‘What’s a glaring historical inaccuracy that’s often said and really annoys you?’ – 23 ‘facts’ from the past that people always get wrong
13.
‘The Y2K bug turned out to be nothing to worry about. Yeah, because millions of programmers spent ages fixing it before it went tits up!’
–Weird-Statistician
14.
‘That people in the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat, that Galileo was persecuted for claiming it was round and that Columbus wanted to prove it was round.
‘We have known the Earth is round since the time of the ancient Greeks. Galileo’s claim (basically a confirmation by observations of Copernicus’ theory) was that the Sun is at the centre of the solar system.
‘Columbus thought the Earth was smaller than it actually is, which was the reason nobody wanted to fund his expedition to find a Western passage to Asia. The circumference of the Earth was pretty well established by the 15th century, and Columbus was a bit of a crackpot. If America hadn’t existed, Columbus and all of his ships would have perished in the vast ocean between Europe and Asia. It was basically dumb luck that there was a continent there, not some sort of genius. I fucking hate Columbus, and the undue credit he gets.’
–hetsteentje
15.
‘That Mama Cass died choking on a ham sandwich. It’s just disrespectful.’
–FAITH2016
16.
‘That the Civil War wasn’t about slavery. It was about ‘State’s rights’, but what those assholes don’t acknowledge is that it was about State’s rights to own slaves, and without slavery it would’ve never happened.’
–CKent83
17.
”Mussolini made the trains run on time’. This has been thoroughly debunked. It was a propaganda slogan, not a statement of fact.’
–old-guy-with-data
18.
‘And the truth is even more ridiculously ‘fascist’: trains arrived on time because timetables and newspapers could not write that the train had arrived late, under penalty of ‘offending the prestige of the State or the authorities…’ and the crime of ‘political defeatism’ could even lead to life imprisonment.’
–DaRosiello
19.
‘That Vikings wore horned helmets. Nope — that’s opera costumes, not history.’
–Substantial-Depth832
20.
‘People had healthier dentition before sugar. People forget that while there was less sugar in foods, dental hygiene was pretty limited. Dental disease has possibly killed more people in history than any other single thing.’
–bambooDickPierce
21.
”Women didn’t work’. Working class women have ALWAYS worked! It’s in the title! They also often didn’t get married until their late 20s so they weren’t starting out with nothing.
‘Rich women worked too for quite large periods of history (eg medieval times), they were often educated and capable enough to run entire estates for long periods of time when their male family members were away. It just doesn’t get talked about very often. And pre-Industrial Revolution, everyone in the household would work in some capacity for the family business.
‘The idea that half the population has spent millennia sitting by the fire darning socks (tying in with your point that women have obviously been economically and socially active during various eras) is ridiculous when you think about it for more than five seconds.’
–binglybleep
22.
‘The line from Jaws Is ‘You’re’ gonna need a bigger boat. Not ‘we’re’.’
–terraceten
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