had to bring out my measurement charts 🤦♀️
Lyone Fein 4 years ago (edited)
A 35 inch bust or hips puts anyone beyond a size 4. More like a 10.
GoddessOdd 4 years ago
Yes, that is what I've gathered from multiple sources, that her clothing is the equivalent to a current size 8-10. Also, as you can tell from photographs, her weight sometimes fluctuated, just like everyone else.
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Gin 4 years ago
Yep. Her waist varied from 24.5 inches to 28.5 inches (inches because that's the measurement's the website uses).
Load More Replies... MissyKrissy 4 years ago
I have the exact same measurements, but I'm 5'7 and 120 lbs. Size 2 in women's and 3 in juniors clothing. I'm told daily that I'm too skinny and need to gain weight. As a very active, slim framed, mother of 5, with a full time job I think my body said it's just fine! Everyone has their own views on what a "healthy size" should be, but I say the only opinions that should matter are your own and a medical opinion from your personal doctor.
#9
The United States spent the majority of its time and resources in WWII fighting the Nazi’s to free the Jews. The majority of US fighting was in the Pacific theatre against Japan, because they bombed the sh*t out of us. We weren’t even going to join the war at first, only assist Britain.
Cecily Holland 4 years ago
The USA wanted nothing to do with WW2 and refused several times get involved. Until the Japanese snuck up on Pearl Harbour where the yanks had conveniently parked all their boats which made Japans job very easy.
CP 4 years ago
Put the tin foil hat away. I can't imagine why the US had all there boats parked at a naval base. I know it seems odd, but hear me out. It was a naval base!
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Dodo 4 years ago
The US belief that they are the saviours of the Allies really annoys me. The rest of us fought for years, on our doorsteps. The US swoop in and take the credit.
Martha Meyer 4 years ago
Most of the work was done by Russia (8 out if 10) German soldiers were killed by Russians. Yet the US today somehow claims they practically did it all alone.
Load More Replies... M M 4 years ago
The USA didn't give visas to Jews who were trying to flee Germany on time. The allies could have bombed the railway to the concentration camps before the Jews from Hungary were moved there. The president of Hungary didn't let their Jews to the camps till very late in the WW2 and they could have been saved if the railway to the camps was destroyed. It wasn't important enough for the allies.
Bear Hall 4 years ago (edited)
The Hungarian Jews were sent to the camps after the Germans occupied the country. Eichmann personally organized the transports and between May and July 1944 more than 400.000 people arrived from Hungary to Auschwitz; the famous pictures made there depicts one of these trains. 80% of the newcomers were killed right after arrival. The camp's infrastructure simply couldn't keep up with this huge number, corpses were burned in pits. Before all of this two escaped prisoners already put together the Auschwitz Reports: detailed first hand account of the extermination. It was sent to the Hungarian authorities, the Vatican and local Jewish organizations. Nobody did ANYTHING. There were a few lines in the papers about executions of "thousands of Jews". By the time it made some waves the Nazis were busy destroying the camp as the Russians were coming. Err Hungary was Kingdom with a Governor as boss at that time.
Load More Replies... Valisbourne Spiritforge 4 years ago
The only thing I really learned and remembered regarding US participation in WWII was that A) we didn't want to fight in Europe, as a country. B) there were Nazi sympathizers amongst the US where the ideology that racial purity was a good thing took root. C) The US joined the war after Pearl Harbor and did help, fight & sacrifice. But we were the only major country who's infrastructure wasn't devastated by the war and we took full advantage of that afterwards. D) We lost our minds again regarding American citizens of Japanese ancestry. Whether I'm right or wrong about it, this is what I think (as an American) regarding WWII. There's more, but those are the most salient points that come to mind for me.
SPQRBob 4 years ago
On May 27th, 1939, the United States turned away a passenger ship filled with hundreds of Jewish refugees, many of them children, who were forced to return to Europe as they had been denied entry into Cuba previously, and were likewise turned away from Canadian shores after the United States denied them the asylum they sought.
CP 4 years ago
Another fun fact lost in history. Almost all the nations that defeated Germany in WW2 were refusing Jewish refugees before the war. Thank you for the memory jog!
Load More Replies... Hugh Willie Mungous 4 years ago
Germany declared war on the U.S.A.. That's how and why America got involved in the war in Europe.
CP 4 years ago
Shh! Apparently that is a big secret in this thread. Everyone seems to think the US did it for altruistic reasons.
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Anna Snorrepot 4 years ago
right. The US was just as anti-semitist as most other countries before WWII. It was so common :(
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
I'm gonna say it, and downvote away: THE UK DIDN'T WANT WW2 EITHER. It's an obscure clause in a treaty that Poland FORCED them to honor, which they did EVENTUALLY (the clause was that any nation giving up territory freely was not in need of help, so the Poles fought every step, never surrendering even a village, and thus the UK had no outs as they did with other nations invaded by Hitler's regime.)
Nicholas Kraemer 4 years ago
You say this like it's some sort of ding on the UK. Who wants to get involved in war? Every post like this acts like the Allies were fighting some random force that just appeared... The whole thing was caused by Germany and it's willing allies.
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Giles McArdell 4 years ago
Churchill said that the night after the Pearl Harbour attack was the first good nights sleep he'd had in years.
#10
Knights weren't exactly chivalrous. It was a concept designed to make them appear magnanimous, and to justify their brutality among the common folk of their enemies when they weren't at war.
Knights could even pay their respective kings to chicken out of fighting in a war if they were summoned to do so, which many did to keep on pillaging hovels full of bumpkins because it was easy sport.
In short, a lot of Knights were rich, murderous bullies with too much free time on their hands.
Otter 4 years ago
The whole "Courtly Love" thing was an attempt to actually make the knights behave chivalrously, to make following a code of honor fashionable, and to make knights less bullies and more... knightly. This started in the 12th century, after knights in shining armor had been around for a while, don't get me started.
Hayley Futter 4 years ago
Wasn't it like the idea was to protect women and children and other such chivalrous acts. Then the Knights were like ohhhhh for the aristocrats right? And so continued being bullies to the peasants or something?
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El muerto 4 years ago
the whole chivalrous knight is a modern invention...a knights life in the early middle ages was to fight wars, and make money, to finance the next war. at some point the decided that only those who were born into knightly families could become knights, in other words nobles. knights where trained from childhood to kill. they could steal, harass, rape or kill most people under their status, and they did that a lot. and that way kept the social order in society. by force...and forget about the "tournament" that was very late medieval, at a time that knights weren't as important in war as before. those where mostly rich kids showing off and getting famous.
Tee Witt 4 years ago
If the knights were aristocrats then they certainly are not policemen
Load More Replies... F. H. 4 years ago
Many knights were not even rich. It's a very low rank of nobility, often with no land to speak of and intended to military service. Those also did not have a lot of time on their hands, having to do farmwork by themselves and getting caught up in endless bloody feuds with similarly broke peers. In Germany, these petty feuds (speak: shootouts about a barrely of beer, rights of way or whose goose it was) lasted up until the early 19th century, when the rank Imperial knighthood was abolished along with the old empire.
Patrick McKerral-Burnett 4 years ago
This is exactly what George R R Martin was trying to say with the Song of Ice and Fire. Knights are murderous bullies. Sansa Stark, the most clueless character, is the stand-in for the average reader getting schooled in knightly history.
#11
“Medieval peasant food was bland”
People seem to think peasants only ate bread and potatoes with no seasoning. In reality, while salt was indeed a luxury they often couldn’t afford, they had access to plenty of herbs to flavor their food. They also had access to things like fish and other meats, so they weren’t just eating bread, though it was an important staple of their diet.
If you’re interested in how a bunch of civilizations ate throughout history, check out Tasting History on YouTube. It’s a great source of historical information and entertainment.
Fred Van Der Zee 4 years ago
The potato arrived in the West in the late 16th century anyway, so after the Middle Ages.
Otter 4 years ago
Actually, how much access to fish and meats DID peasants have? Hunting and fishing rights have been jealously regarded by the European nobility for centuries, for a long time if a peasant hunted a deer or went fishing he could be hanged for "poaching", even if he was hunting on land he farmed.
A B C 4 years ago
Depending on where you lived, some animals could fall out of the poaching laws. I think (!) rabbits were one example for that in many places, so if you got lucky with your snares, you could get a decent portion of meat with relative ease and no trouble with the authorities.
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Stefan Scheiben 4 years ago
Actually, bread was not the ultimative staple of everyday diet. The rural population often had some kinds of grain porridge instead, as bread took much time to make. There are even traditions connecting bread with religious connotations, like bread was sacred by carving a cross into the crust before baking, or that the breadcrumbs falling from the table would become food for the innocent poor souls in purgatory.
Bear Hall 4 years ago
Salt wasn't a luxury, there were plenty to go around coming from mines and straight from the sea. Everybody needs to eat salt, our body needs it or we get sick. Actually most of it was used to preserve meat before the modern refrigeration was invented. It was taxed everywhere since it was coming from limited number of sources and everybody needed it so it was practically controlled by the state. Sugar coming from Africa was real luxury before it was produced in Caribbean plantations. Pepper coming from the Far East was more expensive than gold. Columbus originally set sail to find another way to open another Spice Route.
Caro Caro 4 years ago
This wasn't medieval though but a later period I think.
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Rei 4 years ago (edited)
And everything was organic, the soil and water weren't as contaminated, so some food had much more taste to them without salt than some foods today have.
Shane O'hEibhrín 3 years ago
Bullshit. There's no evidence supporting the claim that organic foods taste better. In fact multiple blind test studies have refuted this claim.
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Catlady6000 4 years ago
The absolute best food comes from Poorer cultures, My Grandmother was a sharecroppers wife in the Great Depression. The only seasoning she ever used was salt, pepper, bacon grease. I remember going with her to forage greens from the side of a country road. Best food ever. Also, Soul food , which evolved from African American slaves turning the masters leavings into masterpieces. Same with a lot of Asian and Hispanic foods. Necessity taking nothing and creating works of culinary art. Oftentimes also the only way available to give a gift to a loved one
Nubis Knight 4 years ago
During big parts of the middle age bread was luxury, peasants often ate some sort of porridge from wheat and oat. One point of sending your kids to an abbey was the luxury of getting bread there everyday.
Ķecerītis I 4 years ago
There were less people, more woods, less borders, more animals to hunt and more fish to catch.
Vuun 4 years ago
I just read an article saying that, in fact, the opposite is true. Apparently medieval people would find modern food bland because they were used to food that was smoked, fermented, pickled, and, eventually, salted as that became more affordable.
Vuun 4 years ago
Here is the article if you understand Finnish or wanna try your luck with Google translate. :) https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11339377
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Victor Botha 4 years ago
British food pre WWI & WWII was hardly bland. It was only because of the war years, rationing and food shortages, that food became dull, boring and bland.
Load More Replies... #12
"Even Einstein was bad at math"
No, his grades were disclosed multiple times and showed very high marks in math.
Shelp 4 years ago
Of course he wasn't, you can't work on high-level physics without any knowledge in maths
Rissie 4 years ago (edited)
But you can start out being confused by the silly methods we use to teach our children math. Not saying Einstein was, but many people are discouraged by unnecessary repetition and unnecessary facts and not learning about concepts that do matter and context.that makes it interesting.
Load More Replies... Bear Hall 4 years ago
This misunderstanding comes from the highest grade was "1" at the time and he had "1"s and "2"s in his index card. In another school the grading was reversed and "6" was the highest. At that time everybody knew what was going on it's only us who are surprised by his "low" grades. But it's true he didn't like institutionalized education and his oppressive teachers. They didn't like him either.
Chris Wade 4 years ago (edited)
It bloody baffles me people believe this. How could the greatest theoretical physicist in history be bad at maths? You know what? Come to think of it, I heard Michael Schumacher was a s**t driver and Mozart was tone-deaf. Mmm-hmm.
NsG 4 years ago
One version I read was that this came from a misunderstanding of the grading system between countries (although I forget which ones). The ones as published had 1 as the highest and 5 as the lowest, the ones reported had 5 as the highest (or the other way around - see how easily it is to get the wrong story!)
Ekaterina S 4 years ago
In Switzerland 6 is the best grade, 1 the worst. He was born in Ulm (?!), but attended school in Aargau (Swiss Canton).
Lynn Morello 4 years ago
He played with Mathematical numbers when he was bored. Had an exceedingly high IQ and could outsmart even the best students. He loved a challenge.
Gail Nicholson 4 years ago
Is this perhaps related to the anecdote (probably also untrue) that some teacher said of him that he would never amount to anything very much?
Amy Camacho 4 years ago
Who thought this because it never even occurred to me that he would be bad at math.
#13
That Napoleon was short. Dude was 5"6'. Making him downright average for the European standard at the time. A brief investigation shows this was a rumor that his enemies spread in order to deminish his reputation and how serious his subjects took him. Funny error, but still an error
JitkaBlitka 4 years ago
He also liked to choose very tall men as bodyguards, so beside him he looked smaller.
Luis Hernandez Dauajare 4 years ago
He was still taller than some of his enemies. Admiral Horatio Nelson was 5'' 4' tall and the Duke of Wellington was apparently 5"5'
Wilf 4 years ago
And the British right-wing tabloid gutter press STILL in 2021 use "Little Napoleon" as an insulting description for France's modern leader, Emmanuel Macron. (Who is also an entirely average 5'9'') A recent piece of research on public attitudes to politicians found the majority of British public believe Macron is the shortest leader in Europe! Insane, isn't it?
Peppy Piplup 4 years ago
I discovered this fact when researching the Pokémon Empoleon of all things. Empoleon is partially named after and is the same height as Napoleon.
#14
That Neanderthals were monosyllabic brutes. There's no evidence of that whatsoever. Their brains were bigger than ours and casts of the inside of their skulls show that they had all the same structures our brains had. Their tool making was comparable to any Homo sapiens' took making (at least before the Great Leap Forward) and they lived in communities just like we did.
We also regularly mated with them and had kids, which I really don't think we would if they were little more than quasi-gorillas.
Romenriel 4 years ago
And many people today have Neandrethal ancestors, meaning that Neandrethals weren't wiped out by modern men, but rather blended in with them.
Martha Meyer 4 years ago
Most people have no more than 5% Neanderthal DNA though. I wouldn't call that blended. We preserve a tiny bit of them inside us.
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Lenka Smetanová 4 years ago
Actually The Homo Sapiens Sapiens was the most brutal people of all, there are everal evidence of massacred Neanderthals... in Asia island there was a nations of quite small people (like real hobbits), and the 'normal sized' humas massacred them.
Random Panda 4 years ago
This is true according to recent research and I don't know why you were downvoted.
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M. A. 4 years ago
"We also regularly mated with them and had kids, which I really don't think we would if they were little more than quasi-gorillas." Well.......
Witchling 4 years ago
Yeah. Ik what you mean. Some of the guys I dated as a teenager....
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Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago
It’s correct that they weren’t brutes. There’s evidence from digs at Neanderthals caves that they took care of clan members who were old, disabled, or infirm, keeping them safe, sharing food, and providing for them, and that they cared about their members enough to give them funerals, with symbolic offerings in their arms or arranged around them. That kind of care and respect means that they were relatively civilized, at least amongst themselves. If they truly were brutes, old and/or sickly members would be left to die, and all their dead would be tossed out for the animals to eat. So no. Not brutes at all.
Bear Hall 4 years ago
The big difference beside physiology is they started to produce Art much later the us. Their tools were well made and their shelters well built but during most of their existence they didn't paint or carve either of them, they started to use it only close to their disappearance. On the other hand were draw on cliffs and walls, carved statues, decorated our tools from the beginning.
Gail Nicholson 4 years ago
I like the idea that their art was verbal - songs, stories, poetry - which would explain the big brains and the lack of archaeological evidence. I have no evidence for this of course, it's just a personal theory!
Load More Replies... Gail Nicholson 4 years ago
But brain size relative to body mass does tend to equate, especially in mammals, assuming the amount of wrinkling = surface area isn't hugely different; and it would be odd to find that kind of discrepancy between close species.
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Lara Verne 4 years ago
I recommend reading "The Ugly Little Boy" by Asimov. The way story depicst Neanderthal might be truer than we imagined.
#15
Only around 40% of colonists supported the American Revolution. Another 40% was indifferent, and about 20% sided with the British. Most Americans think that it was the vast majority who wanted Independence.
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
I wouldn't say indifferent so much as "not immediately involved", given what I know about US history. They were busy farming or whatever, and not really concerned with high ideals beyond, "Can I feed the family this winter? Is the cow sick? That's terrible about the deaths in Boston, but I live in Podunk, and we never see redcoats." So, typical human mindset, really. (See: Brexit.)
Analyn Lahr 4 years ago
I think that might be how a lot of people in the US are today too. I've heard of so many people not bothering to vote because of the mindset "as long as MY rights aren't violated, what the f**k ever". It really needs to change.
Load More Replies... Kevin Erdős–Bacon 4 years ago
This painting itself also creates misconceptions - many of the signatories in the painting were not present on the 4th of July during the signing, some delegates didn't end up signing and some who signed became delegates after the declaration was passed
Jon S. 4 years ago
Oh no! You too could have ended up like Canada! What horror! /s
Load More Replies... Mike Crow 4 years ago
The American revolution was never about freedom either. After it was done the only ones with actual “freedom” was rich white male landowners.
Two_rolling_black_eyes 4 years ago (edited)
This is revisionist thinking. In the progressive theory of society, the only true humans were white and male and only a landowner had the mental capabilities to make decisions. No society went from Thag dragging Una into the cave and raping her to LGBTQ rights in one generation. To ask our founding fathers to do so is childish thinking. Their revolution was a first step that allowed the other ones to happen and was an important start to freedom. By voting, you voluntarily gave your personal power to someone else to use how they choose. voluntarily is what freedom means. None of us would be sitting here without some group somewhere in the world starting the path to voluntarily giving up power so others can also benefit. 70 years later enough people had been enlightened past the original idea that they were willing to fight and die to prove another group were human. The North could have let the South go but they didn't. Our job is to continue to make those sacrifices so their first one wasn't in vain. Every generation needs to make sure then next one is more free than they are.
Load More Replies... Vicky Z 4 years ago
Fear could be a factor why they didn't want to support the revolution though.... in these situations they know that in order to be independent there had to be war and many lives would be lost so this 40% that was indifferent doesn't mean they didn't want independence! Usually it's the few that dare to do something like that
John 4 years ago
Exactly. To publicly declare that you were siding with the revolutionaries meant treason and hanging if you were caught. I can only imagine some men feeling caught between going to war and leaving their family to fend for themselves and staying back "indifferent" and keeping their family fed and alive.
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#16
That witches could only be women. There were plenty of male ‘witches’ over hundreds of years. In fact there are lot of misconceptions about witchcraft in general
Shelp 4 years ago
And also the witch trials occurred during the Early Modern Period, and not during the Middle Ages
Zaza 4 years ago
Also witch burnings, nope, didn't happen (or at least not as much as most people think, 0 witch burnings in Salem for example)
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Crispy Toast 4 years ago
They do, unfortunately. And in some places, the witches are literally homeless orphan children, whom the village has decided is possessed with evil. Not sure where that mentality started.
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Crispy Toast 4 years ago
Pretty much any woman that is doing something men don't like, or has something they want, or in a position of power over them, or makes the general public uncomfortable, is eventually labeled by someone as a "witch". Old women who spoke their mind, landowners, midwives, herbalists, the handicapped, Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great, Cleopatra, Elizabeth the 1st, even Hillary Clinton.
Load More Replies... GoddessOdd 4 years ago
And that witches were burned at the stake, but most were hung, or drowned, or ... you get the idea
Zintoki 4 years ago
In Rome they were skinned. For example christian crowd skinned famous mathematician Hypatia in Alexandria.
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Jon S. 4 years ago
I remember reading about this and thinking what an odd thing the gendered and geographic differences were. In some places it was mostly men prosecuted (Scandinavia?), in some places men made up a significant minority (England), but in many places, and especially the places with the highest rates of execution, it was overwhelmingly women charged (Germany).
anaona 4 years ago
It's not odd at all: Most of the "witches" tried in the USA were in fact single female landowners. Since landowners had power, the trials were often about taking land away from women to give it to men.
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MyOpinionHasBeenServed 4 years ago
Also, warlock means "promise breaker" and not a correct masculine term for male witch or wizard.
