Historical Lies That Far Too Many People Still Believe

Unless a person has been completely isolated from society, they know about the influence of misinformation on the masses.

But misinformation isn't a creation of the digital age. When they say history is written by the winners, it's always meant they're able to lie about events to place themselves in the best light.

In addition to misinformation, the digital age also exposed a lot of people to facts they'd never seen before.

Turns out history books are full of lies.

Reddit user Repulsive-Finger-954 asked:

"What is the biggest historical lie that many people believe?"

Vikings

"Not the biggest lie, but Vikings didn't wear horned helmets."

~ blodyn__tatws

"I’ve seen enough Minnesota Vikings games to know you’re wrong."

~ RicEl2

"Hagar the Horrible taught me that you are incorrect!"

~ darthsteveious

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Ancient Rome

"That Ancient Rome was a gleaming white marble city. For one, the marble was mostly painted with all sorts of bright colors, including the statues."

"Secondly, most people didn’t live in marble buildings but instead in a mixture of brick/wooden structures. There’s a reason Rome burnt down."

~ Ok-Ad-2605

"The paint makes more sense when you think about just how drab most things would have been in an otherwise brick and wood city like ancient Rome.

In the pre-modern world, dyes and paints were expensive. Some colours, like purple, were so famously expensive that the colour became associated with kings and emperors. If you saw a somebody rocking finely made, brightly coloured clothes, you knew they were wealthy. There was no faking it.

'So I have to imagine that a bright, gaudy a** temple or painted statue would have been damn interesting, and damn impressive. Maybe more in the Times Square or Las Vegas 'holy sh*t, look at all the lights' kind of way, rather than a deep appreciation for the subtly of the aesthetic, but still impressive. "

~ TheRC135

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Napoleon Bonaparte

"That Napoleon was this abnormally short man. He was 5'6 which was pretty average back then."

"I'm pretty sure it was this smear campaign of sorts that painted him as this weirdly short, unpowerful guy."

~ Financial_Island2353

"He was 5'6" in English inches (the ones still in use). He was 5'2" in French inches."

"The English used the fact that their inches were shorter to make him look weaker in propaganda. Some people say that this is part of the reason the French government kept pushing metric under him."

~ Alotofboxes

"Just as an example of how common that height was, Horatio Nelson (probably the most famous British naval commander at the time) was also about 5’6"."

~ FligguGiggu11

"For context the global average height of an adult male today is 5' 7.5"."

~ ja_dubs

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George Washington

"George Washington's dentures were not made of wood, but rather a combination of teeth from living slaves, ivory from hippopotamus, walrus and/or elephant, horse/cow teeth, and metal."

~ jguacmann1

"Teeth from slaves (who were still alive) and orphans (ditto). It was a different time, when 'troublesome teeth' was used as a diagnosis for rebelliousness and bad behavior."

"So they'd just yank them out and sell them, traumatizing the 'troublesome' slave or orphan into being more docile."

~ rachstate

"As a history teacher, I make a point of showing examples of his various dentures and the letter he wrote where he purchased slave teeth."

~ Maleficent-Bad3755

  only remaining full set of Washington's denturesmountvernon.org

Battle of Thermopylae

"That the Battle of Thermopylae was fought by just 300 Spartans against the Persian army. Those Spartans were joined by a few thousand other assorted Greek forces."

~ Didntlikedefaultname

"My understanding is that there were much more than 300 Spartans in the battle. When Leonidus realized that the Persians were outflanking them, he ordered a full retreated and stayed behind with 300 Spartans to cover the main force’s retreat."

~ dring157

"It's absurd because 2,300 Greeks holding off the entire Persian army would've been a moving story by itself, no need to invent anything."

~ DogAlienInvisibleMan

"The myth also criminally tosses away why those 300 Spartans were celebrated by the Greeks and Romans."

"The 300 Spartans decided to die in a rearguard action, partially to save those other thousand Greeks."

"Yes, I admit that's likely another myth too. But even if self-sacrifice for Hellas was not the rank and file goal, it certainly was what the Spartan state chose to say during its later tussle with Athens and Thebes."

"For 100 years, Sparta claimed it fought for the rest of the Greeks. And for 100 years, many other Greeks believed them. There likely was a kernel of truth to the eulogizing."

~ DavidlikesPeace

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Paul Revere

"While Paul Revere is often credited with being the sole rider to warn the colonies of the British, he was actually one of five riders who alerted colonists on the night of April 18th."

"Revere's mission relied on secrecy, and he didn't shout 'The British are coming!' as the phrase would have been confusing to locals who still considered themselves British."

"Instead, Revere's network of riders, signal guns, and church bells effectively spread the alarm."

~ gmoney-0725

* Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride,” written in 1860 and published in 1861 in the Atlantic Monthly, transformed Paul Revere from a relatively obscure, although locally known, figure into a national folk hero. ~ Paul Revere House

Holocaust

"That the Nazis were hated and opposed for their treatment of Jews from the beginning. There has been plenty of narrative building through the years around the idea that the Allies were seeking justice for the Jewish people from the start."

"It was only when we witnessed the extent of the Holocaust that the villainy of the Nazis became more of a widely recognized, acknowledged trope."

"Anti-Semitism was very common in the West prior to WWII, and the Holocaust got that far, in part, because nobody wanted to house Jewish refugees." 

~ Some_Number_8516

"The part of American history during the 1920's and the 1930's that no one wants to talk about is that following a global conflict and an economic crash, Americans were perfectly content to remain isolated, so much so that Nationalist movements started gaining more popularity following the National Socialists winning the most seats in the German government."

