# Historical myths DEBUNKED! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 19, 2025, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251 "2025-08-19T02:56:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**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:** [August 27, 2025, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/241 "2025-08-27T18:17:12Z")
I confess I remembered that there was a Malay slave who was first, but I didn’t remember his name. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/242 "2025-08-27T18:28:32Z")
> [@solost](#): > > Maybe not a full-blown historical myth, but a misconception I often hear, is that since the average life span in the past was so much lower ([40 yo globally in the year 1800](https://www.verywellhealth.com/longevity-throughout-history-2224054)), many assume that people actually aged more quickly and all dropped dead by 40 or so. Who assumed it? I never heard anyone say that. Who ever thought that people aged quicker? Obviously the low life expectancy was due to the myriad ways of dying prematurely. > [@solost](#): > > But it’s an _average_ life span, skewed down by the high amount of infant mortality-- before vaccination, modern antibiotics and sanitation techniques had been developed. If you lived past childhood and didn’t get yourself killed in a war, you had a good chance of living into your 70s or even 80s. Well, yeah. A person could live to 70, if he wasn’t killed in a war, or died of smallpox or cholera or measles, or he had no money to buy food, or there was a famine and there was no food available, or he got a minor infection, or got himself hanged for a minor crime, or poisoned by the lead water pipes, or there was a cold spell and his house had no heating … ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/243 "2025-08-27T18:49:15Z")
ChatGPT tell me that, in Europe in the middle ages, > historians and demographers generally estimate: > > 20–30% of infants died within their first year of life. > > By age 5, up to 40–50% of children might not survive. So if we assume that, of every 10 babies born during that time, at least 4 died before the age of 5. Furthermore, if the average life span was 40, if you survived early childhood, you had a better-than-average chance of living into your 70s. Which is, I believe, what **solost** was trying to convey. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/244 "2025-08-27T18:57:01Z")
That is what I was trying to convey, and I don’t think @Peter_Morris had any misunderstanding or disagreement with that part of my contention, just with the part that people often hear that the _average_ lifespan was much shorter, for example 40 years old globally in the year 1800, and confuse that to mean the _typical_ lifespan was shorter, that people were routinely dropping dead at 40 back then. > [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Who assumed it? I never heard anyone say that. Who ever thought that people aged quicker? > > Obviously the low life expectancy was due to the myriad ways of dying prematurely. @Peter_Morris must hang out with smarter people than I do 😏 ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/245 "2025-08-27T18:57:32Z")
I remember reading up on it a little bit before. Magellan was killed in the Philippines when travelling west around the world, bit on a previous voyage he had sailed east to at least that distance. At the time he died he had crossed every line of longitude. I don’t recall if he had gone to the same port or crossed the path of his previous trips. So ot kinda depends on what counts as a circumnavigation. ---
**Author:** ![JWT\_Kottekoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@JWT\_Kottekoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JWT_Kottekoe)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/246 "2025-08-27T19:21:03Z")
The Wright Brother’s did not do their experiments and make their first powered flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They did it four miles away in Kill Devil Hills. They sent and received mail and telegrams in Kitty Hawk, including the telegram announcing their success. As bicycle designers, they even designed a special bicycle for riding on sand to expedite their trips to and from Kitty Hawk. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/247 "2025-08-27T19:44:54Z")
> [@solost](#): > > just with the part that people often hear that the _average_ lifespan was much shorter, for example 40 years old globally in the year 1800, and confuse that to mean the _typical_ lifespan was shorter, that people were routinely dropping dead at 40 back then. Right. But while people weren’t dropping dead of old age at 40, as noted earlier the typical adult lifespan was still a bit shorter than today. You’d be hard-pressed to find a pre-modern European monarch who died peacefully and made it past (or even to) 70. Many checked out in their 50’s, especially as you go farther back in time. Metabolic and contagious disease just killed you quicker, younger back then as the immune system gradually declined with age (as it does with us all). The famously long-lived Louis XIV went at age 77 in 1715. None of his predecessors, not one far as I can tell, made it to 70 in the entire history of France. His very, very long-reigned successor who became king at age 5, died from smallpox at 64. People did not normally make it well into their 70’s and 80’s in the pre-modern world. It happened, but it was notably rare. ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats2)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/248 "2025-08-27T21:32:30Z")
