Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual

Khalid Elhassan - October 30, 2024

Misreported historical facts are all too common, and many commonly accepted historical “facts” are anything but factual. Take the conventional wisdom that Napoleon was short. In reality, the man after whom the Napoleon complex is named was average or even a bit taller than average. Or take the conventional wisdom about medieval witch hunts. In reality, the Middle Ages had no such thing – witch hunts belong to a different era. Below are twenty four things about those and other misreported historical facts.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Contemporary cartoon of Little Boney in the hands of King George III. Napoleon Org

24. Misreported Fact: Napoleon’s Height

For many, one of the first things that come to mind when thinking about Napoleon Bonaparte is that he was short. Early in his career, even his own men referred to him as Le Petit Caporal – the Little Corporal. In his lifetime, and for centuries afterwards, L’Empereur was cruelly mocked – especially by his British foes – for being a ridiculously small, little man. Nowadays, the term “Napoleon complex” is commonly used in reference to short people who are pushy and overly aggressive to overcompensate for their lack of height. In reality, though, the notion that Napoleon was short is a myth – propaganda spread about by his enemies, based on misreported or misunderstood measurements.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Contemporary depiction of a ‘short’ Napoleon. K-Pics

French sources gave Napoleon’s height as around 5 feet 2 inches. However, that was measured in French feet. French measurements were not the same as the imperial or US customary units used in Britain and America. A British or American inch is 2.54 centimeters, but a French inch is 2.71 centimeters. In imperial units, L’Empereur stood about 5’6” or 5’7” – in the ballpark of 1.68 or 1.7 meters. That might be short by twenty first century standards, but the average height of French men at the time was in the ballpark of 1.58 to 1.68 meters. So Napoleon was average or even a bit taller than average. As to his nickname, the Little Corporal, it was not about his stature. It was a term of endearment and affection bestowed upon him by his admiring soldiers.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Woman accused of witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials. Boston Magazine

23. Misreported Fact: Medieval Witch Hunts

Ask people what comes to mind when thinking about the medieval world, and a common assumption is that the era was one of widespread superstition, in which witches were burned with regularity. It is true that people back then were superstitious, especially compared to today. However, their superstitions were not expressed in witch hunts. While there were some witch trials in the Middle Ages, they were rare, and were usually done by the secular authorities, not directed by the church.

Indeed, throughout the Middle Ages, the church often contended that magic was just silly nonsense that did not work. The European witch craze was more of a sixteenth and seventeenth century phenomenon. It took off after Heinrich Kramer wrote the infamous Malleus Mallificarum in the late fifteenth century, in an attempt to convince a then-skeptical public that witches were real. When the book first came out, the church actually condemned it, and warned inquisitors not to believe what it says.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Medieval shaving – big beards were not big throughout much of the medieval era. Interessly

22. The Popularity of Victorian Beards

Beards have recently become fashionable, thanks in no small part to hipsters, after generations of being out of fashion. It is not the first time they went out of style then made a comeback. In ancient Greece, beards were in fashion for centuries, then went out of style in the Hellenistic era. Early Roman Republic leaders were bearded, but within a few generations, their descendants went clean-shaven, a style that lasted for centuries before Emperor Hadrian made facial hair fashionable once again.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Thick beards of prominent Victorians Wilkie Collins, Charles Darwin, and William Holman Hunt. London National Portrait Gallery

Beards were in and out of fashion throughout the Middle Ages, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, physicians misreported that facial hair was bodily waste. Shaving would thus rid the body of a potentially harmful substance. In the eighteenth century Enlightenment, men were clean shaven. An enlightened gentleman’s face was smooth, youthful, with a clear countenance that suggested a clear and open mind. Then came the nineteenth century, when beards roared back into style. As seen below, the renewed popularity was helped by medical opinions that facial hair was good for men’s health.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Victorians really liked their beards and facial hair. Coin World

21. Misreported Victorian Fact: The Health Benefit of Beards

The popularity of beards in the nineteenth century had much to do with Victorian ideals of rugged manliness. Beards are prominent visual markers of maleness, so thick facial hair fit in great with the new zeitgeist. It was not just changed cultural norms and mores, though. The renewed popularity of thick facial hair was helped in no small part by misreported medical “facts” about the health benefits of beards. In the mid-nineteenth century, doctors began to encourage men to rock thick beards, as a means to ward off illness. Although the medical benefits of beards as imagined by Victorian doctors are nonexistent, it makes sense why many theorized that they were healthy.

