This was a fun read.

http://www.writespirit.net/ad/greatest_historical_myths

And don't go into a rant about how some of the religious references are not historical, we know.. we know..

17. Marie Antoinette said "Let them each cake"

Each?

9. Nero fiddled while Rome burned ~ Though he was innocent of this disaster...

If he was technically innocent (hotly disputed by reputable historians), he certainly took advantage of the situation, by building his new palace on the burnt remains...

6. America became independent on July 4, 1776

This is a matter of interpretation, not some great "gotcha!"

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"I have this theory that the Apollo missions were faked when NASA found out that general relativity was wrong because the Earth was expanding due to the Sun's iron core being influenced by magnetic waves from the electric universe after being perturbed by Planet X and thereby causing global warming. Where should I start a thread about this?" ~ ToSeek

"Those are the people that wonder how a thermos knows whether to keep something hot or keep something cold." ~ NeoWatcher

Myth number 4:By my recollection, Columbus did his deed in 1492 (and later years). 500 years later would be 1992. Washington Irving died in 1859. So that should read much less than 400 years.

Don't they teach arithmetic anymore? Is it all calculators and readouts?

You know, for an illiterate, King John had an awfully large library.

Also, strictly speaking, yes, George Washington was the first President, given that the office those fourteen other men held was not the same at all. For one, none of them held the office under the Constitution; before that, I don't think the US could really be said to have existed as a political entity.

Now, the cherry tree thing? That's a myth.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Re the violin and Nero:This puts the origin of the violin at 1664. Actually, the violin in its modern form showed up between 1520 and 1550 in northern Italy.

Sri Chinmoy Centre? There's a clue right there re veracity.

Oh well.

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I'd quibble with the description of the electric arc lamp as having a "carbon filament". In fact, it had no filament at all; the light was produced by an arc (plasma discharge) between two carbon electrodes -- hence the name.

To be completely accurate, Edison's lab produced the first practical incandescent light bulb. While that may not be the way the general public thinks of it, no historian would claim anything stronger.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

It's just sad when someone tries to correct misconceptions by issuing other misconceptions...

I've had an idea for a few years about where the idea could have come from that the fruit in Eden was an apple. The scientific name for the tree genus, and thus presumably the either Latin or Greek word for "apple", is Malus, which is the same as Latin for "evil"... a coincidental homophone that people mistook for a connection?

I've never been comfortable about the claim (wrongly, apparently, attributed to Marie Antoinette) about "Let them eat cake" being cold and heartless towards the plight of the peasantry.

My read on it is that it's more likely to be impressive ignorance regarding how the world works. The same sort of ignorance we ourselves see every day. They press a button and the lights come on, and that's everything they'll ever know about electricity and where it comes from. The same sort of person who'll drive all day when the oil light turns on.

In "Marie Antoinette"'s case (or whoever actually said it, if anyone), I'm pretty sure that this person had no idea what it meant when told that the crops had failed. No clue that bread and cake were made from flour, grain flour, and that if there was a shortage of grain for flour, both bread and cake would be very scarce.

This is the sort of person who never went hungry a day in her life, nor so much as prepared a single meal. She may well have been genuinely concerned about the plight of the peasantry and believed with perfect sincerity that she'd come up with a valuable idea that surely was too obvious to have to mention. She probably also assumed someone would take care of it, like they took care of every other problem that might ever have intruded on her tiny little world.

She was as ignorant as a boxorz of roxorz, and I'm not even sure I could entirely blame her for how she'd been raised and "educated".

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[Dr. Horrible]___________________________[Penny]
Listen close to everybody's heart________And you believe there's good in everybody's heart
And hear that breaking sound_____________Keep it safe and sound
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart____With hope you can do your part
And crashing to the ground_______________To turn a life around

Not even that. The "apple" concept is far, far older than even the earliest semblances of Latin language. It was a Sumerian/Babylonian/Persian tale before it was even a Hebrew tale.

There are some interesting linguistics to the story, though. "eden", or "edin", in Sumerian, was a word that meant "the land beyond the cultivated land", or the "wilderness". It's said that "eden" was a paradise. "Paradiso" is a very specific Persian word for a 4 walled garden. The Taj Mahal is laid out in a paradiso concept. There are said to be 7 gates one must attain to get to the paradise of Eden. In the original Sumerian, "gates" as translated are mountain passes. So, in the earliest known version of the story, the Garden of Eden would have been a 4 walled garden 7 mountain passes from the town it was written in

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"I have this theory that the Apollo missions were faked when NASA found out that general relativity was wrong because the Earth was expanding due to the Sun's iron core being influenced by magnetic waves from the electric universe after being perturbed by Planet X and thereby causing global warming. Where should I start a thread about this?" ~ ToSeek

"Those are the people that wonder how a thermos knows whether to keep something hot or keep something cold." ~ NeoWatcher

That's how I've always seen it as well. Of course, such ignorance of the realities of their subjects' lives is equally unforgivable to a starving peasant. (Er... let them eat pheasant? )

As you point out, though, the phrase has come to signify uncaring arrogance rather than ignorance. I doubt that will change anytime soon.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

How interesting!

Up from Earth's Centre, through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate...

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

It's interesting that in the list they mention that India could have gained independance earlier if they had done things different. Gee, you think? Are there any events in history where things couldn't have turned out differently if people had done things differently? If in 1776 instead of a declaration of independence there had been a declaration of we love the British, the British are so cool, I think things would have turned out a bit different there.

Magellan actually did complete a cycle around the Earth during this lifetime. While it is true his final voyage ended in the East Indies, he had been further east of that point earlier in his life.

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

I think the whole "7 gates" thing is a bit of a recurring theme in early religions.

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I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

Did they bring his body back? (Bit smelly perhaps.) How about his log entries? Maybe that could be considered a primitive "downloading" of his mind and so at least a part of him did make all the way around on one trip?

Grrr... wrong place...

In the Bible, it's "the fruit of the tree." However, most Biblical scholars think it was probably a fig. Regardless, the first portrayal of the fruit of the tree as an apple dates to the Middle Ages--probably because, in the location the painting was done, apples were a common fruit.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I heard pomegranate.

But, yes, the Bible doesn't specify. The earliest paintings were made by artists who were unfamiliar with either figs or pomegranates. They chose a fruit that was familiar.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov