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?

Yes the reason Vikings are portrayed with horned helmets is mainly due to a stage director who was putting on Wagner's The Valkyrie Opera and he wanted the Valkyries to look fierce so gave them horned helmets apparently. So the idea somehow stuck!

the Romans were pretty violent, uncivilised and barbaric themselves....

that's one way to see it, but looking at their legal and political system, the organisation of their army and all the buildings still left today, I would disagree.

Agreed LRD. Probably derived from the Reformation and the split from Rome.

They might also have been spirited away for their own safety

Unlikely. Child princes don't stay children forever. Give it a few years and they could get the backing of a foreign King or powerful noble and lead an invasion, much like their father did.

Utterly confused by one of your paragraphs Camilla. How exactly were the Irish English before they were Celtic? The English language is 1000 years younger than the Celtic lanuage......

very few people actually bother to look into things for themselves, rather than just accept the watered-down stuff taught in school.

Yes but looking at novels by Sharon Penman or Philippa Gregory doesn't count!

Re Marie Antoinette: I read somewhere, years ago, tha she said something along the lines of let them eat brioche.

From Wikipedia: The phrase "Let them eat cake" is often attributed to Marie Antoinette, but there is no evidence she ever uttered it, and it is now generally regarded as a "journalistic cliché". This phrase originally appeared in Book VI of the first part (finished in 1767, published in 1782) of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's putative autobiographical work, Les Confessions: "Enfin je me rappelai le pis-aller d'une grande princesse à qui l'on disait que les paysans n'avaient pas de pain, et qui répondit: Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" ("Finally I recalled the stopgap solution of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: 'Let them eat brioche'"). Apart from the fact that Rousseau ascribes these words to an unknown princess, vaguely referred to as a "great princess", the purported writing date precedes Marie Antoinette's arrival in France. Some think that he invented it altogether.

My mom had the backof her hair turn white overnight after she got my dads cancer diagnosis.

Regarding the Romans, it depends on how you define 'civilised'. As in, do you mean a structured society with a legal system, or do you mean somewhere without inhumane practices such as slavery and gladiator battles?

Marie Anyoinette was under such severe stress towards the end of her life that I wouldn't be surprised if her hair did turn white. She also apparently suffered from very heavy and frequent periods, which may have been stress-related or a sign of cancer.

"History is a bad joke that we play on the dead."

Camiila - I’d love to see your sources about the Celts, since that theory invalidated my undergraduate degree!

do you mean somewhere without inhumane practices such as slavery and gladiator battles?

violent, yes they were on some aspects, but as uncivilised as slavery is, it was not a Roman concept, so I don't think it represent the entire Roman civilisation. The concept that slaves could buy their freedom put the Roman one step higher than other civilisations for example.
I am not sure that British sailors taken slaves by islamic traders even had the same chance later on.

Richard III had scoliosis, not a hunchback.

It was actually the Greeks who "invented" the concept of barbarians- because languages other than Greek sounded to them like "ba ba ba". Hence "barbaroi" as a Greek term - the people who ba

I don't believe the Egyptians built the pyramids but an older civilization, they just used them as their tombs.

Don’t take Camiila seriously! She thinks the whole population of the planet originated from the Vikings, including Africa, our mother continent.

Medievalist high-five for LRD Nothing Dark about it!

Admittedly the "earth is round" thing isn't my area of particular expertise but from my recollection of all things Apocalyptic Tradition-y (something there was quite a bit of), I think there's no definitive evidence that it was common knowledge that the earth is round - eclipses weren't understood as scientific phenomenon, they were generally seen as a sign of Bad Things Happening and were something that Hagiographies and Annals mentioned with pretty reasonable frequency.

@Osirus Say what now???

I have read that the hair turning white overnight thing is due to the dark hairs on a greying head of hair all falling out with the shock, leaving the white ones, which gives the impression that all the hair has turned white.

That's Richard the third killed the princes in the tower. Henry the 7th had far more to gain.

That's not a fact though. That's the slant on history promoted by the likes of the Richard III Society, Philippa "I want Richard III's babies" Langley, and books such as The Daughter of Time. My tutor at university, a professor of late medieval history covering the Wars of the Roses, said that probably Richard III was responsible.

well, his bones disagree with you! The discovery of his spine showed that he had scoliosis, not that he was a hunchback. This was hidden by his clothes and his armour and he was an extremely capable soldier.

I agree with the Celtic thing. I saw an interesting programme suggesting that "Celticness" was mainly a fashion and decoration movement which spread to Britain from Central Europe.

That there was no food in Ireland during the famine.

Camiila - I’d love to see your sources about the Celts, since that theory invalidated my undergraduate degree!

unfortunately, the number of people clinging tight to their university degree content is one reason for myths to survive.

I don't know why history and english graduates are s resistant to the idea that they were taught wrong information. Science graduates on the whole totally accept that new evidence emerges and understanding changes, and what was learnt at uni, whilst the best information available at the time, does become outdated in parts.

Why do you think your degree is different?

As in I agree that it wasn't a race of people which ruled the western fringes of NW Europe and was mainly a cultural thing.

dark hairs on a greying head of hair all falling out with the shock, leaving the white ones, which gives the impression that all the hair has turned white

that would make a lot of sense, much more than the idea of your hair magically changing colour overnight unless you are in student accommodation and your roommates like a prank