What's The BIGGEST History LIE That People Still REPEAT?

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Speaker 1: What is a historical inaccuracy that's extremely commonly said that

really annoys you? I'm a history professor. As part of

a quote-unquote leadership reading club, I was given the best-selling

book Start With Why by Simon Sinek. Almost every historical

statement made by Sinek is demonstrably false. The Wright brothers

didn't succeed because they had a greater passion for flying.

This breakthrough was developing a steering system that operated in

three dimensions— They fiercely defended their patent to keep others

from flying and even refused to teach their engine mechanic

how to fly because they didn't want him distracted from

the work they needed him to do. The march on

Washington at which MLK delivered his I have a dream

speech didn't happen spontaneously after the organizers didn't send out

any invitations. It was one of the most carefully planned

protests in US history. Colin Powell never said that he

only needs 30% of the information on a situation to

make a decision. and that having more than 70% of

the information leads to bad decisions. Sinek was trying to

make the point that people should trust their gut and

not their rational brain. What Powell actually said was that

he would never make a decision with less than 40%

of the information, and that gathering intelligence takes time so

by the time you had more than 70% of the information,

the opportunity has probably passed you by. But the worst

lie in the book is, hands down, the part where

he tells readers with a straight face that, quote-unquote, until recently,

humans believed the Earth was flat and that's why they

didn't travel, trade, or explore. He claims that human movement

and migration only began once people realized they wouldn't, quote,

fall off the edge of the planet. It's such a

mind-bogglingly stupid claim that I can't believe people ever took

the book and its advice seriously. Alright, so hold on

a minute. I might be one of those people. So

this guy wrote these things in a book and he

sells that book and people are buying it? Yeah, I'm guilty. Alright,

before I forget, other me's over on Rufus Stories doing

what he does best, unpacking some crazy stories. It's a

good time, I promise. Links in the description if you're down. Alright,

back to the stories. Story 2. No one in medieval

England said ye in place of the. They said the,

just as we do now, but it was written... with

a special character that looks like a B, with a thorn,

a non-Latin letter inherited from languages and used before the

Norman conquest. When the printing press was involved, the letter

that looks like, again, a B and a P put

together was not typically included because it doesn't exist in

Germanic languages. So, it began to be written as ye,

but as anyone who speaks English knows all too well,

orthography doesn't equal phonology. Story 3. J. Bruce Ismay was

done dirty. He was the president of the White Star

Line who survived the Titanic and is accused of ordering

a speed record for the ship. The comment about making

a speed record either never happened or he was just

quipping that they were already making decent time. He also

tried to help as much as he could in loading

the lifeboats to the point that the sailors told him

to stop because he was getting in the way. He

only got in the second-to-last boat to launch, and the

only reason was that there had just so happened to

be no one else around to take one of the

final seats. There was literally no reason for him to

not take the seat. He was absolutely shattered by the

events for the rest of his life. He stepped down

as president of the White Star Line the next year,

and only stayed on the board to help pay out

insurance claims to survivors and victims' families. Not a meeting

would end without him bringing up payouts. The poor man

just made the mistake of surviving and having an enemy

in William Randolph Hearst. Story 4. The first shots of

World War II between the USA and Japan was the

attack on Pearl Harbor. Just before the attack, an old

World War I destroyer, the USS Ward, was on patrol

in the waters outside of Pearl Harbor. They had standing

orders to fire upon any unidentified submarines in the area.

They fired upon a conning tower but were unsure if

it had been hit. They searched the area for signs

of the submarine but found nothing. They radioed into command

but command dismissed the report without a confirmation of a

successful hit or contact. one of the many ignored signs

of impending attack. A few hours later, the attack on

Pearl Harbor commenced. In 2004, a Japanese submarine was found

off the coast of Hawaii just outside of Pearl Harbor

with a hole in the conning tower. Story 5. That

people in the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat,

that Galileo was persecuted for claiming it was round, and

that Columbus wanted to prove it was round. We have

known the Earth is round since the time of the

ancient Greeks. Galileo's claim, basically a confirmation by observation of

Copernicus' theory, was that the sun is at the center

of the solar system. Columbus thought the earth was smaller

than it actually is, which was the reason nobody wanted

to fund his expedition to find a western passage to Asia.

The circumference of the earth was pretty well established by

the 15th century, and Columbus was, well, a bit of

a fool. If America hadn't existed, Columbus and all of

his ships would have perished in the vast ocean between

Europe and Asia. It was basically dumb luck that there

was a continent there, not some sort of genius. I

freaking hate Columbus and the undue credit that he gets.

