30 False History Facts That Were Really Taught In Schools, But Did Not Stand The Test Of Time
Memories make for a risky foundation: as events recede further and further into the past, the facts get distorted or augmented by entirely new details. So we have to keep ourselves in check! And there's a thread on Reddit that's perfect for that.
It started with the question "What historical inaccuracy is still taught often?" and people have been sending in their replies ever since it was posted. From famous people's lives to wars and government decisions, here are those that have received the most upvotes.
This post may include affiliate links.
That Mother Teresa was a saint but in reality she was a racist money loader. Information about this topic can be found even from the New York Times archives.
Tuskegee experiment.
The government did not inject men with syphilis, they took men who already had syphilis, and pretended to treat them so they could study how it ravaged the body over time left untreated.
Still just as cruel though.
And then they denied people the proper treatment once treatment was discovered just so they could see what would happen
That the loss of the American colonies was a devastating blow to the British. As an American, I was taught this multiple times. In reality, the loss of the Revolutionary War was a minor blip in British history. The loss of India and Singapore after WW2 was a devastating blow. But the British didn’t and still don’t care about the loss of the 13 colonies.
The general view in Britain of the American colonies at the time of the Revolution seems to have bee that yes, they have their uses, but they really are becoming a dreadful nuisance. If the Americans had been prepared to wait 15 - 25 years, Britain would have probably gladly let them go, no fighting necessary.
Generally when it comes to the slave movement in the United States most people have the impression that slavers just went over and kidnapped the natives, which although did happen, wasn't the only way slaves were acquired. Quite a lot of slaves were actually bought from African chiefs, who'd sell their own and captured people to the Slavers.
There's definitely this thought process that normal Germans (and Poles, Austrians, Hungarians, etc) didn't know about the camps at all during the holocaust that gets pushed as fact in schools, which is b******t. The concept of the goings on at a KZ was absolutely something people knew. When my grandfather was growing up it was normal to 'hire' people from Dachau satellite camps to build fences or work in fields or whatever. The industrialization process and scale of it was news to them, for sure, but if something happened to you and you were sent to a KZ, everyone knew it was a death sentence, and you were going to be forced into labor until you died. By the time 1944 rolled around they were pretty aware of the gas chambers too, though most people didn't believe it.
My grandma was a teen and young adult in Nazi Germany. She said "Everybody who says they didn't know is lying." Even though she agrees most didn't know about literal death camps, but they were aware that work camps were really really bad and most people died there.
That only Europeans were colonizers or imperialists.
People really should understand this one by now, and I think the majority actually do so, but the done thing is to pretend they have no idea what you are talking about. Take South Africa. The original inhabitants were largely peaceful. No, I'm not talking about the people who were segregated and underwent the horrors of apartheid. I'm talking about the tribes that the ancestors of the people who underwent apartheid killed. The original inhabitants were wiped out by the more warlike tribe of the Bantu which spread down the coast, killing and enslaving other tribes as they went. Then, the Europeans showed up with superior technology and weapons and did the same to them. Point this out though and you get called every type of bad person synonym in the book.
That Native Americans were one homogenous group who all agreed upon who could live on which bit of land and always had peaceful arrangements with one another before the Europeans arrived. In actuality, there was tribal warfare often. Culturally, there was so much variety. People should learn more about the Cahokians who were unique in that they built a city rather than just a village or being nomads.
Just think about how huge the North American Continent is and how different the landscape is. Of course native people living won't be an homogeneous group!
For some reason, people still seem to think that Marie Antoinette said, "Let them eat cake," when she said no such thing. History has not treated her well.
My mother and all her siblings were taught at a Catholic school that men have one less rib than women and that's to origin of the Adam and Eve story. Completely untrue. Men and women have the same number of ribs.
The reason that the Adam and Eve story is told that way even though all humans have the same number of ribs is that it was the cleaned up version of a nsfw myth that was around the Middle East at the time. This myth was meant to explain why certain rodents, dogs, monkeys, and other mammals have a bone in their penis (The baculum) but humans don’t. Where did this bone go? This myth was originally a way to explain it that later got cleaned up.
That Napoleon was very short. He was slightly taller than an average Frenchman of his time. Around 168-170 cm. It was English propaganda. He was also often surrounded by his Imperial Guard who used to be a lot taller. Still, alot shorter than average Europeans these days.
I don´t know if this is still up-to-date, but my history teacher always pointed out it was often falsely taught that the pyramids and temples of the ancient egyptian period were build by slaves. They were build by respected people that helped voluntrily.
Yes, there was whole communities of skilled labourers, artisans, and 'technicians' involved. There's records from those times of how it was proper employment, like construction workers today.
