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Most People Picture History Wrong, These Facts Will Set them Straight

Khalid Elhassan April 25, 2020 34 min

Franklin D. Roosevelt - Joseph Stalin — The Big Three of Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, at the Tehran Conference in 1943. Rare Historical Photos

8. Katanas Were Not Folded Thousands of Times, Nor Could They Cut Through Machine Guns

A katana forged by thirteenth century master swordsmith Masamune. Tokyo National Museum

Thanks to Hollywood and assorted works of history, fiction, and historic fiction, the Japanese katana is probably the world’s most recognizable sword. It is a single-edged curved sword, with a long handle for two-handed use that features a square or circular guard, and a slender blade usually measuring two and a half feet in length.

Katanas are among the finest cutting weapons in history, and were used by Japanese samurai since feudal times, with the earliest recorded mention in the historic record dating to the twelfth century. Many legends have sprung around katanas, from the forging process by master sword smiths who hammered and folded the blade’s metal over a thousand times, to katanas that cut through machine guns during WWII. Unfortunately, as seen below, those are just legends.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.