- Not everything you believe in is a lie — just some parts of it.
History is weird. There are so many historical facts, people, events, and objects that everybody knows about.
Yet, none of them are real.
That’s the thing about history. If you come up with a really good bull**** story that really takes off, hundreds of years later people will still keep repeating it — and thinking it’s real.
Here’s a collection of X historical facts you may have even learned in school, yet never existed at all.
1) The Word ‘Ye’
If you want to give your store an old-fashioned flair, you just call it Ye Olde Shoppe. That’s what people did back in the day, right?
Well, yes and no. They did occasionally spell “the” as “ye,” but if you pronounce it like The Artist Previously Known as Kanye, you’re wrong.
The “ye” was still pronounced as “the.” You see, the English alphabet used to have a letter called thorn that looked like this: þ
A bit weird, right? Well, that was also the issue with early printing presses — the lettering didn’t have a thorn.
So, printers started rendering it in various ways, including “y” and “th” as it’s pronounced. So, yes, you may have Ye Olde Shoppe, but it’s pronounced just as “the old shop.”
2) The Red Phone
During the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union established a direct line of contact. This Red Phone allowed the leader of each superpower to speak directly to each other.
Not exactly. The line existed, but it wasn’t red — and also not a telephone.
Originally, the line of contact was a Teletype machine. In 1986, it was changed to a fax machine.
A phone line wouldn’t have made much sense anyway. Think about it, how many Soviet leaders spoke fluent English — or U.S. presidents Russian, for that matter?
3) Pyramids Were Built by Slave Labor
You’ve seen it in movies, read about it in novels, and even in the Bible. Those cruel ancient Egyptians forced slaves to build their pyramids!
Except not. Sure, slavery existed in Egypt and there were likely slaves working on the pyramids, but the bulk of the labor came from regular day workers.
Actually, they weren’t quite that regular. Recent studies have found that the pyramid builders were actually fairly well paid and were even buried with respect if they happened to suffer a work accident.
So, there were probably some slaves too, but most of the work was done by your Average Joehotep.
4) ‘Let Them Eat Cake’
Word reaches French Queen Marie Antoinette that people are starving and have no bread. In response, the heartless queen quips: “Let them eat cake.”
Famous as the tone-deaf joke is, it probably never happened. Or at least there’s no proof of it.
The original quote (“Let them eat brioche”) comes from the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who attributes it to a “nameless princess.” Marie Antoinette was a princess at the time, but for royalty, she was pretty much a nobody. No one would’ve cared what she had to say about bread or cakes.
But the quote made for great propaganda during the French Revolution and it has stuck around since.
5) The Iron Maiden
If you asked a medieval peasant if he was scared of being put into an iron maiden, he’d probably just blink and ask you what that is. That’s right, everyone’s favorite medieval torture device likely never existed.
“But I’ve seen one in a museum!” you say. Sure, you’ve seen an iron maiden, but it wasn’t medieval.
The modern concept of the iron maiden wasn’t invented until the 18th century. And even then, it was a work of fiction, not based on any historical evidence.
More people have been tortured by the band Iron Maiden than by the real device. Mostly because the latter number is zero while plenty of people have been exposed to the band’s music.
6) The Chastity Belt
Since we’re on the topic of horrible devices that never existed, here’s another one. No medieval gentleman ever put his wife in a chastity belt before heading out for his travels.
The concept of the chastity belt originates in the 16th century — and it started off as a joke. The whole device was invented to make fun of overtly controlling husbands.
But it must’ve been a good joke because people kept repeating it. And by the Victorian era, they’d forgotten it was a joke (or they figured they could make good money by displaying fake chastity belts).
And of course, there’s also that one couple from centuries ago who heard the joke and, for the first time, thought it actually sounded pretty kinky.
7) Stockbrokers Jumping Out of Windows
On October 24, 1929, the Wall Street stock market crashed. Seeing all their money disappear, dozens of stockbrokers leaped to their deaths out of their office windows rather than face poverty.
You know what we’re going to say. No, they didn’t.
Now, that comes with a caveat that a lot of people did kill themselves as a result of the crash. And yes, two of them did so by jumping out the window on Wall Street.
But it wasn’t the kind of epidemic you think. And the reason you think that is because newspapers at the time smelled a juicy story and decided to milk it for all it’s worth — and then a bit more.
Based on the news stories from the time, you’d imagine Wall Street was littered with mangled corpses. But no — it was only ever two despairing gentlemen who met such a sad end.
8) Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride
We can already hear the torches and pitchforks at our door. But it’s true — Paul Revere never rode through Massachusetts screaming, “The British are coming!”
The story of Paul Revere originates from a poem by the revered poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. But he took a lot of artistic license with the story.
Now, there was a man named Paul Revere who did go out on a horse that night to send word about the British. But he was only one of the riders. There were many more, and they actually performed better than Revere.
You see, the man didn’t seem to be in an awful rush. During his ride, he stopped by a bar to have a drink — and got arrested by the British.
They did let Revere go but confiscated his horse. So, he finished his tour on foot, only to have people tell him to shut up since they were trying to sleep.
Revere did play his part in the story. That part has just been greatly exaggerated.
Hits: 0