#17
I've mentioned this before but the Earth was mathematically proven to be spherical by the Ancient Greeks in the 3rd Century BC. Literate people, at very least, wouldn't have believed the Earth to be flat in the Medieval era. Furthermore, the Dark Ages weren't the Dark Ages because the Church allegedly suppressed science that they disagreed with. Many important discoveries were sponsored by the Church, and scientists/clergy were not mutually exclusive.
troufaki13 4 years ago
Ιt's been proven since the 3rd century BCE yet there are still people who think Earth is a floating raft smh
Monday 4 years ago
Can you imagine how hard the Ancient Greeks would facepalm hearing them?
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Lenka Smetanová 4 years ago
Well, this is quite common misinformation. Everyone in Medieval era knows that earth is round, the problem was elsewhere. In medieval times the Church claimed, that Earth is a center of the universe, and all object in the space including Sun was moving around the earth... Giordano Bruno died because he even claimed the universe is much bigger and there are more solars systems than just this one... Nobody inteligent believes in flat earth.... The problem was Heliocetrism ws something the Church was against, Giordano was killed for his discoveries, Mikołaj Kopernik's book was added into the indexof banned books for 200 years, they forces Galileo to take back his claims about heliocentrism too....
tuzdayschild 4 years ago
I've always believed the earth is the shape of a 3D Dorito I shant be persuaded otherwise.
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
They were called "dark" b/c there was relatively little known about them at the time the term was used, I was taught.
Two_rolling_black_eyes 4 years ago
There are only two theories I see as viable. One is based on science and the world is round. The other is the one I wish was true which is a disc shaped world on the back of four elephants standing on a turtle that is also standing on a turtle so its turtles all the way down.
Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago
Yes, but I believe those ancient discoveries were either forgotten or thought to be pagan, so when figured out again centuries later, they were considered new.
Jessica Cifelli 4 years ago
I thought it was called The Dark Ages because not a lot was written down.
Gail Nicholson 4 years ago
And sailors - or anyone living anywhere near a flat horizon (steppes, beside the ocean) - would have worked it out pretty quickly because of the blindingly obvious curvature of the land, which hides anything that ought to stick up in view if it were really flat!
Geri Taran 4 years ago
We still have "mistaken" citizens who believe the earth to be flat. Truthfully, I think they can't possibly actually believe that. Some folks just have a terrible urge to be "different".
#18
That carrots magically make your eyesight better. I still hear people say this to this day. Carrots are good for you, but not any better for your eyes than any other vegetable. In World War 2 when the Nazis were bombing Great Britain, they couldn't figure out how the Brits were able to shoot their planes down at night. British propaganda stated that their gunners and pilots ate a lot of carrots to improve their eyesight. In actuality they were covering up the fact that they'd invented RADAR and didn't want the Jerrys to know about it.
Jetze 4 years ago
Actually I read somewhere it was not to hide the fact that the UK had radar (as the Germans had Freya and Wurzburg) radar systems, which the British knew and captured in operation Biting). But to hide the fact that the British had it miniaturised enough to allow mounting them on planes. For more info see https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propaganda-campaign-popularized-the-myth-that-carrots-help-you-see-in-the-dark-28812484/
Tee Witt 4 years ago
and I read that is was to encourage children to eat them So many "true" facts, I wonder which is the correct one?
Load More Replies... Otter 4 years ago
Carrots contain Vitamin A, and a possible symptom of Vitamin A deficiency is night blindness or other visual problems. So carrots do absolutely nothing for your vision, unless you are suffering from a symptomatic Vitamin A deficiency, which is very rare in the developed world.
Two_rolling_black_eyes 4 years ago
Yep. Beta carotene (guess where it got its name) is metabolized into Retinol AKA vitamin A. Like many misunderstood things, increasing something over a threshold doesn't continue to make something stronger. Too much carrots only gives you orange skin. Go too far over the threshold and you get birth defects, comas, and deaths. Fun fact - the reason retinols are effective skin treatments is they are actually so toxic at that concentration that it kills the skin cells so the body has to rapidly make more!
Load More Replies... xolitaire 4 years ago
Sorry but that is total BS. No one believed the carrot thing. We had radar too. So basically you are basing one misconception on another.
Charl Marx 4 years ago
Cane here to say this. Literally everyone treats it as an old wives tale like "eat your crusts and your hair will grow curly". No one actually believed it!
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Firkin Dirkin 4 years ago
Germany also had radar, sorry! Another myth. It's true they lost the "radar race" to improve and implement it. The carrots thing was part of a wider drive to get people to grow more vegetables and eat a wider range of them. They used fighter pilots in their propaganda because they were the icons of the day.
Mathias 4 years ago
Oh boy where should I start here? 1) The Germans even knew the exact location of the British radar stations and attacked them in the first waves. It just was hard to knock out and to easy to be repaired while the dive bombers suffered horrible losses. 2) The germans bomber crews knew very well how the British find them at night and did their best counter that by taking specific approaches / fly patterns. 3) German had radar too that actually was way more advanced, they even used it to guide their flak units, but during the Battle of Britain the British had a more efficient command infrastructure.
Hugh Willie Mungous 4 years ago
German radar development was probably just as advanced as that of the English. However, they didn't initially appreciate its significance.
Malwin Wellham 3 years ago
Carrots are good for eyesight because have you ever seen a rabbit wearing glasses ;)
Faith Love-robertson 4 years ago
In fact some vegetables do have an effect on eye sight. As a person that has seen some deterioration in my eye health I have been advised to take daily supplements of lutein by my specialist. This is the same substance that is found in green leafy vegetables like spinach and other veg. I don't know about carrots but the supplement has a proven benefit to eye health.
#19
Oh, so many. Native Americans were just as capable of ecological destruction as any other humans. My favorite example of this was from my archeology professor who does excavations of Native American sites in Baja. In excavating a midden (trash heap) he found at the bottom were bones from the local land mammals, that got smaller and smaller as the locals over-hunted. Then was a level of fish and sea mammals -- again, starting with bone from large fish and mammals and getting smaller and smaller until they practically disappeared from over hunting and over fishing. Then on the top were the shellfish -- and again, the same pattern. Until apparently there was nothing left at this site to eat, and the Natives moved on. Native peoples used every bit of the animal when they had to, when said animals were tough to kill. North America didn't have horses between last ice age and Columbus. In fact, the favorite method for killing bison was to chase a herd off a cliff. And we know where this was done because the Natives left a whole lotta bones in the kill zone. Which we obviously couldn't find if they really used every part of the animal. Native Americans understood property rights. Various systems between tribes, from quasi-socialist bands of multiple families where all produce was held in common (but very explicitly belonged to the band and would be defended against outsiders), to land assigned to different families for use and periodically reapportioned, to land that was held by families and inheritable. My theory is that this myth was first started by colonists to justify stealing the land and then perpetuated as Rousseauian "look at how much better the primitives are!" nonsense.
sofacushionfort 4 years ago
If we admire the native peoples for using every part of the animal, we must be over the moon about hot dog producers.
RandomBeing 4 years ago
And clumping together all the different groups of native americans into one is also stupid.
Marlowe Fitzpatrik 4 years ago
Thanks - I wanted to say that, too. There's so many tribes with very different social structures and different living-conditions. There were farmers, fishers, hunters and those who did everything a little (or a lot). Some had matriarchy, some patriarchy. Some went to war with the neighboring tribes and took slaves, some didn't. But yes, they are human and therefor capable of violence and over-use of resources just as Europeans or Asian cultures.
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Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
You have to be fairly ignorant to believe that "noble innocent savage" stuff. Complex cities/societies, systems, etc.... It's all there. Or was.
RandomBeing 4 years ago
People are so shocked to hear that a diverse group of people are in fact complex :O
Load More Replies... Mazer 4 years ago
Applying this theory based on ONE archeological site is a huge mistake. Not all tribes were migratory, not all stationary.
Anna Snorrepot 4 years ago
upvote but I think you're a bit too literal thinking all bones should be used when people refer to "every bit was used". Sinews, organs and hide are typically not used nowadays from modern food-kill but where back then. Not just for steak, is what's meant, imho.
Kira Okah 4 years ago
Sinew, organs, and hide from modern meat rendering are most definitely used. Food, leathers...
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Dem Dan 4 years ago
Every society/civilization/people stole something from someone else. Get over it
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Hotdogking 4 years ago
Filthy socialist Indians ruining the economy of America before true Americans arrived /s
Marcellus II 4 years ago
Look at Australia, where the desert has been man-made long before western explorers. Or the Amazon tribes that live(d) nomadically, staying in a place for a few weeks until any animal larger than about a hand has been eaten then move on.
Load More Replies... #20
That AD means after death.
SentimentAndBadJokes 4 years ago
It gets so frustrating having people tell me that actually, it DOES mean after death. Correct my spelling please, but AD is Latin for Anno Domini, which translate roughly to English as 'the Year of Christ'
Lyone Fein 4 years ago
Sorry, but it does NOT mean Year of Christ. It means Year of Our Lord.
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Natalie Alderman 4 years ago
And those of us who don't believe in the divinity of Jesus use CE, which stands for Common Era.
H Edwards 4 years ago
I seem to remember being told this as a kid, probably as an easy way to remember the difference between BC and AD. Only somewhere in the explanation they forgot to mention that it really stood for something else, or maybe they just thought we'd figure it out when we got older. So there were definitely some years of my young life when I thought this was true.
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xolitaire 4 years ago
Seriously WHO in their right mind thinks that ? I never never heard that before. So many historical buildings even have "Anno Domini" written out right over the main entrance...
Tiny Dynamine 4 years ago (edited)
That's exactly what I thought. No-one has ever said that to my knowledge.
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Agnes Jekyll 4 years ago
Textbooks now use the term: CE for Common Era and BCE for Before Common Era
Campfire_Kansas 4 years ago
AD is anno domini, year of the lord, after death would mean 33 years later as modern data system distinguish between before and after the birth of Christ. damn.
Jessica Bertram 4 years ago
right? so BC and AD would have 33 or so years' gap between them. with no reckoning. not...not ok. people don't think, i think.
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Stannous Flouride 4 years ago
The decision to stop using BC/AD was not done out of an attempt to suppress Xtianity*. It was done to be more accurate with BCE/CE, Before Common Era/Common Era. *Xmas, etc. is not a "War on Christmas" despite what Faux News claims. The use of an X as a substitute for 'Christ' dates back at least as far as the Late Roman Empire where scribes used the cross shape as an abbreviation.
Incitatus 4 years ago
The Greek spelling for Christos (Christ, or Annointed One) begins with a Greek Chi, which appears as "X." Doesn't have much to do with a cross, sorry.