Story 6. 1775, Boston, Massachusetts. A 23-year-old British postal worker

hears that the British are invading. He gets on a

horse and rides 350 miles to warn the colonists, and

his name was? His name was Israel Bissell. Hey, but

what about Paul Revere? He rode 19 miles. He went

from Boston to Cambridge. The only person he could have

warned was some groundskeeper at Harvard. Israel Bissell rides from Boston,

across Massachusetts, down through Rhode Island, across Connecticut, down into

New York, across New Jersey, to Philadelphia. How come we

never hear of Israel Bissell but everyone knows Paul Revere?

In the 1860s, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow decides he's going to

write about Paul Revere. Prior to the Civil War, Longfellow,

who considered himself a patriot and wanted to keep the

country from splitting apart, decided to write a saga that

would inspire patriotism in everyone. Except he's got a problem.

He's just like a Hollywood producer. He needs a name.

And he figures Israel Bissell won't inspire anyone. So he

ignores a guy who rode over 300 miles and turns

to the guy who rode only 19 miles to create

the legend of Paul Revere. Story 7. The life expectancy

was low number so everyone passed away young. That's not

how life expectancy works. It varies depending on a lot

of variables including how old you are at the moment.

Infant and child mortality was crazy high before the 20th century.

Depending on where and when we're talking about, fully half

of all babies born could expect to pass away before

their 5th birthday. A kid who survived past the age

of 5 still had a good chance of passing away

before the age of 10. Infant and child mortality pulls

the average life expectancy way down. However, your basic human

being wasn't inherently more likely to pass away young. If

you survived things like preventable childhood illness and malnutrition, your

life expectancy looked a lot more like it would today.

If you managed to live to middle age, surviving plagues, warfare,

passing away in childbirth, and rampant interpersonal violence, you were

as likely to live to 100 as you are today.

Story 8. That the consensus among the learned was that

the world was flat. Most scientists and explorers of the

era were vastly aware the Earth was a sphere. Scientists were, mostly,

accurately measuring the circumference of the Earth as early as

2nd century BCE. See Carl Sagan's segment from Cosmos regarding Erastenes.

Explorers believe they reached India by going west. They just

didn't know there was a whole freaking continent blocking the way. Alright,

so Carl Sagan would be so proud and also very

annoyed by how little people listen. Story 9. I get

annoyed when college classmates from the south would spout BS

that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. In reality, the

majority of the Confederate States explicitly declared slavery as the

reason for their secession. The Declaration of the Immediate Causes

which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina explicitly

cites abolition and the loss of slave property rights as

their justification for their secession. Story 10. Maybe the one

that bothers me is the mischaracterization of the reaction of

the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas to the first arrival

of Europeans. In general, the white men were not thought

of as gods since they obviously had all the baser

aspects of humanity on display. Instead, they seemed to be

a contradiction, enormously ignorant of basic survival skills, yet possessed

of fantastic technology. The native tribes then had a decision

to make, either ally with the newcomers and use their

technology to become the hegemon in the area and take

over their rivals, or kick the interlopers back into the

sea and hope that they would keep away. In North America,

the decision was influenced by the fact that the leaders

of the tribes likely had more information on the Europeans

than the colonists had on them. Hence the powerful Pohatan

Confederacy played a more cagey game. since they knew what

had happened with the Spanish to the south while the

various tribes in the New England area, weakened by epidemics

and fractured politically, created alliances which lasted until King Philip's War.

Story 11. Confederate statues are meant to preserve history. I'm

sure it's been discussed plenty online, but this annoys me

personally since I still see many people in my day-to-day

who say this as a part of an argument to

justify flying Confederate flags or admire Confederate leaders. We don't

need them to preserve history. We have books and museums

for that. They were built to rewrite history and make

the Civil War's losers look like heroes, to celebrate those losers,

and to intimidate Black people. Speaking of which, if you

think of Confederate symbols as part of your heritage, why

are Black people not part of that community? They live

in the same states as you, eat similar cuisine, and

are your literal neighbors. Are you really more willing to

side with slave lords than the people you live with?

Story 12. That the iPhone was a unique revolutionary product.

It wasn't anything special. In fact, when it first appeared,

the specs fell well short of the competition. It couldn't

record video, and it didn't even have 3G, but Sony Ericsson, LG, Nokia, Samsung,

and so many others had already been offering both for years.

It was essentially just a low-grade PDA with a cellular

modem baked in. The only thing that made it stand

out was a fantastic marketing campaign. I don't dispute that

the marketing campaign changed the general direction of the smartphone market,

but the idea that it was some amazing futuristic thing

is revisionist history. Story 13. The idea that corsets were

painful and restrictive is a myth. Corsets, also known as

stays or bodies, were support garments. For much of their history,

they were constructed using whalebone, flexible reeds, and cording. as

well as shaped panels of fabric to provide structure, shaping,

and to help support the weight of the outer layers

of clothing. They went through many style changes depending on

the location and era. While some look extreme from our

modern perspective, people from that time would have probably thought

the same about our modern day's shapewear. A lot of

the extreme proportions were achieved by adding layers of petticoats

or padding to other areas of the body, not by

squishing the waist down. That's not to say some people

didn't tight lace or go to various lengths for the

sake of vanity. However, it wasn't the norm. Story 14.

