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High school was hard enough, what with all the video games and boobies to distract us from our homework. What makes it even harder is having to unlearn all of the stuff they taught us in elementary school that turned out to be utter bullshit. To this day you can even hear some adults repeating these "amazing" historical tales that, years ago, somebody just pulled out of their ass: #5.
Columbus Discovered the Earth is Round
The story we heard:
Columbus, as we were told, did fail to reach his destination, but not because the world was flat--it was because he crashed into the future greatest nation on Earth, baby! Thus, Columbus proved the world was round, discovered America, and a national holiday was born.
The truth:
In fact, the navigational techniques of Columbus' time were actually based on the fact that the Earth was a sphere. Trying to navigate the globe as if it was a flat plane would have fucked up the trip even more than it was.
The Spanish government's reluctance to pay for Columbus' expeditions didn't have anything to do with their misconceptions about the shape of the world. Ironically, it was because Columbus himself severely underestimated the size of the Earth and everybody knew it. The distance he planned to travel wouldn't have taken him anywhere near Asia. Nevertheless, he eventually scraped together enough funds to embark on his ridiculous adventure, and the clusterfuck that was the Columbus voyage has been celebrated annually in the Americas and in Spain ever since. So where did the myth come from? It began with author and historical charlatan Washington Irving, who wrote a novel about Columbus in 1838. The novel was fiction, but some elements managed to creep into our history textbooks anyway, probably by some editors who wanted to spice it up a bit. Who's going to read a history book that's just filled with a bunch of boring shit anyway? #4.
Einstein Flunked Math
The story we heard:
That muddled kid grew up to be Albert Fucking Einstein! And if he can do it, then so can you!
The truth:
The idea that Einstein did badly at school is thought to have originated with a a 1935 Ripley's Believe it or Not! trivia column.
There's actually a good reason why it's a bad idea to include Robert Ripley among the references in your advanced university thesis. The famous bizarre trivia "expert" never cited his sources, and the various "facts" he presented throughout his career were an amalgamation of things he thought he read somewhere, heard from somebody, or pulled out of his ass. The feature's title probably should have been: Believe it or Not! I Get Paid Either Way, Assholes. When he was first shown this supposed expose of his early life, Einstein allegedly just laughed, and probably went on to solve another 12 mysteries of quantum physics before dinner. By the time he finally kicked the bucket in 1955, it's entirely possible that "failure" was the one concept that Albert Einstein had never managed to master. Of course, this just reaffirms what we have always suspected, deep down: success really is decided at birth, and your life will never be better than it is right now. Sorry about that. #3.
Newton and the Apple
The story we heard:
Probably his most famous discovery, however, is the law of gravity. The story goes that Newton, a modest mathematician and professor of physics, was sitting under the shade of an apple tree one sunny day, when an apple dropped from a branch and bopped him right on the head. While most people would merely think "Ouch! Son of a bitch!" and stare warily upward for 10 minutes, Newton's first instinct was to formulate the entire set of universal laws governing the motion of gravitating bodies, a theory so sound that it went unchallenged and unmodified for over 200 years.
The truth:
"Whilst he was musing in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from the tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from the earth but that this power must extend much further." You'll notice that even then we don't get the thing with the apple actually hitting Newton in the head, it got added somewhere along the line to add the element of cartoonish slapstick to his genius life.
We like to think complex discoveries happen this way, with a sudden light bulb popping on over our head. Kind of makes it seem like it could happen to us one day, the next great idea will just occur to us while we're wasting the afternoon on a park bench. In reality, Newton spent the best part of his life formulating and perfecting his theories. When we have kids, we're going to tell them the truth, dammit. Just Newton, hunched over his piles of papers covered with clouds of tiny numbers. Just months and years of tedious, grinding, silent, lonely work, until he had a nervous breakdown and finally died years later, insane from Mercury poisoning. Welcome to the real world, Timmy. |
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The timecube link just made my head explode! i mean come on! We've got rambling:"Educators are KILLING US!", rascism:"White Americans deserve to be hacked to death
by the Black Race - for they are dumb, educated
ONEness stupid and worship EVIL ONEness
WHICH EQUATES DEATH of OPPOSITES. ", and whatever the heck this is:"Creation is the Harmonics of Opposites -
Opposites are the Harmonics of Creation.
God entity is q***r sex, or no opposite sex.
God Oners must ban all sex with Opposites.
Trinity of males degrade female opposites.
Sex okay for atheist, but not God Oneists.
Opposite hemispheres equate planets to a
Giant Brain, that has 4 faces, but no limbs.
Adults create baby, baby evolves to adult.
No 1 God can create a planet of opposites,
which equate to a zero value existence, and
cancels to nothing as an entity in death. " seriously Dr.Gene Ray? Seriously?
ADDENDUM: circumference, not diameter. Why did I write diameter?