The Industrial Revolution saw the burning of coal in prodigious quantities, that brought about prodigious levels of air pollution. Add to that the then-new-fangled germ theory, that many physicians had heard of but hadn’t yet fully understood, and it is understandable that there was plenty of concern with tiny bad things floating in the air. Doctors reasoned that thick facial hair could filter out bad air and the bad little particulates that floated in it. Some even expressed the medical opinion that beards could prevent sore throats. Of course, as we now know, beards can’t filter air – harmful germs and aerial pollutants are too small for facial hair to block them. Beards actually do the opposite of what Victorian doctors thought. Rather than filter out harmful bacteria, germs and other tiny harmful particles can actually get stuck to beards, which thus increase instead of reduce the odds of infections.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Stalin and Gelya Markizova. Wikimedia

20. The Soviet Union’s Most Famous Dictator-and-Cute-Kid Pic

Buryat-Mongol official Ardan Markizov toiled away for the USSR in remote Siberia. A passionate communist, he named his daughter Engelsina after Friedrich Engels, and his son Vladlen, after Vladimir Lenin. Markizov traveled to Moscow in 1936, as part of a Mongol delegation to meet Stalin. His seven-year-old daughter, Engelsina “Gelya” Markizova, came along. Gelya stole the show when she gave some flowers to the Soviet dictator. Stalin picked her up and placed her on the table, and a photo of Gelya hugging Stalin became a sensation. The editor-in-chief of Pravda newspaper enthused: “God himself sent us this little Buryat girl. We’ll make her an icon of happy childhood“. The photo, nicknamed “Children’s Friend”, went viral. After the photo was published, the hotel lobby was filled with toys and other presents gifted to her.

Upon her return to Buryat, Gelya was greeted like astronauts were later. A famous sculptor even created a monument to Stalin and Gelya. That did not save her family from Stalin’s Great Purge, however. In 1937, her father was arrested by the NKVD, accused of being, Trotskyite, subversive plotter, and spy. Gelya wrote to Stalin, begging for mercy, but to no avail. Her father was executed in 1938. Her mother was also arrested and exiled to Kazakhstan, where she died, probably at the hands of the NKVD. From celebrity, Gelya now became a pariah, shunned as the daughter of an “enemy of the people”. The images and sculptures of Stalin with the daughter of an enemy of the people were awkward. Too many to destroy, officials simply changed the girl’s name from Gelya Markizova to Mamlakat Nakhangova.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Bartolome de las Casas depicted as a savior of Indians, by Felix Parra, 1875. Google Art Project

19. A Lesser Known Fact About a Famous Do-Gooder

Bartolome de las Casas (1484 – 1566), a Spanish missionary and historian, devoted his life to stand up for Native Americans mistreated by his fellow Europeans. He protested the enslavement of New World natives and the horrific cruelties to which they were subjected. In the process, he pioneered the development of ideas that led to the concept of modern human rights. He got there in a roundabout way. Las Casas sailed to the New World as a layman in 1502, and settled in Hispaniola – the island that contains today’s Dominican Republic and Haiti. He was granted an encomienda, or a hacienda worked by native slaves, and was fine with enslaving the locals at first. He even joined military expeditions to capture and enslave more natives.

Las Casas had a change of heart, however, when his conscience began to gnaw at him. He became a priest, renounced his hacienda and slaves, called for an end to the encomienda system, and advocated for the indigenous population’s rights. He saw the mistreatment of natives by Europeans as illegal and immoral, and in 1515 petitioned the authorities to protect Native Americans. Las Casas continued to tirelessly petition and write extensively to end the mistreatment and enslavement of the natives, until he drew his final breath in 1566. However, in attempting to help New World natives, he advanced an argument that led to untold horrors visited upon millions of Old World Africans. Las Casas called for the enslavement of Africans instead of Native Americans. He figured that Africans were fitter and more resistant to the Old World diseases that decimated Native Americans.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
A 1529 illustration of an enslaved African in the New World. Origins

