

|
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. |
6 Geniuses Who Saw Their Inventions Go Terribly Wrong
6 "World-Changing" Inventions (That Didn't Change Shit)
5 Pathetic Groups That People Think Rule the World
6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain
Newton was also secretly an Alchemist.
You SnotBrains will know hell for ignoring TimeCube.
Columbus was an Italian, not a Spaniard
Hey cracked bros, Colombus discovered the continent America, not the U.S.A
Also he landed on El Salvador.
f**k yeah history geeks.
Washington might have been kinda bland and normal, but he had two major qualities- MASSIVE arrogance and an incredible ability not to get shot. He wanted the President's address to be "your majesty" or "your highness," and walked out of his first senate hearing because it was too boring. But he led his troops into battle and, despite an immense opposition, managed not to take a single f*****g bullet.
btw it was vasco da gama who PROVED that the earth was round and not flat, by circumnavigating the globe. also a vaguely connected to this article random fact - Einstein was dyslexic.
as far as my simple knowledge goes, columbus didnt give a rats arse about the orb theory, he was out to discover INDIA, therefore the fact he called the native americans, Indians. and he didnt land in America as in USA, he landed in one of the Carrebian Islands, so SPeterDavies, if you were implying that the nation which is cause of the global recession - USA is the 'greatest' nation on earth, then you are sadly mistaken.
I was kinda sad that the "Fountain of Youth" myth wasn't here. The myth that Ponce De Leon was searching for said fountain is false. The myth that it was in America did not come around until quite a while after his exploring.
Well, quantum physics was one thing Al stumbled upon, but decided was way too complicated, so he ignored it.
despite newton's acheivments, he went to his death bed claiming his greatest was to die a vergin.
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/10.21/newton.html
Ok, the Timecube link. What the f**k. Real insanity is VERY scary close up.
Ok, the Timecube link. What the f**k. Real insanity is VERY scary close up.
The Ripley story at the Einstein story is clearly nonsense. I looked at the Ben Nevis topology in Google Earth, and saw the steepest hills there are about 45 degrees.
My favorite hobby HAS to be reading these comments. Some people just love to think they are so far above everyone else - as they misspell and mistype their ramblings. This is a damn comedy site, meant to be funny. Calm down.
Did anybody else try the Timecube link? I just tried reading it and I'm pretty sure I'm never gonna need drugs again. That dude is fucked in the skull!
i've never heard the 'indeos' thing, though i always assumed they were called Indians because they were thought to be of India. It wasn't until after the explorers discovered it was a different mass of land, where there became a distinction. But I guess it didn't really matter anyway since they were mostly dead of syphilis by then
There is another thing that was a lie. columbus named Indians Indians because they were 'indeos' or 'in god
I'm a history TA. We don't teach those things. These articles are usually better.
If Pythagoras never existed, who invented Pythagoras's Theroem, and who are all those sculpters of?
5 Real Life Soldiers Who Make Rambo Look Like a Pussy
The 5 Most Popular Safety Laws (That Don't Work)
6 Random Coincidences That Created The Modern World
A Series of Poor Decisions: The Twitter Song
Not only did Newton steal credit for calculus from Leibnitz, but also tried to use the Royal Society's influence to prevent Leibnitz's calculus from ever influencing England for years to come and isolating it from later advances made on the continent. Newton only seemed so great because he staggered any future mathematical advancement in England for decades. Way to be a douche, Isaac.