Ok, I didn’t know the first. But as for the second, I grew up outside of Philly in the 70s, and I recall hearing that in class and on trips to the Liberty Bell. I don’t think anyone denied the third item, either.
Yeah I was going to offer that up as some kind of a world record for “clarification”! 
Okay - here’s a silly one. People forget that the folks fighting the British in the American Revolution weren’t Americans.
Most people know, I hope, that during World War II the Allied Powers (USA, UK, etc.) fought the Axis Powers and that the latter consisted of Germany, Japan, and Italy. But most people are surprised to learn that also allied with the Axis powers were Hungary, Bulgaria, Roumania, and (to a limited degree) Finland.
When you deal with history you have to place yourself in that time. Nelson Mandella and Malcom X had their racist moments as well as Benjamin Franklin. You see it’s just whatever someone picks out.
This is espeically sensitive when you deal with slavery. Because slavery is the ultimate indignity it is treaded with caution and agast.
An example would be slaves had to work from sun up to sun down. Well so did most other people. Not the people that owned slaves, but the poor retched immigrants. Now that seems awful by our standard, but place yourself in the 1800s. What else was there to do? If you went home from work there was no radio, TV, illiteracy was high, so even if you had a book you’d likely have to find someone to read it to you.
A lot of people are suprised to hear that Irish immigrants were responsible for most of the infrastructure of the South before emancipation of the slaves. In fact slaves themselves, would look down upon the “dirty shanty Irish.” Why the Irish? Why not use slave to build? Because it was DEADLY to build railroads and such. You could hire an Irish guy for a dime or a quarter and if he died, so what? There will be another boat load of them in New York City or Baltimore soon. But a male slave in good health was worth $150.00 AND he could pick a lot of cotton. It made sense not to use him, 'cause the slave was much more valuable.
BUT the ultimate thing is the “dirty shanty Irishman,” had one advantage, he could get up and leave and say “screw you.” The slave couldn’t. This is the ultimate indignity.
So you see how history can quickly reflect views. You can transfer this to now-a-days. How many of us have jobs where we suffer great indignity? Some of us will quit, some will say it’s worth that indignity.
And then it becomes subjective.
Reflecting people always try to make their source look better. A current example is Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It is constantly being touted as the best selling album in history. While that was true, it no longer is the Eagles Greatest Hits (since 1999) now holds that record. (Though it’s easily conceivable that with Jackson’s death, people will start buying it again, and it’ll retake the lead)
And a huge proportion of the troops on t’other side weren’t British.
Over 30,000 Germans fought plus 10,000 loyalist colonists (that’s not something many Brits would know).
Well, that’s kind of what the war was about, wudn’t it?
Yeah - I just read a lengthy article on how the much vaunted British forces arrayed against the colonists weren’t exactly the powerhouse they are often presented as being. (My wife and kids present in a loyalist unit.)
The thing is, the original French phrase didn’t even use the word “gateau” (which is what most of us use when talking about “cake”) - the phrase we know is a result of sloppy translation. The word actually used by Rousseau (the real originator of the phrase) was “brioche”, which is a soft, slightly sweet bread which is usually enriched with eggs and/or butter.
Seems to me that the source for your fact forgot that neither Marie Antoinette nor Rousseau spoke a speck of English… and that while “cake” may have meant something different to a 18thC baker than it does today, neither meaning is particularly close to the original “brioche”.
(though the overall message of callous ignorance remains the same, regardless of what kind of baked goods you’re talking about)
That’ll learn me for actually taking the time to write something instead of just finding a link to back me up. 
I wonder if more black troops fought for the British rather than for the Americans. Either way they were nowhere near 50% of the army any more than 50% of the population, and in the Revolutionary as in the Civil War it was said to be incomparably easier to convince a man to lend his sons than his slaves. (He could make more sons free of charge and have a good time doing it, slaves were the most expensive property you could own.)
I don’t want to hijack this Revolutionary War discussion but this is a great OP.
Here’s mine: The Redstone rocket that carried the first Americans into space was built by Chrysler…in Detroit…in what as far as I can tell was a unionized factory.
[quote=“bup, post:9, topic:501087”]
Other conveniently forgotten history - [LIST]
[li]Benjamin Franklin owned a couple of slaves (I think even beyond when slavery was made illegal in Pennsylvania, because he had them with him in England at the time), even if he did petition the government to get rid of slavery at the end of his life.[/li][/quote]
Franklin’s views on race were interesting, and admirable in their malleability. He had always believed blacks were, as humans, entitled to compassionate treatment, but he had no real problem with slavery for most of his life and like most men of his time he looked upon blacks as intrinsically inferior.
He owned at least 4 during the course of his life. He’s known to have freed one and to have given another to his daughter, though it’s not certain what became of the other two other than he did not own them at the time of his death.
What seems to have most changed his views were meeting educated black men in England and seeing the pupils of a school for black children in Philadelphia. He was embarassed at the notion that he had not taken into account their complete lack of opportunities for education and their traumatic history in the country in his assessment of the race, and his realization that “with the same opportunities there’s no real difference in intelligence” caused him to realize just how truly barbaric slavery was.
His daughter and son-in-law did not free the slave he had given them however, so he played hardball when he died. In his will he cancelled a £2,172 loan (and 5 shillings) loan he had given his son-in-law but only if in exchange “he would immediately after my decease manumit and set free his Negro man Bob”. This was a no brainer- slaves were expensive, but I doubt there was one anywhere in the US that would have been worth anywhere remotely near that amount.
Abraham Lincoln similarly viewed blacks as inferiors and said so many times, and famously considered colonization as a solution to slavery. I find him admirable as well for the fact his views changed as he met people like Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Keckly, and others, and as he heard reports of all black units.
I’ve never understood why men who remain completely steadfast to a conviction are so revered. Men like Franklin and Lincoln who remain devoted to a conviction until they see good evidence why they’re wrong are incomparably more admirable.
Googling “blacks American revolution” gives this as the first link.
I didn’t (and don’t) have time to read the entire article but it certainly casts a big :dubious: on the 50 to 80% of the troops -on either side- were composed of blacks.
True - however, I sometimes think that it’s actually more useful for people who aren’t experts in a particular historical period to have a less “accurate” view of that period. A person who believes that the Axis consisted solely of Germany, Italy, and Japan is technically wrong, sure - but that person has a perfectly workable sense of who was driving Axis policy in the war, whose interests were paramount, and so on. It takes significantly more study for someone who’s taught that the Axis consisted of all these countries to understand why it matters that these other countries were in the Axis. And, frankly, I’m okay with letting Finland off the hook for their sort-of Axis membership. Rarely has a civilized republic been forced into a worse deal.
One of my favorite books! I recommend it highly to anyone with even a passing interest in history.
That the outcome of WW II was decided on the Eastern front. Not only did Nazi Germany military casualities on the Eastern front amount to 4.3 million out of a total of 5.4 million, it was also there the vast majority of their best trained and best equipped troops were sent from the beginning to the end.
One of the deaths resulting from the Boston Massacre was a black man named Crispus Attucks. Other than that, I got nothin.
It was (1681), by 11,000 dutchmen, led by William of Orange.
Unless, of course, his son was also one of his slaves. Or the son of another one of his slaves.