6 'Facts' About Historic Figures (Their Enemies Made Up)

"Voulez-vous make like a tree and get outta here?"

As we'll see often on this list, if you repeat a lie often enough, it eventually becomes truth. Fast forward 200 years and a man who at worst was a few inches shorter than average, and at best was exactly as tall any random dude at the time, is portrayed as a laughable cartoonish freak of a man.

The lesson? If you're going to be a world leader, surround yourself with shorter people.

How did Capote get away with it? Well, he was famous and consorted with the movers and shakers of the day. When asked whether he believed the rumors about Hoover's transvestite tendencies, Capote pithily replied, "Who cares?" This is easily the most gangster outlook one can have when casually annihilating another man's reputation.

O.G. with pimp hat.

But the image of the pudgy tough-guy Hoover prancing around in nothing but see-through panties and a feather boa was too ironic, and nightmarish, for the nation to ignore. As usual, when the smear is more hilarious than the truth, we go with the smear.

But it could have been worse, when you consider...

"What SHALL we do about this troubling vagina?"

It didn't help that the unmarried Catherine loved her pink parts and put them to good use regularly, something that ladies weren't allowed to be open about in those days. She reportedly "tested" her suitors on one or more of her handmaidens first.

Catherine's fondness for 18th century sex was matched by her love of equestrianism. Seeing as how the empress' favorite mounts were both man and beast, it was easy for pesky French aristocrats to combine her hobbies into a nasty rumor designed to knock Russia's hillbilly queen down a peg.

The rumor culminated in what is today the most well-remembered detail about Catherine: That she perished when a stud crushed her during coitusequus.

In reality she died in her bed, of a stroke, at the age of 67. But the smear gained legitimacy on the continent, being too misogynistic and Russophobic to ignore. And today it's just so much more awesome to remember Catherine as a quasi-mythical creature that ran through multiple species of dicks to prove her might.

Angelina Jolie, ladies and gentlemen!

It was the Chicago Tribune that reported the blaze began in the barn of Irish immigrant Catherine O'Leary, when the aforementioned cow kicked over a lantern while she was milking it.

O'Leary countered that she had been asleep that evening, but given that she was an Irish Catholic lass living in 1871, nobody gave a fuck what she said. O'Leary was a pariah for the rest of her days. Passers-by would insult her and spit on her until she died in 1895, sad and saliva-soaked.

But how did the Chicago Tribune know O'Leary was responsible? Don't fire investigations take months to complete since, you know, everything is in ashes?

Short answer: No.

Well, journalistic standards were a tad more lax back in the day, and the cow anecdote made for a cute, Irish-bashing story, so the Tribune just made the whole thing up.

Specifically, Tribune reporter Michael Ahern, who quickly came forward and admitted that it was all fiction and that everyone should stop spitting on her. And by "quickly" we mean 22 years later, long after the story was ingrained in popular culture and Ms. O'Leary's life had been ruined.

Yeah, compared to the newspapers of the 19th century, this here website is the goddamn Economist.

The Coast Reporter, an L.A. rumor rag, figured that if Clara was profiting from her flirty image, then they might as well cash in too. In 1931, the tabloid ran a hit piece detailing Clara's fondness for public sex, threesomes with prostitutes and, oh yeah, fornicating with dogs.

"I am in public with a dog. This covers two of my fetishes. Hopefully this dog is also a prostitute."

The Coast Reporter followed this with a three-week series on Bow's perverted lifestyle and even published such charming lines as, "You know, Clara, you'd be better off killing yourself."

Authorities discovered that the publisher of the Coast Reporter had fabricated these lurid tales to blackmail Bow out of $25,000 (and you thought the Tribune's standards were low).

The damage to Bow's career was catastrophic. The public and her studio no longer considered her an independent, sexually liberated woman--they saw her as a dog boner.

You know, like Megan Fox. And we'll run the rest of the photos unless we get 25 billion dollars.

Hitler has only got one ball,
Goering has two but very small,
Himmler is somewhat sim'lar,
But poor Goebbels has no balls at all.

The lyrics weren't based on any actual rumors or information at the time, and in fact an early version of the song had Hitler and Goering switched, with Goering being the one missing a testicle and Hitler's having two shrunken ones.

Admittedly, the song was no "Gettin' Jiggy wit It," but it served its purpose. It quickly spread the world over, striking fear into the hearts of Aryan supremacists everywhere. So yeah, maybe it was actually exactly like ""Gettin' Jiggy wit It."

"In the middle of the club with smaller than average testicles."

But wait, there's one more bizarre twist to this tale.

In a weirdly prescient case of art mirroring reality, a Polish field medic who treated Hitler came out last year and said Hitler did in fact have only one ball, having misplaced his testicle in World War I during the Battle of Somme.

As far as we know Toby O'Brien never talked to said medic before writing his tune. Either it's an absolutely bizarre coincidence, or somehow, he just knew. The man was... the Testicle Whisperer.