5 Famous Historical Misconceptions to Impress Your Friends With in an Annoying Fashion
#3. Viking horns weren't real
If I had friends, I’d be telling anyone willing to listen just how wrong we humans are about so many things throughout history. It’s almost as if fibbing, embellishing, and stretching the truth is in our very nature.
But surely, not everything is on purpose. Sometimes mistruths are misquotes, mistranslations, or even occasionally mishapped mischief itself.
But just like in The X-Files, once a new “truth” is out there, it’s incredibly hard to put that baby back in the bath.
Let’s try to do it, anyway. Here are five famous examples of historical misconceptions to impress your friends in an arrogant argumentative fashion.
#1. We can’t see the Great Wall of China from space
Ah, space, the final front teeth. Or something like that. We grow up staring up into the stars, wondering if humanity will ever reach out and touch them someday. From the first satellites to astronaut monkeys, and finally landing on the moon — it truly is an enthralling space to think about.
But a well-known mistruth we often hear is that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from space to the naked eye.
This is false, for several reasons.
First, let’s get a few facts out there:
Space is often considered to be about 100 kilometers (62 miles) above ground level, or the height of 1750 Leaning Tower of Pisas, each one tilted, of course.
The Great Wall of China at its widest part is only 16.7m (54.8ft). Roughly equal to 40 angry chickens standing in a straight line.
To see something accurately at that distance, you’d be able to tell what pattern I’m wearing on my underwear ~1 mile away (1.61 km). FYI, they’re Mickey Mouse, you nosey reader.
Most proofs online showing pictures of the Great Wall visible from space are because cameras with huge zooms were used, such as from the International Space Station.
To add to that, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield once tweeted “the Great Wall of China is not visible from orbit with the naked eye. It’s too narrow, and it follows the natural contours and colours.”
So, while it may not be visible to the naked eye from space, what is?
Cities — especially at night when they’re lit up (not necessarily on fire)
The cooling pond of Chernobyl
The Greenhouses of Almería
The Bingham Canyon Mine
The next time this erroneous fact is mentioned by a hypothetical friend, you can throw this in their face with a hearty evil laugh and twiddle your fingers in excellence.
#2. The infamous iron maiden torture device didn’t actually exist
Ah, the Medieval age. Witch burning, persecution, and rampant torture of innocent people. Fun times right?
Well, while you may have been worried about your ancestors dying from overly enthusiastic religious ancient Karenellas, you can at least rest well knowing two things:
If they had died, you wouldn’t be here, duh.
At least they weren’t tortured with the iron maiden
While there are many examples of devices like the iron maiden mentioned in history, no direct evidence has ever been found of any actual device existing before the 19th century.
In fact, most of the references to these medieval devices weren’t written until centuries after their supposed use.
Essentially, most historians think these accounts were exaggerated or faked. There was a bit of a culture of talking sh*t about our ancestors to make them look savage, whereas they — the enlightened 1800s philosophers — were civilized heroes of humanity.
However, there are a few ancient tales of similar torture implements in history.
Written in the 500s, The City of God, described the torture and death of a Roman general from being locked in a box with nails. But it stated he died from sleep deprivation, as the nails weren’t too deep.
A Greek historian named Polybius also told of a story about a mechanical structure made in a Spartan ruler’s wife’s image. Anytime a lowly libertarian citizen refused to pay their taxes, the Spartan would shout out “THIS. IS. MY WIFEAAAAAA!” and wheel the machine out to torture the citizen, in theory with a hug full of nails.
So where did they come from?
One popular idea is that over-eager museum curators and historians essentially pieced together different historical artifacts and concocted a highly-believable story.
In this case, nails + coffins = museum visitors = cash money, baby.
But notice I mentioned the iron maiden didn’t exist before the 19th century? Well, one notable tale of it in actual use is, as you can imagine, kind of f*cked up.
In 2003, Time Magazine reported a “worn from use” iron maiden was discovered in the Iraqi National Olympic committee compound in Baghdad. It turns out the device was owned by Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday.
If you ever want to read about how screwed up and evil a person can really be, look no further than the dictator’s son. There are many, many accounts of him committing rape, murder, and torture of anyone he didn’t like. The insane dude even tortured his own national football club members whenever they lost games — and he was the damn coach!
If you want to see that specific device, there’s a video of it — because of course there is. No blood though, but worn-out nails do send a message.
#3. Viking horns weren’t real
That crude helmet above? It’s the original viking helmet called the Gjermundbu helmet dated back to the 10th century. Notice it doesn’t have any unwieldy horns protruding out the sides?
That’s because they weren’t a real thing.
So why the everlasting stereotype of tall bearded barbarians with huge horns sticking out their heads?
