History has a funny way of repeating itself, especially when the people repeating it aren't
exactly telling the full story.
Many of the clean, easy, wholesome "facts" you learned in history class would earn you
a big fat F in real life.
Here are a few historical lies that will make you rethink your entire education:
The British are coming
If your dusty old history books are to be believed, the build-up to the American Revolutionary
War was pretty dramatic: Paul Revere rode through a bunch of towns on horseback screaming
"The British are coming!" and everyone freaked out and got their guns and the war started
the next day.
As it turns out, that only sort-of happened.
Revere did ride to Lexington, Massachusetts, to warn everybody.
But the actual quote was way different.
According to the website for The Paul Revere House, a sentry at the house where Adams and
Hancock were told Revere to keep the noise down.
To which Revere replied dramatically: "Noise!
You'll have noise enough before long.
The regulars are coming out!"
That's...not nearly as catchy.
But sometimes the truth sucks.
Napoleon complex
Everybody knows that the famous French military leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, was actually super
short.
According to the persistent myth, Napoleon stood a measly 5 foot, 2 inches.
It didn't stop him from kicking ass during the war, but the myth became infamous enough
that a psychologist coined the term "Napoleon complex," used to describe people who make
up for their short height by being extra aggressive.
Of course, these days we just call them Joe Pesci.
But the thing is, Napoleon wasn't even that short.
We now know that he was actually more along the lines of 5'6"—or, more to the point,
the average height at the time.
How did history get so wrong?
His height was lost in translation between French and British measurements.
Annnd then some healthy propaganda finished the job.
Newton's apple
When the history of Isaac Newton is taught, many teachers quote the old story about an
apple hitting him on the head, prodding him to figure out gravity.
You probably believed it in part because, duh, it's an old story, and who doesn't love
a good eureka moment?
"I think I just got an Idea.
Ahh!
I got glass in my face."
But, again, this story is only sort-of true.
While Newton did supposedly put two and two together by watching an apple fall, The Royal
Society in London concluded that "there is no evidence to suggest that it hit him on
the head."
That's a bit of a bummer.
But, hey, he still came up with the theory of gravity.
And our apple-based innovations have only gone downhill from there…
"Well, we'll just tell your mother that ah… that we ate it all."
Edison's inventions
In school, we learn that Thomas Edison gave America electricity and light bulbs and a
bunch of other awesome stuff.
And he did, kind of...through being a monopolizing, thieving jerk.
According to Ernest Freeberg, author of The Age of Edison, Edison didn't really invent
the lightbulb.
He was just the best at telling people he invented the lightbulb.
In reality, he built his version on the backs of other inventions by other inventors, and
took all the credit.
But one of Edison's worst stunts?
Electrocuting animals like dogs and horses in front of paying crowds just to prove that
alternating current was too dangerous to put into people's homes.
He went so far as to kill a circus elephant, just to make his competing direct current
seem more family-friendly.
What a jerk!
"I'm the wizard of Menlo Park!
Take your F------ family on a vacation up my ass!"
Good ol' Gandhi
The idea that Gandhi's mind was anything except pure seems almost heretical, and in fact,
Gandhi's biography by Pulitzer prize–winning journalist Joseph Lelyveld's has been banned
in Gandhi's home state for blasphemy because it defied the popular image of Gandhi as a
saint.
Most of us don't know that Gandhi abandoned his wife to live with a rich male bodybuilder.
A gay Gandhi is just fine, but then he went and tried to erase all references of homosexual
traditions from Indian temples with his act of "sexual cleansing."
He then slept in bed naked with his teenage grand-nieces to test his own sexual temptations.
Even worse than Gandhi's hypocrisy was his terrible racism.
When he and his followers were led to a lower caste jail for protesting, Gandhi wrote:
"We could understand not being classed with whites, but to be placed on the same level
as the Natives seemed too much to put up with.
K------ are as a rule uncivilized—the convicts even more so.
They're troublesome, very dirty and live like animals."
Though Gandhi did bring some good to the world, he was still only human—a human with some
seriously messed up ideas.
"This is one bad mutha you don't want to mess with."
World War II enthusiasm
These days, you get the impression that World War II was just too good to resist for Americans.
Who wouldn't want to defeat a bunch of Nazis?
But Americans at the time weren't so enthusiastic.
Europe seemed like another world, and the U.S. had no place in their fight.
Plus, the war meant the draft was coming back, and most people weren't interested in having
a repeat of the Civil War or World War I.
According to Lynne Olson's book Those Angry Days, college students were one of the largest
contingents against the war.
The sentiment was so strong that students at Yale formed an anti-war group called "America
First."
Members of the group included future influential names like Gerald Ford, Gore Vidal, and John
F. Kennedy.
Alamo heroes
The battle at the Alamo is usually taught as a bunch of heroic white Americans fighting
for freedom against the dastardly Mexicans.
Sadly, that barely resembles what happened.
When the battle of the Alamo commenced, it was far from a war of white versus brown.
"Free blacks, slaves, Indians from central Mexico who spoke no Spanish, Tejanos [Mexicans
who sided with the Americans], Europeans" all fought for the side of Texas, and most
of the American soldiers did fight to their death.
Texans spread the word of the Alamo and greatly exaggerated the tale.
When the rebels and General Santa Anna's men fought again, the Texan soldiers killed any
Mexicans they could find, whether they were soldiers or not.
They remembered the Alamo alright.
They just forgot most of the story.
Even the best of us get confused about the Alamo.
"Aren't we gonna see the basement?"
"Ha, there's no basement at the Alamo! Hahahaha"
Cherry chopper
For decades, it seemed like American classrooms couldn't get through the Revolutionary War
without teaching the story about how America's first president, George Washington, famously
confessed to chopping down his father's cherry tree when he was just six years old.
"I'v cut down more than just cherry trees with this axe, child!
By the power of America."
The story has become such an infamous myth over the years that the official website of
the home of Washington, Mount Vernon, took steps to squash it once and for all.
They definitively state that the whole thing was made up by Washington biographer Mason
Locke Weems in 1806 for his book, The Life of George Washington.
Why would he make up a story like that?
For the most American reason of all, of course: to make more money by selling more copies.
Thanks for watching!
Click the Grunge icon to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Plus check out all this cool stuff we know you'll love, too!