Historical myths DEBUNKED!

Lemons and limes can be carried by either African or European swallows, so they don’t have to migrate by themselves. :laughing:

I believe you have swallows confused with fruit bats.

What fruit bat?

It could be an African fruit bat. Not a European fruit bat, that’s all I’m saying.

Oh, yeah, an African fruit bat maybe, but not a European fruit bat. That’s my point.

But then of course, uh, African fruit bats are non-migratory.

I’m still waiting for the canonical answer.

Eric the fruit bat.

The kind that carry fruit…like limes and lemons.

Ah, there it is.

Well, half a fruit bat.

Eric the half a bat carries cut limes.

Is that why there is a bat on a bottle of Bacardi? It’s Eric!

Okay, Saint Fruitbat.

Sherlock Holmes wore a deerstalker hat maybe once- In Hound. He wouldnt wear one around London, but that is how his is portrayed.

Sherlock Holmes wasn’t real so I’m not sure it counts as busting any sort of myth.

There are so many myths about the medieval period that have just been internalized and also show up all the time in popular culture.
Frequent ones being that they didn’t bathe; that only the rich could afford coloured cloth or black cloth; that they never drank water, only beer…

It doesn’t help that, far and away, the most recognizable narrative set in medieval Europe is a Monty Python film.

The big one is that people valued spices because it concealed the smell of rotting meat.

An absurd idea, since spices were luxury goods, and no one would waste valuable spices on bad food.

Yep. Hell, it’d be cheaper just to get new meat rather than hide it with expensive spices. Mind you, they did like their meat well aged.

I have two more-

The Norse Vikings- as far as we know- never used what some call a “Viking funeral” by putting someone is a boat , sending it out to sea, then setting it afire. There is an accounts- once - of the Rus using it on a river.

The Lost Cause/Southern Apologists have spread the myth that the Emancipation Proclamation didnt free any slaves. This is fake propaganda- Lincolns proclamation freed immediately about 50000 slaves, and by wars end something like three million more.