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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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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Africans did a roaring trade. It was the perfect way to get rid of an inconvenient rival or family member
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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... Germany declared war on the U.S.A.. That's how and why America got involved in the war in Europe.
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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right. The US was just as anti-semitist as most other countries before WWII. It was so common :(
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.)
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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Churchill said that the night after the Pearl Harbour attack was the first good nights sleep he'd had in years.
This is true, Jan Karski was a polish diplomat and courier who got to meet the US president and told him (and other polish allies) about the horrible things that happen to jews (he even went undercover into the warshaw ghetto) and he did so quite early, but it took a long time and many lives until the US would intervene.
Yet mist movies and nearly all Americans claim the US won the European war and Pacific war all on their own with just a bit of a :look in" by the Allies.
Didn't Hitler declare war after Pearl Harbor as an ally of Japan and by doing so force Roosevelt's hand?
Hitler was allied with Japan, but Germany by no means was compelled to declare war on the US according to their treaty. Why Hitler decided to declare war is still a mystery.
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You werent going to assist, Germany was helping Mexicos revolution to distract the US
Majority of US soldiers fought in Europe. Most of US war effort like men, food, raw material, planes, tanks, etc. was sent to the European Theater either to its own armies or to the Allies.
The yanks sent 900 jews back to Germany on the SS St Louis in 1939, already knowing what would happen to them.
The US did not give a rats ass about the Jews during WWII. The concentration camps being liberated was nothing more than a side effect of the war. Countless Jews were refused entry into the US, even after the government was fully aware of what was happening.
The United States did really well out of WWII. They were the arms traders! They sold arms to England and Europe as well as supplied food and fuel oil. This is why after WWII England was in such a bind and took ages to recover because they had to pay back the US for all the 'help' they gave. While the US was rolling in it and had a profitable period of expansion.
This one is actually wrong. It was agreed between the Allies that the main effort would be directed against the Germans, and that Japan would be put on the back burner. There would be a war against Japan, but fewer resources would be allocated than were made available to the European theatre. Initially, it was the Americans who were pushing for an early invasion of Europe, by 1943 or even 1942. The USSR also pushed for this. It was the British who insisted that this was impractical, and that the invasion would have failed. The alternative strategy was to invade North Africa and Italy in order to continue to fight Germany until the invasion could take place. There was no time until Germany was defeated where the USA didn't prioritise Europe over the Pacific. Anyone disputing this simply doesn't know the history.
My then-young (first) cousin was beheaded by the Japanese, as documented in the book, "SHOGUN" by the son of one of his fellow airmen, who was also beheaded. It was a nasty business, that terrible time. I was able to secure a copy of the book for my family history project.
T'was a nice side affect free'n the jews and many others that filled the nazi's death camps.
What led up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor? Do you think it was only because Japan was imperialistic? No, it wasn't. The USA was viewing Japan as a threat as they had taken over a lot of Asia and they were trying to be the dominant force in the region (and they were).They were led to believe by the ruling class that the Japanese were superior to all other races/people. The USA wanted to confront Japan and really wanted a war with them. They were looking for an excuse. They put in an oil embargo among other things against Japan and kind of forced Japans hand. Now there has always been speculation that the government knew what Japan was going to do as far as attacking Pearl Harbor but it's never been proven. But the US did force Japan to attack or concede and history tells of their choice.
The U.S. had no interest in fighting "to free the Jews," and I've never heard of anyone believing that.
Also the US was only involved in Europe because Germany declared war due the alliance of the Tripartite Pact. The US originally only declared war to Japan.
If Hitler/Germany hadn't declared War again the US after Pearl Harbor it's uncertain that Roosevelt could have gotten a declaration of war against Germany. Russia did not declare war against Japan until 1945 because Japan did not attack or declare war against Russia even then it was only because they could afford to shift troops east because Germany already beaten by that point and Roosevelt wanted Russian ready to assist with the invasion of Japan which all experts expected would be very costly in terms of lives. An example of this is that every single purple heart medal given out since the end of WWII is from the batch that was ordered during the preparations for the invasion of Japan. But the atomic bombs convinced Japan to surrender without the invasion.
The Nazis got the idea of "inferior races" from the eugenics movement in the US. It was commonly accepted as fact among American scientists pre world war II
on a seperate note the lusitania was hauling weapons and the germans implored civilians to not travel on the ship or similar ships.