18. A Human Rights Pioneer Who Pioneered Centuries of Misery and Suffering

Slavery in the ancient and medieval world was based on war and conquest. Las Casas pioneered the then-revolutionary idea of slavery based on race. Before, ancient Greeks, Romans, and their Middle Ages successors had justified slavery based on the right of conquest. It was a race-neutral justification: those defeated in war and conquered could be enslaved. Caveats were sometimes carved out, such as the Spanish government’s prohibition of the enslavement of fellow Catholics. Conquered Muslims, Protestants, and pagans could be enslaved, regardless of their race, but not defeated Catholics. Nor could conquered non-Catholics who agreed to convert to Catholicism be enslaved. Las Casas gave Europeans a new and novel justification to enslave other human beings: their race. In this conception, Africans were fit for enslavement because they were Africans, period.

Eventually, Las Casas called for the abolition of all slavery. That closed the barn’s gate after the horse had already fled. Europeans embraced his original idea of race as justification for slavery, and ignored his later retraction. The result was the transatlantic African slave trade, which lasted for almost four hundred years, from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Twelve million to fifteen million Africans were shipped to the New World for a life of slavery that that was often dark, cruel, brutal, and short. At least for those who survived the horrific Middle Passage to the Americas, in which millions died. That was just the tip of the iceberg: for every single African packed into a slave ship, up to five more perished in the violence that surrounded the capture of slaves and their transportation to the coasts and slave ships.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Medieval travelers on a pilgrimage. K-Pics

17. Misreported Fact: Medieval People Were Homebodies Who Never Traveled

Per conventional wisdom, people in the Middle Ages seldom ventured far from where they were born. That is true, especially when it came to peasants and those who lived in the countryside. However, that was not unique to the medieval era. The same could be said for most people throughout history, both before and after the Middle Ages, until relatively recently in the modern era. That should not be taken to mean that medieval people never traveled: many of them did.

For example, pilgrimages to holy sites were quite popular back then. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales revolves around pilgrims traveling from London to Saint Becket’s shrine at Canterbury Cathedral. That was a relatively short holy quest. Other pilgrims traveled to holy sites thousands of miles away from home. Traders also roamed far and wide to buy, sell, and transport high value goods. The long distance trade economy in the Middle Ages featured among other things amber and furs from the Baltic, spices from India transported through the Middle East, and silks from China.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
1918 Philadelphia parade amidst the Spanish Flu pandemic. US Naval History and Heritage Command

16. A Memorable World War I Parade

Many people could have used a bit of a pick me up towards the end of summer, 1918. By then, World War I had raged for four years, millions had been slain in the battlefields, and millions more had been injured. Many more around the world, even those far away from the front lines, suffered from the disruptions and hardships caused by history’s greatest war to date. The United States had joined the conflict by then, and Doughboy deaths and injuries had steadily increased from a trickle to a torrent. Against that grim backdrop, the authorities in Philadelphia decided that the city’s residents could do with a morale boost.

To raise the public’s spirits, and simultaneously support the troops by selling Liberty Loans – government-issued bonds that paid for the war – the City of Brotherly Love organized a huge parade. It was to feature Boy Scouts, women’s groups, soldiers, and numerous marching bands. All would be capped by a concert headlined by the “March King” himself, composer and conductor John Philip Sousa. There was a hiccup, however, that the authorities overlooked, or outright ignored: the Spanish Flu, the modern era’s deadliest pandemic.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Soldiers stricken with the Spanish Flu. National Museum of Health and Medicine

15. The Parade That Killed Thousands

The Spanish Flu was first reported in a US Army training camp in Kansas in the spring of 1918. The virus raced across the country to reach New York City within days, and within a month, it was a pandemic that raged across the world. The virus was deadly, but compared to what followed, the initial outbreak was relatively mild. It was not until the summer of 1918 that a second and far deadlier wave struck, and death rates spiked. Philadelphia’s public health director, Wilmer Kursen, protested that it was a bad time for a parade, but was ignored. 200,000 spectators jammed Broad Street on September 28th, 1918, to watch a miles-long procession. They cheered as bands blared brassy tunes and floats passed by, showcasing the latest additions to America’s arsenal, such as Philadelphia-built airplanes.

