50 Greatest Historical Events That Never Happened

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[YoungGandalf]

I heard that there was once a YouTuber that had like a hundred different channels and presented on such a wide array of topics that he was practically a genius, a modern day Library of Alexandria. But it's probably just a myth.

[Hykje]

It was under Mythbusters's test of Archimedes's death ray when Jamie Hyneman said "The death ray isn't working -I'm standing in the middle of it and I'm not dead yet."

[johngaran]

I'm beginning to think all these historical figures were replaying these events over and over again in their heads. Then, a few years later, thought, "If I would have said...., it would have been a lot cooler." Then they realized, "I'll just make everyone believe I said...."

[nininoona]

As someone who has a very large tapestry of Lady Godiva's ride hanging in her home, I'm ok with it not being historically accurate. Its a beautiful piece of artwork.

[trevormillar]

"George. Did you chopdown my cherry tree?"
"Icannot tell a lie father, Benedict Arnold did it and ran away".

[CartoonHero]

The Alice Cooper one always made my friend's mom laugh when people told her this. She was a HUGE Alice Cooper fan and whilst pregnant with my friend she went to one of his concerts, and also had a backstage pass (she had won a radio contest or something). She said when Alice noticed she was pregnant (cause she was barely 3 months along) he went from rock superstar badass character he puts on during shows, to extremely caring mom-friend watching out for her. He demanded the others not smoke in the green room while she was there, made sure she had food and/or something without alcohol to drink, and even gave her his chair so she could sit.

[AndiSplatterpunk]

I learned most of these in school and now you tell me they weren't true?! I'm an old woman..I can't start over, for fucks sake

[kibathemechanic]

Simon: "The book of Kings was likely embellished to make Solomon look better than he was."
I & II Kings: A literal laundry list of mistakes and sins made by Kings, FIRST OF WHICH WAS SOLOMON.

[legendaryhunter]

As a Greek I will say the stories about Ancient Greece are perfect for describing us as shitposters even when the internet wasn't even a concept

[IamNasman]

I would imagine Ceasers last words were more along the lines of ‘Ahrgghh, arghhhh, help, murder, arghhh, arghhh, gurgle, gurgle!’, rather than ‘et tu brute’.

[hutch]

Case Eliot’s daughter had said in an interview, “Mom was Jewish and would have not been eating a ham sandwich.”

[TexasTimeLord]

Actually the 4th Doctor was caught by Newton sitting in one of his apple trees, and the Doctor explained all about gravity and the Laws of Motion to Newton during dinner later that day.
It's well documented.

[AnotherPointOfView]

That time Atlas carried a giant pancake on his shoulders.
Still true for flat earthers.

[samanthac.]

There’s an episode of Outlander where Claire (who is from the future) is a bit star struck to meet the pre-revolutionary George Washington. He began to talk about his childhood, and she mentions he used to chop down cherry trees. The look on the Washington’s face is well done by the actor because he was so confused why she, a woman he just met, said that. 😂

[RainbowYak]

Swiss person here - the myth about Einstein's poor performance in math class was actually created by German people's confusion with the Swiss school system. Einstein was born in Ulm (Germany) but he grew up in the Canton of Aargau (Switzerland). Both the German as well as the Swiss grading system use numbers ranging from 1-6. However, most Germans don't know that the Swiss grading system is the exact inverse of their own. In Germany, 1 = A+ and 6 = F but in Switzerland 6 = A+ and 1 = F. Einstein was obviously very good at math, which is why he only ever had 6's in his report cards. The first guy who wrote a biography about Einstein was German, though, and clearly didn't do his research. He simply looked at the numbers and - based on the grading system in his own country - assumed that Einstein must've been a total loser at math. Obviously, that's preposterous. Another well-known myth spread by the same, unreliable biographer is that Einstein supposedly failed his high school finals and had to repeat his last year of high school because he was so bad at math. Einstein did indeed fail an important exam but it wasn't his high school finals. After successfully completing high school, Einstein took the entry exam to study physics at the ETH Zurich. He failed his first attempt, though not as a result of poor math skills. The true reason was that Einstein sucked at French and French was a mandatory part of this exam. Einstein's first biographer probably didn't get this because Germany isn't a multilingual country and French isn't a mandatory language at school. Einstein ended up enjoying his free time and took the entry exam once more the following year - at which point he passed comfortably.

[pirobotbeta]

Do an episode about David Mech, the researcher that coined the terms 'alpha', 'beta' and 'gamma' when studying Wolf behavior.
What he didn't realize was that natural wolf-packs are extended families, while his Wolfs were all orphans from un-related packs.
The 'orphans' behaved with aggression and violence, establishing pecking-orders...they were 'strangers' to each other.
He's been trying for decades to get people to stop using the term 'alpha male'; they never existed, it was bad science.

[BromdenChief]

An addendum for the "Let them eat brioche" topic: At the time when the quote was born, there was a law in France which said that if bakers ran out of bread, they had to sell the fancier bakery products cheaper. The reason for introducing the law was that some bakers made less bread so they could cash in on the fancier stuff.

[fflrjjr]

Re: Atlantis, what I read, albeit a long time ago, was that Plato got the story from the Egyptians and there was a mistranslation into Greek of the island's size; it was supposed to read 40, 000 square miles but Plato saw it as 400, 000 square miles and so realizing it could not fit into the Med., he moved it out past the Pillars of Herakles...

[michaelarrowood]

Brilliant, Simon! Thank you for this excellent debunking of historical myths.

[davidm]

Chastity belt…..I’m thinking Robinhood Men in Tights lol