6 Famous Things From History That Didn't Actually Exist

This was fine, since readers of the time knew to pronounce "ye" as "the" because they recognized the intention. But that context got lost over time, for the same reason future historians are going to have no idea why people in our era kept substituting the number 4 in place of "for." And they'll have no idea what to do with something like "Ke$ha."

We've got terrible, terrible news for you: The brontosaurus as you know it never existed. We're so sorry.

The Reality:

Here's what happened: Back in the 1870s there was a massive rush to find and assemble dinosaur bones. The first person to find a new dinosaur fossil would get to name it, after all, and who wants to miss their chance to find history's first Orgasmosaurus? There were two bone hunters in particular who had a kind of Sosa/McGwire thing going on, minus the juicing (we assume). In 1877, Othniel C. Marsh found the skeleton of a leaf-eating, long-necked, long-tailed dinosaur. He was just missing the head, so he substituted a different dinosaur's head to complete the picture. He named his find "apatosaurus" -- Greek for "deceptive lizard" -- apparently implying that the lying bastard had intentionally fossilized itself with the wrong head.

Meanwhile, Marsh's fellow paleontologist Edward Cope was making his own discoveries. But instead of encouraging one another with a gentle but friendly rivalry, the two used spies and thugs to sabotage each other. When Marsh found another long-necked specimen two years later, he was so paranoid that Cope would get to it first that he hurried up and named it "brontosaurus." This one had more bones and actually got mounted, but not in a sexual way, in the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

What Marsh didn't understand was that he hadn't found a new species at all -- he had found another apatosaurus, just one with the correct head (it also had extra pelvic vertebrae, but that was because it was younger than the specimen the last guy had found). So there never was a separate dinosaur called brontosaurus: It was just a screwup by a paleontologist. Even stranger, scientists figured this out as early as 1903, but the "brontosaurus" made it to a museum first, so we've been calling it that ever since.

On the list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World you have things like the Pyramids at Giza, which are still around, and the massive Lighthouse of Alexandria, which is long gone. But then you have the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which apparently never existed at all.

If you're not familiar with the Hanging Gardens or why they were a big deal, just imagine if a section of Central Park was 80 feet above ground. We're not just talking about the riding paths and urine-soaked vagrants, but every tree you can imagine, flower beds, and statues -- all of it up in the air, supported by stone columns.

The story goes that, deep in the deserts of what is now Iraq, King Nebuchadnezzar II's wife was homesick for the lush foliage of her homeland, so Neb commissioned an elaborate terraced pleasure garden for her benefit. And while, say, the pyramids were just a one-time deal, the Hanging Gardens would have been a sprawling, ongoing project requiring engineering knowledge that surpassed everything else at the time -- you're trying to keep water flowing to all of these tiers of suspended foliage in the middle of the freaking desert.

It's hard to overstate how impressive an achievement it was. Or would have been, had it been true.

The Reality:

There are no records of the Hanging Gardens having existed at Babylon. Experts today believe that the myth of the Hanging Gardens was perpetuated by soldiers returning to Greece from Babylon. They told exaggerated tales of the things they saw -- Babylon did have some sweet buildings, and the land was more fertile back then -- and in turn the ancient historians made those descriptions even more fanciful, until we had a Wonder of the Ancient World on our hands.

But surely there must have been something there for the ancients to embellish, right? Well, a tablet was found in the Assyrian city of Nineveh that has a depiction of a garden, which has one Assyriologist raising the possibility that Babylon's gardens were actually an exaggerated, overhyped version of something that existed elsewhere, maybe.

By the way, the tablet looks like this:

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: People could not draw worth a shit back then.

So while a few crazies today obsessively prepare for the apocalypse, we're not exactly shutting everything down in a blind panic as a society. Not like those dipshits back then.

The Reality:

European Christians were too busy with the day-to-day business of not starving to death to get caught up in an apocalypse-prepping panic. For one thing, they could barely agree on which year it was, so it's kind of hard to get worked up over the next round number on the calendar when you thought the fatal day had already passed a few years ago. For another, these people were always anticipating the return of Christ. It was kind of their thing, ever since John scribbled down some incoherent ramblings about horsemen of the apocalypse and a whore of Babylon.

Which is why historians have been dismissing the notion of widespread panic at the last turn of the millennium for more than a hundred years now. No one went crazy. No one flocked to Jerusalem. People just went about their ordinary business of being dirty and hungry, maybe with an occasional look to the sky, just in case.

What's really interesting is how the rumors of collective millennial shit-losing got started in the first place. The stories actually began in 1605 when a Catholic cardinal mentioned the panic in his history of the church. Protestants later used the stories as evidence of how unenlightened and superstitious Catholics were. Finally, a politically motivated 19th century French historian embellished the accounts as a final indictment against the church. By the time he was done with the first millennial scare, a retroactive mass hysteria had seized all of religious Europe. We almost wish we could be here in a thousand years to see what our ancestors have to say about our handling of the year 2000.