The Spanish Flu’s virus could not have asked for a more hospitable environment in which to spread than the hundreds of thousands of spectators jammed together like sardines in a can. Cheers turned to trepidation within days, as Kursen announced that the pandemic had firmly gripped the City of Brotherly Love. Philadelphia was unprepared for the deluge of death that descended upon it. Every single bed in the city’s 31 hospitals was filled with three days, as the Spanish Flu raged. It was only then that the authorities tried to curb the pandemic, and shut down all public spaces. It was too late. 2600 Philadelphians perished from the flu within a week of the parade, and within two weeks, fatalities had surpassed 4500. It was Philly’s deadliest, and most misguided parade, ever.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
The medieval social pyramid, with peasants at the bottom. Feudums

14. Misreported Fact: Medieval Peasant Workload

Peasants had it rough in the Middle Ages. They lived in cramped quarters without many amenities we take for granted, sanitation was abysmal, they performed backbreaking work, and were exploited by aristocrats. They often had to worry about war, famine, and plague. We might envy them one thing, however: they worked fewer hours than us and had way more vacation time. We often view medieval peasants as exploited, downtrodden, brutalized, oppressed, and overworked minions. For the most part, they actually were exploited, downtrodden, brutalized, and oppressed.

Medieval peasants were placed at the bottom of the social pyramid, with fewer legal rights and protections than the nobles and clergy above them. A significant chunk of the fruits of their labor went to support their social betters. A peasant in Middle Ages Europe might have been reduced to the status of an outright serf, bound to the land and unable to leave without the proprietor’s permission. He might be required to put more time and effort to tend a noble’s fields than his own. However, when it comes to whether they were overworked, well – as it turns out, not so much. As seen below, modern Americans work longer hours, with less vacation time and fewer holidays, than medieval peasants.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Medieval peasants. K-Pics

13. The Modern Rat Race and its Medieval Version

We might comfort ourselves on tedious workdays with the thought that least we don’t have it as bad as medieval workers. No, sir, at least we are not like old-timey peasants who toiled from dawn to dusk, or medieval artisans who began work at sunup, and kept at it past sunset and well into the night with candlelight. We could console ourselves thus, but we would be working off of misreported facts. The frantic rat race with its long hours is a feature of the modern era and its innovative linkage of work to a regular schedule and the clock. Before that, people did not work very long hours, life’s tempo was slow, and the pace of work was relaxed.

People in the Middle Ages were not wealthy, and they lacked many comforts we take for granted. However, one thing they had more than us is free time. For example, an average American in 1987 worked 1949 hours per year. That figure went down to 1811 hours annually by 2015. An improvement, but still nearly 200 hours more than a thirteenth-century adult male English peasant, who worked an average of 1620 hours per year. A typical medieval workday stretched from dawn to dusk, and the labor could be backbreaking. However, there were many breaks for breakfast, lunch, an afternoon nap, and dinner. There might also be mid-morning and mid-afternoon refreshment breaks. After a harvest, peasants might enjoy up to eight weeks of slack time. Then there were all the holidays and religious feast days.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Manhattan’s Grand Central Station rush hour. Flying and Travel

12. At Least We’re Not as Overworked as Our Nineteenth Century Grandparents

Durham’s Bishop James Pilkington complained about all the breaks taken by peasants: “The laboring man will take his rest long in the morning; a good piece of the day is spent afore he come at his work; then he must have his breakfast, though he have not earned it at his accustomed hour, or else there is grudging and murmuring; when the clock smiteth, he will cast down his burden in the midway, and whatsoever he is in hand with, he will leave it as it is, though many times it is marred afore he come again; he may not lose his meat, what danger soever the work is in. At noon he must have his sleeping time, then his bever in the afternoon, which spendeth a great part of the day;

and when his hour cometh at night, at the first stroke of the clock he casteth down his tools, leaveth his work, in what need or case soever the work standeth.” Between holidays and off days, a peasant in the Middle Ages might work only 150 days in a good harvest year. By contrast, an American worker would be lucky to get eight vacation days in a year, as the US remains the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacations. Although we work more hours than medieval peasants, at least we don’t have it as bad as nineteenth-century American: they worked around 3650 hours annually. That was almost double the 2023 American worker’s average of 1892 hours a year.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Tutankhamen’s death mask. Pinterest

