[upbeat music]
- We've been learning about the founding fathers
of the United States since our first day of school,
but it turns out a lot of what we learned wasn't true.
So get your second grade teacher's email ready
because these are the ten biggest myths
about the founding fathers.
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This doesn't mean you can stop brushing and flossing,
but George Washington did not have wooden teeth.
America's first president did have dental issues.
A 2005 study on a pair of his dentures--
he only had one original tooth remaining by 1789--
showed that they were made from many materials--
gold, ivory, lead, human, and animal teeth.
Talk about "The Wolf of Wall Street."
They were never made of wood, nor was wood a common material
used as dentures.
The root of the myth likely came
from his ivory teeth that stained over time,
giving them the appearance of wood.
Additionally, Washington was known to repair
the dentures himself,
appearing to be carving his own wooden teeth.
It's noteworthy that this is one of the only depictions
of a physical weakness of a founding father.
Historians believe people clenched onto the myth
because it gave humanity to an otherwise godlike figure.
This myth originated from Ben mumbling and grumbling
to his daughter in a letter about the national seal,
the design for which was argued over
for six years.
At the time of the letter, the bald eagle
had been selected to be featured
on the new nation's official seal.
The eagle was a symbol of strength in Roman times,
and other pitches for the seal included images from the Bible
and of Hercules.
Benjamin wrote, "The bald eagle is a bird
"of bad moral character.
"He does not get his living honestly.
He is too lazy to fish for himself."
Kind of sounds like a bald eagle
stole Ben's girlfriend.
In comparison, Franklin said the turkey
is "a much more respectable bird,
"and withal a true original native of America.
"He is besides, though a little vain and silly,
a bird of courage."
Although he clearly liked turkeys,
there's no evidence he actually wanted it
to be the national bird.
It's hard to tell if he'd be pleased
that it became the national bird of gobbling
on Thanksgiving.
Sorry, President Biden, this one might sting.
There were technically only 12 original colonies
because Delaware was legally a part of Pennsylvania
until just before
the Declaration of Independence
was signed in 1776.
Before then, the area was called
the Lower Counties of the Colony of Pennsylvania.
It did have its own legislature,
but its governor was the same as Pennsylvania's.
The president would be proud to know
that, like the new guy at the office
offering to pick up coffees for everyone,
the state of Delaware was the first
to ratify the Constitution on December 7, 1787.
As stressful as it is to spark up a brand new country,
the founding fathers were not midnight tokers.
Hemp is indeed the marijuana plant,
and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington
did grow fields of it.
However, back then, it was just used to make rope
and canvas products for ships, cloth for fabric,
and pulp for paper.
It was not popular to smoke, and even if people did,
the THC levels would have been too low to get high
even with ye old gravity bong.
These rumors likely began in the 1970s
when the underground newspaper
"The Chicago Seed" ran a story that seven
of the founding fathers smoked hemp.
In 2008, a quote attributed to Jefferson
appeared online.
"Some of my finest hours have been spent
on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing
as far as my eye can see."
But the quote doesn't appear
in any of his official writings.
Today, the National Constitution Center
also has an article refuting the myth
the founding fathers wrote the original U.S. Constitution
on hemp paper.
You were probably taught that if you told the truth
like George Washington, you too could become
the first president of the United States.
Ironically, the story of young George's honesty
is in fact a lie.
The story goes that when George was six,
he used his new hatchet to cut down
one of his father's cherry trees.
When his father confronted him,
George confessed saying, "I cannot tell a lie."
But this never happened.
Writer Mason Locke Weems
released one of the first biographies
of Washington in 1800,
a year after his death.
He assumed that a book detailing
George's private virtues
instead of his public accomplishments
would fly of the shelves. He was right.
The book was an instant hit.
The cherry tree story, which didn't even appear
until the book's fifth edition was most popular,
humanizing a man who'd been deified
in writings to that point.
Turns out inventing about honesty
is the best policy.
It's easier to frame the American Revolution
with an us versus them,
rebels versus evil empire dynamic.
However, the reality was much more complicated.
It's important to remember that almost everyone
in the 12 colonies was British,
so to many, a revolt felt like declaring civil war.
John Dickinson, one of the founding fathers,
was still arguing against the independence
of the colonies and hoping for a possible reconciliation
with Britain as late as July 1st, 1776.
