The 20 Greatest Historical Myths

Write Spirit ^ | 3/24/2007 | Noivedya Juddery

[quantim]

21. Jon Carey was a war hero.

[aft_lizard]

23. Hillary Klintoon is the smartest woman in the world.

[LdSentinal]

24. Barack HUSSEIN Obama is not a Muslim.

[P.O.E.]

Newton was hit by an apple

Which made him appreciate the fact that there are no watermelon trees.

[flynmudd]

25. The U.S. Constitution is a living document.

[GoldCountryRedneck]

25. Al Gore invented the Internet.

[PzLdr]

Napoleon was never a Corporal. He went from cadet to commissioned officer of the Royal Artillery. He wore the uniform of a corporal of the Old Guard Artillery [Its simplicity made him stand out from his gaudily uniformed Marshals, especially his brother -in - law, Murat].

[Bringbackthedraft]

Elvis Lives!

[proudpapa]

GEorge Washington was really the 16th president.

John Adams was sworn in as Vice-president 4 days before GW was sworn in as President. Thus John Adams was technically president before and after GW.

[RightWhale]

11. Walter Raleigh introduced potatoes and tobacco to England

Right. It's a fib, but the explanation here is also.

[RightWhale]

10. Magellan circumnavigated the world

While his expedition did this, it was not the first. The Ports and the Spanish and the Genoese and Venetians and English were in a highmarking contest by then and the truth is none of them were first.

[RightWhale]

on September 3, 1783. On that day, Britain's George III and US leaders signed the Definitive Treaty of Peace.

The Treaty of Versailles is full of legal holes. England probably still owns all this.

[Publius6961]

BUMP!

[Bernard]

It was American author Washington Irving, some 500 years after Columbus sailed to America,

That would make it 1992, which is long after Washington Irving's last transcript was published.

[x]

Some of them are only semantically wrong. Edison did, so far as I know, invent the incandescent light. Washington was the first President of the US under the 1789 Constitution. BTW, is the date of Mithras's birth really any more certain than Jesus's?

[SAJ]

Exactly. While there are numerous historical bits of nonsense that have been propagated for SO long that they are now accepted as ''truth'', the author of this article misses out badly on at least two of his ''debunkments''.

Another example:

6. America became independent on July 4, 1776

Hold the fireworks! As most American school children (and many non-American ones) are aware, America's founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. However, the war raged for another seven years before independence from England was finally granted on September 3, 1783.

Horrible historical ''research''. First, John Hancock affixed his signature to the Declaration on July 2nd, and it took a number of months for the Declaration to be properly signed, although it was publicly posted on the 4th. Second, one's independence IS established from the date of its declaration; the fact that American independence 7 years to **enforce** the declaration is irrelevant.

The author is straining at gnats in his debunkment efforts.

[SAJ]

Uh, the Treaty of Versailles was the one that (haha) ''ended'' the First World War in 1918. Doubtles, you're thinking of what Americans call the Treaty of Ghent, correct?

;^)