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Simon Andrew 4 years ago (edited)
AD is Anno Domini - 'the year of the Lord'. The same phrase gets used in English - 'In the year of the Lord sixteen hundred and eighteen', etc, etc. "After death' in Latin is Post Mortem - which gets used for something very different...
#21
The myth about the Vomitorium
The story goes that Roman nobility would go there to eat so much till they puked and would then continue eating.
It was just the name for the Colosseum entrance.
Thorfin Wolfsbane 4 years ago
I found my self backstage at a large venue and a door was labelled "Vomitorium". It was locked but I imagined it was rows of toilets for those very nervous to take the stage. Well, I was wrong...and disappointed.
Martin Kaine 4 years ago
It also helped the rising Christians paint the Roman aristocracy as decadent.
John 4 years ago
Except you forget that the rising Christians spoke Latin, not English, so "to vomit" didn't come to mind when they heard about a vomitorium.
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Heinrich Hall 4 years ago
A vomitorium is an access passage in an ancient theatre or amphitheatre. The term has no specific connection with the Collosseum, a famous amphitheatre in Rome, although the Collosseum certainly has vomitoria.
wv10014 4 years ago
I recently (june 2021) hired a noted anthropologist to take me around Pompeii. He confirmed this - indeed, vomitoriums were exits to public places and rms meant for vomiting after meals did not exist. The very rich would sometimes eat to excess and would vomit to make room for the next banquet- but this was very rare and there was no special room for this type of behavior. See the writings of Seneca the Younger or Suetonius on the banquets of emperors. Dining rms were important in the houses of wealthy Romans - they were called tricliniums and the ppl ate lying down, raising their heads on one elbow. My guide said these were the provinces of men only but, of course, "Ancient Rome" was not monolithic but had trends and changed over time (not to mention trends based on location within the vast empire) and can be divided into many different periods. Business was often discussed in the triclinium over meals. women may have joined the men for certain meals or during certain eras.
El muerto 4 years ago
also for the costume of rich people throwing parties with lots to drink and eat...if you wanted to look good, you would serve more than people could eat. showing off your wealth. but they didn't vomit, it was just left there...I guess that some would have the left overs thrown away or given to the servants.
Giles McArdell 4 years ago
*Exit, I believe. Same as what your stomach contents do when you vomit.
Gail Nicholson 4 years ago
That's really terrible. We were actually taught this one in Latin class..! smh
#22
That if you were a Peasant you could marry who ever you wanted for love and if you were a noble, royal or the like you could only marry for power During the Medieval period.
Higher class people could and did (though it wasn't common) marry for love and most of the time Peasant marriages were arranged for the same reason as noble ones were, to link two families together, you very rarely got to marry who you liked it was usually who your parents liked.
Also Prima nocta has, as far as I know was never actually being recorded as a thing.
xolitaire 4 years ago (edited)
That is not a "common misconception", its just a movie plot. Planned marriages were a super common thing all through Europe. Marriage itself was just a vehicle to ensure your children would take care of you and your belongings in the future.
Two_rolling_black_eyes 4 years ago (edited)
They are still a common thing. How many of us have gone home for dinner and there's someone at the table that both sets of parents think should marry you. I worked in IT for a multinational corporation and one day a colleague came and said she had to take the next week off. Mom and dad showed up with a nice gay doctor from Mumbai and now that marriage was legal in California, they were to going to get married. Both families decided to waive each dowry since it didn't make sense. The greatest blending of ancient rigidity and modern progressiveness I've ever seen.
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Thorfin Wolfsbane 4 years ago (edited)
marrying for love is a very new phenomenon in human history. biblical marriage = you marry who your parents say you marry (or, if you're rich, however many women you can afford) & women are the property of men.
Jo Choto 4 years ago
If you were a woman of any class, you were married off to whomever by your father or other male guardian.
Jon S. 4 years ago (edited)
I believe, in Britain at least, if you were poor you were married off to whoever your lord thought was appropriate, male or female. The best you could do was ask permission to marry someone you wanted and hope they agreed.
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Ellen Ranks 4 years ago
Also, the Catholic Church dictated who could marry who by deciding who was concidered too closely related and at a certain point made it a policy to extend the range of "family" so more people would stay unmarried and the Church could get their inheritance. So even less freedom in partner choice.
Caro Caro 4 years ago
That Prima nocta gives me the creeps. It's called Legal rape these days.
Auntriarch 4 years ago
Is that the same as droit de seigneur? Nifty two for the price of one shafting your peasant and his Mrs simultaneously
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#23
The belief that Anastasia did not die with the rest of her family
Vorknkx 4 years ago
Wait, you're telling me she didn't lose her memory and get hunted by an undead Rasputin and his albino bat???
tuzdayschild 4 years ago
They found that Anastasia was buried with the rest of her family all along. They mistook the body of her sister Maria who was buried near by but alone.
Otter 4 years ago
"Anna Anderson" was a fake, proven by DNA tests. And she didn't even look much like Princess Anastasia, her mouth was very different for instance.
Kay blue 4 years ago
The only person they could go to for a comparison DNA was the late Prince Philip.
Load More Replies... Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago (edited)
As a teenager, I read a book called “Seven League Boots”, by Richard Halliburton, a well known explorer in the 1930s. My mother loved his books, so still had her copy. One of the entries was Halliburton at the death bed confession by one of the Romanov family’s executioners. This man actually fired shots at them in that basement, but had never told anyone—-even his own family were surprised (they attended the confession). He confirmed, time and again, that Anastasia died with her family, and was buried in a remote location with them. I read that book in the mid-1970s, and knew from then on that Anna Andersen was a fraud. Turns out the guy Halliburton interviewed had to have been there, as he was right about every detail. I’ll have to look at the book again to see how he described the burial site.
Sage Gusano 4 years ago
" I'd give her a HA! And a HI-YA! And then a OOH-WAH! And I'd kick her, sir."
Thomas Stead 4 years ago
yeah, they found a corpse buried in a mass grave that matched the dna.
Analyn Lahr 4 years ago
Wasn't there a lady who looked a lot like her, claimed to be her and even Anastasia's childhood friend believed it? I saw it on Mysteries at the Museum.
Enby.Minecraft.Bee. 4 years ago
She was actually shot in a basement with the rest of her family.
SPQRBob 4 years ago
I imagine she was mostly shot in the head and the torso...
Load More Replies... Lenka Smetanová 4 years ago
well in the time they made this movie, there was actually hints that she mabye survived- her body was not in the mass grave with the rest of her family. Only a several years later they fond another grave, where they found Anastasia and I think her brother and another sister?... So the movie was based on the legend that she survived... Sadly she did not.
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#24
I have had way too many of my university students tell me that Lincoln owned slaves.
Kira Okah 4 years ago
He was anti slavery and didn't own slaves. I'm not American and know that. Oof.
BasedWang 4 years ago
not as anti slavery as you think.......... Here's a famous quote of his...........................................In August 1862, Lincoln stated: "If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."
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tuzdayschild 4 years ago
Lincoln's mother was probably a Quaker and he was very much influenced by her. Quakers were prohibited from owning slaves people and many were abolitionist.
Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago
Mary Todd Lincoln’s family members each owned one slave to attend to their needs. So, while the Todd’s didn’t believe in owning slaves on the scale of other southerners of the same level of wealth, they still did own slaves. They did. The Todds. Lincoln didn’t.
Lady of the Mountains 4 years ago
they're getting confused with toams jefferson another man who spoke out against slavery but did own slaves. though I understand he treated them relatively well, in comparison to other owners at the time
Tinder of the SkyWings 3 years ago
Well, the first part is true, but he never tried to free his slaves and forced them to make a huge mountaintop home. He wasn't a brutal master, but an apathetic one.
Load More Replies... Andrew Langley 4 years ago
They are just confusing him for U.S.Grant who was a reluctant slave owner.
Cydney Golden 4 years ago
He did not own slaves, could not afford them even if he wanted to. He was anti slavery even before president.
Julian West 4 years ago
For the most part, most of the Northern leadership didn't own slaves or support slavery, while a high proportion of the Southern leadership did. A number of Northern generals began the war either indifferent to slavery, or mildly in favour, but changed their minds as things developed. Grant did own a slave for a short while. He freed the slave when he could have sold him for a considerable sum. He became deeply opposed to slavery, and was progressive (for the era) on racial issues when president. There's a double agenda where supporters of the Southern Cause want to deny that the Civil War was about slavery, by denigrating the North as being as racist as the Confederacy. This is supported by radicals on the other side who don't wish to portray the white armies as being motivated by anti-racist sentiment. There's a bit of truth in that, but the Civil War would not have happened had President Lincoln not been seen as an anti-slavery figure.
#25
There is no record of Queen Victoria ever saying "We are not amused".
And Roman gladiator fights usually weren't just pointless, bloody, fights to the death for scumbag convicts. The gladiators themselves were very highly trained celebrities who were very well looked after. It was entertainment done for show, much like WWE or similar today.
Two_rolling_black_eyes 4 years ago
A mother can force an unruly child to freeze and start behaving with a single glance. Victoria did it to an entire country.
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Thomas Stead 4 years ago
The reason for Gladiator fights having low kill counts was due to the cost it took to train them. It took years to train a Gladiator, and it was expensive as well. making it plain stupid to have them die in every fight, which lead to the weapons often being blunt except for special occasions.
Rissie 4 years ago
At some point in her life she probably did? The woman had quite the sour expression.
Ivy la Sangrienta 4 years ago
Considering that back then one had to sit absolutely still for a sharp photographic image not smiling was way easier. She did definitely have rbf. I look mad af when my face it neutral too.
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Lotten Kalenius 4 years ago
I read somewhere that Queen Victoria wrote several times in her diary something like "I was very amused", which is where the idea of "I was not amused" may come from, since - what some of you already noted - that is more along the lines of her solemn appearance.
Jon S. 4 years ago
The death counts for gladiators were so low that there is speculation the whole things were staged. Not the bits where they slaughtered prisoners, that was real, but the matches they had against each other.
Load More Replies... SCamp 4 years ago
It was also rare for the losing gladiator to die - gladiators were highly trained and very well looked after, they were elite sports stars (along with chariot racers) of their time and a lot of money was invested in them. Their owners didn’t want them out to death. Most of the arena deaths were criminals and later Christians
Luis Hernandez Dauajare 4 years ago
Actually, she did say "We are most amused". It is written in her diary.
