# Bullshit history that turned out to be true **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 2, 2021, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541 "2021-07-02T21:30:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/81 "2021-07-05T16:41:59Z")
Similarly to the Rosenbergs, many people believed that Alger Hiss never worked for the Soviets as a spy. A find called the Verona papers indicated otherwise. Though some still hotly dispute this, [“few today question that Hiss was indeed a spy.”](https://teachingamericanhistory.org/blog/the-long-controversy-over-alger-hiss/) Of course, many people believed that Joseph McCarthy and others of his ilk were true patriots exposing rottenness in the government. Today, nobody but cranks support this. A little footnote to history. At the same time as some of these hearings, Congress set up an investigation of comic books, a medium about which dozens of serious people had been fulminating for a decade saying that they corrupted our youth. Nobody today believes that either. Also see video games. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/82 "2021-07-05T17:02:02Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > As I recall, Ethel at least was offered the opportunity to escape execution if she’d reveal what else she knew about atomic program espionage, but refused. She didn’t know anything about atomic program espionage. I read that Julius was really a low-level spy, passing along military information, but nothing too serious, and nothing to do with the atomic program. Ethel knew about his activities, but wasn’t directly involved. ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/83 "2021-07-05T17:15:41Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > I’ve also never understood how ideology could’ve been more important to her than staying alive for the sake of her sons. I can’t understand that either. But martyrdom, be it for religion, or Communism, or a nation, is all too common, all through human history. I don’t get it either. But we have to accept that people permit themselves to be martyred all the time. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/84 "2021-07-05T17:22:21Z")
I don’t understand this sentiment, expressed by several posters now. Less than 10 years before millions had died for their ideologies in WWII, why is so strange that someone would do the same in the 1950s? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/85 "2021-07-05T17:55:59Z")
The “sentiment” seems to be that dying for your beliefs is more noble if innocents don’t suffer as a consequence. Of course, it helps if one’s cause isn’t horribly flawed to begin with. A lot of people have seen the Rosenberg case through the distorted lens of their own convictions (including the writer whose article suggested that Ethel could be folded into the Me Too movement). The established facts, while not terribly kind to the U.S. government, are damning to the Rosenbergs and those who assisted them. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/86 "2021-07-05T17:58:01Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > He [Pliny the Younger] didn’t describe pyroclastic flow… On the contrary, the standard view is now that he _did_ describe a pyroclastic flow. In [his second letter to Tacitus](http://www.pompeii.org.uk/s.php/tour-the-two-letters-written-by-pliny-the-elder-about-the-eruption-of-vesuvius-in-79-a-d-history-of-pompeii-en-238-s.htm), Pliny mentions that, ‘Soon afterwards, the cloud began to descend, and cover the sea. It had already surrounded and concealed the island of Capri and the promontory of Misenum.’ [The classic 1982 article by Sigurdsson, Cashdollar and Sparks](https://www.jstor.org/stable/504292) argued that what Pliny was describing in that passage was a _nuée ardente_ associated with a pyroclastic flow. That article has been hugely influential. They were writing in the immediate aftermath of the Mount St Helens eruption and so were applying the brand new thinking about pyroclastic flows. Their reinterpretation of the AD 79 eruption was seen as a big breakthrough and was presented as such in almost all media coverage about Pompeii in subsequent decades. This was when talk of pyroclastic flows became the cliché of every TV documentary on the subject. Such discussions were usually accompanied by claims that this proved that Pliny’s account was accurate. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/87 "2021-07-05T18:06:33Z")
Talking about the once common claims made by Western experts that lots of civilzations were made by a now lost Nordic race. Well in Ramses case, we have a red-haired pale-skinned fellow, though probably of Hykos not Nordic heritage. So were his father and grandfather. I recall reading books which (properly) were derisive of the racist idea that he was a white looking foreigner and the red hair of his mummy was explained as henna, closer examination of the hair and DNA analysis showed that actually, no he was, in fact, light-skinned and red-haired. (I remember one archeologist commenting that the actor who he probably looked like most was Damien Lewis). Frankly, I used to hold it in the same regard as Ian Smith’s regime claims that Great Zimbabwe was made by “a lost white race”. Of course, some clues were already there, Grand Pa Ramses was a military general who usurped the throne and started worshipping of Seth, hitherto the bad guy of the Egyptian pantheon (and a ginger to boot), which suggests that they were trying to make virtue out of necessity. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/88 "2021-07-05T18:06:51Z")
Thanks! I didn’t know that. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/89 "2021-07-05T18:09:35Z")
