The 5 Most Ridiculous Lies You Were Taught In History Class
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:
In 1492, a Spanish ponce by the name of Christopher Columbus won his long-standing feud with the monarchy and the Catholic church to get funding for a voyage to East Asia. They were afraid that he would fail spectacularly, because everybody knew that the Earth was a flat disc, and the direction Columbus was sailing in would cause him to fall off the edge and into the mouth of the giant turtle that supported it.
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 the 1400s, the flat-earth theory was taken about as seriously as the Time Cube theory is today, if not less so. The shape of the world has been pretty much settled since the orb theory was first proposed by the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras, around 2,000 years before the existence of Spain.
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.
Artists' representation
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:
Motivational speakers love to tell this tale, inspiring underachievers with the story of this German kid who was just like you! Despite his sincerest efforts he could never manage to do well in his math exams, and struggled desperately with physics while working as a lowly patent clerk.
That muddled kid grew up to be Albert Fucking Einstein! And if he can do it, then so can you!
The truth:
Well, no you can't. As it turns out, Einstein was a mathematical prodigy, and before he was 12, he was already better at arithmetic and calculus than you are now. Einstein was in fact so fucking smart that he believed school was holding him back, and his parents purchased advanced textbooks for him to study from. Not only did he pass math with flying colors, it's entirely possible that he was actually teaching the class by the end of semester.
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.
Not the actual 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:
You've probably heard of Isaac Newton. He's pretty much the Jesus of physics. In the late 17th century, Newton practically fucking invented science. The discoveries we can thank him for include the laws of motion, the visible spectrum, the speed of sound, the law of cooling, and calculus. Yes, all of goddamn calculus. One wonders if anybody in history ever had a thought before Newton.
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:
Newton never mentioned the thing with the apple, and in fact it was another guy named John Conduitt who first told the story some 60 years after it supposedly happened. Even then, he was decisively vague about whether Newton actually saw an apple, or whether the apple is a metaphor that he used to illustrate the idea of gravity for people less intelligent than he was (read: everybody):
"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.
Future versions will say that Newton then vomited in agony.
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.
What the Fart?!
ReplyActually, Washington was a charismatic leader. While it's true he had a horrible temper, he was a natural leader who people would willingly follow according to men who served under and alongside him.
ReplyAlso, Columbus wasn't the first Westerner to reach the future Americas. If I recall correctly, it was the Vikings...it was a group from Scandinavia, anyway. AND the Natives had already migrated here looong before that. As a matter of interest, there is evidence to suggest that members of the Knights Templar were here possibly before the Vikings. Saw that on the History Channel, but can't find it now.
ReplyThe Viking era was during the end of the Dark Ages (~700-1050 A.D.), and Lief Erikson's voyage was in 1000 A.D. -- meanwhile, the Knights Templar were established in the 1st Crusade, towards the end of the 11th Century A.D. -- almost 100 years after Erikson's voyage.
how a real father would behave when his son tells him he choped down his cheey tree: COME WHO YOU LITTLE *smack*
ReplyBut he's holding the ax! Lol...
I guess many of us can agree on this one fact, Take what you read with a grain of salt, even if it is a book in your history class. Believe what you will but mostly learn what you need to know to pass your class, after all that is really what we try to do anyway.
ReplyOK, let's start with #5-Columbus wasn't Spanish. MOST people think he was Italian but he was probably Corsican. If you were from Corsica you had better lie because they had a bad bad rep.
ReplyGeorge Washington was anything but bland AND he was a master liar. He won through deceit and espionage. And luck. He was one lucky dude.
The kite experiment was done lots of times but you are right, it is dangerous as hell.
The Germans changed their grading system, turned it upside down. Einsteins perfect grade of 6 read as a fail under the new grading which changed in the 1910s.
Newton-the best entry. It's just that he was more obsessed than dedicated. He was hated by his students, rarely washed and was a dedicated alchemist, a dangerous hobby. At age 50 or so he went into a funk and seclusion. He emerged a clean fancy fop who rose in social standing and became a consultant to the treasury catching counterfeiters. The penalty was harsh, death.
More tl;dr Versions...
Reply1. Colombus didn't discover the world was round. He discovered the New World, after the Vikings, the Indians, and the Kardashians did.
2. Einstein didn't flunk math. He flunked history and home economics.
3. The apple didn't hit Newton. Newton hit the apple. Martini that is.
4. Washington didn't cut down the cherry tree. It was an apple orchard. With a chainsaw. During a game of Clue.
5. Benjamin Franklin didn't discovery electricity using a kite during a thunderstorm. It was clearly Tesla.
You forgot "6 million Jews died in World War 2". That's funny because there weren't 6 million Jews in Europe at the time.
Reply Hide All See All 7 RepliesThere were more than that even on the Nazis records you fascist fool.
That's just the kind of fact-less mind numbing bullshit this article is talking about. you should write school books.