Gail Nicholson 4 years ago
Woah, from Queen Victoria to Roman gladiators, biggest tangent leap ever..!
#26
French revolution storming of the Bastille freeing hundreds of political prisoners. When in actual fact there were only 7 prisoners. (4 cheques forgers, a lunatic, a sexual deviant and a man who tried to assassinate King Louis XV 30 years ago).
Phil Jones 4 years ago
Ive read this too- also I believe the French did not celebrate it until about 100 years after it happened - I love France but I really dont understand Bastille Day in the same way I dont understand Guy Fawkes Day in the UK!!
Giles McArdell 4 years ago
We (British) celebrate the man who came closest to achieving what we all dream of, blowing the F**K out of parliament.
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Fat Harry 4 years ago
Please let that include the sexual deviant and the lunatic!
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#27
Deep breath.
I've been studying the Titanic disaster for over three decades. Titanic comes up on reddit a lot, which I love because how cool that my nerdy hobby interests so many people, but the amount of misconceptions is large. This is no ones fault, nor is it ignorance, Titanic had the (un)lucky fortune to become a symbol very quickly, so very often what we think of as history is really folklore. That being said, here are the ones I see often.
There is enough evidence, good evidence, where we can say that William Murdoch most likely did shoot himself. The scene James Cameron shot is a direct recreation of witness testimony- multiple witnesses actually. There is a huge amount of first hand and second hand evidence that this happened. Why it's thought to be a myth and why James Cameron had to apologize is actually another interesting part of the story but for the main question- in all my research, I've yet to see a fact based reason why we should think Will Murdoch was not a victim of suicide.
2)On the same note- yes Charles Lightoller lowered early boats without filling them- as he should have. It wasn't incompetence or ignorance, there were many reasons why this was the best course of action and it was practiced throughout the night. To add- Titanic's crew weren't incompetent or unprepared, they were, quite literally, the best of the best.
3)There were lifeboat drills. Multiple. Every night at 6pm.
4)The 4th funnel wasn't fake- it just served a slightly different purpose than the first three.
5) Titanic. was. not. speeding.
6) Boats were not filled by class.
7)Third Class was not locked below- but some of them thought they were. This is actually pretty interesting in that every view of this situation is the correct one. To refer to Cameron again- his portrayal of this is correct- depending on who you ask. It was miscommunication, not classism.
9) Coal fire damage- not a thing and the "evidence" is just ... wrong.
10) The switch theory not only makes no sense, it is literally impossible.
11) Titanic wasn't a cruise ship. She was an ocean liner :)
Monday 4 years ago
The switch theory is impossible...but still a very fun conspiracy theory to explore. It's also worth noting that one of the crew members on the titanic, Violet Jessop, survived not only the sinking of the Titanic, but also the sinkings of both the Olympic and the Britannic.
Grant Barke 4 years ago
Olympic never sank. Olympic was withdrawn from service and sold for scrap in 1935.
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Wilf 4 years ago
I'd agree with most of this, but I think (9) is maybe open to some question. The bunker fire was only given cursory attention at the British enquiry (the Board of Trade were more interested in the actions of the passengers and crew rather than HOW the ship sank), but there's no doubt that the bunker fire caused some damage to the watertight bulkhead separating boiler room 5/6. How that damage might have contributed to that bulkhead failing during the sinking is open to some question, but the witness was pretty clear that boiler room 6 filled suddenly- as if a bulkhead had suddenly failed. In the end though, the question is irrelevant as the iceberg damage reached just into Boiler room 5- meaning that the only thing holding water back was the non-watertight door to the bunker. The ship was doomed. It's not a question of whether the fire caused the sinking, but I think it's valid to question whether it sped up the final minutes of the sinking.
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
The Titanic hit a frigging iceberg. It sank. Trying to set a speed record overall is not the same as "speeding"; there were NOT ENOUGH LIFEBOATS so the drills were irrelevant, and that's fact; and I have seen some survivor stories that indicate the women-children first order never made it down to steerage, and they were waiting per instructions for their turn, but their turn somehow never came.
Nicholas Kraemer 4 years ago
Well these are a fine collection of opinions being passed off as absolute fact. Number 2 is demonstrably wrong, as the lifeboat davits were capable of handling fully laden boats and the boats were strong enough to lowered full. We know this because 1) full boats were lowered later that night 2) tests on the Olympic showed that this was possible.
Wilf 4 years ago
Lightoller said at inquiry that thought the Captain wanted the boats filled with women and children ONLY, and took that to mean launching them with only those few women he saw around him on deck, get the boats to stand-by the ship and then fill them to capacity later on- using the ship's gangways. While Captain Smith knew the situation was serious, it probably took until about 12:00-12:15 before he was convinced that the ship would sink quickly. It probably took even longer for the officers (busy managing the preparation of lifeboats) to realise the ship was going to sink immediately. Many officers were also worried that lifeboats lowered under the strain of their full capacity would break apart because out of water the weight is only supported at the ends, not the middle. It was established maritime practice to use lifeboats in the way Lightoller planned to. He intended to lower them to the water and load them from the passenger gangways. Lightoller was wrong with hindsight.
Load More Replies... AnnaBanana 4 years ago
Didn't Cameron have to pay Murdoch's family for defaming their ancestor?
Thomas brennan 4 years ago
Yeah I think the issue was that Cameron showed him panicking and killing a passenger - which didn't happen. That's what rightly pissed them off.
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Kira Okah 4 years ago (edited)
For a very brief summary: Titanic's sister ship, RMS Olympic, had an accident with a naval vessel called HMS Hawke. Hawke was equipped with a ship ram, which tore a pretty impressive looking hole in Olympic and nearly capsized Hawke. Cost to repair Olympic was $125k and a delay in launching Titanic. Titanic sinks the year after. In the 1990s some dude published a book saying that Hawke's ram damaged Olympic's keel and put the company in a dire financial position, so while Olympic was in dry dock in Belfast with Titanic they disguised Titanic as Olympic and engineered the Titanic disaster to scupper Olympic for insurance money. This situation is malarkey - Olympic didn't take keel damage from Hawke (in fact the lack of damage to Olympic actually caused the navy to abandon the use of ship rams as non effective), the company was in a very comfortable financial position, Titanic and Olympic were differently designed in several ways, Olympic was only in dock for 40 days, and no company has enough hush up money for the whole of Belfast.
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Roxy Eastland 4 years ago
The idea that 'there weren't enough lifeboats' was down to penny pinching. There were laws stipulating minimum requirements. Ships as large as Titanic almost always sank slowly and by far the safest way of rescuing passengers was to ferry them across from the sinking ship to a waiting one that had arrived to offer help. With the experience of shipping up until that point it was perfectly good enough. The speed with which the Titanic sank was shocking to everyone.
daisydiamond 4 years ago
just want to add: the laws at time around lifeboats were based on the tonnage of the ship and outdated by the time the Titanic was built. According to the laws at the time, a passenger ship of 10,000+ was required to carry 16 lifeboats sufficient for 960 people. The Titanic actually carried 20 lifeboats, which was four more than legally required.
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#28
The fact that Shah Jahan cut off hands of his workers after they completed Taj Mahal.
There's literally no evidence except for tell tales.
Many monuments were built after Taj Mahal under reign of Shah Jahan. Just think, who would work for you knowing that they're going to lose their hands if they did a good job.
J. F. 4 years ago (edited)
Heard that one over here in Germany, but never thought it was true.
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Shalini Pabreja 4 years ago
Actually, this was a metaphor. He forbade his artisans from ever working again, just to preserve the unique beauty of his monuments, which was equivalent to cutting off their hands, as they were left without a source of income.
J. Normal 4 years ago
"Just think, who would work for you knowing that they're going to lose their hands if they did a good job." True or not, the workers did not necessarily have a choice about working. Between slavery and poverty - many a man worked, knowing the end result would not be a reward
Carole Hamilton 4 years ago
I am not sure that anyone be allowed to refuse the Shah if he wanted their service
#29
Louis-Michel le Peletier cast the single vote that sentenced Louis XVI
Actually the vote was a pretty clear majority in favor of execution
Chris Freeman 4 years ago
Dude looks like a ferret not legally allowed to go within 500 foot of a school.
Two_rolling_black_eyes 4 years ago
For the actual original vote, he was the deciding one. There were 721 people who held the trial and voted what to do. As the head of the proceedings he was only to vote as the tie breaker. He was the 361st vote. The next day they held a follow up vote to commute the sentence. Due the the length of the proceedings, many members had left to take care of business. On that one, 310 out of 380 said Louis must be punished and since the sentence they had taken was death, he would die. Many of those 310 had voted for lesser penalties on the original ballot but changed their vote to ensure a punishment on the second one. So technically both views are correct.
Ryan Deschanel 4 years ago
In prison too. Or dead. Of in England to save their families.
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Samantha PandaNotBored 4 years ago
I’m really liked this article. I do hope BP are sorting out their game now , and going back to the way they were
#30
That corsets were uncomfortable and prevented free movement and breathing, so were a way of physically subjugating women.
Firstly, this is often asserted by people who don't know the difference between bodies, stays and corsets, proving that they're waaaaay out of their lane.
It's pretty obvious even just from contemporary art that women were perfectly capable of getting through physical labour including farm work in that kind of supportive garment whether stiffened with interfacing/stitching or "boning" (not necessarily made of bone). And if you've ever worn one, you'll know how great they are for supporting your back and core.
They're much more comfortable than bras, in my opinion.
Oh and they didn't leave red marks all over your skin because unlike a bra you'd never have worn one against your skin (too difficult to wash) but over a shift/chemise/combination garment of some kind. Try putting your bra OVER a tank top or similar, and note (1) no loss of support, (2) much kinder to the skin, and (3) bra needs much less frequent washing.
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
BULLSH*T from a medical doctor. Many corset styles caused incredible harm, you're not meant to need anything to support your posture unless you are INJURED, and the boning was made of bones (whale, flexible) or metal, or WOOD, so don't try to sell this myth. Do NOT. We saw skeletal remains of women who were strictly corseted or "stayed" in med school. Girls were put into them before they finished growing. It may not have killed, but it wasn't like it was "good" fory ou. AND PEASANTS/FARMERS didn't wear high fashion, so duh they didn't wear the corsets seen in fashion! Good grief...