This one is an obscure bit of misremembered Chicago history, but the story does come up occasionally. In 1919, on two segregated beaches, one for Whites, and one for Blacks, side by side on Lake Michigan, a black swimmer drifted across the unseen boundary and tried to come ashore on the White beach. An angry white mob pelted him with stones, forcing the black swimmer back into the lake where tired and injured, he drowned. People from the Black beach retaliated, resulting in the bloody Chicago race war of 1919. Not quite. In reality, four young black men were floating on a raft near the boundary of the two beaches, and a single young white man began throwing stones at them from the edge of the white beach. One of the stones hit Eugene Williams, and he slipped off the raft and drowned. The white assailant ran back among the crowd on the White beach. Eugene’s friends got to shore and found a white police officer, demanding that the officer arrest the white stone thrower whom they could see was still on the White beach. The police officer refused to apprehend the assailant, and from there the incident grew into the race riot that killed 38 people. Yes, either way, a young black swimmer died and that is horrible, but there was only one probably racist stone thrower, and an undoubtedly racist police officer, not a vicious racist mob forcing a tired black swimmer back into the lake from a segregated shore. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/249 "2025-08-27T21:39:20Z")
The female factory worker in the iconic WWII-era “We Can Do It!” poster is **not** Rosie The Riveter. She was conflated with a folk hero of that name (and a Norman Rockwell painting thereof) when the image was rediscovered in the 80s. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/250 "2025-08-27T23:13:58Z")
> [@JWT\_Kottekoe](#): > > The Wright Brother’s did not do their experiments and make their first powered flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They did it four miles away in Kill Devil Hills. Good point, and here’s the thing- unlike other- bogus IMHO- claimants to the first powered airplane flight, the brothers didnt do it once. They flew over and over, longer and longer. The Smithsonian for like decades, kept claiming it was Langley , whose aircraft managed to hop a few feet off the ground- later ones were catapult launched and all crashed immediately. . It finally flew in 1914. . Also the design had no real controls for turning, Later aircraft did not use that design. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/251 "2025-08-27T23:26:50Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Smithsonian for like decades, kept claiming it was Langley That might be because Langley ran the Smithsonian Institute from the late 19th century until shortly before he died in 1906. It was also in part because the Wrights were interested in protecting their unpatented IP so they kept a somewhat low profile and pursued testing their improved designs in near secrecy. They were simply just not well known until about half a decade later when Wilbur started doing public demonstrations in France. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/252 "2025-08-28T00:10:32Z")
Langley did have the first successful powered heavier-than-air flight. Of a small model unable to carry a human. And yes, he had so many failures on the way to success that it didn’t seem like a deliberate iterative development effort so much as random aimless tinkering that finally got lucky. The Wrights’ much greater achievement was flying with people aboard. Repeatedly. And doing so as the culmination of a designed plan, not tinkering. IMO if Langley had not been associated with the Smithsonian he’d be a mere footnote in US aviation history. Much as the US version of history treats all the folks in other countries who were moving along the same general path at the same general time. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/253 "2025-08-28T02:03:29Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](#): > > there was only one probably racist stone thrower, and an undoubtedly racist police officer, not a vicious racist mob forcing a tired black swimmer back into the lake from a segregated shore That reminds me of the story of the death of Dr Charles Drew in 1950. Dr. Drew revolutionized blood transfusions, but died at just 45 following a car accident. The myth is that he died because the whites only hospital which was closest to the accident refused to treat him, as this was in North Carolina and he was Black. In reality, the hospital _did_ try to save him. His injuries were just too severe. > **[The Truth About the Death of Charles Drew - 2004 - Question of the Month -...](https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/question/2004/june.htm)** ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/254 "2025-08-28T02:29:01Z")