11. Ancient Egypt’s Most Famous Ruler

In 1922, Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen (reigned, circa 1333 – 1323 BC). That archaeological feat triggered a wave of Egypto-mania that swept the world, and that hasn’t receded since. Relics from the ancient ruler, nicknamed King Tut in pop culture, traveled the globe and were seen by millions in exhibits for which people waited in line for hours. Ancient Egyptian references made their way into popular culture, and musical hits such as “Old King Tut” topped the charts. Even US President Herbert Hoover caught the Tutankhamen bug, and named his dog King Tut. Today, Tutankhamen is the best known ancient Egyptian pharaoh. It is ironic, because ancient Egyptians saw him as one of their least memorable and most insignificant pharaohs.

Tutankhamen’s father, Pharaoh Akhenaten, and his wife-sister Nefertiti (royal incest was common in ancient Egypt), had been radical religious reformers who overthrew the Egyptian religion that had dominated the Nile Valley for centuries. In place of its many gods, they ordered the worship of a single deity: Aten. Akhenaten and Nefertiti also displaced the Egyptian priesthood, who until then had acted as middlemen between worshippers and the gods. Instead, they made themselves the main conduit through which divine blessings flowed to the people. When the priests objected, the couple closed the main temple at Karnak, seized its treasury, fired the priests, and moved hundreds of miles away to a new city, purpose-built for the worship of Aten. The traditional Egyptian priests were understandably upset. As seen below, they undid all of Akhenaten’s religious works as soon as he died.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
How the inbred Tutankhamen probably looked in life. Art Net News

10. Misreported Fact: The Importance of King Tut in His Lifetime

After a tumultuous seventeen-year-reign that plunged Egypt into chaos and bankrupted the kingdom, Akhenaten died in 1334 BC. Nefertiti tried to continue her late husband-brother’s religious revolution, and stepped up to act as regent for Akhenaten’s successor, a seven-year-old born him by another sister. However, Nefertiti lost a power struggle at court, and the reins were taken by a chief minister, Ay, who became the child pharaoh’s key adviser. The kid’s birth name had been Tutankhaten birth, which means “Living Image of Aten”, after the god worshipped by his father. Soon as he ascended the throne, the child ruler’s advisers had him change his name to Tutankhamen, or “Living Image of Amen”, the traditional Egyptian god ditched by Akhenaten. That heralded a rejection of his father’s religious revolution, and a counter-revolution that restored the old Egyptian gods and traditional ways of worship.

Tutankhamen was relatively insignificant. He was a child king for most of his life, which lasted for only another ten years before he died at age seventeen. In that time, actual power was wielded by his advisers. The young pharaoh was also physically disabled and sickly. A product of generations of royal inbreeding, he suffered many deformities caused by incest. He had scoliosis (a deformation of the spine), a clubbed foot that necessitated a cane to walk, and a cleft palate. Tutankhamen also caught frequent bouts of malaria, which ultimately killed him. When he died, courtiers raided the tombs of his father and Nefertiti, and ransacked them for items to toss into his tomb. Indeed, the most famous ancient Egyptian artifact, Tutankhamen’s Mask, had actually been Nefertiti’s. Even his sarcophagus had been made for somebody else: masons simply carved over its original inscriptions, and repurposed them for King Tut.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Notre Dame Cathedral. Humanities West

9. Misreported Fact: Everybody Was Religious in the Middle Ages

There plenty of examples of extreme religiosity in the medieval era, that range from mass pilgrimages, to flagellants, to mystics and saints. However, that does not mean that people back then were fixated on religion. Nor does it mean that they did not engage in skeptical reflection. Many were not sold on a variety of beliefs. They doubted whether the miracle of the Eucharist was real, whether saints actually performed miracles, or whether there really was a resurrection and life after death.

