It started with the question “What historical inaccuracy is still taught often?” and people have been sending in their replies ever since it was posted. From famous people’s lives to wars and government decisions, here are those that have received the most upvotes.
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That Mother Teresa was a saint but in reality she was a racist money loader. Information about this topic can be found even from the New York Times archives.
Tuskegee experiment.The government did not inject men with syphilis, they took men who already had syphilis, and pretended to treat them so they could study how it ravaged the body over time left untreated.Still just as cruel though.
That the loss of the American colonies was a devastating blow to the British. As an American, I was taught this multiple times. In reality, the loss of the Revolutionary War was a minor blip in British history. The loss of India and Singapore after WW2 was a devastating blow. But the British didn’t and still don’t care about the loss of the 13 colonies.
Generally when it comes to the slave movement in the United States most people have the impression that slavers just went over and kidnapped the natives, which although did happen, wasn’t the only way slaves were acquired. Quite a lot of slaves were actually bought from African chiefs, who’d sell their own and captured people to the Slavers.
There’s definitely this thought process that normal Germans (and Poles, Austrians, Hungarians, etc) didn’t know about the camps at all during the holocaust that gets pushed as fact in schools, which is b******t. The concept of the goings on at a KZ was absolutely something people knew. When my grandfather was growing up it was normal to ‘hire’ people from Dachau satellite camps to build fences or work in fields or whatever. The industrialization process and scale of it was news to them, for sure, but if something happened to you and you were sent to a KZ, everyone knew it was a death sentence, and you were going to be forced into labor until you died. By the time 1944 rolled around they were pretty aware of the gas chambers too, though most people didn’t believe it.
That only Europeans were colonizers or imperialists.
That Native Americans were one homogenous group who all agreed upon who could live on which bit of land and always had peaceful arrangements with one another before the Europeans arrived. In actuality, there was tribal warfare often. Culturally, there was so much variety. People should learn more about the Cahokians who were unique in that they built a city rather than just a village or being nomads.
For some reason, people still seem to think that Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake,” when she said no such thing. History has not treated her well.
My mother and all her siblings were taught at a Catholic school that men have one less rib than women and that’s to origin of the Adam and Eve story. Completely untrue. Men and women have the same number of ribs.
I don’t think it’s taught but the general American seem to believe that cowboys were mostly White people. When in actuality it was Mexicans and even Black people after they were freed. It was considered a lowly position in the Wild West. If a cowboy was White, he was a very poor White. White people were on the frontier farming and such. Asians (the Chinese) did laundry and were cooks. That’s where a lot of Chinese-American foods originated from. People also seem to forget that this time period, which was maybe only 30-50 years, had three pinnacle events unfold in US history—the Transcontinental Railroad was completed, The Chinese Exclusion Act went into law, and slavery was abolished. I may be wrong but I believe in that order too.
The myth of the Alamo and birth of Texas vs the real story of why Mexican army attacked. All the illegal immigrants from the US breaking laws on Mexican land (Texas), not paying taxes, and still pushing things like slavery even though it was against Mexican law.
“Only 8percentof U.S. high school seniors can identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War.” So 92% of students are taught an inaccurate account of one of the most critical and defining parts of US history.
Christopher Columbus discovered America. That’s been bs for a long time and still gets taught in schools.
That Frankenstein is the monster, but in actuality Frankenstein is the doctor not the monster. The monster is actually called Frankenstein’s monster.
I always seem to see some school teachers talking about Pearl Harbor, and some of them say that thats how WW2 started, I remember when I corrected them once, then i got to sit in the timeout corner.EingestricheneOktave:Man, that must have been frustrating.To be fair, that’s how WW2 started for the americans, but yes, it was already in full swing in other parts of the world.There’s this ubiquitous photo of german soldiers removing the barrier that marked the german-polish border in 1939. It’s everywhere. It’s in documentaries, it’s shown in schools, it’s in history books etc. etc. and, correctly so, always in connection with the beginning of the war.Almost every german has this photo drilled into their brain, and that it was taken in 1939, when the war started.
Cortes and 500 Spaniards conquered the Aztec empire. It’s true that he only had a few hundred Spanish soldiers but he had tens of thousands indigenous allies who did most of the fighting.
r/askhistorians can teach you a lot more about these, but one thing that seems to be kind of implicitly taught is that since medieval Europeans were white, therefore they never saw or interacted with anyone who wasn’t. I’m not saying there were a lot of people of colour in Europe at the time (there weren’t) but Europeans did travel to other continents and had contact with Africans and Asians going back to the classical era and before.Also foreigners did travel to Europe sometimes and there were the Romani people (who are from India) living all over Europe. The Mongols invaded Europe in the 13th century or so, and the Arabs once colonized Spain. So a work about the Vikings or something that has a few people of colour in it wouldn’t necessarily be inaccurate.
The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. No, it wassignedon July 2, it wasn’t announced until July 4 but regardless even Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and others, wrote that they expected July2would be the date that would be celebrated with great festivities. That got lost to history.
In New Zealand, they sometimes seem to be taught that they had the highest casualty rate in both World Wars. I worked with a New Zealander who got genuinely angry when I said that it wasn’t even close to being true. I put it down to him being misinformed, but then I saw another NZer making the same claim on the Guardian website.CookinFrenchToast4yaThey got confused.. They had the highest rate of deaths per 1 million people in the commonwealth (not the world). “Post-war calculations indicated that New Zealand’s ratio of killed per million of population (at 6684) was the highest in the Commonwealth (with Britain at 5123 and Australia, 3232).”