Charles Dickens was not paid by the word. He was paid by the installment. > **[Was Dickens Really Paid By The Word?](https://dickens.ucsc.edu/resources/faq/by-the-word.html)** > Dickens published his novels in serial form. That is to say, the novels appeared serially, or over a period of many weeks or months (much as a modern-day soap opera appears daily, or a modern sit-com appears weekly). > Dickens’s 20-part formula was successful for a number or reasons: each monthly number created a demand for the next since the public, often enamored of Dickens’s latest inventions, eagerly awaited the publication of a new part; the publishers, who earned profits from the sale of numbers each month, could partially recover their expenses for one issue before publishing the next; and **the author himself, who received payment each time he produced 32 pages of text (and not necessarily a certain number of words)**, did not have to wait until the book was completed to receive payment. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/255 "2025-08-28T12:01:52Z")
A podcast I listen to ([Two Designers Walk into a Bar](https://www.twodesignerswalkintoabar.com/episodes/episode-107-us-wartime-posters)) said the poster was originally a Westinghouse Electric campaign, and it wasn’t necessarily to promote women in the workplace. Worker morale had been declining, and this was Westinghouse’s attempt to bolster it. That’s why there’s a badge with a W on it at the bottom of the poster. The woman didn’t actually have a name. [![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec324ea292e052eacb5ef35/1746842828711-VY9TSYMEID0TYWUSFUFM/rosie-poster-large.jpg?format=1000w) ](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec324ea292e052eacb5ef35/1746842828711-VY9TSYMEID0TYWUSFUFM/rosie-poster-large.jpg?format=1000w) Norman Rockwell created the actual Rosie the Riveter poster that was used at the time. She’s eating lunch while resting her foot on a copy of Mein Kempf. [![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec324ea292e052eacb5ef35/1746842994051-YI21NY255XYRDIX92WYE/Sat+Evening+Post+Cover+4.jpg?format=1000w) ](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec324ea292e052eacb5ef35/1746842994051-YI21NY255XYRDIX92WYE/Sat+Evening+Post+Cover+4.jpg?format=1000w) The reason the Westinghouse version became more iconic was because the Rockwell painting was difficult to license. Since Westinghouse only used the poster internally, it wasn’t copyrighted. The Westinghouse poster resurfaced in 1982 in a Washington Post article about WWII propaganda, and then went viral, repurposing the We (factory workers) to We (women in the workforce). The woman became Rosie the Riveter from that point on. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/256 "2025-08-28T12:39:18Z")
Fascinating - thanks! I see the first woman also has a “Westinghouse Electric” button (pin?) attached to her collar, with another woman’s face on it - or is it her own? ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/257 "2025-08-28T12:53:20Z")
That looks to be her work ID badge. ---
**Author:** ![Clearbluesky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Clearbluesky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clearbluesky)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/258 "2025-08-28T13:39:50Z")
I think most inventors we credit for various inventions didn’t necessarily invent anything independently. The wright brothers didn’t just wake up one morning and invent the airplane. There was a field of research regarding the subject that they built upon. But we like the narrative that two brothers just up and invented air travel. Plus they are Americans! Competing claims on who did what first are common. Thomas Edison was just good at public relations and stealing ideas. Did John Paul Jones actually say “I have not begun to fight” ? Like he had a stenographer following him around in middle of the naval battle and they documented it? The Washington Cherry Tree story can be directly attributed to a biographer around 1800. The whole first Thanksgiving thing is made up. But it’s fun and we all play along. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/259 "2025-08-28T14:02:12Z")
> [@Clearbluesky](#): > > Did John Paul Jones actually say “I have not begun to fight” ? Like he had a stenographer following him around in middle of the naval battle and they documented it? I don’t know, but since he presumably said it out loud in the hearing of others, instead of muttering it to himself while shut up in his cabin, those who served with him likely told it to newspaper reporters or something, so I can’t see any a priori reason to discount this story. ---
**Author:** ![Clearbluesky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Clearbluesky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clearbluesky)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2025, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251/260 "2025-08-28T14:17:51Z")
We can never definitively state whether or not he actually said those words in the middle of a naval battle. I am highly suspicious that if someone heard him say something to that effect, told a friend, who told a friend, who told a reporter, it got changed to the more eloquent “I have not yet begun to fight” to sell more newspapers. Heroes sell. And Julius Caesar never said “et tu Brute” but a lot of people think he did because Shakespeare made it up. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-debunked/1022251.md?page=14)