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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

5. Katanas Were Not Folded Anywhere Close to a Thousand Times

A katana gifted by a shogun to a German traveler in 1861. Five Continents Museum, Munich

The four metal bars of which katanas were made were heated at high temperatures, then hammered into a long bar that would become the blade. Contrary to myth, samurai blades were not folded thousands or even hundreds of times – that much folding would be counterproductive, and render the steel useless for a sword. Instead, katana blades were folded between eight to sixteen times.

When the sword was sharpened, the steel took a razor-sharp edge, while the softer iron prevented the blade from breaking. Well-crafted katanas became prized heirlooms, passed down generations of samurai families for centuries. Magnificent specimens of centuries-old katanas can be seen in the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya, Japan.

Read More: 12 of History’s Deadliest Swords.

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.