19 Of The Biggest Historical Lies People Somehow Still Believe Despite All Evidence To The Contrary
Recently, a post from Reddit user Repulsive-Finger-954 on the popular Ask Reddit forum caught my eye. In it, they asked people, “What is the biggest historical lie that many people believe?” and the answers were both entertaining and informative. I decided I had to share; so, here are some of the best:
1.“Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets.”
Johner Images / Getty Images
2.“People believe that Napoleon was this abnormally short man. He was 5’6, which was pretty average back then. I’m pretty sure it was this smear campaign of sorts that painted him as this weirdly short, unpowerful guy.”
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3.“George Washington’s dentures were not made of wood, but rather a combination of teeth from slaves, ivory (hippopotamus, walrus and/or elephant), animal teeth, and metals.”
Star Tribune Via Getty Images / Getty Images
—u/jguacmann1
4.“While Paul Revere is often credited with being the sole rider to warn the colonies of the British, he was actually one of five riders who alerted colonists on the night of April 18. Revere’s mission relied on secrecy, and he didn’t shout ‘The British are coming!’ as the phrase would have been confusing to locals who still considered themselves British. Instead, Revere’s network of riders, signal guns, and church bells effectively spread the alarm.”
Gregobagel / Getty Images
—u/gmoney-0725
5.People believe that the Nazis were hated and opposed for their treatment of Jewish people from the beginning. There has been plenty of narrative building through the years around the idea that the Allies were seeking justice for the Jewish people from the start. It was only when we witnessed the extent of the Holocaust that the villainy of the Nazis became more widely recognized and acknowledged.”
Pigiste / Getty Images
“Antisemitism was very common in the West prior to WWII, and the Holocaust got that far in part because nobody wanted to house Jewish refugees.”
6.“The idea that people used to believe the world was flat. In elementary school, I was taught that no one wanted to fund Columbus’s voyage because they thought he’d just sail off the end of the world. Utter nonsense.”
Mishella / Getty Images
“Since at least Ancient Greece, it was believed the world was a sphere. I mean, you look up at the sky at night, and see nothing but other round bodies, it makes sense you’d assume that you’re on a round body as well.”
“Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth and was only about 3% off. Roughly 250 years before the birth of Christ, he did this. Truly remarkable.”
7.“People believe that Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. He did not. Several other men pioneered it before him.“
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
8.“People believe that women stayed home and only men worked. For the poor, which was the vast majority of people throughout history, everybody who could work worked, even the kids. If you didn’t, the whole family would starve and die.”
Ilbusca / Getty Images
“You were working your own land, working your lord’s land, working as itinerant laborers. If you weren’t doing physical work, you were cooking and you were spinning, constantly spinning, and weaving and sewing. Constant work.
Women worked down mines, worked as servants, and they were working in factories as soon as there were even proto-factories.
Wealthy women also worked. They ran the households; for a wealthy family, this could be 100 people she was in charge of. She oversaw organizing supplies, ensuring that food was cooked, that they had accommodations, and food stores; she made the medicines and tended the ill.
Women have always worked. How the hell do people think men could confidently ride off to war and know that everything was being looked after while they were away fighting for years on end?”
—u/wwaxwork
9.“People believe that the US Civil War was over states’ rights.”
—u/SpiDeeWebb
“I mean, it was. It was over states’ rights to allow their residents to own people as property. But I totally get where you’re coming from.”
—u/fourtoedfist
10.“People believe that MLK was socially acceptable to white people during the 1960s, and not in favor of radically changing the socioeconomic order of the US. He was a socialist who was widely reviled by the white culture of the time. He’s been re-imagined by white people as someone willing to accept slow electoral solutions to racial problems.”
Bettmann / Getty Images
—u/Cute_Win_386
11.“Many people still believe that Marie Antoinette said, ‘Let them eat cake.‘”
Duncan1890 / Getty Images
12.“The myth that there ever was a famine in Ireland. It was a genocide, and the English were exporting enough meat and grain from Ireland to feed three times the Irish population.”
James O’neil / Getty Images
13.“People in ancient and medieval times lived past 30 or 40 on a regular basis. The ‘life expectancy’ was low due to child mortality.”
Culture Club / Getty Images
—u/SerSkippa22
“Infant mortality brought the mathematical average for life expectancy down. It’s usually thought today that in the past, if you DID make it past 10, you had as much chance of living to a ripe old age as anyone today.”
—u/silliasaurus
14.“The idea that Galileo was imprisoned because of the heliocentric model. Nope, it was because he pissed off the pope, who was funding his research.”
Grafissimo / Getty Images
“Galileo didn’t follow the steps that were required to declare the heliocentric model as valid; he got angry and started talking shit about the pope. The heliocentric model wasn’t his idea; many people way before him were talking about the heliocentric model, and none of them were imprisoned because of it.”
15.“There is a myth that the US has never experienced an authoritarian government. In actuality, a large portion of its history has been authoritarian. The Jim Crow South was an authoritarian government that existed until 1964.”
“It wasn’t until fairly recently that constitutional rights were ‘incorporated‘ to apply to state laws. For a large portion of our history, the Constitution applied to federal laws.
State government restricted behavior on a very wide basis: interracial marriage, homosexuality, birth control, pornography, anything deemed offensive, offensive comedy, etc. were all regulated or illegal.”
—u/dowbrewer
16.“The myth that carrots give you good eyesight. That lie came from Britain during WWII to hide the fact that they had a new technology called radar.”
Bettmann / Getty Images
—u/cha0sdan
17.“The idea that Catherine of Aragon failed Henry VIII because she didn’t have a son and heir. She and Henry had — at least — three sons.“
Robert Alexander / Getty Images, Eric Vandeville / Getty Images
18.“That Samurai despised guns and saw them as ‘dishonorable tools.'”
Pictures From History / Getty Images
“The Samurai as a class not only were the first to embrace gunpowder weaponry in Japanese history, but Japan as a whole developed its own domestic industry surrounding gunpowder weapons, including many original designs and tactics that not even Europe would have an equivalent to until decades later.”
—u/AlikeWolf
19.And finally: “That nothing much happened in the ‘Dark Ages.'”
Dea / Getty Images
—u/callmeKiKi1
What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments. Better yet, tell me your own historical pet peeves that drive you up the wall!
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