That was in the 1st World War. Before Pearl Harbor Hitler ordered the U-Boats to avoid any conflict with American ship even if they attack them,
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And while communism became the tool of vicious men (and women) like Stalin ,, the communists in 1930's Germany were the only active opposition to Hitler ...sad that the US and UK didn't't recognise it
There's revisions/theory's that Pearl Harbor was a provoked attack. Roosevelt created tension between the US and Japan by introducing embargo's on metals and fuels that Japan needed Thus America concluded that Japan would (conveniently) attack pearl harbor, believing that this would cause the US to seek settlement in the pacific, ergo Japan would become free to create an east asian "co-prosperity sphere" - at the time, the US was not officially joining sides in the war, as most people wished to remain neutral - and Roosevelt had promised that they would not go into war unless under foreign attack by one of the axis powers. (Japan being one of said axis powers), the US military was not alerted to the threat of attack as they believed the surprise attack would create an overwhelming consensus for involvement in the war.
Roosevelt couldn't possibly want the American fleet being destroyed and MacArthur's army defeated in the Philippines. It would have been too risky for Roosevelt to try that. It was pure luck the carriers were not in the harbor during the attack. And it was the carriers eventually stoping the Japanese at Midway. US had so limited possibilities options in the Pacific during the first years of the War, they could eventually lose it right there. Without the defeat at Midway the Japanese might have built a defensive "ring" around Eastern Asia to keep the US at bay even after they rebuilt their feet. They knew it very well without these defensive positions they are screwed. They can't cause high enough causalities to the Americans to eventually force them to make peace and they can't possibly resist the overwhelming power of the US industry. And Hitler was not compelled by the Treaty with Japan to declare war on the US. It was his individual decision to do that. It's still a mystery why.
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We'd had 150 years of isolationism - Europe can fight among themselves and as long as they stayed on their side of the ocean, we weren't going to get involved. Stay out of our backyard and the entire world can do whatever they want to each other and we won't care. Its one of the reasons Teddy Roosevelt's efforts in the Russian-Japanese War was such a big deal. The US caring about something in the world that didn't affect them directly. If Japan hadn't made that alliance with Germany, there a decent chance we wouldn't have gotten involved in Europe.
world war 2 actually started with japan invading china to take over so idk about that
Depends on your definition. That is a minority view among historians.
Load More Replies... The truth about the concentration camps didn't surface until very late in the war. Initial tales of the atrocities were dismissed as Soviet propaganda.
As early as 1941, stories about what was happening to the Jews and other undesirables at the hands of the Nazis were run in the New York Times, the Nation, the Post and the New Republic.
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That is NOT true. My own father was a pilot for the RCAF , he was an American and as soon as the United States entered the war he transferred to the army air corps and flew a b 17 flying fortress bombing the railroads and plenty of germans.
That sounds like exactly what we would do ... goddamn we f*****g suck.
In fairness, we are taught WW2 began on Sept 1st, 1939 with the invasion of Poland, and for the US on Dec 7th, 1941.
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At that time in our history we didn't. It all changed after WW2.
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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.
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.
“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.
The potato arrived in the West in the late 16th century anyway, so after the Middle Ages.
"Even Einstein was bad at math"
No, his grades were disclosed multiple times and showed very high marks in math.
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
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.
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.
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.)
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
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.
Ιt's been proven since the 3rd century BCE yet there are still people who think Earth is a floating raft smh
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.
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/
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.
If we admire the native peoples for using every part of the animal, we must be over the moon about hot dog producers.
That AD means after death.
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'
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.
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.
The belief that Anastasia did not die with the rest of her family
I have had way too many of my university students tell me that Lincoln owned slaves.
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.
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).
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!!
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 :)
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.
Louis-Michel le Peletier cast the single vote that sentenced Louis XVI
Actually the vote was a pretty clear majority in favor of execution
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.
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...
Note: this post originally had 49 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
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.
Yes, he was a monster, "explorer" is a strange romanticization.
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Who's to say the information in these posts are any more accurate than than the information on the rest of the web?
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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This is just a list of people who have their own misconceptions about history. That's it.
A whole lot of "aKsHUally" going on in the posts and in the comments here.
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.
Seriozsly, how do you think we know ANYTHING about history?
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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?
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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I don't like it when people say that Colombus was the first European to reach America. It was the Vikings.
