6 Famous Firsts You Learned in History Class (Are Total BS)
#3. Darwin Didn't Invent the Theory of Evolution
Any chucklehead with half a brain knows who came up with evolution: Charles Darwin. Most people even know the background story: Darwin went on a five-year voyage aboard the HMS Beagle to the Galapagos Islands, discovered some mismatched finches, then, bam! We have The Origin of Species and decades of ill-informed debates at IHOP.
Wikipedia
Remember everyone, it's just a theory, and God planted dinosaurs in the Earth to fuck with you.
Except That ...
Before Charles was even born, his own grandfather was preaching evolution -- in verse.
Not only was Charles' grandaddy Erasmus a philosopher, a botanist, an inventor and awesome at wearing ringlets ...
nceas.ucsb.edu
Ladies.
... but also he was one of the first intellectuals to speculate that all life came from one origin. But unlike some people, he didn't just go out and write a world-changing treatise. Erasmus instead chose to express his brilliance in the form of poetry. Check it:
Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.
Wikipedia
The book that poem came from introduced the three-boobed woman centuries before Total Recall.
BAM, it's evolution, baby! And in 1802, seven years before his grandson was born and 57 years before The Origin of Species. That's like Albert Einstein's great uncle coming up with the theory of relativity, but using the art of shadow puppetry to express it. And Erasmus wasn't done there. He also came up with a little something we like to call natural selection:
"The final course of this contest among males seems to be, that the strongest and most active animal should propagate the species which should thus be improved."
Wikipedia
And just to prove that he was the pinnacle of the species, he fathered 14 children.
Not to mention the notion that all life came from a single organism:
Would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality ...
No, Erasmus! It would not be too bold! Unless you don't like science, then yes, it is too bold. The point is that while most grandchildren inherit watches and government bonds from their grandparents, Charles Darwin inherited the beginnings of a paradigm shift.
Getty
And one hell of a political cartoon shitstorm.
#2. Copernicus Wasn't the First to Realize the Earth Revolved Around the Sun
If there are two things we know about space, one is that the Earth orbits the sun, and another is that no one can hear you scream when you're attacked by an extended rape metaphor. As we all learned in school, we have Nicolaus Copernicus to thank for that first one.
Wikipedia
And maybe the second one, too, if we interpret his wild stare correctly.
He was a 16th-century mathematician, astronomer, physician, translator, artist, cleric, jurist, diplomat, economist, military leader and all-round know-it-all. And in his book De revolutionibus orbium celestium, Copernicus set out to prove not only that was he terrible at catchy titles, but also that the Earth orbited the sun.
Except That...
A Greek mathematician named Aristarchus came up with the heliocentric model a few years prior to Copernicus. And by "a few" we mean 1,800.
Wikipedia
And by "came up with" we mean "put his coffee cup down in a fortuitous place."
The problem is that much like your college roommate's insistence that he totally joined a gang when he was in high school, the evidence is pretty lacking. As in, we don't have Aristarchus' actual theory. What we do have are snippets in his citations, and references to Ari's controversial theory from the other big thinkers of the day, like Plutarch and Archimedes.
And the way in which they mention Aristarchus leaves no doubt that the idea was that of a heliocentric model: "The sun, like the fixed stars, remains unmoved and forms the center of a circular orbit in which the earth revolves around it." Not only was Aristarchus the first guy to put forth the theory, but also there's plenty of evidence that Copernicus was familiar with it, specifically that Big C referenced Aristarchus' work then edited out that name drop in later versions, so as not to detract from the "originality" of his own theory.
allfunandgames
If Aristarchus was Tupac, then Copernicus was every rapper in history.
So why does Copernicus get all the glory and Aristarchus get all the nothing? For one thing, Aristarchus' theory was dismissed from the get-go for not putting Earth at the center of the universe, but also for not accounting for the movement of the stars. After all, if the Earth is moving and the stars are standing still, why couldn't we see them sliding across the sky like intergalactic hockey pucks? (We can't see it with the naked eye, is the answer.)
More importantly, Aristarchus gave us a model and Copernicus gave us math. The difference between the two is the difference between a kid concocting a robot unicorn out of Play-Doh and a robocryptozoologist giving us the mathematical proof that it exists.
Wikipedia
Aristarchus got this crater named after him, while Copernicus got an even bigger crater and a cool new element.
#1. Pythagoras Didn't Discover the Pythagorean Theorem
For those of you too far past your geometry days to remember, the Pythagorean theorem was that one equation you couldn't get away with not learning. If the SAT's could make hot, passionate love to a mathematical concept, this would be it.
Wikipedia
We can almost smell the #2 pencils and Ritalin now.
Why? Only because the Pythagorean theorem is one of if not the most important concept in all of mathematics. And from its name, it's pretty damn easy to figure out who was the first person to realize that it existed, to use it and to prove it, right? It was Pythagoras, of course!
Wikipedia
We know our math, but we sure have difficulty with pattern-spotting!
Except That...
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., whereas Pythagoras "discovered" his theorem around 550 B.C. In fact, the Babylonians also seemed to have a bit of a love affair with the right triangle, seeing as how they actually had rules for generating Pythagorean triplets and wrote down hundreds of the suckers.
Wikipedia
Don't believe us? Here they are. You read ancient Babylonian, right?
But hey, there's still something special about being the first to write a proof for a theory, right? Well, many mathematicians believe Pythagoras didn't do that, either. 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. So, to recap, Pythagoras gets full credit/hate for a theorem that he wasn't the first to use, discover, document or prove. Man, the ancient Babylonians and Chinese just don't get any breaks.
Wikipedia
Still, the Chou Pei Suan Ching-ean theorem doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?
You can visit Eddie's website here.
For more firsts that were here before us, check out 11 Modern Technologies That Are Way Older Than You Think and 6 Depraved Sexual Fetishes That Are Older Than You Think.
And stop by LinkSTORM to check out some B.C.-era Egyptian porno.
And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get sexy, sexy jokes sent straight to your news feed.
Do you have an idea in mind that would make a great article? Then sign up for our writers workshop! Do you possess expert skills in image creation and manipulation? Mediocre? Even rudimentary? Are you frightened by MS Paint and simply have a funny idea? You can create an infograpic and you could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow!
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.
Reply