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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

1. “Were They There?

There is a solid consensus among Civil War scholars and historians that there is no battle or “River of Blood” designation associated with the Trump National Golf Club. When challenged about the accuracy of the plaque, however, Trump was adamant. As he put it, the area was: “a prime site for river crossings. So if people are crossing the river, and you happen to be in a civil war, I would say that people were shot – a lot of them“.

Unfortunately, scholars remain unconvinced and refuse to accept the point-at-a-landmark-and-speculate method as valid historic corroboration. When informed that historians disagreed with his River of Blood myth, Trump retorted: “how would they know that? Were they there?“

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

Ancient History Encyclopedia – Fall of the Western Roman Empire

Carley, Michael J. – End of the Low, Dishonest Decade: Failure of the Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939 (1993)

Clark, Alan – Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945 (1985

Cracked – 5 Historical Landmarks (That Are Total Frauds)

Cracked – 5 People You Didn’t Realize Were Fictional Characters

Encyclopedia Britannica – Montezuma II

History Collection – Popular Historic “Facts” That Are Actually False

Ericson, Edward E. – Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933 – 1941 (1999)

Glantz, David – When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (1995)

GQ, June 20^th, 2019 – A Dirty, Rotten, Double Crossing (True) Story of What Happened to the Italian American Mob

Japan Talk – 8 Common Ninja Myths

Lane Fox, Robin – The Search For Alexander (1980)

Military History Now – Enter the Ninja: Facts and Myths About Japan’s Most Mysterious Warriors

Montefiore, Simon Sebag – Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (2004)

New York Times, March 17^th, 2017 – Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too

Rolling Stone, August 17^th, 2017 – Donald Trump’s Golf Course Plaque Honors Fake Civil War Battle

Smithsonian Magazine, August, 2004 – In Search of William Tell

Southern Poverty Law Center – How the Myth of Irish Slaves Became a Favorite Meme of Racists Online

History Collection – Historical Facts Accepted as Real For Many Years

Tank Encyclopedia – Medium Tank M4 Sherman

Wikipedia – Lend-Lease

Wikipedia – St. Bernard (Dog)

History Collection – Popular Historical Myths That People Think Are Fact

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.