I don't know if I could call this an inaccuracy,

but there is a persistent idea that Ty Cobb was

a racist simply because he was from Georgia in the

late 19th and early 20th century. People believe he didn't

like black people just because he was from Georgia, but

he came from a very prominent family that opposed slavery.

I don't know what Cobb's views on the civil rights

movement were, but he publicly defended Jackie Robinson as Robinson

became the first black man to play in Major League Baseball. Cobb,

at the very least, publicly advocated for the integration of

baseball on the grounds that the best players should be

allowed to compete in the same league regardless of race.

Story 15. The claim that, quote, before 1492, everyone thought

the world was flat is a common misconception. For hundreds,

if not thousands of years, the earth was known to

be spherical. People understood that the sea was level but

curved at the same time. This was evident when the

top of a ship's mass was the first thing to

be seen as it approached the shore. In fact, experts

at the time were telling Christopher Columbus that his plan

to sail to India was flawed. He thought that the

earth was smaller than it actually is and that he

could make it all the way to India with the

provisions he had on board his ships. Having a continent

in his way saved his life and the lives of

his crew. Story 16. The idea that the French are

cowards because of their surrender in World War II is

a common misconception. The French have fought and won more

wars throughout history than any other nation and their military

prowess is massive. The French surrendered in World War II

only after a large portion of their military forces were

cut off and surrounded at Dunkirk. The remaining forces tried

to regroup but were simply overwhelmed by the German military.

Even after the surrender, the French government continued to operate

in exile and continuous resistance actions were undertaken by the

French populace. During World War I, the French suffered horrific

casualties throughout the war, especially in the first few months

before trench warfare was established on the Western Front. In

the first month of the war, France lost over 75,000

men with around 27,000 being lost in a single day,

yet they carried on fighting ruthlessly. It's a shame that

the colossal military achievements of the French are undermined by

one war in which they were surprised and outmaneuvered by

new effective tactics and perhaps a bit of luck. Story 17.

The idea that the America we know was founded by

the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock was pounded into our collective

little heads in elementary school. But the Spanish had mission-based

settlements in several modern U.S. states, such as St. Augustine, Florida,

and Santa Fe, New Mexico, just to name a few,

way before Plymouth Rock. But as they like to say,

the winners write the history books, and the winner at

the time was England. I wonder how this would have

been taught in U.S. schools had Spain prevailed against England

during their wars in this time frame. Story 18. This

is a small thing, but I get frustrated when people

seem to interpret quote not having the right to do

X with quote not being able to do X. As

a common example, you will hear women couldn't open bank

accounts on their own in the US until 1974. That's

some shocking fact, but it's nonsense. Women have, to some degree,

owned solo bank accounts long before that in the US.

They just didn't have the right to. This means it

was up to the discretion of the bank and some

would allow it while others wouldn't. While having rights is

absolutely important and we should celebrate things like extending them,

especially in insane scenarios like this where it's just idiotic

not to have that right, People need to learn the

difference because it can drastically change how they perceive history.

People fought and succeeded some of the time for things

they did not have the right to do all the time.

Story 19. The idea that people didn't bathe and stank

all the time is a myth. People absolutely bathed regularly.

It's just that they didn't have the water resources to

immerse their bodies in water or have a continuous flow

of water over themselves. They were, however, washing themselves daily

with a washcloth, soap, and a washbasin. They also relied

on their clothing to absorb sweat and oils while keeping

the dirt off their bodies. They changed their underclothes frequently,

probably more than we do today, based on some Redditors.

Combine that with the fact that they wore natural fibers

and had a diet low in refined sugar, they probably

didn't smell like much of anything. Story 20. For me,

it's not about what is said, it's about what isn't said.

Northern English working class history just isn't well represented at all.

A lot of our employment rights were fought for by

the trade unionists in places like Bradford, Manchester, and Halifax.

The Chartist movement also started in the North. A lot

of the infrastructure in England was funded by the industries

in the North and Midlands, all powered by coal that

was mined in Durham, Newcastle, South Yorkshire, and Wales. I'm

sure Scotland, Wales, and the Channel Islands also have something

to say about how their history is often glossed over

as well. London is not the sum total of the

British Isles or the United Kingdom. Story 21. Corsets, Victorian

era in general, especially when dealing with sailing and battles

in general. 99.5% of corsets should not restrict breathing or

hurt to wear. If it does, you are wearing it wrong. Yes,

I'm aware of the small phase of super tight corsets,

but that was for a very short time. Among a

small set of women, it was extremely controversial even then.