Many doubted that God had much to do with nature and the growth of crops and plants. Instead, they attributed such matters to the simple mechanics of toil on and upkeep of the soil. Many people – sometimes most – expressed their skepticism by simply avoiding church. For example, a Spanish priest wrote his bishop in the early 1300s, to complain that hardly anybody showed up for church on Sundays. Instead, most of his flock preferred to sleep or lark about on their day of rest.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Spartan infant inspection. 300

8. You Might Have Had it Rough, But You Probably Never Had it as Rough as Spartan Babies

Life was tough throughout much of history – as in orders of magnitude tougher than what we experience today – for most of humanity. Things we consider shockingly cruel today, such as infanticide of unwanted children, were routinely done by many. For example, ancient Greeks often abandoned unwanted children in the wilderness. There, they perished from attacks by wild animals, exposure to the elements, thirst or hunger, or, if they were fortunate lucky, were rescued by a passerby. Ancient Sparta in particular ramped up infanticide into eugenics as a matter of state policy.

Per Plutarch, in his biography of the ancient Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus: “Offspring was not reared at the will of the father, but was taken and carried by him to a place called Lesche, where the elders of the tribes officially examined the infant, and if it was well-built and sturdy, they ordered the father to rear it, and assigned it one of the nine thousand lots of land; but if it was ill-born and deformed, they sent it to the so‑called Apothetae, a chasm-like place at the foot of Mount Taÿgetus, in the conviction that the life of that which nature had not well equipped at the very beginning for health and strength, was of no advantage either to itself or the state“.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Aristotle advocated eugenics. Wikimedia

7. Ancient Greek Infanticide

Throughout history and in many societies, infanticide was commonly used to dispose of unwanted children. Infant exposure was often practiced in Ancient Greece. It was the preferred method to get rid of unwanted children because, to the ancient Greeks, it was not as immoral as the outright murder of a baby. The way they saw it, an exposed infant’s fate was in the hand of the gods. They might directly intervene to rescue the child, or a kind-hearted passerby might do so.

Hardships in difficult times made an extra mouth to feed problematic, and it was in that context that most infanticide occurred. Some, however, took infant exposure from cruel necessity to eugenics. The philosopher Aristotle, for example, advocated that deformed infants be exposed. As he put it: “As to the exposure of children, let there be a law that not deformed child shall live“. The decision to keep or expose an infant was usually the father’s, except in Sparta, where a group of elders made that choice. As seen below, however, recent scholarship has cast doubt on whether infant exposure was as common in Sparta as has long been believed.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
The selection of children in Sparta, by Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours, 1785. Wikimedia

6. Misreported Fact: The Extent of Spartan Infanticide

The notion of Spartan eugenics was popularized by Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, in which the government decided whether newborns were fit to raise or not. The state wanted to produce strong warriors to maintain Sparta’s military dominance, so it involved itself in the selection of parents for their physical and mental traits. The authorities decided which newborns to keep. They also participated in the upbringing of children, who were raised in brutally tough boarding schools to ensure their development in accordance with Spartan ideals. Thousands of years later, a eugenics movement arose, and had its heyday in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Modern eugenicists looked back at history, and filled with admiration for Spartan manliness and hardihood, figured that the ancient Spartans were on to something. However, what if Spartan infanticide as a matter of state policy is based on misreported facts?

A single passage from the Life of Lycurgus is the sole evidence for widespread Spartan infanticide. Plutarch wrote hundreds of years after Lycurgus had died. He was also more concerned with biographical details about his subject’s life, than with details about Sparta as a whole. Additionally, there are many examples of ancient Greeks who were reared despite birth deformities. Their numbers even include a Spartan king, Agesilaus II (444 – 360 BC), who was born lame. Despite that deformity, he was not exposed, and instead grew up to become a formidable warrior. Of course, the absence of (additional) evidence of Spartan infanticide is not evidence of absence. It could well be that Sparta did practice eugenics as described by Plutarch, but that there were some exceptions to the rule. The debate continues.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Medieval cardinals elect Pope Gregory XI. Wikimedia

5. Misreported Fact: There Were No Elections in the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages did not have as many elections as today. Nor did they have universal suffrage back then. However, medieval people did have elections. They routinely elected aldermen, members of parliament, bishops, abbots, popes, and sometimes even kings. To be sure, there were important differences between elections today and elections in the Middle Ages. Not least among the differences was just how narrow was the slice of the population that got to vote in any elections. On the other hand, there were similarities, chief among them the belief that elections conferred legitimacy.