I don't think it's taught but the general American seem to believe that cowboys were mostly White people. When in actuality it was Mexicans and even Black people after they were freed. It was considered a lowly position in the Wild West. If a cowboy was White, he was a very poor White. White people were on the frontier farming and such. Asians (the Chinese) did laundry and were cooks. That's where a lot of Chinese-American foods originated from. People also seem to forget that this time period, which was maybe only 30-50 years, had three pinnacle events unfold in US history—the Transcontinental Railroad was completed, The Chinese Exclusion Act went into law, and slavery was abolished. I may be wrong but I believe in that order too.
The myth of the Alamo and birth of Texas vs the real story of why Mexican army attacked. All the illegal immigrants from the US breaking laws on Mexican land (Texas), not paying taxes, and still pushing things like slavery even though it was against Mexican law.
They were trespassing on Mexican land, and were given multiple opportunities to vacate the Alamo but stayed until it was too late.
"Only 8 percent of U.S. high school seniors can identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War." So 92% of students are taught an inaccurate account of one of the most critical and defining parts of US history.
Christopher Columbus discovered America. That’s been bs for a long time and still gets taught in schools.
The part of this myth I hate is that he is often given credit for figuring out that the world is round, when ancient scholars had known that for a long time and had actually calculated a fairly accurate circumference of the Earth. People in Europe didn’t sail West to get to Asian, not because they thought the world was flat and they would fall off, but because the journey was much too long and you wouldn’t know if you could restock clean water and food along the way. Columbus was willing to go because he had done his own calculations which included several math errors that meant he thought Earth was much smaller and that Asia would be right where the Americas actually are. https://www.history.com/news/christopher-columbus-never-set-out-to-prove-the-earth-was-round
Corsets aren't meant to be painful and tight lacing was only practiced by a few people.
Corsets originated as "stays" or "a pair of bodies" (sometimes "bodice", though that word is used for other types of tops as well). They were originally basically like wearing a camisole with a built in bra. They were made of stiff canvas and has baleen (whale teeth) used to give them shape. I haven't worn any with whale teeth but I have worn some with the plastic alternative that is said to be very close to the baleen. If they're made correctly, they are snug but not tight. Your body heat will actually slightly melt the baleen or plastic into place and if you don't gain or lose too much weight they become like memory foam after a while.
The reason we think of corsets and tight lacing is because a few women did it in the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras (late 1800s/early 1900s). But for most of the time that corsets were popular, the goal wasn't to have a tiny waist, it was to have an hour glass figure. So you just padded out your bust and hips and bam! There were some women (and men) who hurt themselves achieving some impossible idea of beauty but a good modern equivalent would be: most women aren't out here trying to look like Kim Kardashian. If they are then most of them are using non-invasive ways to look like her (like make up, hair dye, clothing). Some women are getting plastic surgery to look like her (butt implants, etc). But the women getting surgery to look like her are the minority.
THANK you! I'm big into historical fashion and it always really irritates me when someone goes "corsets bad!!! Oppressive!!! They deformed women!!!". Like, it's true there was a very small minority of upper-class women who deliberately over-constricted their waists, but every other woman had custom-built and comfortable corsets which supported their bust better than a bra and formed the base shape for the fashions of the era. One historical fashion influencer to check out is Asta Darling; she's lovely, makes a lot of her own incredible cosplays and explains all the layers of her outfits. TLDR: corsets not bad.
That Frankenstein is the monster, but in actuality Frankenstein is the doctor not the monster. The monster is actually called Frankenstein’s monster.
I disagree - Frankenstein was the monster. The creature was as much victim as villain
The Vietnam War started in the mid-sixties when it started in the fifties.
apocalypse_chow replied: And lasted into the 70s. Good God, that was a disaster
SHIELD_Agent_47 replied: Some misinformed people still teach that the USA did not lose the war (by using the red herring of a slow withdrawal) when in reality North Vietnam succeeded in their goal of kicking out the occupying foreigners and reunifying Vietnam.
Vietnam was a colony of France after WWII. But the French got their butts kicked at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. So the US said it would help in 1954. Initially just sending a few troops the number gradually increased over time. 1960- 900 US troops. 1964- 23,300. 1966- 385,300. Peak troop strength in Vietnam was 543,482, on 30 April 1969. So, while the war for US started in the 50s, most of the US involvement was in the late 60s and early 70s.
Albert Einstein didn't fail his classes.. He succeeded very well.
TerribleAttitude:
Sometimes it's repeated by adults trying to uplift younger kids who struggle in school. 3rd grader having trouble with long division and is crying because he thinks he's stupid? "Aw, don't worry, even Einstein failed math. Math is hard. You're smart you just need to keep at it." The "keep at it" part being the point (because in this legend, Einstein eventually stopped being bad at math)." But yes, that is something that older kids take and run with to argue that their crap grades are in fact evidence that they are brilliant geniuses, and it's the school's fault for not challenging their genius.