You should be able to move when wearing one, even

if it's a fancy formal one. You are still expected

to dance for several hours and perform other duties that

will require a decent amount of movement. Sailing ships are

not just cars, but on the water, especially warships, they

are slow and ponderous tubs. Even the clippers, which are

designed for speed, are slower than you think. There's also

a lot more crew than you think. Naval battles were

slow and moderately boring. The max fire rate of a

muzzle-loading cannon was like two to three rounds per minute.

And that was for a short amount of time. For

most of the time, it was about 1.5 rounds per minute.

And they had a range of several miles, so the

ships weren't usually even close together. You would only ever

board if you were guaranteed victory by a wide margin.

Every sailor who passed away during a boarding action was

a sailor who couldn't do their duties on either your

ship or the captured ship, and you needed as much

of your crew as you could. Pirates would be considerably

really woke by our standards. Most pirate crews were completely

democratic aside from combat, and that included destinations, income divisions,

punishments for crimes, everything. And a person was a person,

so everyone got the same vote whether you were white, black, Asian, Indian,

man or woman. You were also hunting for more trade

goods than actual gold. They also did not bury their treasure.

We have one known instance of Captain William Kidd burying

part of his to use as evidence and a bargaining

chip to avoid a piracy conviction. The idea came largely

from the Treasure Island book. Story 22. The idea that,

throughout history, women didn't work is a myth. Women have

always worked. In the 1800s, Queen Victoria decided to spread

the propaganda that a woman's place is chaste and in

the home, raising children and nothing else. This was only

achievable for rich women, but upper middle class women still

try to keep up with the fashions. Poor women have

always worked, but they were rarely counted in census results.

By World War I, the suffragettes had fought their way

into the factories, helping the war effort, and their ideas

were more widely discussed. By World War II, their ideas

became so mainstream that women were actually employed in factories

and were called up by the government to do so.

After the war, soldiers had severe PTSD and needed simpler

ideas of simpler times, so the government came up with

the 1950s housewife aesthetic and heavily pushed it in magazines

and newspapers. There's nothing traditional about it. Before 1800, men

and women worked side by side, and the idea that

a woman shouldn't work was unthinkable. Queen Victoria was the

original anti-feminist and gave us our harmful ideas of chastity

and only being educated to run a house and read

the Bible. Honestly, she was a nasty lady in my opinion.

Story 23. Another historian here. Ever since the ancient Greeks,

it has been known that the Earth is spherical. Perhaps

less well-known, during the Middle Ages, the Ptolemaic model, which

accounted for all observed celestial movements, was part of popular

culture in a simplified form. This is, I think, well-known

here on Reddit, but the flat Earth was referred to

in Star Trek. Alas, it's true that some other advanced

pre-modern societies did assume the world was flat, notably the

ancient Chinese. Though some of their philosophers drew attention to

paradoxes and logical problems involved, for example, is there an end?

But their thought was less interested in the issue. Digression,

in a discussion of early cosmology, someone once commented to Wittgenstein,

after all, the earth does look as if it's flat. Perhaps,

he said, what would it look like if it were round?

The idea that medieval Europe was anti-technology is a rather

vague preconception. In fact, it developed important technological advances, including

spectacles with lenses, clockwork, and of course, weapons. Also, about monasteries,

modern monasteries are generally retreats of highly spiritual men and women.

The medieval monasteries were often economic powerhouses, pioneering agricultural and

technical advances. They were also often rather less pure. In

medieval literature, the monk tends to be a comic figure.

The idea that the French Revolution was, in origin, a

rising of peasants against the rich with the storming of

the Bastille overthrowing the monarchy is also inaccurate. In fact,

the government had a severe financial crisis and, to cut

a long story short, called an elected National Assembly without

a clear plan. There were huge structural problems in France

and quote-unquote enlightened opinion had new ideas. Middle class leaders,

especially lawyers, pushed forward radical reforms and things destabilized, though