Kira Okah 4 years ago
You are describing TIGHT-LACING, which was a small fashion fad among the upper class. TIGHT-LACING /= CORSETRY. Corsets and stays were generic undergarments for both men and women to support the body and lay the clothes. These were worn by lower classes too. The point of this person's comment is that it is a misconception that all corsetry is tight-lacing. It is not. You're describing something completely different to what they are.
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Lenka Smetanová 4 years ago
well, this is quite complicated... there was corsets and "corsets". Normal corsets do the exact thing you mention here, it was basic part of clothes. But in higher stats, woman litteraly broken their ribs to look more thinnier. There are bones of little girls (7-15 yo) whos ribs was deformed , shoved several fractures from wearing a corsets and it was most possibly the cause of their early death
Martha Meyer 4 years ago
This is a myth too. Girls were not required to wear corsets before puberty. Some women however overdid “lacing“ for fashion. Kind of like those Instagram people overdo their filters these days.
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Otter 4 years ago
The discomfort of corsets varied tremendously over time. Some eras very tight lacing was in fashion and they had to be hell to wear, some other times they were worn rather loose and were meant to give shape to garments rather than to force the torso into an unnatural shape.
Lyone Fein 4 years ago
I suspect the looseness or tightness had a bit to do with the economic class of the wearer. Someone who had to work for a living would wear it loosely. Whereas a member of the upper class would, ironically, be compelled to wear it more tightly and be more restricted by it.
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Mazer 4 years ago
Please check the facts on the medical impacts of wearing the aforementioned undergarments. They are really not a good thing
Martha Meyer 4 years ago
Please watch Karolina Zebrowska's YT channel. You are wrong.
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Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago (edited)
Most people don’t know that dandies wore corsets during the mid-1800s (1830s to 1850s, I believe—-older dandies holding on to the fashion of their youth, or trying to hide a middle-age paunch, I would imagine). It was fashionable for men to lace in their waists to make their shoulders appear broader and more manly. I believe the Civil War was what hammered the last nail in the coffin of the fashion of men wearing corsets. Can’t fight a war if you have to be laced into a corset every morning.
Load More Replies... Rissie 4 years ago
Let's agree that this is a personal opinion and that any garment meant to shape a body impacts freedom of movement. Like wearing huge skirts and underskirts. Just because you can do physical labor in it, doesn't mean it's optimal
Out of chocolate 4 years ago
They’re essentially the precursor of the bra. The supreme push-up bras can be incredibly uncomfortable… if you’re jogging you’re gonna wish you had support (if your body does things like mine)
Load More Replies... MyOpinionHasBeenServed 4 years ago
I just had this argument with my mom. If incorrectly sized and tight-laced, yes, a corset can be bad. But the same thing can be said for wearing bras that are too small, shoes that are too small and tight, low jeans (remember that issue, millennials?). Whale boning and tightlacing didn't come around until the mid-19th century and isn't synonymous with corsets. There was the option to do so, but not everyone was doing this. Men wore corsets, or girdles, too. I've been following fashion historians who make their own corsets and have tried out doing various activities while wearing them and the only complaint they have is difficulty bending over to put on shoes.
Joanna 4 years ago
I think the issue is that people don't distinguish between normal corset wear and tightlacing.
Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago
And, once laced, could use the hooks in the front to get themselves in and out of it—-no need for help until the lacing finally comes loose.
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#31
People love to portray Napoleon with a French accent. Napoleon actually had an Italian accent.
Ryan Deschanel 4 years ago
And he was bullied in school for that... They almost treated him like a foreigner, because he was born one year after Corsica became French.
Chewie Baron 4 years ago
He was born the year before. His mother lied about his age.
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#32
Oh God, where to begin... That the Europeans in the Middle Ages didn't bathe, that the US was founded as a Christian nation (Treaty of Tripoli, anyone?), the pyramids were built by slaves, that ye olde life expectancy was abysmally short (only of you're one of those darn infants bringing the average down...).
Susan De Nimes 4 years ago
The pilgrims left England because they wanted to be less tolerant than society was comfortable with at the time.
Mark Kelly 4 years ago
and the word god wasn't originally in the founding documents on on currency and the founding father didn't believe in god.
Concept-Peter Roosdorp 4 years ago
I have never believed the whole not washing thing. If you have been hiking or some other activity that makes it difficult to clean yourself.. You start to feel the grime after a few days, things start getting itchy and if you keep going, you get rashes.. But they still only bathed a few times per year? I would at least jump in any river or lake at first given oppertunity, probably with my clothes on to wash them off too.
Enby.Minecraft.Bee. 4 years ago
Didn't the people that made the pyramids get paid with wine and food?
memyselfandI 4 years ago
The US wasn’t founded as a Christian nation, but it was founded by Christians who were most likely expecting that the nation would remain majority Christian or accepting of Christian values. It hadn’t even occurred to them that Muslims would come, atheism would be prevalent, etc. etc. etc. But yes, you’re right, it wasn’t intended to require Christianity. (It was likely assumed, though)
#33
During Paul Revere's Midnight Ride he did not shout "the British are coming!" The mission depended on secrecy so shouting loudly the "British are coming" kinda defeats the whole purpose.
According to several sources (e.g., eyewitness accounts) his warning was likely "the Regulars are coming out" or some variation of that and probably not loud enough to wake up a village (as I've seen in some media renditions).
Ryan Deschanel 4 years ago
"The British are coming! -I am British, you are British, we are all British! Also, shut up, you woke up my baby!"
Louloubelle 4 years ago
Add he rode about 12 and half miles. Nothing compared to the 40 miles ridden by Sybil Ludington, a 16 year old girl.
GoddessOdd 4 years ago
Also, Sybil Ludington was only 16 years old, and deployed by her father, Col. Henry Ludington to arouse his militia when the rider who had been alerting the militia on April 26th arrived at the Ludington's with a horse too exhausted to go further. She was sent because she was an excellent rider with knowledge of the surroundings. She rode 40 miles, (twice the distance of Revere), alone (Revere had two other riders) and she avoided capture (Revere did not). Sybil, at only 16. rode all alone through the night, in the rain, on outlaw-infested, poorly traveled back roads, armed with only a stick, alerting her father's militia, and yet very few remember her name.
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
If his ride was similar to that of Jack Jouett, he probably knocked on "the right doors", and went quietly away.
Joe Reaves 4 years ago
Exactly. It would be like a Civil War soldier trying to warn of an attack by shouting 'the Americans are coming'.
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Draco Lucius Malfoy 4 years ago
fun fact Sybil Ludington was less than half of pauls age (16) alerted hundreds more people in driving rain on horseback in a dress (also the ride was unplanned) while reverer was riding in pants during clear skies during a planned ride and alerted I s**t you not 2 people(no really!!) (he was 41)(꒪⌓꒪)
MyOpinionHasBeenServed 4 years ago
LOL Isn't he always depicted shouting this in a British accent?
#34
People are usually dead wrong about when the Roman Empire fell. Because of political, religious, and cultural reasons - we often think of the Roman Empire falling in the end of the 4th century. Except, it didn't. That was when the Rome fell, but by that time Constantinople had become the capital of the empire and that political lineage lasted until 1453.
There are a lot 'but they spoke Greek', and 'they weren't...whatever', normally by people who just can't let go of what they were taught in high school. Yes, the ERE became Greek in language and culture, and yes they were much more Asian than the western empire. None of that changes the fact that the political line of the empire was unbroken through the middle ages.
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
Rome's empire split into two ----- and that's when things really fell apart, no pun intended. But the western Empire we think of as Roman (rather than Byzantine, as I was taught to refer to it) didn't just vanish in 117AD
Lyone Fein 4 years ago
You are omitting the fact that about two thirds of the empire fell and was dissolved in the 5th century. What was left could no longer be called the Roman Empire, since Rome was not part of it any longer. This is why it is popularly known as the Byzantine Empire. Whatever political lineage that existed was no match for the Bishop of Rome, who later became the Pope. Christendom was larger and more powerful than the Byzantines throughout the Middle Ages.
Enby.Minecraft.Bee. 4 years ago
Dude if anything my education that i got in school would be one of the easiest things for me to doubt. Especially because the american school system if f**ked
#35
WW1 trench combat was nothing like how most people think about it. The common misconception is that people stared at each other with machine guns until some idiot general forced his soldiers to run into machine gun fire and they all got brutally mowed down while the enemy cracked open a beer. The reality is much, much more complex. Artillery did an excellent job of suppressing machine guns and clearing barbed wire, forcing defending troops to hunker in deep shelters while the attacking infantry were free to advance. As a result, the attackers generally had a pretty substantial advantage in the war, and casualty ratios support this- across the war, attackers almost always had equal or lower casualties than defenders. What forced the stalemate was not that it was impossible to attack, but rather that it was impossible to defend against counterattacks. Once you've taken the enemy's first line of trenches(and they have much more than one line), because of your own artillery, it is now almost impossible to reinforce and consolidate your hard-earned territory. Your own artillery has blown apart the terrain between the trenches enough that it's very, very difficult to get supplies or men across, and it generally doesn't have the range to suppress enemy counterattacks further back(because if it did, then it'd be open to counterbattery fire, which would result in you losing all your artillery). Ad a result, you now have to defend against a counterattack that does have artillery and the attacker's advantage, and you don't have any defender's advantage because you haven't
Caro Caro 4 years ago
Did you know that about 40 thousand (!) died of drowning in the mud in Northern France? To this day human bones are still found, collected and respectfully buried or put in a ossuary.
Jo Choto 4 years ago (edited)
I did my thesis on WWI in northern France. I used to live in Northern France. I spent a lot of time on historical battlegrounds where the trenches still exist. You can say all you like, but it is pretty clear how close quarters the fighting was. Plus, I did it at a time where there were still many alive who had been in those trenches. I had the benefit of a lot of first hand interviews. It was up close and personal.
An Co 4 years ago
And that the defended position you just took had built in supplies lines that let the defender easily retake the position. The main reason the allies had a big problem with trench war fare was they took positions as close as possible to the enemy, who took positions up hill (hence 'the high ground' myth). This not only meant they were charging up hill, but it meant rain filled their trenches. Dirty, disease full rain.
#36
That Vikings were an ethnicity.