And here's the story on how that wrong "fact" came to be: Einstein was born and raised in Germany first and moved to Switzerland later. Switzerland and Germany both have a Grade System, that gives grades between 1 and 6 (with halfs and sometimes quarter grades). The thing is, In Germany, 1 is the best Grade and 6 the worst - But in Switzerland, 6 is the best grade and 1 the worst. He aced Math, but it looked like he failed miserably, if one didn't catch that the Grade was from another country.
No so much inaccurate but heavily downplayed. The American labor movement from 1880 - 1920's was so bloody that my Anthropology professor referred to it as the second civil war.
InvertedReflexes:
The Battle of Blair Mountain, over 1,000,000 rounds were fired in a battle with workers who'd been fed up with 14 hour days in coal mines and living in tents and being brutalized by "private investigators," thugs hired the Capitalists." "Lots of good music came from it too. The IWW, communist Party, socialist party, and so on feature heavily here." "The National Guard was called in by the Capitalists, who shot or imprisoned anyone who didn't immediately get back in the mines."
Yep, this is why we celebrate Labor Day. It's to honor the deaths of all the workers who sacrificed themselves for our 40 hour work week and no child labor, among other labor issues that once were rampant and no longer are. They stopped teaching this in school when Rockefeller's school programs were adopted by the US.
I always seem to see some school teachers talking about Pearl Harbor, and some of them say that thats how WW2 started, I remember when I corrected them once, then i got to sit in the timeout corner.
EingestricheneOktave:
Man, that must have been frustrating.
To be fair, that's how WW2 started for the americans, but yes, it was already in full swing in other parts of the world.
There's this ubiquitous photo of german soldiers removing the barrier that marked the german-polish border in 1939. It's everywhere. It's in documentaries, it's shown in schools, it's in history books etc. etc. and, correctly so, always in connection with the beginning of the war.
Almost every german has this photo drilled into their brain, and that it was taken in 1939, when the war started.
1939 too is wrong and way too western-centric. The war started in 1937, when Japan attacked China. The invasion lasted until Japan surrendered (actually longer, as some soldiers refused to accept the surrender), and the allies did support China
Cortes and 500 Spaniards conquered the Aztec empire. It's true that he only had a few hundred Spanish soldiers but he had tens of thousands indigenous allies who did most of the fighting.
So many!
The Titanic disaster has rooted itself firmly in pop culture as one of those things we think we know the general story of, but the history is quite different. A few-
-Titanic wasn't speeding
-The fourth funnel wasn't "fake" or "a dummy", it just served a different purpose than the other three. It was *not* purely aesthetic.
-Titanic didn't go out with too little lifeboats... by 1912 standards. She actually had more than she was legally required to take, and was designed to take many, many more. The idea they were so sure of her reliability they cut on safety is very false. Also, no one ended up dying due to lack of boats, but lack of time. Titanic sank before she could launch all 20. While yes, it was inevitable that people would die due to lack of boats, they hadn't reached that point by the final moments. The idea of people trapped on board waiting to die with no way off isn't *quite* true. They were still trying to launch them within the last 5 minutes.
-Third class were not purposefully locked below and certainly not because of classism. This one requires a bit of a lengthy response but the short version is, it seemed to be all simply a matter of confusion and/or miscommunication. There was no active attempt to hold back passengers according to ticket- in fact, it was the exact opposite.
-There was no 300 foot gash. The damage was made along *roughly* 300 feet but it was a series of incredibly small indents and holes.
-Lack of binoculars- There was no such thing as "no binoculars". They had plenty - I think we have three sets from the wreck alone. While it's true that a last minute staffing change didn't give the crows nest access to a pair, it's incredibly important to understand it didn't matter match. Binoculars were not favored especially high, and were not required. The closest thing we can get to blaming them is testimony that states that binoculars *maybe* would have been just enough to avoid the collision. Maybe- but certainly not for sure. Titanic was almost on top of the iceberg by the time it was sighted, binoculars would have done nothing to see it earlier. A reading of the testimony shows us wishful thinking and hypothesized hindsight, not blame or condemnation.
All of these are centered around the theme that Titanic was the victim of hubris. The history, however, shows that that narrative is a consequence of post tragedy press and not reality. Titanic was an incredibly safe and advanced ship with some absolutely horrible luck. It's easy to nitpick to try and find reasons "why", but the reality is Titanic was very safe on a normal, boring (albeit famous) and over cautionary sailing.
I've tried to hit some of the bigger, famous ones here. The more nerdy you get and down the rabbit hole you go, the more there is to unpack :)
Here's the thing: Having enough life boats for all crew and passengers and having enough life boats to fulfill a legal requirement are two separate things. The Titanic had enough life boats to fulfill the legal requirement for the number of life boats. They didn't have enough life boats for all crew and passengers. Today, a ship has to have enough for everyone. Mainly due to the Titanic.
r/askhistorians can teach you a lot more about these, but one thing that seems to be kind of implicitly taught is that since medieval Europeans were white, therefore they never saw or interacted with anyone who wasn't. I'm not saying there were a *lot* of people of colour in Europe at the time (there weren't) but Europeans did travel to other continents and had contact with Africans and Asians going back to the classical era and before.
