6 Famous Firsts You Learned in History Class (Are Total BS)
Your whole life you've been taught the importance of coming in first. Whether you're the first to make a great discovery, the first to hit the finish line or the first to produce vegetable-based pornography, it's all a big deal. After all, how would you like it if Rumpshaka43 got the credit for commenting on this article first, when it was really Lord_Dildonator all along? Exactly.
So let's take a moment to point out that ...
#6. Lindbergh Didn't Make the First Transatlantic Flight
Very few individual achievements have been as celebrated as Charles Lindbergh's crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. In fact, when he landed in Paris, the French went le apeshit. Lindbergh couldn't even get out of the cockpit before an estimated crowd of over 100,000 Frenchmen stormed his landing site, grabbed him and carried him above their heads like a human umbrella ... for half a goddamn hour.
Wikipedia
"The first 10 minutes were celebration. The last 20 were molestation."
It's easy now to forget how exciting the accomplishment really was. Maybe if we could all take a cross-Atlantic trip in the steamy pits of an overcrowded, rat and TB-infested ship, we'd get a better understanding of Lindy fever.
Except That ...
Two British pilots had already crossed the Atlantic. And they did it eight years earlier.
aviation-history
Sometimes upside down!
In 1919, British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown laughed in the face of gravity by flying from Newfoundland to Ireland in an exhausting 16 hours. When they got back to their native England, they were given the royal treatment -- literally. King George V knighted the two men, and they were awarded a nice cash prize by none other than Winston Churchill. Hey, it's no half hour of crowd surfing, but we can't all land in France.
Wikipedia
Some of us apparently can't even land in Ireland.
So why do we not know about either of these guys? Well, Alcock and Brown were HUGE celebrities ... in Britain. But in America, they contracted what has later become known as "soccer syndrome," meaning the United States just didn't give a shit. It wasn't until American Charles Lindbergh made the New York to Paris flight (in order to win 25,000 clams) that anyone on this side of the pond cared. And it didn't hurt that Lucky Lindy looked like he was dripping with Handsome Sauce:
flyaoamedia
This is why Americans are action heroes and British men are disfigured villains.
Just a photo op with Lindy sent the press into orgasmic ecstasy. In fact, when Lindbergh was awarded the Medal of Honor in the U.S., the inscription read that he "demonstrated that travel across the ocean by aircraft was possible," completely ignoring the achievements of those before him. The other guys? Mostly forgotten now, even in Europe.
Wikipedia
Even after being encased in cement to be admired by future generations.
#5. Jackie Robinson Wasn't the First Black Professional Baseball Player
When you think of civil rights pioneers, a lot of people come to mind. Most of us immediately think of Martin Luther King Jr. Perhaps you hate mass transit and everything it stands for, so Rosa Parks is your hero. If your thing is people coming to accept each other by swinging bats at baseballs, then Jackie Robinson is your man.
wc.pdx.edu
He's sliding to score a run, but also for freedom.
As the first African-American to play professional baseball, Jackie Robinson took a lot of racist shit. But that's what breaking barriers is all about, right?
Except That ...
Moses Fleetwood Walker was an African-American and played major league baseball long before Jackie Robinson. Walker was a catcher for the Toledo Blue Stockings, which was a major league team, and he did it in 1884, over 30 years before Robinson was even born. That's just freaking 19 years after slavery was legal!
Wikipedia
We're not certain, but Eddie Murphy may have stolen his mustache.
Walker probably wasn't even the first black guy to appear in a major league game. That distinction goes to William Edward White, a Brown student whose story fans of world play must have loved. But Walker was the first to try and make a career of it, and his story has all the makings of a legend. When Walker first picked up baseball, the sport was so young that mitts hadn't even been invented, and since he was a catcher, he was forced to catch his pitchers' fastballs with his bare hands. This was especially precarious position to be squatting in since Walker had to endure much of the same bullshit that Robinson put up with nearly half a century later, such as racist epithets, letters threatening to lynch him if he played and opposing players refusing to share the field with him because of his skin color.
Like Robinson, some of the dickishness came from Walker's own team. Tony Mullane, one of the star pitchers of the day, told everyone that Walker was the best catcher he'd ever seen, but that whenever he pitched to him, he wouldn't even look at Walker's signals and he'd just throw whatever he damn well pleased. This type of idiocy led to a hell of a lot of balls ending up beyond Walker's reach or smacking into his ribs, since the catcher had no idea where they were going.
