Recently, a post from Reddit user sad-talking_head on the popular Ask Reddit forum caught my eye. In it, they asked people, “What are some historical lies that people generally believe?” and the answers were both entertaining and informative. I decided I had to share; so, here are some of the best:
1. “That knights in plate mail were big, slow, clunky bruisers. In reality, plate armor is actually easier to move around in than what we think of in video games as medium armor, like chainmail.”
Print Collector / Getty Images
“Why? Because it’s fitted to the wearer and held on with a complex collection of straps and belts. This distributes the weight evenly across the body. In comparison to chain mail (or samurai o-yoroi, which often comes to mind when this is mentioned), this is far more comfortable, as the others put weight directly on the arms and shoulders.
In a similar vein, padded or cloth armor is often portrayed in games as the lowest form of protection, but a properly made gambeson of such is actually surprisingly good protection. The layers of tough textile, often stitched so the weave is going in different directions in each layer, actually can really stagger a slashing blow.“
—u/Sumsuchuser
2. “That Cleopatra was some sort of otherworldly beauty who mesmerized every man she met. Ancient historians were more impressed/scandalized by her intelligence and ability to manipulate as easily as she breathed, and it wasn’t until centuries later that she began to develop this reputation as a sexy seductress.”
Dea / Getty Images
“Cleopatra’s ancestors were big fans of incest (the 16 roles of her great-great-grandparents were filled by just six individuals), and members of the Ptolemaic dynasty had a reputation for being...odd-looking. Cleopatra, reportedly, was above-average-looking compared to others in her family, but according to historians like Plutarch, the general consensus was that ‘her beauty…was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her.’”
—u/Dahhhkness
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3. “Also, that Cleopatra was Egyptian. The Ptolemaic dynasty were the descendants of Macedonian Greeks. Ptolemy, who founded the dynasty, was one of the generals of Alexander the Great and took Egypt when Alexander died and his Empire split apart.”
Sepia Times / Getty Images
“The Ptolemaic dynasty was super into inbreeding to maintain bloodlines. They rarely married outside their family, and when they did, they brought in Macedonian or Greek nobility to marry. There’s some speculation that Cleopatra may have had some Syrian blood from several generations prior, but she was almost entirely Greek.
She was the first of the Ptolemaic dynasty to actually learn how to speak Egyptian, which was notable. The family ruled Egypt for almost three centuries, and it wasn’t until the last in the dynasty that any of them bothered to learn the language. It endeared her to the Egyptian people, and they saw her as one of their own. Ethnically speaking, though, she was Greek.“
—u/deleted
4. “That Marie Antoinette proclaimed, ‘Let them eat cake.’ In reality, it seems to have emerged from a short anecdote in an autobiography published by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and is frequently misattributed to her.”
Heritage Images / Getty Images
—u/deleted
5. “That Henry VIII divorced his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, because she was ‘ugly,’ or that he was deceived by a flattering portrait, only to be disappointed in real life.”
Hans Holbein the Younger / Via commons.wikimedia.org, Hans Holbein the Younger / Via commons.wikimedia.org
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“When Anne first arrived in England, Henry thought it would be romantic to disguise himself when meeting her for the first time. When he attempted to kiss her, she had no idea it was the King, so she pulled away. Henry’s ideas of a chivalric first meeting ended in humiliation, so he would have taken an instant dislike to her for damaging his ego.
Also, there is no evidence to suggest that Holbein’s portrait of Anne was not a true likeness. Holbein’s talents continued to be praised throughout Henry’s reign. It is more likely that he was trying to cover up his embarrassment at their disastrous first meeting by stating that she was not what he expected, or that he was convinced she wasn’t a virgin.“
—u/eviewevie
6. “‘NASA spent millions on developing a pen for space. The Russians used a pencil.’ [This suggests NASA wasn’t very intelligent.] They were perfectly correct to make a pen for space. A pencil would have released loads of tiny graphite particles during use, which would float around and interfere with electronics.”
NASA / Via commons.wikimedia.org
—u/wombey12
“NASA also didn’t make the pen; Fisher did, and he developed it with his own money. NASA only bought it afterward, as did the Soviets.”
—u/deleted
7. “That the Roman Empire fell in 476 CE, and then it was the Dark Ages. In reality, a peasant living through 476 probably wouldn’t have realized they were living through the end of one age and the start of another.”
Heritage Images / Getty Images
“The beginnings of feudalism had already started back during Diocletian’s reign; barbarian warbands had been a fact of life for generations.