You know, there is a reason why a) the original native Carib people are more or less extinct and b) Columbus was fired from his post as governor of the Caribbean. To get to the bottom of this, let's go back to the beginning.
Columbus was basically an Italian with sketchy origins who one day, went to the King and Queen of Spain and asked them to fund a westward expedition to Asia with three barely sea-worthy vessels. His voyage was entirely based on his assumption that the Earth was about six thousand miles in diameter and that China was about half-way across the world.
In modern day terms, it would be like L. Ron Hubbard proposing to the Senate that NASA fund an expedition to Jupiter, based on his calculations that the core of the planet houses a hyperspace gate. The difference in Columbus' case was that he was talking to the King and Queen of Spain, who could basically do whatever the f**k they wanted. So they eventually gave him his three ships.
Columbus also made a number of other outrageous demands: in return for claiming any lands he may discover in the name of the Spanish crown, he would become governor of those territories, given the rank of "Admiral of the Seas", as well as a twenty foot long gold chain with his name and title made out in encrusted rubies. Admittedly the last part was a lie, but it would've made more sense than any other demands he made.
So when he set off to go find China, everyone else thought that either he was simply going to wind up in the middle of a massive expanse of ocean and starve to death, or that the crew would decide to throw him overboard and return back to Spain. Much to everyone's surprise, he managed to find land. He thought it was India; we know it now as the Caribbean.
As promised, he became governor of the new land and quickly put the natives to work. Unfortunately, due the harsh European labour laws of the time, as well as filthy European diseases, the natives quickly died off and nearly became extinct. Columbus was later fired from his post, and died in poverty. Meanwhile, the native Caribs were replaced by hardier African slaves, but that's another story.
So in conclusion Columbus was pretty much an incompetent, arrogant, and incredibly lucky bastard who somehow managed to get the King and Queen of Spain to fund an expedition to what most people thought was nowhere, and was even fortunate in actually reaching any land at all.
Besides the explanation in the article, the only other reason why Columbus is so famous is well, because Western historians have traditionally taken a European stance. Not entirely their fault really, because back then, the Internet had yet to be invented and so only had access to what resources available to their country.
Holy f**k, I could've written an entire article with that.
@jdbaldwin
"Actually, Einstein never really accepted quantum theory."
If he accepted quantum theory, he wouldn't have been very interested in "solving its mysteries" now would he?
It's been said, it's worth saying again: Columbus was from Genoa (Italy). He was therefore Genovese. Not quite Italian, since Italy itself didn't exist before 1861.
Cool article anyway.
Although an apple most definitely did not fall on Newton's head, he did use the story to explain the theory. Newton created the story.
And, seriously you thought Columbus was Spanish?
where are your citations?
@obxsurferbabe Columbus didn't really kill the natives. That was Cortes, Pizarro, and subsequent conquistadors, mainly from the region of Extremadura, Spain.
"...he crashed into the future greatest nation on Earth, baby!" What, Cuba?
Sweet Christ...the writing....it's beautiful........
WOW, that TIMECUBE link blew Me away, thats some crazy ass s**t! I dont get it but whoever wrote that s**t was a crazy f****n wack job!!
#4.Einstein Flunked Math
Wooo!!! Carlisle reference~! ...Ben Nevis reference?! Even bigger Wooo!!!
Okay, I'm finished XD
funny I always thought Columbus was from Columbia, but I guess you learn something new everyday
Uh, both Wikipedia and Newton say that there is some truth to the apple thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Newton.27s_apple
Fail.
christopher colombus was genovese you fuckheads not spanish not portuguese damnn read a f*****g book
v you are an idiot, fivepoundnote.
Another lie still being taught in school is the notion that Western women were (and still are) somehow oppressed.
Someone might have already made this point (apologies if so): Columbus was Genoa, an Italian city-state. His exploration was funded by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, which sometimes leads to confusion.
B
Leif Eriksson is presumed to be the first one to discover America, or "Vinland" as they called it back then.
He and his men got their asses whooped by indian rage, and went home to the safe fjords of Norway.
Or, let's not forget how he savagely killed the so called "Indians" and made them mine for gold...yeah, let's celebrate a guy who murdered hundreds of Native Americans and give him his own f****n holiday. Also, Columbus did in fact get funding from Spain, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. He originally went to whoever was the Ruler of Italy and asked him to fund the voyage and well we all know how that turned out...anyway, good article...I'm so fed up with the lies they teach in school.
This article is just missing one point with Columbus. The biggest lie probably isn't that people in his time didn't think the world was flat. The much bigger lie is that Columbus discovered America. Before him there was at least an anonymous Asian guy who came across the sea and then started what's now referred to as First Nations. Then there were some norsemen who came to North America. It was some 500 years after that Columbus finally got to America.
The fact that there is so little attention for the First Nations in history books, is a very significant form of americentrism/eurocentrism. The non-white are constantly being degraded to a much less important position in history.
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Um, Gottfried Leibniz had quite a bit to do with the creation of calculus, too.