Wikipedia
Here's Mullane either pitching or falling forward very slowly.
The good news for Walker was that for a brief time in the 1884 season, he was joined by his brother, Welday Walker, as a member of the Blue Stockings. That's right, the same year that saw baseball's first black pro baseball player also saw the second black pro baseball player rise through the ranks.
oberlin.edu
Wow, this is an awkward photo.
Unfortunately, Moses Walker's professional career was brief. The Blue Stockings folded the year after Walker made his major league debut. At which point the entire world apparently forgot about him.
#4. Gutenberg Didn't Invent the Printing Press
If you don't know the name Johannes Gutenberg, let's put it this way: He's considered by many to be the most influential person of the last thousand years.
It's all because around 1439, Gutenberg whipped up the world's first printing press, putting books into the hands of the common man for the first time ever. That means we all have him to thank for the entire concept of mass distribution of information. So yeah, he's remembered as having utterly changed the world with the invention of a single machine.
Wikipedia
Yep, the Gilette Twin-Beard Razor.
Except That ...
Gutenberg wasn't the first guy to do it. Not even a little bit. Movable metal type -- the method his printing press used -- was 200-year-old news by 1439. That's because the Goryeo dynasty of Korea already covered that ground back in the 13th century.
rightreading
Starcraft manuals, as far as the eye can see.
It was during the 1200s that the Mongols caught world domination fever, and Korea was one of the many nations on their road to recovery. As the Mongols invaded Korea, they destroyed countless religious texts. So the Koreans did what any self-respecting country would do -- they invented a revolutionary way to use metal characters dripping with ink to preserve their sacred heritage as quickly as possible.
And check this out, we've still got one of the books they printed:
Wikipedia
We translated the symbol for "First!!!" and didn't read any further.
That bad boy was printed in 1377, over 60 years before Gutenberg got his press up and running. And by the way, Asia had already been printing with wood blocks for hundreds of years by this point, while the West was still hand-writing with quill feathers on pig carcasses. In other words, the transition to metal movable type on paper got a whopping "Meh" from the East and a "HOLY SHIT, IT'S A MIRACLE!" from the West.
My history teacher always said, "It's not who did it first, it's who changed something by doing it. Lief Ericson may have discovered America first, hell even the Chinese and Japanese may have been here before Columbus, but it does not matter because his discovery was the one that set the Columbian Exchange and altered history."
ReplyOf course there were people who realized the sun was the center of the universe before Copernicus, they were just afraid the church would stone them stone them to death or some s**t if they said anything, and the church probably would have, they didn't like people saying they were wrong. Copernicus was just the first one to grow a pair, stick a big ole middle finger up to the church, and say, "FU, the sun is the center of the universe and you're wrong bitches". Copernicus was just that cool.
ReplyA lot of total BS in the article and comments.
Reply"Gutenberg Didn't Invent the Printing Press"
Gutenberg did invent the printing press. He invented it independently from the earlier chinese invention. Had the mongols transmitted printing to the West, it would have appeared in the 1200s or 1300s. Also, the compass appeared in the 1100s in Western Europe before any part of the muslim world, thus the compass was also certainly independently invented in Europe, roughly simultaneously with or little after the chinese invention.
"Ancient Indians, Egyptians and Babylonians were using "Pythagorean triplets" (common sides of a right triangle) to construct their buildings since about 2,000 B.C."
Babylonians and Egyptians, but certainly not "Indians" in 2000 BC.
"It turns out that a Chinese mathematical text called the Chou Pei Suan Ching has a geometric proof of the Pythagorean theorem that may predate the Greek thinker."
It doesn't. The text is not attested earlier than ca. 100 BC, and judging from the characters the picture certainly doesn't predate Pythagoras. But of course you don't really know anything about chinese history either.
CrapsterZ:
"the Chinese invented the repeating crossbow over a thousand years before any form of semi-automatic weaponry was invented."
Look up the Polybolos (Greco-Roman repeating ballista).
loqk:
"the Chinese seem to have done almost everything independently a bit sooner than the west"
That is total BS. "almost everything"? There is a lot more things that were done or discovered in the West or Middle East before china than the other way round, even before the 1300s (after which basically every single significant achievement in science and technology has been by people of European descent).