even in 1791 it can be argued their reformed monarchy

might have worked. Those old enough to remember Gorbachev will

recall how his Congress of People's Deputies opened up forces

he could not control. It's a very complicated story, not

everyone would agree with my summary, but it definitely wasn't

a spontaneous overthrow of the rich. Many of the inaccuracies

are not straightforward factual errors. An example, people often imagine

a single, one-size-fits-all model of colonial empire, but in fact

there were all sorts of variations. Sometimes a colonial power

removed local rulers, but sometimes it preferred to leave them

in place and rule through them, for example. Here's one

that doesn't really annoy me, perhaps. The version of the

American Revolution believed in the U.S. is inaccurate in multiple ways,

and George III was not an arbitrary tyrant in the

modern sense, but I can understand why the legendary version

is more important for present-day resistance to Trump. And if

you're learning a thing or two from the story so far,

don't forget to hit that subscribe and like button for

more videos just like this. Story 24. Native Americans are

often depicted as savages. Many were well-clothed and had advanced

societies with millions of people. before the smallpox. I saw

an archaeological site that depicted the mound people in loincloths

even though they found intricate ceremonial copper chestplanes. In the

Northeast Americas, there was evidence of smelting from 3000 BC.

I'm pretty rusty on my survival games, but I think

you usually discover clothing before smelting and practical wear before ceremonial.

Another example is with the Pueblo people. I always learned

they were very simple until I saw a museum in

New Mexico where they had a massive multi-story fort that

impressed even the Spanish and their journals. Don't even get

me started about Mesa Verde where they found shoes in

one of the most impressive cities I have ever seen

but apparently, according to the art, they were still practically bare.

Story 25. Maybe not what is said but what is depicted.

History is portrayed through a modern European image even though

pale skin is one of the most recently evolved mutations.

and was first seen in Europe as late as 5000 BC.

The most famous visualizations of human evolution almost exclusively show

humanity evolving from an ape into a white person. Otzi was,

and still is, portrayed as white, even though the genes

responsible for pale skin hadn't arrived in Europe yet at

that time. And Jesus of Nazareth, who lived prior to

the Crusades, World War II, and other migrations of Europeans

to the Levant, continues to be portrayed with pale skin

and blue eyes despite us knowing he was deliberately whitewashed

to justify slavery. Story 26. That lower average life expectancy

meant that everyone passed away in their 30s or 40s.

That's not true at all and plenty of people in

the past lived to old age. The reason the average

is so much lower is because the infant mortality rates

used to be much, much higher. Starting from pregnancy and childbirth,

there was so much in the past that could end babies.

They didn't have the medical knowledge that we have now

about infant care, nutrition, hygiene, etc. And they certainly didn't

have all the medicines and immunizations that keep modern babies alive. Basically,

lots and lots of infants passed away, but if you

could stay alive for those first few years, you would

likely live a fairly long life. Story 27. The popular

depiction of Anatoly Dyatlov as a reckless person who would

break safety rules to get a promotion is a historical inaccuracy.

In reality, Dyatlov was known for being a strict individual

who followed the rules meticulously. He was respected by plan

operators for his extensive knowledge and focus on adhering to protocol.

While he did deviate from some procedures on the night

of the disaster, he didn't completely disregard safety rules. The

main source that portrays Dyatlov as an antagonist is a

book written by someone with a personal grudge against him,

and some parts may be fabricated. This is the source

the HBO series used, which led to the widespread belief

that Dyatlov was solely to blame for the Chernobyl explosion. However,

the show itself hinted that no one was aware of

the positive void coefficient issue with the AZ-5 button. Dyatlov

himself even tried to investigate the aftermath of the explosion

in person. Dyatlov was combative during the trials because he

was defending his operators. The manuals they had were confusing

and contradictory. They had a poison reactor that couldn't go

past 300 DMW, so he ordered the AZ-5 button to

be pressed. The reactor then blew itself up. What self-respecting

plant engineer wouldn't hit the scram button after losing control

of their reactor? The only protocol he truly violated was

letting the reactor go to 200 MW instead of 700 MW.

Everything else he tried to do was buy the book,

but when the book is contradictory and the design is flawed,

there's not much you can do when the only safety

option you have blows up the reactor. Story 28. Most

of the common knowledge about the quote-unquote dark ages is

either utter nonsense or later revisionism with a hefty dose

of nonsense. There was no US pre-minoctis, a supposed law

where a local lord could sleep with any woman in

his jurisdiction on her wedding night. People weren't afraid that

the world would end on January 1st, 1000. There was

no such thing as a Y1K bug in the Bible

that even hinted at an apocalypse, nor did people fear it. Europe,

while not exactly thriving, was in a dark hole of

superstition and backwardness where people believed the earth was flat

or that water caused illness. Some aspects of the Greco-Roman

world had been lost or mixed with other beliefs, but

the notion that people live like cavemen is simply wrong.

This was largely posthumous defamation from the humanism slash renaissance

and mostly the enlightenment period. which love to paint the

barbaric past in the worst possible light to make themselves

and their ancient forefathers seem more civilized and indeed enlightened. P.S.