"Their anti-Judaism views were very well known, and a lot of people over here, sadly, sympathized with them."

"When the Second World War began, while we were supplying Great Britain and her allies, we didn't want to get involved in another war in Europe."

"It needs to be taught that we probably would have remained sympathetic to Nazi Germany if Japan hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war on us the following day."

~ or10n_sharkfin

* The German American Bund (Bund) was a pro-Nazi organization in the United States during the late 1930s and early World War II period. They infamously held a rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939 with an estimated 20,000 attendees.

  - YouTube  youtu.be  

Pyramids

"The pyramids weren’t built by 'slaves'. The working conditions were tough but graffiti and records show that they were usually farmers who were paid and had access to medical stands as well as food shops around."

"My favorite finding was the notes about rivalries and 'teams' they were sorted into, they set goals and had team meetings and teased each other while working by writing dirty jokes and pictures."

"Pyramid builders were also buried with nicer things than everyday people or slaves so that shows their profession was respected."

~ chonz010

"The first ever recorded union strike were pyramid builders."

~ loptthetreacherous

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Columbus the Genius

"People used to believe the world was flat. In elementary school I was taught that no one wanted to fund Columbus’ voyage because they thought he’d just sail off the end of the world. Utter nonsense."

Since at least Ancient Greece, it was believed the world was a sphere. I mean you look up at the sky at night, see nothing, but other round bodies, it makes sense you’d assume that you’re on a round body as well."

~ postXhumanity

"They'd worked out the earth's circumference to a pretty good standard too."

~ Curiousinsomeways

"Eratosthenes calculated it and was only about 3% off. Roughly 250 years before the birth of Christ, he did this. Truly remarkable."

~ postXhumanity

"And Columbus' claim to fame is really that he completely butchered the number of the Earth's circumference and thought India was right next door."

~ jtobiasbond

"And the reason no one wanted to fund his expedition is because the navigators and experts of the time were telling their monarchs 'absolutely not even close, this guy is going to die way before he hits India'."

"I mean, he barely even made it across the Atlantic, FFS!"

~ ImperialSympathizer

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Thomas Edison

"That Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. He did not. 18 other men pioneered it before him. Look it up."

~ Commercial-Camera189

He patented the filament that made them cost-effective to produce and sell. Though to further your point—Edison in general was a businessman, not an inventor."

"He hired people and patented their ideas in his name, or bought the rights to others' patents. We learned a lot about it in my electrical apprenticeship class because the DC vs AC is a BFD in the electrical world. How Edison treated Tesla and other inventors at Menlo Park was... Not great.

~ Minute_Cold_6671

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Faked Moon Landing

"I'm always surprised how many people believe the moon landing was faked."

"Maybe that's not a historical lie, more of a dumb conspiracy theory around a historical event. But it's way way way too common."

"There's literally amateur radio operators who picked up the signals as they were transmitted from the Moon, you would have needed every major world government and every ham radio nerd on earth in on the fake..."

~ wvtarheel

"Honestly one of the biggest pieces of proof for me is that Russia didn't immediately say it had been faked or was fake. In fact, they, or at least their space program, were one of the first to congratulate the US on landing on the moon."

~ conman752

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Working Women

"That women stayed home and only men worked. For the poor, which was the vast majority of people throughout history, everybody worked that could work, even the kids."

"If you didn't the whole family would starve and die. You were working your own land, working your lord's land, working as itinerant laborers."

"If you weren't doing physical work, you were cooking and you were spinning, constantly spinning and weaving and sewing. Constant work."

"Women worked down in mines, worked as servants, they were working in factories as soon as there were even proto factories."

"Wealthy women also worked. They ran the households, for a wealthy family this could be 100 people she was in charge of. Organizing supplies, what food was cooked, that they had accommodations, food stores, made the medicines and tended the ill."

"She had men to run the estates, and the harvests were gathered by the poor men and women mentioned earlier as part of their rent. And those harvests went to her and her staff to store, use, distribute."

"Women have always worked."

"How the Hell do they think the Lords could confidently ride off to war and know that everything was being looked after while they were away fighting for years on end?"

~ wwaxwork

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Magellan

"Ferdinand Magellan did not circumnavigate the globe."

"He planned the journey and set sail with the team of ships and 200-some crew members, but he was killed when they got to the Philippines. I think it was only 18 crew members that made it back to Spain."

~ AgilitySimDriver

"One of them went down off the coast of South America, too, didn't even make it halfway."

~ AgilitySimDriver

  - YouTube  youtu.be  

Civil War

"The US Civil War was over states' rights."

~ SpiDeeWebb

"I was taught this in Texas and remember a question on one of my middle school exams. It asked what caused the war and gave 'slavery' and 'states rights' as two separate options."

"Thankfully, the answer was 'all of the above,' but I remember the spike of anxiety I had in that moment."

~ EscapedTheEcho

"They still teach the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression in the south. Rural Texas "history" teacher told my dad he should give me the belt because I questioned his terminology."

~ GearsAndBeers2

"States’ rights, taxes, oppressive federal oversight, northern aggression—they’re all just euphemistic explanations for Southern states’ rights to own and exploit other human beings."

~ Utterlybored

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Martin Luther King, Jr.

"That MLK was socially acceptable to White people during the 1960s, and not in favor of radically changing the socioeconomic order of the USA."

"He was a socialist who was widely reviled by the majority of White culture of the time. He's been re-imagined by White people as someone willing to accept slow electoral solutions to racial problems."

~ Cute_Win_386

  Martin Luther King Jr Mlk GIF  Giphy  

What would you add to the list?