Fake news may be getting its moment in the spotlight, but it's hardly a new phenomenon.
In fact, people have been mistakenly believing total nonsense since the dawn of human civilization.
And sometimes, those mistakes actually end up changing the world.
Here's a look at some false "facts" that changed history.
The immortality elixir
Once upon a time, people believed alchemists could create magical potions that could do
just about anything, including grant immortality.
So in the year 850, a Chinese alchemist finally came up with what he thought was the perfect
formula:
75 parts saltpeter, 15 parts charcoal, and 10 parts sulfur.
A contemporary text recorded the results, saying
"...smoke and flames result, so that [the alchemists'] hands and faces have been burnt,
and even the whole house where they were working burned down."
That's because, in arguably the greatest irony of all time, instead of inventing an immortality
potion, the alchemist had accidentally created gunpowder, which would lead to centuries of
warfare and genocide around the globe.
Whoops!
Phlogiston
Back in the day, people believed that things burned because they contained a substance
called phlogiston.
Things that burn easily had a lot of phlogiston, and when it was gone, burning stopped.
Plus, when the air absorbed too much of the substance it became phlogisticated and wouldn't
allow anything else to burn.
That theory stood for about a century, but in the 1770's, French scientist Antoine Lavoisier
decided to try and prove once and for all that phlogiston was nonsense.
To do so, he performed a series of experiments, leading to the first descriptions of oxygen,
and eventually to the creation of an entire new field of modern science we now know as…
chemistry.
So, thanks, phlogiston!
The evil eye
Nowadays, we know that your eyes work by receiving light, which is converted by photoreceptors
into electrical impulses interpreted by your brain.
But thousands of years ago in ancient Greece, scientists thought eyes worked not by receiving
light, but rather by sending out invisible beams of fire.
Not only is this wrong, it also contributed to one of the most widespread superstitions
in the world - the Evil Eye.
Cultures and religions across the globe have come up with all sorts of wards and charms
against the power of the Evil Eye.
But the most effective?
Is simply the scientific knowledge that eyes really don't work like that.
Unless, of course, you're in the X-Men.
Lysenkoism
In 1936, Trofim Lysenko presented the bizarre theory of Lysenkoism to the Conference of
the Lenin Academy in Moscow.
This theory essentially claimed that plants would adhere to communist principles.
Rather than traits being inherited through genetics, they could be trained by the people.
It was nurture over nature, only with beets and potatoes.
Soviet farmers were taught one plant would sacrifice itself for the good of its neighbors,
that plants chose their reproductive partners, and that plants would eventually just get
used to those cold Russian winters and start growing better.
As propaganda, it was great.
As agriculture, it was a colossal disaster.
According to the Smithsonian, it kicked off decades of food shortages, famines, and crop
failures.
It also destroyed the science of agriculture itself within the Soviet Union, as those who
argued against Lysenkoism were sent to prison, executed, or simply just disappeared.
Lysenko essentially told Soviet leaders what they wanted to hear and stopped science for
decades, at the cost of untold lives.
El Dorado
The stories of a city of gold hidden somewhere deep in the South American jungles started
some time after 1521 when Spanish explorer Cortes "danced across the water" and looted
the Aztec empire.
Everybody wanted in on the action, and the legend of El Dorado was born.
Of course, no such city actually exists, but thousands of European looters swarmed over
the Western world trying to find it, destroying entire civilizations an enslaving a continent
in an effort to get El Dorado's fat booty.
Ironically, historians now believe the Spanish actually found the basis for the El Dorado
myths when they conquered the Muisca people in 1537.
But the conquistadors didn't realize it, and kept on pillaging and looting for centuries
in search of a non-existent dreamland.
The only good thing that came of it?
Thanks to their pointless search for a non-existent city, European explorers ended up mapping
almost all of South America.
Just like Google, only with way, way more massacres.
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