The story there is that his dad was Henry Tudor when he took over the throne of England, and in order for the Tudor name to continue, Henry VIII needed boys, not girls, to keep the lineage alive. Henry's wife Catherine delivered a daughter and some not-living boys before her womb dried out altogether, so Hank moved heaven and hell to divorce her for a new wife, causing a massive upheaval at the time. Anything to keep the Tudor monarchy going, right?

Eventually, Henry's daughter Queen Elizabeth I died childless and the Stuart era began. Too bad for the legendary family known as the Tudors. The whole drama makes for a pretty good soap opera.

The Reality:

You know how no one who lived in the Dark Ages actually thought of themselves as living through the Dark Ages? The phrase was invented by later historians as a nice way to break up that bit of history from the years before and the years after. It's the same thing with the idea of a "House of Tudor" or "Tudor England."

For one thing, the first Tudor king wasn't too crazy about throwing his last name around because he came from humble origins. Apparently, "Tudor" was like the "Jim Bob" of the day. After scouring contemporary documents, one historian found one single lonely mention of the word "Tudor," and that was in a poem written after Elizabeth's death.

The point being, subjects living under Elizabeth's or Mary's or Henry's reign wouldn't have been nearly as concerned about whose house was named what -- they were probably more concerned about whether or not Bloody Mary was going to execute them for Protestantism. In fact, when Elizabeth died, the country was relieved that there was a quick succession that didn't involve an invasion or revolt. If they were lamenting the end of the Tudor era, they didn't let it show. Unfortunately, all of this means that we're not going to get to take reruns of The Tudors very seriously anymore.

In the ninth century, a German woman named Joan started studying at a monastery, claiming to be a man. Covered from head to toe in junk-hiding monk clothes like everyone else, no one suspected that she wasn't a dude. Then she made her way to Rome, where she became a secretary to a cardinal. And when the pope died, according to one 12th century chronicler, Joan was deemed the best person for the job.

For two whole years she pulled off the charade, until the day came when she gave birth in the street during a procession.

The story gets fuzzy from there. While still trailing afterbirth, Joan died or was stoned by the crowd or was dragged from the tail of a horse, a worthy punishment for being a religious leader with a vagina.

For centuries after, papal processions avoided the street where Joan plopped out a Pope Jr. A statue was erected to commemorate the story. Her face showed up on ancient Roman tarot cards and statues in cathedrals. For years, each papal candidate was forced to sit on the sedes stercoraria, a special throne with a hole cut in the seat ... so cardinals could reach up underneath to confirm there were balls a-danglin'. Like this:

Someone even made a whole movie about Pope Joan's story, shockingly not starring Tilda Swindon or Glenn Close.

Aaaaand, it's bullshit.

The Reality:

Unfortunately, Pope Joan's story has some birth-canal-sized plot holes. Like the year of Pope Joan's coronation, 855. That can't be right, because Leo IV was immediately replaced by Benedict III in 855. Unless she was actually John VIII, who reigned from 872 until 882, except that fully penised guy had his own backstory and sad demise. There really are no empty spots in the church's history where a theoretical mystery pope could have stepped in.

The most damaging evidence against Pope Joan is the fact that there are no contemporary references or relics that support her existence -- no commissioned paintings of a suspiciously feminine pope or papal panties or anything.

As for the reason the church avoided that street where she allegedly gave birth, it was because it was too narrow for the pope's entourage. And the statue erected on the spot had actually always been there -- it was a pagan goddess later attributed to Pope Joan. And as for the part everyone wishes were true -- that every pope has to go through a laborious scrotum-groping ritual -- we have to disappoint you once again. It was a conclusion people came to when they saw the hole in the sedes stercoraria, which is really a ceremonial toilet.

Maybe that's the real story here -- that somebody who at one time was considered an expert looked at a chair with a hole in it and instead of thinking "toilet" thought "This must be the pope's nut-grabbing chair." We've got to say, we kind of like how that guy's mind worked.

When Paige Turner isn't writing about dicks on the Internet, she's ... writing about dicks elsewhere. Matt Martin is currently in training to become a novel editor. Send him a PM if you're interested in hiring him for some cheap freelance work.

For more ways your school is full of a bunch of liars, check out 6 Ridiculous History Myths (You Probably Think Are True) and 5 Fictional Stories You Were Taught in History Class.

If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out 5 'Are You Afraid of the Dark?' Shows With Adult Messages.

And stop by LinkSTORM to watch some sweet, sweet brontosaurus sex.

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