Well, again, we have the early 19th-century enlightened folks to blame. In 1811, a group of authors and poets came together to protect the mythos of Sweden’s noble past. From what? Christianity and other ways of thinking, of course.
Maybe they were onto something.
But this society, called the Götiska Förbundet or the Geatish Society, went to work creating countless documents, poems, and writings describing a past they had, well, invented.
Their work often combined aspects of the Merovingian period, the Bronze age, and Norse mythology to come up with their descriptions and artwork of the proud Viking warrior.
The problem is, most of their garb never existed during the actual age of the Vikings!
These nutters even wore the horned helmets in their own rituals and meetings, which was probably the only accurate portrayal in their body of work. It’s thought any of the actual horned helmets from thousands of years ago were mostly for ceremonial purposes.
Imagine fighting a dude wearing massive 50 lbs horns wobbling on his head. Even I, the meekest of keyboard warriors, would surely stand a chance at fighting such a foe.
But why is the myth so pervasive in modern society?
From these works of the Geatish Society, media eventually matured and evolved into fun cartoons like Hägar the Horrible, Vicky the Viking, and Asterix the Gaul — a personal favorite.
Several terrible football teams have also adopted the horns on their labels. Which, in hindsight, is probably better than some other ethnic stereotypes chosen over the years.
#4. Napolean wasn’t short
Our favorite French general (screw you Charles de Gaulle) was famous for conquering most of Europe in the First French Empire, warding over nearly 100 million people.
Known as Le Petit Caporal (The Little Corporal) by his troops, people have thought of Napoleon Bonaparte as being short-statured for centuries.
And while this nickname was true, it was actually a form of affection towards the general from his soldiers, who ostensibly thought he was one of them and not just some far-off aristocrat.
There’s also the paintings.
The British loved to poke fun at Napoleon, after all, they were at war with him. And what better way than to do so in political caricatures? Also a personal favorite.
Enter James Gillray, a famous British cartoonist. During Napoleon’s reign, this artist released a series of hilarious mocking cartoons depicting Napoleon exactly how he hated being seen.
“[Gillray] did more than all the armies of Europe to bring me down.” — Napoleon Bonaparte
Daaaamn, son, consider yourself ye olde burned!
It was these extremely popular cartoons that made a lasting impression all over the world of Napoleon being vertically challenged.
In reality, his valet and physician said he was around 5'2 by French standards at the time. Back then, an inch was 2.7 cm versus the 2.54 cm inch Americans use today (and almost no one else in the damn world, catch up to the times, will you?)
In short, that means Napoleon was actually around 1.69 meters tall, or just above 5'5".
Still short by today’s standards, but most people have been growing taller over the centuries (thanks for that growth hormone, meat industry!). Other sources put him somewhere between a modern 5’6” or 5’7” (1.68 or 1.7 meters).
Either way, the average height in 1800s France was between 5’2” and 5’6” (1.58 and 1.68 meters), thus making Napoleon either average or slightly above at the time!
Mon petit Dieu!
#5. Marie Antoinette never said “let them eat cake.”
Back to France again, tout de suite! This time we look at the infamous last queen of France, Marie Antoinnette.
“Let them eat cake.”
We’ve all heard that phrase. It’s an example of uber-rich aristocrats being out of touch with the common folk, so much so that they think if a peasant can’t afford bread, why can’t they just get their greedy paws on a slice of luxurious cake?
Well, the original quote was actually “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” or “Let them eat brioche.” Brioche isn’t exactly the icy sugary goodness we know today as cake, but it was a form of opulent buttery bread.
The misattributed quote first appeared in Book VI of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel called Les Confessions where one particular quote stood out:
“Finally I recalled the stopgap solution of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: ‘Let them eat brioche’”
Unfortunately for reality, the work was written when Marie was still only 11 or 12 years old and hadn’t even lived in France, yet. Fortunately for anti-monarchist propagandists, truth didn’t matter.
Decades later in 1843, the quote was attributed to Queen Marie as having said it in 1789 by Alphonse Karr in Les Guêpes. It was used throughout print for years as a prime example of the frivolousness and out-of-touchness of the wealthy.
As we’re all too familiar with fake news, outright lies, and bombastic claims in the modern age, it just goes to show you — we really don’t learn a damn thing from history, do we?
Now, the next time a short hypothetical military friend shows up to your dinner party of two wearing a horned Viking helmet after returning from visiting the Great Wall of China talking about your favorite Iron Maiden song being “torture to the ears,” serve them up a hot plate of brioche-like knowledge on their ass and thank me later (as you’ll have no other friends left to talk to).
De rien, mon ami!
J.J. Pryor
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