Shelp 4 years ago
I'm not sure to get this one. "Viking" means "seafarer", but at the end of the day they all were Norsemen
Yvonne Dauwalder Balsiger 4 years ago
No, a lot of the Vikings are mixed individuals with ancestry from both Southern Europe and Scandinavia, for example, or even a mix of Sami (Indigenous Scandinavian) and European ancestry. Look here https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/scientists-raid-viking-dna-explore-genetic-roots
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Lenka Smetanová 4 years ago
funny fact... the only one proven grave of a viking woman warrior was not a grave of a viking woman at all... the DNA proven that she was actually a Slavic. Slavs was actually the only nation known for their woman warriors, and the legendary shieldmaiden in vikings sagas was most likely based on the slavic woman, not the vikings one.
Jon S. 4 years ago
When you say "only one proven grave of a Viking woman warrior," how was it proven?
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Stoopham McFernybabes 4 years ago
It can applied to both groups, can’t it?
Load More Replies... Lene Eriksen 3 years ago
I guess the op here is stating that this fact is an annoying myth ppl tend to believe?
Monday 4 years ago
Mostly is the keyword there. There was some diversity.
Load More Replies... #37
That the Library of Alexandria was callously destroyed in a big, dramatic event in which all of the ancient world’s knowledge was lost forever. Like most things, the Library of Alexandria had its rise, its peak, and its ultimate decline, with highs and lows in between. It also certainly was not the only prestigious library in the world at the time, not to mention personal collections kept by the wealthy. To act as if all of the world’s knowledge was recorded one time only and then stockpiled in one place is ludicrous.
tuzdayschild 4 years ago
Try to move on. They are very rich and unfortunately, not going anywhere.
Load More Replies... #38
Marie Antoinette's famous "let them eat cake" or "let them eat brioche". She literally never said it. She was 9 at the time and it was entirely made up.
Shelp 4 years ago
This is BS. She may have not said that, but she was 34 at the time, and not 9.
Demi Zwaan 4 years ago
"Most famously, the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau included the pâté story in his “Confessions” in 1766, attributing the words to “a great princess” (probably Marie-Thérèse). Whoever uttered those unforgettable words, it was almost certainly not Marie-Antoinette, who at the time Rousseau was writing was only 10 years old—three years away from marrying the French prince and eight years from becoming queen."
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Lauren Caswell 4 years ago
"Let them eat cake" was attributed to people before her too, as a way to bring down a popular figure in the eyes of the peasants
Pascal Oudot 4 years ago (edited)
The quotation seems to have been largely loaned to Marie-Antoinette only in the second half of the 19th century. It was at this point that the queen became, for Republicans, a particular figure of detestation. She crystallizes on her person many causes which have the dimension of the Revolution, of which she becomes one of the responsible. This is particularly noticeable in the "History of the French Revolution" by Louis Blanc (1849) and in the "Socialist History of the French Revolution" by Jean Jaurès (1902). However, neither of them mentioned the famous formula. It does not appear in textbooks either. At that time, it is like an urban legend, vector of very varied speeches, that the written use of this sentence becomes common. It is easily spotted, particularly in England, Germany and the United States, where it serves as a referential support for many food advertisements.
Sue M. H. R. 4 years ago
Huh. I was always told that "cake" for us and "cake" at that time in France were not the same thing and that it was really a reference to the burnt pieces of break left in the ovens that most people would consider inedible. And, of course, that no one can accurately say whether she did or did not say it, but if she did, she wasn't referring to a birthday cake with frosting.
Enby.Minecraft.Bee. 4 years ago
Don't really know about the age thing but she definitely didn't say ¨Let them eat cake¨
Load More Replies... #39
There is no evidence that Franklin ever said that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. But it is a cool quote so I will continue to use it.
Susan De Nimes 4 years ago
It was beer-drinkers who helped John Snow understand how cholera spreads: the staff in the local brewery were the only people in the area who didn't use a particular water pump, because they only drank beer. He took the handle off the pump, and the cholera outbreak stopped.
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#40
Sweden is a neutral country. Since we declared neutrality we fought in the Finnish civil war, the winter war, technically ww2, over 5 different un campaigns including the Congo crisis and now the wars in the Middle East.
Concept-Peter Roosdorp 4 years ago
Sweden never had boots on the ground in an other country, but for example, did train "police and security" officers for denmark and norway. I guess it depends a bit on how you define neutral.
#41
Germany invaded Russia on June 22, not “in the winter” as people say.
Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago (edited)
And Hitler wasn’t counting on it taking long so long his troops would end up in a Russian winter. Like Napoleon, Hitler vastly underestimated both the Russian winter, and the Russian soldiers determination to keep his army out. Germans and Russians have also hated each other for millennia—-and Hitler vowing to exterminate all the Slavic peoples didn’t help.
Load More Replies... Martha Meyer 4 years ago
Does that person understand you can't march through and conquer Russia in two or three months?
Dave P 4 years ago
Yes, but they were supposed to invade in early May, 6 weeks earlier. They were supposed to be Moscow before winter, but the delay in Greece caused them to push it off by six weeks, even though they knew it would be winter when they reached Moscow. That is where the misunderstanding comes from.
Shelp 4 years ago
Actually, the Germans initially wished for winter to come, because their advance was already stopped in October/November, rain made the roads impracticable, and they hoped winter will freeze everything and let the tanks go again. "Russian winter" was a made-up legend to justify the unthinkable defeat on the Eastern front
Lenka Smetanová 4 years ago
June 22..... in Russia..... so.... basicaly in the winter :D :D :D
#42
Nothing drives me up the wall when it comes to History. I love to inform people and get them asking questions. History has been taught in such a dry manner and now that we have internet, we are able to take pages worth of text and condense it into entertaining information instead of a single paragraph in a book that covers whole decades.
My "favorite" common misconception is that the Nazi Army was the most advanced, fully mechanized fighting force in the world. The truth is a handful of people were put in charge of portraying that image and they were so good at their job that this image still holds up today.
The Axis was never, ever going to win. The Allies just had their heads in the sand and didn't stop Hitler when they could, and they had many chances. If WW2 looked like the end report of a Chess game, it would look a little like this:
Allies - 9,500 Mistakes 500 Blunders, 1,000 Missed Wins.
Axis - 5,000 Mistakes, 200 Blunders, 5 Missed Wins.
Chich 4 years ago
And contrary to Hollywood, it wasn't the Brits or US who defeated the Nazis, it was Russia.
Thomas brennan 4 years ago
I think it was all three - I don't think any of them could have done it individually
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Josine Vrouwe 4 years ago
Interesting to see the responses to this one - WWII still seems to create rivalry.
Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago
I think also that Hitler never counted on the US joining the fight, with the virtually unlimited supply of not only atrial resources (namely gasoline), plus weapons, Jeeps, etc, but a similarly huge supply of strong healthy young men to fight. Supplies, especially gas for their Panzers, and soldiers were two things the Nazi Army had exhausted by the end. That’s why, once the Allies gained a foothold in France, the Germans were retreating, and on the run.
Izzy Curer 4 years ago (edited)
The nazis were also all high on meth. So were their wives. It was prescribed as a drug called pervitin, and it was about as popular as anti depressants are today. Oh, and Hitler got regular injections of horse semen.
J. F. 4 years ago (edited)
The Wehrmacht had good training, tactics, strategy and later in the war the upper hand in technology in many fields - just too less, too late. The equipment was quite ahead, but the multiple front war made it sparse on each individual front to make a difference. Imagine the difference transport helicopters for example would had made if they were introduced 3 years earlier in larger numbers.
Wilf 4 years ago
The German army relied heavily on horse transport during the earlier stages of the war. It also captured tens of thousands of abandoned British and French military trucks after the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation- without which it is doubtful it would have had the mechanised capacity to have invaded Russia as effectively (at first) as it did.
#43
Classics buff. It's Pandora's jar, not Pandora's box.
Krásnoočko Zelené 4 years ago (edited)
Sorry but this is just a needless nitpick. Pandora is not a historical figure and whether she had a jar or a box is completely inconsequential for the story.
Campfire_Kansas 4 years ago
the myth's first reference is in Exiodus' ργα καὶ Ἡμέραι, Erga kài Hemérai - the Works and the Days and the object of Zeus' gift is a VASE - pithos, πίθος whose typical shape could be easily confused with a JAR so either Jar or VASE are correct - there is no mythological record of it being a box. in the italian version of the myth we talk about a vase.
Ines Olabarria-Smith 4 years ago
In Italian is Vaso, in Spanish is Caja. So just choose the translation from Greek.
Lenka Smetanová 4 years ago (edited)
well now... let me indulge you.... this is true. The original epos saying that she opened "pythos" which is word for a specific jar, that was used for storing wine or oil.... In 16 century the translator of the story mistook this word with another which was "pyxis" and this word means box.
memyselfandI 4 years ago
I heard it as a “pathos”, which was a type of container that could probably have taken either round or rectangular form.
Ozymandias73 4 years ago
Now come on. You mean to tell me that ALL that "evil" was held in a little old jar? Nuh uh. I'm not buying it!
#44
That bushido is some ancient, archaic code of honor held by samurai that made them totally infallible and above the “dishonorable” acts that shinobi would commit.
Paul Davis 4 years ago
I think the idea of "shinobi" covered a wide range of spies. Some being amateurs pressed into service ad-hoc, some with special training.
Lenka Smetanová 4 years ago
you know, the Ten Commandments in bible is quite specific about how you shoud behave... and even though, nobody really care... so...
Requiem 4 years ago
NO it isnt, its like a religion. Ive trained in those martial arts; theres tea ceremonies and paintings. Bushido formalized earlier samurai moral values and ethical code, most commonly stressing a combination of sincerity, frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery and honour until death.[6] Born from Neo-Confucianism during times of peace in the Edo period (1603–1868) and following Confucian texts, while also being influenced by Shinto and Zen Buddhism, it allowed the violent existence of the samurai to be tempered by wisdom, patience and serenity.[3] Bushido developed between the 16th and 20th centuries, debated by pundits who believed they were building on a legacy dating back to the 10th century, although the term bushido itself is "rarely attested in pre-modern literature".[7] This ethical code took shape with the rise of the warrior caste to power at the end of the Heian period (794–1185) and the establishment of the first shogunate of the Kamakura period (1185–1333).
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#45
That the Boston Tea Party was some patriotic protest against taxes. That is totally wrong.
Rather, it was a protest by the local tea smugglers that there was no more tea duty -- it destroyed their smuggling business.