In the medieval era, people were on the fence when it came to elections. On the one hand, their belief in elections was based on precedents from the Bible. For example, the Old Testament contains accounts of the Israelites electing Judges and Kings. Also, kings sometimes died without issue, the papacy was not hereditary, and town burghers needed to select people to fill local government positions. Elections were handy in such situations. On the other hand, elections were also seen as cause for strife, and potential starting points for riots, rebellions, or civil wars.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
We Can Do It! poster. US National Archives

4. Misreported Fact: The “We Can Do It!” Poster

One of the best known images associated with World War II today is the We Can Do It! poster. At the time, however, few saw that poster or even knew it existed. It was not created by the US government as inspirational propaganda for the public at large. Instead, the poster was commissioned by Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company and targeted at its workers. It was produced by graphic artist J. Howard Miller in 1943 as one of a series of posters that were displayed for two weeks in some Westinghouse factories, before it was taken down. Today, We Can Do It! is deemed a symbol of female empowerment, to the effect that women are strong and can do whatever they put their minds to. At the time it was commissioned, however, the idea was to get female factory workers to work harder and follow orders.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Companion poster to We Can Do It! poster. Wikimedia

The “It” in We Can Do It! is clarified by a companion poster, in which a male manager counsels: “Any Questions About Your Work? Ask Your Supervisor“. Thus, the poster was a paternalistic exhortation to female employees that all was possible, so long as they sought help and followed orders. Also, the woman depicted and often referred to as Rosie the Riveter was not a riveter. The posters were displayed in factories that produced helmet liners, a process that involves no riveting. It was largely forgotten, until 1982, when the Washington Post Magazine ran an article about posters in the National Archives that included We Can Do It! Nearly four decades after WWII, the poster finally attracted attention, and went viral. It was depicted on the cover of Smithsonian Magazine, was featured in a US post stamp, and was misinterpreted – or reinterpreted – by feminists as a call for female empowerment.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Real life Rosie the Riveters. PBS

3. Who Was the Real Rosie the Riveter?

The We Can Do It! Poster had nothing to do with Rosie the Riveter. However, a real life woman, Rosalind P. Walter, nee Palmer (1924 – 2020), inspired the Rosie the Riveter meme. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor thrust America into WWII, a teenaged Rosalind joined the war effort as an airplane factory riveter. She broke speed records on the production line, and advocated for equal pay for female factory workers. The New York Times ran an article about Rosalind that inspired a 1942 hit song, Rosie the Riveter, in honor of the women who fueled America’s war effort.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Rosalind P. Walters in old age. New York Times

Rosie the Riveter became a meme, went viral, and came to symbolize the millions of women who labored in the factories that supplied and supported the men in the field. In 1943, a Norman Rockwell painting of a Rosie the Riveter with a Mein Kampf beneath her feet appeared in a Saturday Evening Post cover. As to Rosalind P. Walter, the original Rosie the Riveter, she had been born into money, married into even more money, and became a renowned socialite and philanthropist. She donated millions to help fund PBS, and became a trustee of both Long Island University and the American Museum of Natural History, among other things.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Medieval well. 2 Cool 4 School

2. Misreported Fact: Medieval People Drank Alcohol Instead of Water

One of the most commonly misreported “facts” has it that people in centuries past only drank beer and wine instead of water, because water was too often contaminated with deadly pathogens. That is untrue. In the Middle Age, for example, water was the most popular drink. The same as it was throughout all of humanity’s existence, for that matter, for a simple reason: water was free. It is true that until relatively recently, most people did not have the kinds of modern water purification treatments that the water coming out of our faucets nowadays usually goes through. However, while contamination was a problem, people in the Middle Ages – like all humans since our species first walked upright – knew how to spot and avoid obviously contaminated water.

People throughout history had enough common sense and common knowledge to not drink swampy, muddy, and cloudy water. In the Middle Ages, health manuals and medical texts praised the health benefits of water – so long as it came from good sources. Indeed, the authorities back then went to great lengths to supply people with drinking water. For example, London constructed ‘The Conduit’ in the 1200s, which used lead pipes to bring fresh water from a spring outside the city walls to the London’s center, where people had free access to it.