Historical whitewashing. Sorry, but the victor writes the history books.
ReplyLindbergh did it alone and is credited as being the first solo flight. Of course you learned everything wrong when you're a retard.
ReplyLindbergh covered twice the distance by himself with nothing but ocean underneath him the entire time, as opposed to having the safe havens of Greenland and Iceland to rely upon. And he did it between two cities that most people had actually heard of.
ReplyJackie Robinson broke the color barrier AFTER IT HAD BEEN ESTABLISHED. When baseball first became popular there was no color barrier to break. Jackie Robinson did it with the entire country watching him after it had truly become a national sport. Televised. The racism certainly existed in 1883, but those players didn’t deal with thousands of death threats. With class. After 60+ years of segregation and increasing popularity of baseball. After Ruth, Gehrig and midway through DiMaggio had turned the country into a frenzy.
Guttenberg didn’t “create” the printing press, just like Cervantes didn’t “invent” the novel. He did however, invent the ability to mass produce movable type, created a more suitable oil-based ink and a more efficient process for mass printings. Who do you remember, the guy who invented the car? Or the guy that made the car relevant to everyday people in John Ford? Guttenberg made printing available to everyday people. Certainly you wouldn’t discount the Korean’s achievements because they didn’t invent the written language?
Darwin documented EVIDENCE of the theory. And established natural selection. Every theory you could possibly think of has been thought of by someone else at one point or another. I’m sure that the TRUE originators of the world is a giant turtle people are steaming in the afterlife that the Lenapes were first recorded as having it. Darwin used scientific theory and helped people believe it with evidence. That’s the accomplishment. Or else it would have been one of countless crackpot thoughts some random dude had.
Ditto … see the argument above for Copernicus.
Have you ever heard of Fermat’s last Theorem? It took YEARS to PROOVE it. The ability of Pythagoras to PROVE the theorem is what launched humanity into the world of mathematical theory. I could tell you that a 2, 3 and 4 sided triangle would make a right triangle all day long, but that knowledge wasn’t useful in other applications until theory helped make it so. Until we established what some of the laws of the universe were, human endeavors would MOSTLY fall short as they would mostly be starting from scratch. Pythagoras helped establish mathematics as central to human education and our understanding of the world around us.
To summarize … there’s a REASON these people are famous. Not JUST because we think they should be.
for all your nitpicking, careful research, and likely heavily-edited post, you end up with the most massive fail on the whole page because you completely neglected to read the title of the article. tsk tsk. DO BETTER.
STFU, his biggest failure was that a 2-3-4 triangle isn't a Pythagorean triplet. 2^2+3^2 doesn't equal 4^2....
Wow. Wow. This is so full of misinterpretations that it's laughable. The significance of Pythagoras's theorem is that it proved the existence of irrational numbers (the square of the long side of the right-angle triangle) - not the geometric calculation itself. Copernicus's contribution is not that he came up with heliocentrism - that was already known. It's that he used modern mathematics and astronomical observations to show that it was more likely (and he got the planets in the correct order, too). Lindbergh's accomplishment is that he flew solo, not merely that the flight was transatlantic. And Cracked, do you think we know so little about science that we don't know that Darwin discovered natural selection, not merely the theory of evolution? Nearly every example is thus tainted with mountains of miscues.
ReplyDo you want "nearly all" to become all? Jackie Robinson was the first player to break the color barrier; not the first black player ever. Big difference. There was never a "No Blacks Allowed" policy when Fleet Walker played; only a bunch of shocked racist idiots. That was different when Robinson tested the waters. For this reason sportscasters are often careful to emphasize the part about breaking the color barrier.
Very laughable.
There aren't any "symbols" in the Korean alphabet. Just 24 letters. Of that book that's still around, yeah, hardly any of those are used anymore. Hangul (what Koreans call the Korean language and alphabet) is very simple, and extremely efficient. Instead of creating a new symbol for a new word, like those Chinese, the Koreans just spell that s**t out.
ReplyI used to live, and love, in Korea. Didn't know about the printing press, though I'm surprised nobody told me. Koreans seem to think everything is a Korean invention (even Dunkin' Donuts), though, so this probably got lost in the shuffle of s**t they thought they invented and what they actually did.
So, the Koreans are real-life versions of Star Trek's Chekov?