Not a historical fact, but the constant misinterpretation of Carpe

Diem makes me irrationally mad. It's not the ancient version

of YOLO, for crying out loud. Story 29. At a

high level, the use of the phrase the Middle Ages

is usually a signal for something that is, at best, misleading.

In terms of periodization, the quote-unquote Middle Ages start with

the fall of Rome, say 476 AD. Though for the UK,

we'd probably go with the letter of Honorius about three

quarters of a century earlier, whatever it may be or

may not have really meant. When the period ends, depends

a bit on where you are in Europe. In England,

it's traditionally 1485, but many others would pick 1453. This

means you have about a thousand year period. The concept

really only applies to Europe, but even so, that's a

thousand years and a vast area. Very little is true

in general over that much time and space. So when

people say in the Middle Ages, they are generally wrong.

Story 30, the common belief that the U.S. colonial army

won the Revolutionary War on its own is a misconception.

In fact, the French army played a crucial role and

was arguably the deciding factor. The American army was not

as effective without French support. George Washington's involvement in the

war was partly fueled by his anger at the British crown.

After the French and Indian War, Washington was given a

significant amount of land, nearly all of modern-day Ohio. However,

England did not want to fight another war with the

native population, so they decided to discourage colonists from moving westward.

This decision angered Washington so much that he joined the revolution.

Story 31. While Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939

is the traditional starting point for World War II in

Western history, it's more accurate to see it as the

beginning of the European conflict rather than the entire global war.

The conflict was already underway in Asia, a point that

is often overlooked in Western accounts. A strong argument can

be made that the war truly began when Japan invaded

China in 1937. This was the first of the major

conflicts that would eventually merge into a global war. Another

key moment was when Japan simultaneously attacked the United States

at Pearl Harbor as well as other British and allied

territories like the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Singapore, on the

same day in December 1941. This event led to the

United States officially entering the war and solidified the conflict's

global nature. Framing the war's start with the Polish invasion

is a very Anglo-Franco-centric view that minimizes the significant and

earlier conflicts in Asia. The war in the Pacific began

earlier and ended later than the war in Europe, making

it a critical and distinct theater of the global conflict.

Story 32. The idea that the Revolutionary War was a

great underdog victory is a common historical inaccuracy. While American

forces were initially outmatched, their victory was not a simple

triumph against all odds. The British were starting to feel

that the conflict was pointless and that the American colonies

were too far away to manage effectively. The intervention of France,

providing crucial military and financial support, was the turning point.

This created a much larger, more expensive conflict for the British,

who decided to redirect their resources to other parts of

their empire rather than continuing to fight a costly war

in the distant land. So, England basically got annoyed and

then went home. Another related inaccuracy is that Canada quote-unquote

won the War of 1812 This war was fought between

the United States and Great Britain, with various indigenous nations

and Canadian militias fighting on both sides. The war ended

in a stalemate with no territorial changes. However, many Canadians

view the war as a victory because they successfully defended

their territory from American invasion. The war ultimately concluded when

England once again decided the conflict with America was not

worth the effort. Story 33. Some good ones about the

American Revolution. Mad King George III. It's a fact that

he did go mad, but not until much later in

his life. He was actually a pretty intelligent person. George

Washington and the Cherry Tree. This story was entirely made

up by author Mason Weems in his biography of Washington,

which was published shortly after Washington's passing. The signing of

the Declaration of Independence, people tend to think the delegates

were happy and overcome with emotion. The reality is that

it was a quiet and somber mood. They knew that

by signing the document, they were essentially signing their own

certificates if they lost the war. The Hero of Saratoga.

The popular credit given to General Gates is often misplaced.

General Shuler did most of the groundwork in that campaign. Additionally,

General Benedict Arnold won at Fort Stanwix and led the

decisive final charge at the Battle of Saratoga. In fact,

Gates specifically recalled Arnold from the last battle because he

didn't want Arnold to get any credit for a potential victory. Gates,

of course, took credit anyway and agreed to very poor

terms for the surrender of the Northern British Army. Spain,

as a U.S. ally, Spain was never an official ally

of the United States. They simply declared war on Britain

at the same time the U.S. and France were fighting them.

Even though France and Spain had an alliance, Spain refused

to recognize or directly help the United States. Instead, they

saw an opportunity to attack Britain to regain lost territory,

specifically Gibraltar, which Britain retained after the war. First country

to recognize the U.S., many people assume France was the

first country to recognize the United States as a sovereign nation. However,

Morocco was the first nation to do so by issuing

a decree to open its ports to the United States.

Story 34. As an Iraqi, I believe the modern theory

that the Iraq War was not about stealing oil but

rather about depriving Iran of control over most of it

is more accurate. Most of Iraq's oil production comes from

the predominantly Shia South. Iraq's only independent way of selling

oil is through its only port, the port of Basra,

which is on the Persian Gulf. Iraq was not stable,

as the Western media often implies when arguing that American

involvement was wrong. Saddam had surrounded himself with tribal loyalists

where loyalty to him was the only thing that counted.