That William Wallace was a poor uneducated farmer that grew up in some small village and not a literal nobleman and that Robert the Bruce betrayed him. See tbh a lot of braveheart is complete hollywood b******t which is sad since we don’t get taught much of our own history in scotland my only memory of studying it in school was literally being made to watch that stupid movie and take notes.
Marsha P Johnson did not throw the first brick at the Stonewall riots. You’ll often hear variations of “a black trans woman started Stonewall/pride” and while she was a prolific activist, she did not start it, she came later. That’s not to diminish her accomplishments and role in the riots, she was still there just not the one who started it, she came later when she heard people were rioting.
Watch any kind of medieval docco or book on brewing and they will likely trot out that the people drank small ale because the water was not safe.This idea was printed in some woman’s book published in the 70’s and everyone just kept repeating it and still do, it was never true.
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The US “won” the Space Race.The USSR actually outclassed the US in every category except going to the moon: first satellite in space, first woman in space, first animal in space, first probe to reach another planet, etc.That’s not to say that getting to the moon wasn’t a major accomplishment, but a) it was after the USSR had outdone us repeatedly in every way for over a decade leading up to it, and b) it wasn’t an “American” accomplishment, but a human one. Space and the moon belongs to everyone.
I don’t know if it’s still taught, but I know that a commonly held belief is that the whole world thought that the Earth was flat except for Columbus. In actuality it was well known that the Earth was round as early as the 6th century BC.Muroid:Yep. Columbus’s actual big innovation was that he believed the circumference of the Earth was smaller than was generally believed at the time." It turned out that he was absolutely wrong about that, but luckily for him he ran into a whole unexpected continent that was sitting right in the middle of his route, because otherwise his miscalculation would have meant he was super screwed.
The British who conducted the dambusters missions(Operation Chastise) who dropped the bouncing bombs on German dams. There is a massive misconception that the bombs were spherical in shape which I was taught in school, they were actually barrel shape. This is because in the dambusters film they were spherical as at the time of making in 1955 any details on the actual bomb were still highly classified.
That Napoleon’s invasion of Russia failed because of the Russian winter.The invasion started in the summer and most of the French casualties happened before winter set in. The winter finished them off as they retreated, but they lost long before that.
An American professor taught that King Henry only had 5 wives. The thing is that my family are British so we knew that wasn’t right. But he wouldn’t hear otherwise. Prat is probably still teaching that he only had 5 wives.
The pilgrims and thanksgiving in the United States. Especially in elementary school.
It might be stupid to y’all, but in schools teachers pretty often try to brush off the fact that Russian Empire decided to support the future US to fight the Brits and Russia even sent their navy fleet in order to support americans.
In Egypt, people are taught that Egypt won the Yum Kippur war, and that Egypt got Sinai after militarily wrestling it away from Israeli control. Usually war recounts and reenactments focus on the first day, when Egypt really did defeat Israel in combat and made it all the way to Gaza, but it conveniently ignores what happened in the following 2 days of the war, how Israel retaliated, or the real reasons why the war ended and Camp David agreement ended up the way it is.I guess you could technically see it as an Egyptian victory since the goal was to get Sinai in the first place. But it’s more of a strategic/political victory, and certainly wasn’t a military one.
Men havenotalways had the enforced right to vote. At the time of the American Revolution, it was given to white, male property owners—about 6% of the population (150,000 people). A century later, all men were given it but, of course, it wasn’t enforced for male minorities. In 1919, women got it, but same deal with female minorities. With the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, everyone was (supposedly) given the right to vote. However, this is still not true of all men today. In some states, Selective Service registration is still a prerequisite. Thus, if you’re a man, you still don’t necessarily have the right to vote in America; it may actually be a privilege for you. TL;DR: All women have had the enforced right to vote for 56 years this year; there has not been one point where all men have.
That the Wright Brothers were first in flight.
George Washington chopping down the cherry tree with the hatchet he received for his birthday. This is generally believed to be anecdotal at best nowadays, but is still often taught in lower grades.
That the Soviet Pepsi trade happened and made Pepsi the 6th largest navy in the world (17 submarines,1 frigate, 1 cruiser and 1 destroyer). It would have made Pepsi the 6th largest submarine navy but not even in the top 30 worldwide. And the trade never happened, it was a suggestion but it never happened.
Stalin said “one death is a tragedy but a million deaths is a statistic”
That the Me262 was the first jet aircraft ever produced. In reality it was the Heinkel He178 was the first jet and it flew aleardy in 1939. Not that big of a deal and most probably don’t care, nevertheless it always was something that bothered me
Canada won the war of 1812, because we stopped manifest destiny, although this is subjective. The truth is more complicated. My history teacher said it was the greatest war of all time because every side thinks they won….except the First Nations.
In Canada, they still teach that Roy Brown killed the Red Baron, when in fact it was a gunner on the ground that got the lucky shot.
That the reason Americans even have summer vacation is because families that owned farms needed extra help in the summer. This isn’t true at all. Farmers don’t really do much in the summer. The real reason summer vacation exists at all is because air conditioning didn’t exist, and classrooms would get so incredibly hot that rich families would pull their kids out of school for months and take them to the countryside
That the Wright brothers first took off in North Carolina, which is actually where the first landed, the started in Dayton, Ohio.
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