Lyone Fein 4 years ago
Don't know where this one comes from. The Wikipedia article cited says nothing about tea smuggling, nor about the British doing away with the taxes/duty on the tea. Whoever wrote this misread the article. It clearly states that the British government had passed a new Tea Act, which enabled them to tax the tea sent to the colonies. The Boston Tea Party was a protest against having taxes levied by a government that did not have any elected representatives of the colonial population.
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
It. Was. Not. Smuggling. Furthermore, yeah, it was a protest, and you can't rewrite it. Who ever believed this? Even in the UK history books I've seen (I'm US), this is not a version of history.
#46
That WV was part of the Confederacy. Spoilers: It wasn't. It was part of the North.
Tiny Dynamine 4 years ago
WV means West Virginia. I wish people would stop assuming the entire world must know everything about the USA.
J. Normal 4 years ago
I am from here, and I was scratching my head trying to think of some world wide initials for description... LOL ( early in the morning, but I read VW and was waiting for the nazi reference... LOL)
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Jamie artis 4 years ago
As a West Virginian who lives in a very conservative part of the state, and also as a bit of a history nerd jt pisses me off seeing people here wearing conservative flag shirts and hats and hoodies. At the mall near where I live there’s one of those shitty hoodie kiosks and they have a design that’s literally just the confederate flag and it says “if this flag offends you, you need a history lesson.” It really just hurts my brain how a whole state could be this stupid
Jamie artis 4 years ago
I want to add, that I’ve asked a couple people why they where it, and they always say they’re not racist it’s just there southern pride, bitch what southern pride we were a northern state and you’ve lived here you’re whole life please go take a history class, I’m begging
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Purple light 4 years ago
How are non-US-citizens expected to know where WV stands for? West Virginia perhaps? Based on the comment by johnny
Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago
Same for the “Volunteer State”, Tennessee. The operative word being “Volunteer”. Its citizens fought according to their consciences, not the state’s (which joined the CSA), so it was actually split.
Analyn Lahr 4 years ago
West Virginia seceded from Virginia to be a part of the Union. I did my 5th grade state report on West Virginia. Why? Because I couldn't remember which Virginia my family was from. Turns out, we're from Virginia. Oh well.
#47
That people's surnames were changed at Ellis Island. They were not
cb !!! 4 years ago
They were occasionally misheard and used as the misheard version though, right? You can't trace my family tree past Ellis because it's been horribly butchered and American-ized (or so I have been told?)
RandomBeing 4 years ago
I once was doing some ancestry work and found some people who all had the same last name but with many different spellings. I think it may have been due to immigration but honestly cant be sure.
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Penny Fan 4 years ago
I met an American whose surname was O'Lennick. They always thought they were Irish but when they'd tried to research the family tree but couldn't get past Ellis Island for ages until it transpired that their family had been the only Poles on a ship full of Irish. A tired clerk somewhere in immigration had misheard or mispelled the name after thousands of O'Briens and O'Haras and their name was actually Oleniak.
Steve Wilson 4 years ago
When illiterate people with hard-to-pronounce names came here the immigration people just had to take their best guess based on phonetics.
Dodo 4 years ago
Wait, they weren't? I thought they were Anglicised, either because immigrants thought it would be easier to integrate or because the staff wrote the names phonetically.
Katrina 4 years ago
Not in the very least. Your relatives changed the names to fit in, find jobs, etc. They weren't changed by the very insanely busy people at Ellis Island.
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But they where, perhaps not allways drastically or on purpose. For example the Surname of Anderson (and basically any name that ends in -son) is scandinavian. I means son of Anders. However, the original is allways spelled with two ss'es as in Anders-son. The people writing down names didn't allways know how forgien names where spelled.
Mazer 4 years ago
No absolutes here, there is no doubt that some names were changed, whether it was to protect the innocent or not is the question
Katrina 4 years ago
No It wasn't. Please see https://twitter.com/CleverTitleTK on her threads on how your name wasn't never changed at EI
Load More Replies... #48
WW1 happened because the driver took the wrong turn. It did happened, but it was a trigger that turns political heat into actual war, not a cause.
BaconBenchPress616 4 years ago
There's a story that the person driving the car that Archduke Franz Ferdinad was in took a wrong turn and ended up in front of the cafe that Gavrilo Princip was sitting at. So the assassination was a crime of opportunity.
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Paul Davis 4 years ago
It's more fun to find out that almost everyone seemed to completely despise Franz Ferdinand, even his own people and family. So more ironic that his death should eventually trigger a world war.
#49
Jim Jones didn't give the faithful coolaid to drink. It was flavoraid.
bumble bee 4 years ago
And if he gave them poisoned hydrox cookies, everyone will still call them oreo's
Pink Rose 4 years ago
I once saw a youtube video that said that corsets were the reason many victorian woman were armless. PS: here is a true fact many historical people would drink oxidane to stay hydrated this would turn people urine yellow. (oxidane is another word for water).
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MCathenaE 4 years ago (edited)
He also had drills where he would give his followers flavor aid, tell them it was poisoned, then admit it was not poisoned when they didn't die. Many thought it was another drill & willingly drank it believing they would be fine. When people started dying, the rest of the followers balked at drinking the poison & were forced to drink it by gunpoint or they were shot dead. Even the primates at the camp were killed during the mass death.
Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago
Ah yes, Flavorade. Been around a long long time. Drank gallons of it when I was a kid. It’s the way less expensive, but just about as tasty, alternative to Kool-Aid.
What do you think ?
René Studer 4 years ago
The one the bothers me is when people say that Christopher Columbus was a great explorer and proved the earth was round. People knew very well that the earth was not flat at that time in history. The reason nobody took him seriously is because his math was way off on how far away india is. He would have died on the ocean if there wasn’t a continent in the way that nobody knew about. That jackass got incredibly lucky. He also enslaved the natives and let his men commit horribly crimes against them.
Josy Bannon 4 years ago (edited)
Yes, he was a monster, "explorer" is a strange romanticization.
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Brendan 4 years ago
Who's to say the information in these posts are any more accurate than than the information on the rest of the web?
Eb 4 years ago
Many of them do seem rather naive, as though they writers may be teenagers and just repeating random bits of hearsay, which isn't the same as a widely held belief.
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Phil Vaive 4 years ago
This is just a list of people who have their own misconceptions about history. That's it.
ChickyChicky 4 years ago
A whole lot of "aKsHUally" going on in the posts and in the comments here.
Pearl 4 years ago
SOME of these pieces of info also have a kernel of falsity. How the heck would these OP's be able to prove whether a person who lived more than a century did a specific action or not? Just like Marie's "let them eat cake". You will never be able to prove if she said that or not, the same goes with many historical figures.
Martha Meyer 4 years ago
Seriozsly, how do you think we know ANYTHING about history?
Load More Replies... Rei 4 years ago
That the Bible isn't a respectable historical source and that Jesus never existed as a historical person. It is a historical source just as all the other ones we have about history and we have overwhelming evidence on the existence of a historcial person who was called Jesus of Nazareth, even outside of the Bible (for an expansion on this please take a look at NT Wright and other historians). Unfortunately, people have been dismissing these facts out of their own negative and biased emotions and beliefs about it and towards religion. But that would be the same as me saying I don't believe the historical sources that Iulius Ceasar existed just because I hate him. Quite subjective, isn't it?
René Studer 4 years ago
I don’t agree. I don’t dismiss the bible as a source of history just because I don’t like religion. I dismiss it as a history book because to me it looks a lot like a bunch of storys only BASED on something that happened once. I don’t dismiss that Jesus existed but was he the son of god and did he walk on water? I don’t dismiss there might have been an ark but was it exactly for the reason described in the bible? Two of each species wouldn’t be nearly enough to guarantee a species survival. That is just a fact. You see what I mean? To me it would be like referencing James Bond movies while talking about the inner workings of MI6.
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not your average weirdo 4 years ago
I don't like it when people say that Colombus was the first European to reach America. It was the Vikings.
René Studer 4 years ago
The one the bothers me is when people say that Christopher Columbus was a great explorer and proved the earth was round. People knew very well that the earth was not flat at that time in history. The reason nobody took him seriously is because his math was way off on how far away india is. He would have died on the ocean if there wasn’t a continent in the way that nobody knew about. That jackass got incredibly lucky. He also enslaved the natives and let his men commit horribly crimes against them.
Josy Bannon 4 years ago (edited)
Yes, he was a monster, "explorer" is a strange romanticization.
Load More Replies... Brendan 4 years ago
Who's to say the information in these posts are any more accurate than than the information on the rest of the web?
Eb 4 years ago
Many of them do seem rather naive, as though they writers may be teenagers and just repeating random bits of hearsay, which isn't the same as a widely held belief.
Load More Replies... Phil Vaive 4 years ago
This is just a list of people who have their own misconceptions about history. That's it.
ChickyChicky 4 years ago
A whole lot of "aKsHUally" going on in the posts and in the comments here.
Pearl 4 years ago
SOME of these pieces of info also have a kernel of falsity. How the heck would these OP's be able to prove whether a person who lived more than a century did a specific action or not? Just like Marie's "let them eat cake". You will never be able to prove if she said that or not, the same goes with many historical figures.
Martha Meyer 4 years ago
Seriozsly, how do you think we know ANYTHING about history?
Load More Replies... Rei 4 years ago
That the Bible isn't a respectable historical source and that Jesus never existed as a historical person. It is a historical source just as all the other ones we have about history and we have overwhelming evidence on the existence of a historcial person who was called Jesus of Nazareth, even outside of the Bible (for an expansion on this please take a look at NT Wright and other historians). Unfortunately, people have been dismissing these facts out of their own negative and biased emotions and beliefs about it and towards religion. But that would be the same as me saying I don't believe the historical sources that Iulius Ceasar existed just because I hate him. Quite subjective, isn't it?
René Studer 4 years ago
I don’t agree. I don’t dismiss the bible as a source of history just because I don’t like religion. I dismiss it as a history book because to me it looks a lot like a bunch of storys only BASED on something that happened once. I don’t dismiss that Jesus existed but was he the son of god and did he walk on water? I don’t dismiss there might have been an ark but was it exactly for the reason described in the bible? Two of each species wouldn’t be nearly enough to guarantee a species survival. That is just a fact. You see what I mean? To me it would be like referencing James Bond movies while talking about the inner workings of MI6.
Load More Replies... not your average weirdo 4 years ago
I don't like it when people say that Colombus was the first European to reach America. It was the Vikings.
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