Saddam survived a 14 out of 18 governorate uprising in

1991 and squashed several plots to topple him during the 1990s,

with the most effective one being Shia-led. The U.S. feared

the natural end of Saddam's rule and the civil war

that would inevitably follow. In that scenario, something similar to

the Syrian civil war would happen, with the Shia South

and all their oil choosing direct Iranian control to escape

having to fight with other factions. One might say that

current Iraqi politics is controlled by Iran and be somewhat correct,

but the oil industry is stable and has no Iranian influence,

happily abiding by OPEC and selling oil for the precious dollar.

Mission accomplished indeed on the bodies of one million people,

but who cares? Story 35. The Droit Seigneur, or Ius

Primae Noctis, never existed in the Middle Ages. There is

no documentary evidence of its practice. Considering that medieval people

wrote extensively about everything, this absence is quite peculiar. However,

at the beginning of the Renaissance, the story had spread

so widely that someone attempted to put it into practice.

This led to Ferdinand II, King of Aragon, and later

the first king of Spain, writing to his nobles, telling

them not to get any strange ideas about it. What

happened often was that a lord would ask the family

of a commoner who was leaving his lands to get

married for monetary compensation for the lost labor. But it

was not a canonized rite and was even then perceived

as a misuse of power to be brought to the

attention of the king. Furthermore, historical films set in the

Middle Ages celebrate sumptuous weddings and churches, when in reality

marriage was almost exclusively an economic and contractual agreement between families.

It only became a sacrament officiated exclusively by the church

from the 13th century onward. In fact, for a long time,

Christian philosophers even debated the appropriateness of marriage, and until then,

there was no unified liturgy. Priests celebrated marriages because they

were very often the only notorial authority available, so they

stripped the practice of all pagan traditions and clothed it

in Christian customs. Story 36. The stereotype of the French

as cheese-eating surrender monkeys is inaccurate. While I'm not a historian,

it's clear that nobody was truly ready for the German

blitzkrieg tactics. German tank commanders communicated with radios and the

army moved quickly. The French expected an attack and trusted

in their hardened defenses like the imaginal line. They were

prepared for a protracted engagement, not a swift, overwhelming one.

There was also a great deal of war fatigue in

France after fighting the worst war in history up to

that time, World War I, on their own soil just

a generation before. Furthermore, a lot of the French government

was actually open to fascism. While they didn't necessarily want

to be under German control, they quickly decided it was

worth it to surrender because they could keep their status, power,

and wealth. Finally, didn't France have the best win-slash-loss record

for the past 400 years? Story 37. Almost everything people

commonly believe about medieval knights is inaccurate. While I'm not

a medieval historian, I've spent years studying medieval warfare and

can address some common myths. The medieval era, or Middle Ages,

ran from approximately the 5th century to the late 15th century.

A lot happened in this time regarding the development and

use of armor and weapons, so what was true for

1066 might not be true for 1453. For simplicity, I'll

use the word knight synonymously with armored warrior even though

a knight is a title of nobility. There were also

poor knights who could barely afford decent weapons and armor

and wealthy mercenaries who had the best money could buy. No,

if a knight in plate armor fell, he wasn't like

a turtle on his back, nor did he need a

crane to get on his horse. This myth comes from

two main sources. The 1944 film Henry V with Laurence

Olivier where impossibly heavy armor required knights to be hoisted

onto their horses. The fact that most intact combative armor

found was used for jousting, which was incredibly heavy, up

to 106 pounds, to protect riders for that specific purpose.

Knights didn't go into battle wearing armor that heavy because

it would be impossible to use effectively. The weight of

combat armor, which was about 30 to 50 pounds, was

distributed all over the body. Knights trained constantly while wearing

it so they became accustomed to it. A properly trained

knight with a well-made suit of armor that fit like

a second skin was very fast and maneuverable. Studies have

shown modern people wearing plain armor can run obstacle courses

and even do cartwheels. Swords. Swords were practically worthless against

plain armor. In movies, armor often provides no better protection

than cloth, but in reality, two knights would comically ineffectually

hit each other with their swords. Chainmail. This was effective

at preventing sword slashes, but less effective at stopping attacks.

This led to an arms race between making swords with thinner,

sharper points and armorsmiths making chainmail with smaller, tighter loops

for better protection. Leather and gambeson. Even leather and gambeson,

a padded defensive jacket, were quite effective at stopping sword slashes.

