To wonder which ‘history facts’ aren’t true.

[LeslieKnopefan]

I understand that history isn’t always true and the further we go back in time the harder it is know what the truth is and what is simply made up.

However I recently posted that I thought it was true that Marie Antoinette hair turned white overnight after her best friends head was paraded in front of her and that I only realised it wasn’t when I told a mate who pointed out it couldn’t be true.

So which history facts that people think are true are known to be lies?

Oh you’re right about paleo.

I’m a scientist and the mere mention makes my eyes roll. Pseudoscientific bollocks. Humans are omnivores who adapt their diet remarkably well to whatever is in the vicinity, whether that’s shellfish, whales, big game, small game, plants, grains or dairy. If it’s there, we eat it.

Francis Pryor is a British archaeologist - you’ve probably seen him on time team (the one with the beard, not the one with the hat (Phil) or the one with the wacky jumpers (mick.)
He did a lot of work at Flag Fen and his work is very interesting / he’s written a couple of v nice accessible books about British prehistory.

Guy faulks didn’t plan to blow up anything. He was tortured into giving a false confession.

Probably well known but I still feel sorry that we burn his image ☹️

I know nothing but this thread is fascinating. Thank you all!

(I might surmise though, that all female historians, whether good or bad, are called Philippa)

Littlecandle

Richard did have scoliosis of the spine though, as evidenced in his skeletal remains under the Leicester car park, so although exaggerated, the name ‘hunchback’ did have some truthful source ...

I love Phil Harding.
Just putting that out there.

I love Phil Harding.
Just putting that out there.

I love time team. Archaeology is not my field (I’m a geneticist) but it’s an amateur obsession of mine :)
I watched so much TT on maternity leave that ds would soothe as soon as he heard the theme tune....

I can mainline three in a row

rule one of history (coming from my history professor)

History is written by the winners.

as far as myths - plague one (black death) maybe real due to plague masks being filled with scented herbs etc.

the great fire of london programme was awesome.

clan tartans (im scottish so this one im aware of) started off as hunting and warfare camoflage - clans adopted the colours later on (no i dont know when but WAAAAAY before victorian times)

6 million people in holocaust is a rough estimate.

Marie antoinette lost her head over cake.

Certain tartans being tied to certain clans was an invention of two men to sell tartan.

It was invented in 1842. A lot of Scottish myths are romanticism invented in the 19th century.

Agree with gryffen: the number of people exterminated in the holocaust is a rough estimate and you need to look at what they count in their estimations (which groups and which camps you look at). It’s more horrifying when you calculate ALL the groups together (POW, Roma and Sinti, political prisoners etc).

• another one is the presumption that soldiers during WW1 spent all their time in trenches and that’s not true. They were rotated in and out to try and minimise the impact and possibility of shellshock. Being in the trenches was incredibly dull too from the first hand reports I’ve read.

There is actually a fairly solid theory that the waves of plague were not Yersina Pestis at all, but an unknown haemorrhagic fever along the lines of Marburg/dengue/Crimean Congo haemorragic fever.

The epidemiology fits - the main arguments are:
Some places were decimated by plague but had zero rats atcthe time (Iceland)
The epidemiology fits not plague but a 37 ish day incubation period and a person tonoerson transmission (you can actually trace who is likely to have infected whom in parish records)
People at the time recognised it was spread person to person - they instituted quarantine (Eyam for example) which would have been TOTALLY ineffective of rats were the vector.
Pneumonic and bubonic plague does not spread like that from person to person.

They have found y pestis in toothbpulp from plague pits but I don’t think that’s a smoking gun - an RNA virus and many DNA biruses wouldn’t survive and loads of stuff was circulating atcthe time - including regular plague.

There were some outbreaks of a similar illness in the trenches in the war.

Anyway as I say only a theory but one I find pretty solid.

6 million people in holocaust is a rough estimate.

It's a pretty well documented fact, as the Nazis were kind enough to leave an excellent paper trail, although there has been some rounding up.

Quite obviously it is going to be even more horrific if you add together ALL the victims. That's rather obvious.

www.livescience.com/32172-can-fright-turn-hair-suddenly-white.html

Hair cannot turn white overnight. Your hair is dead.

MrsDilber re the white hair thing.
Yy I agree. Hair can grow out white but surely not 'turn white' once it is out of your scalp.
But the person in the KX fire - honestly - it cant have been ash etc as it was about a week later but his hair was definitely whiter. Bizarre

But trauma can lead to hair falling out leaving or exposing white hair.
My DP always loses lots of hair when stressed.

Is biffidus digestivus, or whatever they put in Yakult, complete bollocks?

Could dinosaurs have been furry or feathery or as smooth as a banana?

As a historian I love spotting the bollocks that some films/tv programmes make of it, but I'm not such a spod that I can't enjoy some bad history if the story is told well enough. I also love "bad" history because if nothing else it sets you off to research how bad it actually is.

Re old Marie Antoinette, I'm sure it's already been covered, but it's possible that her hair did sort of turn white overnight, but that would have been due to her also losing a lot of her hair in a type of alopecia thing with the other hairs that were already more grey would lose all pigmentation. Apparently this can happen due to stress, grief, etc.

Poor Yorick - Yep, the paper trail from the camps is pretty well documented but it gets "fuzzy" when you look at: deaths via the mobile killing squads, deaths whilst in Gestapo custody, deaths from mob groups instigated from the Nazis, the start date that you look at the death numbers (e.g. do you start from 1938 Kristallnacht and the murder of Jews in the concentration camps such as Dachau or Sachsenhausen or "only" begin from 1939 and the extermination camps?)

The one about people not smelling in the past...well, they did in the 1970's! I was there! And, in countries where deodorant is less available although I do believe if you washed a lot and changed clothes a lot it might be kind of ok, but surely that was a tiny minority of people given the huge resources and energy to change clothes. If you had a shirt with a detachable collar, surely the main body of it stank by the end of the week. So, I'm not convinced at all by the historian woman's experiment, she's probably like me, a fairly non-smelly person who assumes everyone else is non-smelling like her!

MorningsEleven I do not personally know about the stuff they put in Yakult. But I have read a science write up that said any live bacteria is extremely unlikely to survive the storage and transport conditions any yoghurt is put through. Its conclusion seemed to be that if you ate live yoghurt soon after it was made, it would have live bacteria, but by the time you buy it in the shops, it will probably have died off.

@RunLillian88

Can you point me towards something explaining how he wasn't involved... because he was.

He was the one found with the barrels (the others died fighting etc). Yes, he was tortured and probably horrifically but it wasn't a fake confession. He signed two confessions - one after torture and another 8 days later after less horrific interrogation.
He was part of the plot, he helped take the barrels of gunpowder into a chamber underneath the kings seat and was found amongst sed barrels. He didn't invent the plan, but did take part it in.

At least, that's the version id always known.

Or he signed two confessions - one to his part in the plot and the other naming the co-conspirators. The torture could have last 8 days... I can't remember!
Just remember that he signed 2 confessions and the signatures were different as one was after he'd been broken down from torture.
But anyway, he wasn't the brains behind the plot or the main guy but part of the plan anyway.

Jesus wasn’t born in a stable.

The Wool Pack! That was a very good book.
I uncharitably thought that Marie Antoinette simply stopped dyeing her hair.