In history class, I learned the Lindberg made the first SOLO flight. The fact that he did it alone was always the point mentioned. Any sort of continuous travel is exponentially easier when you can sleep comfortably, because the other guy is taking the wheel for a bit. Lindberg had to do it all on his own.
ReplyAs for Robinson, he was the first one that counted. Nothing from the 19th century counts in baseball records, because things were so much different back then that there was no standard by which to compare properly. It wasn't until they organized the National League and American League and started playing the World Series that they started counting the records. There are batting records set in the 19th century that will never be broken, but lower numbers are in the books as the all-time best, because it was not until the 20th Century that the "Modern Era" began and the game as we know it took shape. Robinson is counted for the same reason Cy Young has the most wins, and Barry Bonds has the home run records and so on. Because he played in the time in which we kept track.
This is what bothers me about much (if not all) of written history. It seems to be run by at least these two mentalities: 1) Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story and 2) History is written by the victors. I just wish that all history was based in the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But I know that's not how it works. Too much politics in the stew.
ReplyYou can't handle the truth
I remember learning about Aristarchus in my intro physics class when we went over the various theories. He got gipped, man.
ReplyE^2=(pc)^2+(mc^2)^2
Oh man, and all this time I thought Lincoln *prohibited* slavery.
ReplyExcept for number 1, i already knew all of these
ReplySo what you're saying is Copernicus proved what was only supposition before and he doesn't deserve credit for the heliocentric universe theory? Yeah I don't know about that one.
ReplyI got an ad for full metal jousting...and to be honest I think it'd be hilarious to watch two idiots poke metal sticks at each other on horseback.
ReplyI've only read the first page and the article is already chalked full of historical inaccuracies. First, as I'm sure it has been mentioned in other comments, Lindbergh completed the first SOLO flight across the Atlantic. Secondly, the CHINESE invented the printing press, however much Koreans like to credit themselves with the achievement. And for the record, I date a Korean. They like to credit themselves with EVERY achievement. Get it right, Cracked. Yeah, it's comedy, but your readers expect intelligent articles nonetheless. Oh, and just so you know, Koreans credit the first emperor of Japan to themselves also. Despite the fact that this cannot be confirmed anywhere outside of the Korean school system, it still holds true in South Korea.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesI've dated myself, it was not a happy relation.
lol "chalked full"
Jimmu was Korean?? Go figure!
Chinese used woodblock printing, the one the article refers to is about moveable metal print, i.e the one that's actually like modern day printing and doesn't need to be repaired every month. And you know everything about Koreans because you dated one? Well by that logic I'm even more of an expert on Koreans because I actually AM Korean. Most of what your statements about what Koreans say is inaccurate as hell and only claimed by a few people.
Lindbergh: Oh, puh-leez. Lindbergh's first, openly acknowledged at the time, was winning the Orteig Prize for making the first SOLO crossing of the Atlantic. And, yes, the Orteig was established in 1919 *after* Alcock and Brown, specifically as a challenge to top their feat. Do I detect a large English-oak chip on the merrie olde shoulder?
ReplyYes, that is what I learned in history class, that Lindbergh was the first *solo* transatlantic flight.
I thought that it was well known that Darwin didnt discover evolution. He almost didnt get into the royal college because of it and he himself said that he was "walking in the footsteps of giants".
Replymy understanding was that Pythagoras was the one who went all over his known world, picked up mathematical tricks (including one from the Egyptians about a triangle with sides three, four, and 5 units long), wrote them down, took them home and made proofs for how they worked.
Reply Hide All See All 6 Repliesthe Chinese seem to have done almost everything independently a bit sooner than the west, but Pythagoras did so much math by himself, cut off from the clever people in china, that he is remembered as a clever person.
Greece isn't part of "the west." It's west of China, but still in the eastern hemisphere.
back then it was the west
JCA, "the west" includes parts of the eastern hemisphere.
JCA, the West generally means European/Canada/US.
JCA, Ancient Greece is generally considered to have FOUNDED what we now refer to as "the west".
JCA, the "east" is generally considered anything east of the middle east, and the west anything west of the middle east. Keep in mind, in the timeframe we are talking, the majority of the world didn't know about the existence of the American continents. When you take those continents out of the equation, Greece is indeed in the west.
The theory of evolution was not "invented". Invention suggests something that was fabricated or made up instantly/at the whim of someone. The theory was developed, after a series of observation, experiment, etc.
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