In some ways, the fall of Rome was sudden and traumatic (the population of Rome itself absolutely cratered in the 400s, after all), but it was really more of a gradual, centuries-long transition than a fall.“
—u/bigblindmax
“Also, the Eastern half of the Roman Empire continued in an unbroken line until the Ottomans took Constantinople a millennium later in 1453. We call the Eastern Empire after the fall of the West the Byzantine Empire, but the people living in it at the time called it Rome and knew they had a history stretching back to 753 BC in Italia.”
—u/deleted
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8. “Nero probably did not ‘fiddle while Rome burned.’ This is just one of many rumors that Tacitus and other Roman historians list as circulating at the time of the great Roman fire.”
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“Nero wasn’t even in Rome at the time (he was at a private estate on the coast). After Nero knew that Rome was on fire, he set out immediately to Rome and put together a fire brigade to save people and property. He then paid millions of sesterces out of his own pocket to rebuild much of the city.”
—u/deleted
9. “No, burning the Library of Alexandria didn’t set humanity back by a thousand years. Charlemagne would not have been the first person on the moon if it had remained intact.”
—u/JeromesDream
10. “That Napoleon was short. He was of average height at those times. The French just used a different scale of measurement.”
Heritage Images / Getty Images
—u/deleted
“He was reported to be slightly over 5’2” by three different French ‘peers’ when asked, but the French inch was around 2.7 cm instead of 2.54 cm. This would mean that he was, in fact, 5’5“-5’7,“ or 169 cm, which at the time was barely an inch shorter than the average.
The idea that he was SHORT was due to English propaganda birthed by James Gillray, basically an 18th-century comic drawer.“
—u/Pyanez11
11. “That Anne Boleyn had six fingers. She would have never been a lady in waiting to Catherine of Aragon or even a mistress to Henry if she did, as it would be considered an imperfection. Most of it was made up after she was executed.”
Robert Alexander / Getty Images
—u/90sthingz
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12. “That corsets were uncomfortable for women and they moved organs and made women faint. Women wore corsets for hundreds of years; they were the precursor to the bra. They were for support; they were not solidly boned; they were actually quite flexible.”
Ilbusca / Getty Images
“They can actually be quite comfortable. The myths that most people know stem from very high ladies of fashion. Corsetry and tightlacing are two different things. Most women did not have 18-inch waists. Just like today, the women who were placed in ads were skinny and unattainable. People were not shaped differently.”
13. “That the American Civil War was fought over ’states’ rights.’ I was taught this in school and believed it until several years ago.”
Mikroman6 / Getty Images
14. “Astronomer here! Christopher Columbus never set out to prove the world was round, and it was not a common thing at that time in his part of the world to think the world was flat. In fact, people knew from ancient Greek times that the world was round — in fact, in 240 BCE Eratosthenes measured the size of the Earth, and got surprisingly close to the real answer!”
Dea / Getty Images
“In actuality, Columbus was the one in the wrong — as I said, people knew the size of the Earth since Greek times, but he insisted the distance was far less to Asia than calculated because he misunderstood several things.
In fact, he thought Japan was as far as we know the Caribbean is, and surely would have died along with all his crew had he not gotten lucky with the Americas being where they are. It’s not that the crews were scared of ‘sailing off the edge’ — they legit were worried about running out of food and water in their tiny boats.“
—u/Andromeda321
15. “That the Romans only briefly held Britain. They occupied it longer than the US has been a country.”
Pavel Tochinsky / Getty Images
—u/chattywww
16. “That the apple fell on Newton’s head.”
Print Collector / Getty Images
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17. “People believe the Catholic Church was routinely anti-science. In reality, the Church sponsored a lot of science. For example, the Big Bang theory was the product of a Catholic priest, Georges Lemaître, and encountered atheist resistance because they thought it sounded too much like creation.”
Dzika_mrowka / Getty Images
—u/deleted
“The Jesuit community (known as the Society of Jesus) were often (and still are) composed of very well-educated individuals. Many scientific elements brought to China were by Jesuit priests.”
“To add to this, Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics, was an Augustinian monk.”
18. “That Germany started WWI. Germany sure played an important part that led to WWI, but saying Germany started the war singlehandedly is just objectively false.”
19. And finally: “That Pilgrims came to America for religious freedom and to avoid persecution. Half-truth, at best. They wanted the freedom to apply their religion more stringently. They were hounded out of England and weirded out of the Netherlands because of their puritanical practices, hence the derogatory ‘Puritan’ label.”
Print Collector / Getty Images
“They wanted to establish a community in what is now the US to be LESS tolerant than the communities they had in Europe.
So, did they come for religious ‘freedom?’ Yeah, kinda — as long as it was their religion, specifically. They definitely did not come in the spirit of ‘all religions should be treated equally,’ which is how this usually gets glossed over in US schools.“
—u/deleted
What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments. Better yet, tell me your own historical pet peeve that drives you up the wall.
Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
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