Misreported Historical Facts That Are Anything But Factual
Medieval drinkers. Pinterest

1.     Middle Ages Boozing Facts

While people in the medieval era did not avoid, many preferred beer and wine. Provided, of course, that they could get and afford such alcoholic beverages. People did drink a whole lot of beer and ale and wine in those days, but it was not because their water was bad. Instead, they consumed such alcoholic beverages simply because they liked both their taste and effect. The authorities knew and catered to that preference, such as during public celebrations. For example, when King Edward I returned from the Crusades and when King Richard was crowned, London stopped the flow of water in its pipes, and replaced it with wine for a day. 

Wine was the drink of choice of the upper classes and those who could afford it. However, like the ancient Greeks and Romans before them, medieval Europeans did not drink their wine neat. Instead, they mixed it with water to dilute its potency. For those who could not afford wine on a regular basis, beer and ale were plentiful and cheap. It should be noted, however, that beer and ale back then were far weaker than they are today. Also, considering the long days and hard labor medieval workers put in, whether in the fields or shops or other employment, beer and ale did more than just quench thirst. They also provided a significant intake of calories throughout the day to fuel their hard physical labor and exertions.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Bird, William L. – Design for Victory: World War II Posters on the American Home Front (1998)

British Library – Travel, Trade, and Exploration in the Middle Ages

Cracked – 22 Historical Things We Imagined Completely Wrong

Curtin, Philip D. – The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (1969)

Daily Beast – This Myth About the Spartans Just Got Blown Up

Drury University Humanities and Ethics Center – ‘Witch Hunts’ Now and Then, Myths and Realities

Dunn, P M, Archives of Disease in Childhood, Fetal and Neonatal Edition, Volume 91(1), January 2006 – Aristotle (384 – 322 BC): Philosopher and Scientist of Ancient Greece

Encyclopedia Britannica – Bartolome de Las Casas

Encyclopedia Britannica – Was Napoleon Short?

Forrest, William George Grieve – A History of Sparta, 950-192 BC (1963)

Gonick, Larry – The Cartoon History of the Universe I (1990)

Gresham College – How to be an Atheist in Medieval Europe

History Collection – Abraham Lincoln, Hall of Fame Wrestler, and Other American President Facts

History Extra – 8 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About Medieval Elections

Insider, May 14th, 2014 – How Bad Medical Advice Helped Make Beards Trendy

Medievalists – Did People Drink Water in the Middle Ages?

Medium – Medieval Peasants had More Days off Than the Average American Worker

Motley Fool – Here’s How Many Hours the Average American Works Per Year

National Geographic, February 17th, 2010 – King Tut Mysteries Solved: Was Disabled, Malarial, and Inbred

National Post – Why People Think Napoleon Was Really Short (Even Though He Wasn’t)

New York Times, March 4th, 2020 – Rosalind P. Walter, 95, First ‘Rosie the Riveter’ and a PBS Funder, Dies

Patterson, Cynthia. Transactions of the American Philological Association, Vol. 115 (1985) – ‘Not Worth the Rearing’: The Causes of Infant Exposure in Ancient Greece

Pennsylvania Gazette, November 1st, 1998 – The Flu of 1918

Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Winter 2006) – Visual Rhetoric Representing Rosie the Riveter: Myth and Misconception in J. Howard Miller’s “We Can Do It!” Poster

Russia Beyond the Horizon – ‘Children’s Friend’: The Dark Story Behind Stalin’s Popular Photo With a Soviet Girl

Science, December 10th, 2021 – Ancient Greeks Didn’t Kill ‘Weak’ Babies, New Study Argues

Slate – What Was the Drink of Choice in Medieval Europe?

Smithsonian Magazine, September 21st, 2018 – Philadelphia Threw a WWI Parade That Gave Thousands of Onlookers the Flu

Sneed, Debby. Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 90, no. 4 (2021) – Disability and Infanticide in Ancient Greece

Withey, Dr. Alun – The Medical Case for Beards in the 19th Century

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