Old timers might remember the History Channel as a stream of World War II documentaries,
but a lot has changed since then.
The new History is a cranky old conspiracy theorist who secretly binges reality shows.
Here are some of the times the History Channel lied to you.
In 1945, Adolf Hitler took his own life in his underground bunker.
That's reality.
Conspiracy theories about how he might've escaped aren't just wrong, but deeply offensive.
Unfortunately, back in 2014, people got riled up when the FBI declassified documents reporting
on the possibility that Hitler had actually run away to South America, shaved his mustache,
and assumed a new identity.
Here's the thing: FBI reports don't mean something really happened, because the FBI has to document
everything, no matter how stupid it is.
So every time a lunatic or attention seeker claimed to see Hitler, the FBI wrote it down
- that's their job.
As Skeptoid points out, they have been forced to document all kinds of nonsensical falsehoods.
Then in 2015, according to Variety, the History Channel basically gave real history the middle
finger.
The reality show Hunting Hitler, apparently an effort to finally settle the matter with
a crack team of investigators, was really nothing more than a ratings ploy.
The series showed the team go to Argentina and investigate false leads which proved nothing
whatsoever… because, well, no genuine evidence exists.
Aside from trivializing the subject matter, Hunting Hitler also trivialized reality.
Biopics deserve some leeway because turning a real person's life into an interesting movie
- or series - can be hard.
But according to historian David Nasaw, the epic eight-part drama series The Kennedys,
first optioned by the History Channel in 2009, played so fast and loose with reality that
it might as well have used a different name for the family.
Overall, the big problem seems to be that the show's producer was trying to turn the
Kennedy family into the family from The Godfather, leading to a series full of crazy escapades,
sibling rivalry, and big money bribing.
Some of the more bizarre fictional plot twists inserted into the story involve patriarch
Joe Kennedy Sr., who is depicted as giving Jackie Kennedy a $1 million trust fund to
stay with his son - which makes no sense - and also paying off a Chicago mobster to secure
JFK's presidential win.
Neither of these theories have any credibility, and are basically just there to spice up the
narrative.
The actual Kennedys are a powerful family, but whether you love 'em or hate 'em, these
TV characters weren't the real deal.
The History Channel spent two years holding a place on their schedule for The Kennedys
premiere, but when the series was finally ready in 2011, they quietly moved the series
to their Canadian branch, History Television, according to The Globe and Mail.
It's long past time to rectify a sin that's been perpetuated for centuries.
Assuming the biblical characters were real people, none of them were white folks.
All those people were from either North Africa or the Middle East, so there's no way they
had European features or English accents.
Yes, both classical artwork and Hollywood have been lying about this for a crazy long
amount of time, but it's the 21st century, and the History Channel miniseries The Bible
has no excuse for featuring such a whitewashed cast.
To make things even worse, The Guardian notes that out of the few major characters played
by minority actors - one of them is Satan.
Yes, the devil.
Could they be more offensive?
Ironically, the show's producers claimed their program was made out of a quest to cure "Bible
illiteracy," but the series is Bible illiterate itself.
The show cherry-picks elements from the "easy" biblical tales while ignoring more ambiguous,
dark, or confusing aspects.
The result is a clean, sanitized, easy-breezy version that distorts the entire message of
the text, rendering it unrecognizable.
In other words, if your knowledge of the Bible comes from History's The Bible, you really
don't know all that much about the Bible.
The ancient Maya were unquestionably amazing.
Their brilliant insights regarding mathematics and astronomy were so far beyond their time
that it's hard to even conceptualize how they did it.
That's why in 2012, people got freaked out that the Mayan calendar randomly ended on
December 21, 2012.
The History Channel did a lot of fear-mongering about this stuff, even referring to 2012 as
the long-awaited "Doomsday."
"2012, a date that is prophesied as the end of the world."
Then 2012 came and went, with no apocalypse.
What happened?
Don't blame the Maya; blame the History Channel.
As National Geographic explains, the Maya never predicted a doomsday.
December 21, 2012, was simply the end of the 13th cycle, at which point the calendar would
reset to zero.
Basically, it's like how you put up a new calendar every January.
So if those ancient Maya had ever visited us via time machine, they would've scoffed
at how all these silly 21st-century folks totally misinterpreted their calendar.
Wouldn't it be awesome if Bigfoot was real?
The world would feel a little more magical, for sure.
But there's no magic to be found in the 2015 History Channel special Bigfoot Captured,
a ratings stunt that depicted a supposedly "real" sasquatch being apprehended.
While some cool stuff came out of the program, such as an 8-foot 3-D-printed Bigfoot skeleton
that was reported on by the Idaho State Journal, the special was deceptively advertised, featuring
no clear documentation that it was fake outside of a small disclaimer saying the program featured,
quote, "some dramatization."
"Something's out here, dude, something's watching.
I don't know."
As Paste points out, people all over Twitter freaked out about the whole thing.
Snopes even wrote up the series.
Considering that much of Bigfoot's popularity today is the result of pranks, the fakeness
of Bigfoot Captured perhaps isn't shocking.
