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These Common History Myths Are Still Being Taught Today

Khalid Elhassan November 6, 2022 32 min

common history myths are still being taught today

Fear of Speed Fueled This Silly Myth

Myth vs Facts - A struggle with a madman in a train car, as depicted in an 1889 edition of Police News — A struggle with a madman in a train car, as depicted in an 1889 edition of The Illustrated Police News. Atlas Obscura

In the nineteenth century, the perceived risk of the velocities afforded by trains was not limited to the consequences of a crash or derailment. Naysayers theorized that the bodies of human beings were simply not adapted to or able to withstand travel at speeds any faster than those of galloping horses. In a precursor to concerns about G forces in the era of powered flight, train alarmists birthed a myth in which passengers’ internal organs would get compressed against their backs, with potentially fatal results.

Such ridiculous fears eventually simmered down as train travel became common, and nobody got their hearts or lungs flattened against their backs. However, they were replaced by yet another ridiculous fear, this one of a danger to the mind instead of the body. By the 1850s, Victorians worried that the steady increase in train speeds, combined with the rattle and jarring motions within railway cars, injured passengers’ brains and drove people insane. Just like today, the nineteenth century had no shortage of sensationalist media, and it did its best to whip up the myth about the risks to sanity posed by train travel.

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.