Also foreigners did travel to Europe sometimes and there were the Romani people (who are from India) living all over Europe. The Mongols invaded Europe in the 13th century or so, and the Arabs once colonized Spain. So a work about the Vikings or something that has a few people of colour in it wouldn't necessarily be inaccurate.
'A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome' by Alberto Angela is a great read. Imperial Rome was for centuries a very metropolitan and diverse city. Give it a look if you're a history nerd.
The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. No, it was signed on July 2, it wasn't announced until July 4 but regardless even Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and others, wrote that they expected July 2 would be the date that would be celebrated with great festivities. That got lost to history.
In New Zealand, they sometimes seem to be taught that they had the highest casualty rate in both World Wars. I worked with a New Zealander who got genuinely angry when I said that it wasn't even close to being true. I put it down to him being misinformed, but then I saw another NZer making the same claim on the Guardian website.
CookinFrenchToast4ya
They got confused.. They had the highest rate of deaths per 1 million people in the commonwealth (not the world). "Post-war calculations indicated that New Zealand's ratio of killed per million of population (at 6684) was the highest in the Commonwealth (with Britain at 5123 and Australia, 3232)."
That William Wallace was a poor uneducated farmer that grew up in some small village and not a literal nobleman and that Robert the Bruce betrayed him. See tbh a lot of braveheart is complete hollywood b******t which is sad since we don't get taught much of our own history in scotland my only memory of studying it in school was literally being made to watch that stupid movie and take notes.
This one is actually a common one: England’s king Ethelred was not nicknamed “Ethelred the Unready” because he wasn’t ready for a viking attack. His nickname was “Ethelred Unred”. Unred translates to ill-advised, while his name means well-advised. Nice one. It was mistranslated by some historians and stuck around.
Marsha P Johnson did not throw the first brick at the Stonewall riots. You’ll often hear variations of “a black trans woman started Stonewall/pride” and while she was a prolific activist, she did not start it, she came later. That’s not to diminish her accomplishments and role in the riots, she was still there just not the one who started it, she came later when she heard people were rioting.
Watch any kind of medieval docco or book on brewing and they will likely trot out that the people drank small ale because the water was not safe.
This idea was printed in some woman's book published in the 70's and everyone just kept repeating it and still do, it was never true.
Actually, it is true. People didn't know WHY drinking water from most sources made you sick, and drinking something fermented or distilled (even a weak brew) meant you didn't get sick, but they knew that that's how it worked. So, that's what they did, most often 'small beer', which these days we'd call 'lite' or 'extra lite'.
Note: this post originally had 55 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
I'll add one. The Australian history books all say that the Japanese bombed Darwin on a particular day. Some may say that Darwin was bombed twice or three times. Darwin was actually bombed by the Japanese every day for at least 300 days straight. It was as bad as the blitz in London.
I had no idea the Japanese were such vociferous Creationists /j
Load More Replies...
At no point in the Jules Verne book Around the World in 80 days does Phileas Fogg travel in a hot air balloon. That came from a 1950's film adaptation. I read it for the first time a few years ago and kept thinking 'when does he get in the hot air balloon?'
That Vlad Tepes was a blood loving madman who impaled people at random. Romania was at war with The Ottoman Empire (Turky) and Vlad was taught the impaling method from them as he was sent there as a child. The Ottoman Empire wanted to turn Europe muslim and Vlad along with a few people pledged to stop that. So he impaled ottoman soldiers to show that they were up against a worthy foe. His nickname, Dracul, means dragon and it was the symbol used by the noblemen fighting against the empire.
I'll add one. The Australian history books all say that the Japanese bombed Darwin on a particular day. Some may say that Darwin was bombed twice or three times. Darwin was actually bombed by the Japanese every day for at least 300 days straight. It was as bad as the blitz in London.
I had no idea the Japanese were such vociferous Creationists /j
Load More Replies... At no point in the Jules Verne book Around the World in 80 days does Phileas Fogg travel in a hot air balloon. That came from a 1950's film adaptation. I read it for the first time a few years ago and kept thinking 'when does he get in the hot air balloon?'
That Vlad Tepes was a blood loving madman who impaled people at random. Romania was at war with The Ottoman Empire (Turky) and Vlad was taught the impaling method from them as he was sent there as a child. The Ottoman Empire wanted to turn Europe muslim and Vlad along with a few people pledged to stop that. So he impaled ottoman soldiers to show that they were up against a worthy foe. His nickname, Dracul, means dragon and it was the symbol used by the noblemen fighting against the empire.