Still, the whole thing raises questions about the responsibility of filmmakers, and it's
shady that the network interviewed professors without informing them of the film's purpose.
"There are no sasquatches.
There are no bigfeet."
Everything on Ancient Aliens is faker than fake, according to the Smithsonian.
Even when the show pulls from real sources, it distorts, misquotes, and mischaracterizes
them so badly that it becomes a cheesy sci-fi epic rather than a genuine documentary.
When History isn't making up narratives about how aliens may have slaughtered the dinosaurs
to make way for humans, it's promoting even zanier nonsense like the idea that ancient
Egyptians flew extraterrestrial airplanes and Martians created human life.
[Martian stuff]
In order to create these zany theories, the program basically figures out a conclusion,
finds a real event that has absolutely nothing to do with their narrative, and then omits
any information that doesn't support that narrative.
Then, if something doesn't make sense?
Chalk it up to those oh-so-mysterious aliens.
Boom.
Ancient Aliens is like a high school prank that got way out of hand.
The disappearance of daring pilot Amelia Earhart in 1937 is a genuine mystery, and while there
are some wacked out theories about what happened, most people have accepted that her true ending
was probably a lot more tragic.
That's why the whole world got pumped about the History Channel's 2017 special Amelia
Earhart: The Lost Evidence, which theorized that Amelia and her navigator Fred Noonan
were captured by the Japanese and may have even lived for some years afterward.
On the surface, this special wasn't just some Ancient Aliens nonsense: The conversation
centered around a new photo the network had unearthed, reportedly dug up from the U.S.
National Archives, which depicted Earhart and Noonan both alive in Japan.
"You think this is Amelia Earhart?”
“That's right."
While nothing was confirmed, the story got national attention.
Then… two days later, the whole thing got debunked.
According to National Geographic, an intrepid internet blogger found the exact same photo
in a Japanese coffee table travelogue published in 1935 - two years before the famous pilot
disappeared.
Oops.
The History Channel's program Mountain Men, about hard-edged survivalists scraping by
in the brutal wilderness, is ridiculously embellished.
For example, just ask one of the show's stars, Tom Oar, who joked to the Billings Gazette
that the show always exaggerated his life to seem more dangerous - and less mundane
- than it really was.
Even the more exciting incidents, like wild animal sightings, aren't quite what they seem,
such as when a wolf encounter was recreated with regular dogs.
"This is a dangerous wolf, though.
I think he'll be back."
According to Alabama Entertainment, Oar's fellow Mountain Men star Eustace Conway once
admitted to Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert that his crazy wild man persona was
mostly an act.
While Conway does live out in the wilderness, by all accounts, he's not the broke, penniless
fella the show makes him out to be.
“I feel good about that achievement."
Texans take their history seriously, and they don't like a bunch of outsiders painting them
the wrong way.
So back in 2015, when the History Channel aired the drama series Texas Rising, which
claimed to be a historical drama about the creation of the Texas Rangers, Lone Star locals
stood up and took notice of the show's many historical inaccuracies.
Soon afterward, the internet got flooded with so many angry Texans that even the Wall Street
Journal commented on it.
Texas Monthly ripped the series to shreds, pointing out lazily incorrect dates, inaccurate
fashion trends, and the fact that the show's desert landscapes had more in common with
classic Hollywood Westerns than the real Texas locations where historical events took place.
Basically, the History Channel walked into a Texas bar, said all the wrong things, and
got punched out by the locals.
Maybe they'll be more careful next time?
"Go ahead, make my day."
In 2011, Comedy Central's The Daily Show celebrated the holiday season with a section called "Tree
Fighting Ceremony," where host Jon Stewart noted an amusing anecdote.
Supposedly from the years 1789 to 1856, the U.S. Congress valued Christmas Day so little
that they simply used it as a regular workday.
Well, fun-spoiling Politifact swooped in, studied up, and pointed out that this allegation
is completely inaccurate, as both the House and Senate pretty much always took the day
off.
Don't blame Stewart or Comedy Central for this "pants on fire"-level error, however.
The true fault lies with their source, the History Channel, which in 1997 aired a special
called Christmas Unwrapped: The History of Christmas.
Stewart aired a clip from the special on his show.
"The United States Congress sat in session and continued to stay open on Christmas Day
for most of the next 67 years."
Oops.
Clearly, Stewart and The Daily Show producers thought they could trust a channel named "History."
"Ya know what, History Channel, you have f---ed me for the last time!"
Come on, you didn't really think Pawn Stars was real, did you?
If you couldn't tell just from watching it and cringing every time literally anyone delivers
their lines, the actual interactions are highly staged.
Those seemingly spontaneous customer interactions you see on TV are arranged way beforehand.
Even the bargaining and dialogue is lightly scripted and practiced in advance, probably
to make sure neither party storms off in a huff about getting a bad deal.
In 2012, star Corey Harrison told Huffington Post that these days, he's far more likely
to privately meet someone in an empty hallway than to bargain with them at the counter.
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