Thucydides claimed that the Plague of Athens was brought from Africa, whch was generally dismissed by modern scholars. Until Ebola, which began in the same region and has very similar symptoms to what has been described for the plague victims. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/90 "2021-07-05T20:21:29Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Well in Ramses case, we have a red-haired pale-skinned fellow, though probably of Hykos not Nordic heritage. So were his father and grandfather. Red hair isn’t exclusively a White trait. It occurs in North Africans and Asians, even Polynesians. He _may_ have had some Hyksos ancestry, but his reign was 10 generations or more after the Hyksos rule. To call him “foreign” is just wrong. And Ramses I did not usurp the throne. He was _chosen_ by the heirless Horemheb. And the full demonization of Set only really kicks off post-19th Dynasty - and he was hardly the equivalent of Satan then, he had many public temples and a postive role in the mythology along with the antagonist role - somewhat more akin to a Loki than a “big bad”. And in any case Ramses I was _already_ High Priest of Set _before_ he was appointed heir to Horemheb. He’d named his own son after the god before then, even. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/91 "2021-07-05T21:03:58Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Similarly to the Rosenbergs, many people believed that Alger Hiss never worked for the Soviets as a spy. A find called the Verona papers indicated otherwise. Though some still hotly dispute this, [“few today question that Hiss was indeed a spy.”](https://teachingamericanhistory.org/blog/the-long-controversy-over-alger-hiss/) > > Of course, many people believed that Joseph McCarthy and others of his ilk were true patriots exposing rottenness in the government. Today, nobody but cranks support this. I remember news reports a few decades ago when some Hiss files were opened to the public. One of the conspiracy theories about Nixon was that Hiss was railroaded. The fact that the FBI could never find the typewriter he was alleged to have used was considered part of the plot - they didn’t really try to find it because they knew Hiss hadn’t used it. In fact the FBI files revealed that they had honestly done a serious and extensive search for that particular typewriter, they just never found it. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/92 "2021-07-05T21:53:43Z")
Many archaeologists and historians were convinced that the Biblical King David was completely fictional. The discovery of the [Tel Dan Stele](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Dan_stele) has convinced all but the most dedicated of Biblical minimalists at least that the man existed, even if they believe the Biblical narrative of his rise and reign to have been exaggerated or fabricated. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/93 "2021-07-05T22:05:21Z")
> [@Frodo](#): > > I don’t understand this sentiment, expressed by several posters now. > Less than 10 years before millions had died for their ideologies in WWII, why is so strange that someone would do the same in the 1950s? I think what stands out is the futility of it. Their “sacrifice” did nothing to help their cause. It did not help the Soviet Union. It didn’t help communism. No one on their “side” cared. All it did was orphan their children. You can argue the futility of those that died during WWII especially at the individual level but at least it lead to the end of an evil in the world. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/94 "2021-07-05T22:18:35Z")
> [@Topologist](#): > > I’m not sure whether this fits the thread or not, but it’s somewhat appropriate for the day: For some 150 years historians [denied that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings’ children](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson%E2%80%93Hemings_controversy), but after DNA analysis it was finally accepted as true. This is more of a case of historians denying what they didn’t want to be true, though, rather than something viewed as “bullshit.” I came across one historian’s work from around 1910 who claimed that Jefferson was much too feminine in nature to have had an affair with Sally Hemings. I think we can file this one under “They thought it was bullshit because they didn’t want to view it as being true.” ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/95 "2021-07-05T22:24:41Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > I came across one historian’s work from around 1910 who claimed that Jefferson was much too feminine in nature to have had an affair with Sally Hemings. I think we can file this one under “They thought it was bullshit because they didn’t want to view it as being true.” What on earth was that supposed to mean? It sounds like a total non sequitur unless “feminine in nature” is code for gay, but it seems improbable that a historian from 1910 would _want_ Thomas Jefferson to have been gay …? ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/96 "2021-07-05T23:03:32Z")
Well, their sacrifice would have protected other Soviet intelligence assets, thereby benefiting the USSR, wouldn’t it? Sounds like the sort of thing an ideologically-motivated spy would die for. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/97 "2021-07-05T23:25:48Z")
Joan of Arc was treated as a semi-legendary figure for hundreds of years, until a bunch of primary sources (including letters and trial transcripts) resurfaced in the19th C. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/98 "2021-07-05T23:38:19Z")
If I remember correctly didn’t European scientists believe the preserved body of platypus was a fake–made of several animals sewn together before someone managed bring back a live one from Australia to prove it was real? ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2021, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/99 "2021-07-05T23:43:06Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > Well, their sacrifice would have protected other Soviet intelligence assets, thereby benefiting the USSR, wouldn’t it? Sounds like the sort of thing an ideologically-motivated spy would die for. It wasn’t so much that Julius sacrificed himself, he sacrificed his wife and hurt his children. My memory may be hazy but what I remember is if Julius had admitted guilt and said his wife had nothing to do with it their children would have had a mother. He would have still been executed but no one else would have gone down. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2021, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541/100 "2021-07-06T00:54:34Z")
> [@rbroome](#): > > Not really a bullshit theory that turned out to be true, but accepted wisdom that turned out to be wrong. For most of modern biology (up until the 60s), it was accepted that life, certainly life on earth, had to ultimately get it’s energy from the sun. Until the hydrothermal vents were discovered in the deep ocean. Those thriving ecosystems have no need for solar energy however indirect. In fact, when the vents close up, as they eventually do, the ecosystems promptly die. Turns out life can exist without the sun. Also in a massive sealed cave in Romania and lakes buried under Antarctic ice for millions of years. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bullshit-history-that-turned-out-to-be-true/945541.md?page=6)