The next day, the Continental Congress
did vote unanimously
to declare independence from England,
but New York abstained from voting,
unsure how their constituents,
especially the prospering merchant class
wanted to vote.
Historians have concluded that only 45%
of adult white males supported the war effort,
and 20% openly opposed the war.
With this in mind, it seems unlikely
that everybody Paul Revere passed on his favorite ride
was humming, "The British are coming!"
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Paul Revere is famous for his midnight ride on horseback
to warn the patriot militia
of the approaching British military
in 1775.
In 1861, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
published the poem "Paul Revere's Ride."
But it was more like a movie
that's been based on a true story
than a historical recounting.
Revere didn't ride alone.
At least two others rode separate routes,
and he never made it to Concord as the poem states.
He was detained
by the Royal Military in Lexington.
Revere is most famous for galloping through villages
shouting, "The British are coming!"
But there is no way this could have happened
because it was a covert mission.
British regulars were stationed all over
the Massachusetts countryside
and would have quickly captured him.
Secondly, most people at the time
still considered themselves as British,
so to shout that they were coming
would have been confusing.
He may as well have been shouting,
"The people are coming!"
Turns out, Wadsworth missed out
on the chance for a sequel to his poem.
In 1777, a 16-year-old girl named Sybil Ludington
made a similar all-night horseback ride
through Putnam County, New York,
and Danbury, Connecticut,
to warn militias of approaching British forces.
Signatures are required for agreements big and small
from accepting a mailed package
to renting a new apartment,
so one would assume that the U.S. Constitution
would have been signed by all of its founding fathers.
However, it was not.
Of the 41 delegates present in Philadelphia
on the day the document was ratified,
38 signed it in person, and 3 refused.
Elbridge Gerry, George Mason, and Edmund Randolph
refused to sign because they were unhappy
with the final document,
the lack of a bill of a rights
being one of their main reasons.
John Dickinson was ill, so George Read
signed on his behalf, bumping the total signatures
to 39.
The two most notable absences in Signer's Hall
at the National Constitution Center
where all of the signers have a statue
are John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
who were both in Europe at the time of signing.
John was in London serving as the minister
to Great Britain, and Thomas was in Paris
as the U.S. envoy to France.
It's hard to imagine wishing for such advanced technology
as a fax machine.
The first piece of fake news
for the newly minted United States
was the story of the Liberty Bell
being rung on July 4th
after the Declaration of Independence was signed.
The first mistake is that the signing of the document
wasn't celebrated until July 8th
when it was first read aloud to the public.
July 4th was the day it was sent to the printer,
but the story originates from journalist George Lippard
who wrote a fictional account of the day
in the Philadelphia newspaper "The Saturday Courier"
in 1847.
In it, an elderly bellman was waiting
in the statehouse steeple for word that Congress
had declared independence.
His grandson was eavesdropping on the Congress
and yelled, "ring!"
The story quickly spread.
In reality, the steeple where the bell hung
was in bad condition during this time,
so it was unlikely to have been rung.
Even so, a tradition continues today
where every Fourth of July
descendants of the declaration signers
tap the bell 13 times in honor of the original 13 states.
Tough day for George Washington
whose legendary honesty was first debunked,
and now it turned out he stole a lot of thunder.
The key job on George's résumé
is that he was the first president
of the United States.
By one way of looking at it, this is actually not true.
Both during and after the revolution,
several men were elected to a role of president
of the United States in Congress assembled
including Peyton Randolph,
Thomas Mifflin, and John Hancock.
John Hanson's biographers
consider him the forgotten first president.
He was chosen as president of the Confederation Congress
in November 1781.
This was before the Constitution
had been written, so the founding fathers
were governing through Articles of Confederation.
It did not have an executive branch,
but included a president with greatly diminished powers
from the modern presidency.
It was closer to the modern role
of presiding officer of the U.S. Senate
filled by the U.S. vice president.
All in all, there were eight men
appointed to serve one-year terms
as that kind of president.
George Washington was the first president
to be elected by the people under the U.S. Constitution,
but technically if you count
those early presiding officers,
he was our ninth president.
Sounds like we need to make more denominations of coins.
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So that's it.
Some eye-opening truths about your country's dads.
Will you ever look at them the same way again?
Probably not as long as their faces
are on dollar bills.
Did we miss any myths?
Announce them in the comments below.
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