4

Anti-Vaxxers Have Been A Problem Since The Invention Of Vaccines

The modern anti-vaccine movement consists of thousands of websites, celebrity endorsements, protests, sketchy "studies," and novelty coffee mugs. But they're nothing compared to the extreme anti-vaxxers of yesteryear. When Dr. Edward Jenner introduced his smallpox vaccine in the early 1800s, critics falsely claimed that it made people discharge disgusting fluids, and that children would develop cattle mange, grow bumps on their head, and even start running around on all fours and acting like cows. Of course, that was pure paranoia, largely fueled by ignorant, uh ... everything.

3

The Olympics Have Been Over-Budget Since The '30s

Once every four years, the Olympics roll around and we all pretend to care about swimming and gymnastics. We also pretend to care about foreign countries by pointing out that unless you're a Russian oligarch, a corrupt bureaucrat, or an industrious prostitute, the Olympics are a ruinous financial deal for the host city. It turns out that inconveniently located velodromes don't offer a ton of functionality once the Olympics are over, so many of the shiny new buildings we see on TV quickly begin to rot. And that leads to passionate debates about whether governments should even be spending their money on the games in the first place.

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But the Olympics weren't always an exercise in excess. The first official modern games, held in 1896, ran six times over budget ... to a final cost of about 10 million modern dollars. For comparison, the 2008 Beijing Olympics cost 44 billion dollars. What the hell caused costs to skyrocket? Well, like with so many other problems in life, you can blame Hitler. Before the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the games were a low-key affair. But the Nazis saw them as an opportunity to show off their ideology, so they built a 100,000-seat stadium, invented the torch relay, and gussied up Berlin for the big show. In doing so, they spent the modern equivalent of $1.7 billion -- money we bet they really wished they still had by around 1943.

Once the world recovered from World War II, everyone remembered that the Berlin games were pretty neat, minus all the Nazis. So the Olympics became an opportunity for countries to strut their stuff -- Munich wanted to brag about how the world had stopped hating Germany, Tokyo wanted to show off its modernization, Montreal wanted to remind everyone that Canada exists, etc. But that nationalist preening turned the Olympics into a guaranteed financial boondoggle. The 1976 games took Montreal three decades to pay off, and Rio is currently offering its creditors used air conditioners and electrical cables instead of cash.

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2

We've Been Fighting About Weapons Bans As Long As We've Had Weapons

The gun control debate feels like a uniquely American problem, but swap guns for swords and the discussion would have looked right at home with a bunch of old dudes wearing togas. Two famous ancient Greek smarty-robes, Thucydides and Aristotle, denounced armed men walking the streets as a threat against law and order, and doing so was indeed illegal in most Greek cities of the time. Because every debate needs a catchy phrase to fit on a bumper sticker or in a Tweet, Thucydides wrote that Athenians should "Let the laws rule alone. When weapons rule, they kill the law." Tough to argue against a guy wise enough to leave 79 characters for hashtags.

Remi Mathis/Wiki Commons

However, modern gun rights advocates would agree with Aristotle's argument that "those who control the weapons also control whether a constitution will survive or not." Aristotle saw civilians carrying weapons in public as threatening violent revolution, so he was petrified of a different kind of tyranny than what 20 years of NRA presidents have claimed to defend against.

Later, Roman lawmakers enshrined their own "Stand Your Ground" law, making it perfectly legal to kill someone who attacked you on the road or wandered onto your farm in search of "plunder." But carrying weapons in cities was a big no-no, to the point where it was considered blasphemous. That's why Caesar was assassinated outside the city limits, which probably prompted a lot of sarcastic comments about no-sword zones. Weapons being considered dangerous in cities but necessary for survival out in the country? Sounds vaguely familiar ...

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1

The U.S. Government Has Always Treated Some Minorities Like Terrorists

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, fear spread after a series of politically motivated bombings were committed by members of a specific minority. These attacks convinced many Americans that every member of this ethnic group refused to assimilate, harbored a hatred of America, and held views that were fundamentally incompatible with the American lifestyle. So there was an angry and violent backlash against this group. We are speaking, of course, about Italian-Americans.

There were millions of Italians in America, and only a handful were violent anarchists, but that was enough to fuel some harmful stereotypes. Americans were convinced that they were all scheming to overthrow capitalism. The New York Times described Italians as "sneaking and cowardly" and "descendants of bandits and assassins." Their food was considered weird, their version of Catholicism was considered heretical, and they were thought to be prone to violence and anti-democratic ideals. So they faced discrimination from police, landlords, employers, and most heinously of all, shitty political cartoonists.

Academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu

Academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu

Via The Atlantic