Gambesons were much less effective against attacks but were still

better than nothing. Improvised bludgeoning. Because a sword's blade wasn't

the most effective against other knights, it was common for

knights to hold their swords by the blade. Their thick

leather gloves inside of their gauntlets protected their hands. To

use them as a bludgeoning weapon, Some swords were even

designed with a removable pommel to throw at the enemy.

While it sounds absurd, real life is often stranger than fiction.

Pole arms. Most knights didn't even use their swords unless

they had to and instead opted for pole arms. Pole

arms gave knights more reach and many had cutting and

bludgeoning sides or ends. Story 38. Medieval Europeans thought the

world was flat is a common historical inaccuracy that drives

me crazy. They didn't. Sailors, scholars, and even average people

understood that the Earth was round for centuries before Columbus.

The Greeks had already measured its circumference in 240 BCE

with a stick, a well, and some geometry. Medieval monks

were copying those texts and teaching them in universities. The

Flat Earth Myth was actually a 19th century invention pushed

to make the Middle Ages look ignorant and modern thinkers

look enlightened. But the truth is, people weren't dumb back then,

they just didn't have GPS. So every time I hear

Columbus prove the earth was round, I pass away a

little inside. He proved nothing except that he got lucky

by not starving in the middle of the Atlantic. Story 39.

The Vikings, or rather what most people think when I

use that term, did not wear dreadlocks. Also, the women

did not have equal rights. I've heard both of these

things a lot. We know less than most people think

we do because so much of the ancient Norse culture

is lost, sadly. What we do know is that they

were amazing at craftsmanship in everything they did. And funnily,

it is true that a lot of English women willingly

left their English husbands for Norsemen because of their hygiene.

This happened enough times for it to be recorded. I

love the modern TV shows as much as anyone else,

but most of them are really inaccurate. Story 40. The

Middle Ages were as clean an era as any before.

Nobody threw their crap on the street. There were no

rats running around all the time. The water was above

drinking standard. And the groundwater was even better than today,

thanks to industrial fertilizers and pesticides. People washed themselves daily,

and townsfolk went bathing about once a week. And yes,

they used soap. The church did not suppress progress. On

the contrary, wherever progress was being made, it was usually

funded by the church because they ran every single university.

This is also why we still have so many works

from antiquity, because the church stored and transcribed them in

their universities and libraries. Also, the time between 1000 and

1300 was particularly prosperous, with the population quadrupling due to

great harvests over three full centuries. Yes, there were famines,

but only locally, and they were mitigated by regions helping

each other out. Compared to most eras of the past

7000 years, there wasn't all that much war going on

in medieval Europe. The biggest was the Hundred Years War,

but even that one had its peaceful times. I could

go on and on and on about modern cliches regarding plagues,

witch burnings, the Inquisition, and so on. Story 41. A

lot of people don't know that guns were extremely rare

in America before 1900. It wasn't until the end of

the Wild West era that gun manufacturers started mass-producing guns

for civilians. Even then, guns were relatively expensive until certain

industrial machines were created that could churn them out quickly.

Whenever you hear gun advocates talking about their right to

bear arms like the colonials did, remember that only about

three people were rich enough to actually afford a musket

back during the War for Independence. They were kept in

a separate, centralized, secure location to avoid fire from gunpowder spillage.

People didn't have access to their firearms whenever they wanted

and they would never keep them in the house. That

didn't start happening until cartridges were introduced in the late 1800s,

and even then, guns were still rare. The Wild West

was actually a lot less wild than you think, but

our folk stories and gun advocates would have you believe otherwise.

Story 42. People claiming that beer consumption in the medieval

period was so high because the water wasn't safe to drink. One,

it really was, mostly. You're talking about a time when

most bodies of water weren't anywhere near as polluted as

they are today? because they didn't have the industry to

do that. And they were also smart enough to not

drink their own sewage. There were plenty of laws about

not polluting wells and things like tanneries having to be

set up downstream from cities so that the wastewater wouldn't

end up in people's drinking water. Two, people did drink

water and access to good quality drinking water was a

major factor in determining where people would settle. Three, it

disregards the other reasons for why people would drink beer,

such as because it simply tasted of something whereas water didn't,

or as a source of nutrition. We've got a majority

of the population doing physical labor, they gotta get their

calories in somehow, or because they simply enjoyed the buzz,

though it bears mentioning that most of the beer would

not have been very strong. Funnily enough, there was a

period in history where beer was objectively the safer choice

over water in some areas, namely during the Industrial Revolution,

especially in larger cities where there was a lot of

industrial sewage. You can actually correlate spikes in illness in

certain areas with disruptions in the beer supply. And if

you learned a thing or two from these stories, here's

more for you. YouTube thinks you're gonna love this. I'll

catch you in that video.