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Untrue Historic “Facts” It’s Time to Erase

Khalid Elhassan September 8, 2020 35 min

Siege of Budapest - World War II — Red Army soldiers marching into a captured Budapest in 1945. Radio Free Europe

10. The Swiss National Hero

Statue of William Tell and his son. Pinterest

William Tell is Switzerland’s national hero, and it is difficult to find a town in that country that does not have a statue or monument commemorating him and celebrating the myth of his exploit. Most non-Swiss know of him either as the guy who shot an apple off a kid’s head or from the upbeat William Tell Overture finale from Loony Tunes cartoons or the Lone Ranger.

Tell’s most famous statue is in Altdorf, where his heroics reportedly took place. It is the first step in a pilgrimage of Swiss fathers and sons, and is visited by thousands of non-Swiss tourists every year. Next is a chapel on the site of Tell’s home, the lakeside pier where he was placed on a boat headed to a dungeon, and a ledge where Tell freed himself during a storm, sprang from the boat to safety, and drowned the baddie Gessler and his goons.

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.