My particular bugbear of a misconception is that Rome (the west at least) was conquered by pagans. People seem to believe that passive Christianity weakened martial morals of the empire. The Vandals, the Goths, and Lombards were all Christian as well. (The Huns, Franks and Saxons were not).
I'm sorry but there's no freaking way Marilyn Monroe had a 22 inch waist. Kate Moss has a 24-26 inch waist. That is impossibly small if you look at the 2 or them side by side. Even if there's a height difference. There's nothing soft on Kate Moss.
The last name of my great-grandparents was changed after they came through Ellis Island.
They changed their own name, then. At Ellis Island, the ships would give the immigration officials their ship's manifest with all the passengers' names in it. It would have made the process so inefficient to review everyone's name.
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One of my favorites - Darwin converted to Christianity on his death bed. NOPE! If you think it's true then you're buying in to the lies perpetuated by a harridan called Lady Hope and published in the "Watchman Examiner." He had family around him the entire time and ALL of them said his supposed conversion never took place.
Very interesting. I do think when others post there comments or their opinions, the reader could agree or disagree without the name calling and negative rude comments. It's sad that you cant have an opinion without being ridiculed. If you disagree, fine. Explain why. You may even change their opinions but the harsh comments and the name calling is just disgusting.
I think people now spend too much time trying to prove facts to be false …. And keeping alive memories that aren’t necessary to keep alive.
This is debatably historical but it frustrates me when people say Satan and Judas Iscariot are the bad guys. They're not, they're the good guys.
They are respectively the one who tried to deprive all of mankind of eternal bliss, and the second one who sold the guy who came to fix the first one's s**t to the local dictator who tortured and killed him. They were not the good guys.
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How about when people misunderstand how few descendants there are of black slaves in the US. I know this number because it has been my life's work for over 30 years and because I authored a book.
Shame. A convenient post for all the closet racists to come out and wax on all their favorite talking points.
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.
Yes, he was a monster, "explorer" is a strange romanticization.
Load More Replies... Who's to say the information in these posts are any more accurate than than the information on the rest of the web?
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... This is just a list of people who have their own misconceptions about history. That's it.
A whole lot of "aKsHUally" going on in the posts and in the comments here.
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.
Seriozsly, how do you think we know ANYTHING about history?
Load More Replies... 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?
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... I don't like it when people say that Colombus was the first European to reach America. It was the Vikings.
My particular bugbear of a misconception is that Rome (the west at least) was conquered by pagans. People seem to believe that passive Christianity weakened martial morals of the empire. The Vandals, the Goths, and Lombards were all Christian as well. (The Huns, Franks and Saxons were not).
I'm sorry but there's no freaking way Marilyn Monroe had a 22 inch waist. Kate Moss has a 24-26 inch waist. That is impossibly small if you look at the 2 or them side by side. Even if there's a height difference. There's nothing soft on Kate Moss.
The last name of my great-grandparents was changed after they came through Ellis Island.
They changed their own name, then. At Ellis Island, the ships would give the immigration officials their ship's manifest with all the passengers' names in it. It would have made the process so inefficient to review everyone's name.
Load More Replies... One of my favorites - Darwin converted to Christianity on his death bed. NOPE! If you think it's true then you're buying in to the lies perpetuated by a harridan called Lady Hope and published in the "Watchman Examiner." He had family around him the entire time and ALL of them said his supposed conversion never took place.
Very interesting. I do think when others post there comments or their opinions, the reader could agree or disagree without the name calling and negative rude comments. It's sad that you cant have an opinion without being ridiculed. If you disagree, fine. Explain why. You may even change their opinions but the harsh comments and the name calling is just disgusting.
I think people now spend too much time trying to prove facts to be false …. And keeping alive memories that aren’t necessary to keep alive.
This is debatably historical but it frustrates me when people say Satan and Judas Iscariot are the bad guys. They're not, they're the good guys.
They are respectively the one who tried to deprive all of mankind of eternal bliss, and the second one who sold the guy who came to fix the first one's s**t to the local dictator who tortured and killed him. They were not the good guys.
Load More Replies... How about when people misunderstand how few descendants there are of black slaves in the US. I know this number because it has been my life's work for over 30 years and because I authored a book.
Shame. A convenient post for all the closet racists to come out and wax on all their favorite talking points.