I wouldn't dismiss him so fast, though. Much like this "war on terror" it was easy to get rid of anybody you didn't like by claiming that person is jewish. That means, even if the nazi's own records said they killed 6 millions of them, that doesn't have to be the truth. There will be many victims among them that weren't jews. That and they may have exaggerated, much like every side exaggerated when it was about declaring the number of enemy troops eliminated.
Wait. WW2 only involved Europe?!? Stop the presses!!! We should rename it to Europe War Two!
The estimate of those exterminated by the Nazis in death camps and massacres and such is 12 million, 6 million of those were Jewish. Is this accurate? Probably not. I don't see how it could be but let's just say many millions of people. What's the difference? It only matters to holocaust deniers who try to weasel the whole thing by pointing to statistics that actually are hard to verify. They, and it might included this guy, can go f**k themselves.
6 million people, but most importantly some were jewish, its meant as war propaganda like all muslims are bad people who where towels on their heads
although that being said i did see a muslim dressed with a towel on his head and a long....dress thing, my brother explained that because he's covered in head to toe its actually cooler than my shorts and tank top
... And in 1946 they were all found hiding in Argentina, according to Lenny Bruce.
Putz.
I wasn't taught any of these things in actual classes. The cherry tree thing was told to us in passing when we were talking about honesty in first or second grade. We had some guy come to our school dressed as Ben Franklin and he told us his life story and he may or may not have told the key story, and while we knew that Columbus tried to sail to India and "discovered" "America," we were told he *wasn't* trying to prove that the Earth was round. :D
ReplySailing to India would have proved that the world was round. Discovering Florida instead merely proves that the world is, in fact, flat.
Was anyone ever actually taught any of these? I only even learned the cherry tree story or the thing about everyone in Columbus's day knowing that the Earth was round from being explicitly taught that they were common myths that aren't true.
ReplyNext you'll tell me that Donald Trump isn't really a business genius.
I was at an Einstein exhibition in Bern where he used to live and work. We were told that in fact he had good grades in maths but since our grades (6= great, 1= hopelessly dumb)are diametrically opposed to the ones in Germany some German twit got the idea, that Einstein has to be quite an idiot since he got 'only' a 5 or 5.5.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesMaybe that's where Ripley got his idea.
I thought it was because German grades go up to six and North American grades go up to 100.
Of course, this would mean that all Germans are bad at math. Simply proof why the Americans got the bomb and made it to the cheese factory known as the moon first.
@Nathan - using stolen Nazi scientists, of course...
This is the same problem I had with the article... He was Swiss. Spoke German, but Swiss.
Christopher Columbus was Genoese. Genoa was an independent state on the northwestern coast of Italy. He was not Spanish, although he was employed by the crown of Spain. The jury is still out on whether he was a ponce or not, however. Man since you Cracked writers like to debunk myths so much, you should really check out the British quiz show Qi, hosted by Stephen Fry. There are also a number of great books of trivia tied in to that awesome show.
ReplyOkay, I'm fond of QI in the same way that I'm fond of oxygen, but the fact-checking honestly isn't that great. No one actually things Cruithne is in orbit around Earth, and Stephen didn't pronounce it right either.
See my post above- He was most likely not Italian.
"...the passing of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act meant that taxpayers, not the meatpackers, were responsible for the $30 million a year costs of inspection..."
ReplyFood exports and vegetarians notwithstanding, the costs of inspection are paid by the same group, as the meatpackers would pass those costs on to the consumers/taxpayers.
"America is the greatest and most free nation on earth". Of course they said "freest".
ReplyI have every only hear about the cherry tree and the kite > > I dont like this article
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesWell, you're a moron.
and your spelling/punctuation is atrocious.
I'm confused. Why is "I dont like this article" less than "I have every only hear about the cherry tree and the kite"?
Obviously English is not Evils primary language. Whatever his native language is, you guys probably suck at it more that he sucks at English.
And I'd like that again tfitz1017 if I could
These are pop culture myths not history lessons. Poorly written article.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI completely agree, I was never taught any of this in school.
I was taught bits, other parts were stuff kids' shows of the 70s liked to say.
You're right, they ARE pop myths, that's the whole damn point of the article!
To the CRACKED writers: They debunk these things in schools nowadays and have since the late 90s. I'm glad you wrote this, but if it had been written about 20 or 30 years ago, you'd be pulling a lot more attention.
Dude. The lightning thing is in our 2009 textbook. :(
So where do you cite your sources?
ReplyThe links in the article.
My favorite history professor, on the first day of class, gave everyone a lengthy packet on historical myths that are frankly wads of bullshit.
ReplyI think Washington wasn't punished severely [Read: Killed] by his father because he was still holding the hatchet when his father asked.....right?
Reply"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."
ReplyThe reason Einstein was working in the patent office in the first place was that he couldn't get a job with any of the universities. In the end that turned out to be a good thing since it gave him a lot of spare time to think about physics problems but despite everything, all his successes, he was always very modest.
He also suffered a rather large failure in his futile efforts to form a unifying theory.
You can thank a gentleman named Henri Poincare for Einstein's "Theory of Relativity" because Einstein basically plagiarized his entire work from Poincare and bunch of other little known physicists.