Or a velociraptor through anything without being eaten.
"And as Jesus walked along the road to Galilee, his way was blocked by the biggest-ass lizard you *ever *saw.
"'Jesus, that’s a big lizard’, said Luke.
“‘I’m sure gonna write about it in *my *gospel’, said Mark.”
- Bill Hicks
Myth: Hitler was a vegetarian.
No he wasn’t. He enjoyed eating sausages.
Myth: Attributed to John Lennon:
My teacher asked me what I wanted in life. I said to be happy. He said you don’t understand the question. I said you don’t understand life. (or various versions)
also
“Is Ringo the best drummer in the world. (Answer) Ringo isn’t even the best drummer in the Beatles”.
There is no evidence that he said either- apart from attributed quotes on the Internet.
Myth.
The Titanic was said to be unsinkable.
That is pure rubbish. The owners never stated that at all.
Myth. Charles Lindbergh was the first to fly across the Atlantic.
Reality: Many people (around 80) had flown across the Atlantic before Lindbergh.
Phew. That is enough for now.
I don’t know about the Flintstones, but back in 2004CE here on our very own SDMB we proved that the comic B.C. takes place in a dystopian future.
Also, we do get a glimpse of the ground in a Jetson’s episode (that’s where the birds live)
Lindbergh won the Orteig Prize ($25,000, or about $350,000 in today’s money), which was offered for a New York/Paris non-stop flight (it could be in either direction). Previous transatlantic flights had been from Newfoundland to the Azores, South America to North Africa, or other distances that had origins and destinations that were impractical for things like establishing air mail points, and were chosen mainly to keep the route as short as possible.
As it happened, Lindbergh also made the first solo flight, but that was simply how he chose to make the flight; it wasn’t a requirement of the prize.
He brought a lot of attention to American aviation, which had been a European thing up until that point, because of the WWI pilots, and the fact the he made the flight solo was seen as a very American way of approaching the problem of planes being overweight, which had plagued earlier attempts to win the prize. That’s how he became such an American hero.
And contrary to his teetotaler reputation he drank an occasional beer. He did seem to legitimately loathe tobacco, but had been a smoker in his youth.
I have a couple of friends who are on Paleo diets and I’m convinced that the primary criteria for paleo food is to tack the word Paleo in front of it.
The crux of the diet is lots of natural foods with a low carb spin, which is a do-able diet that has some documented effectiveness, but the “science” and “history” behind it is nonsense. I tried to read one of the books but thought it was ridiculous when the writer said we should eat any kind of legume because paleo ancestors wouldn’t have, and that evidence of this is that they’re hard to digest unless cooked. It made me wonder what the doctor thinks of eating meat since few nutritionists recommend raw pork.
Another paleo diet recommends macadamia nuts and chicken breasts and spinach, never mind that there probably wasn’t a soul in the paleo world who would have had access to all three of those things. And of course the entire diet is based on what man evolved to eat, which implies everybody had the same diet, which was no more true in paleo times than now. It also implies that agriculture decreased health, which has some truth but is a bit more complex than “grains are bad” (spread of disease, less active lifestyle, etc.).
Again, it’s not the “cut out processed food and cut down on carbs” that I object to, but the pseudobiohistory.
[QUOTE=Cicero]
Myth. Charles Lindbergh was the first to fly across the Atlantic.
Reality: Many people (around 80) had flown across the Atlantic before Lindbergh.
[/QUOTE]
The Naval Air Museum in Pensacola, which I heartily recommend to anybody with an interest in 20th century history even if they’re not an aeronautic enthusiast, has the beautifully restored Curtiss NC-4, which is believed to be the first plane to cross the Atlantic. It’s huge- this picture gives some idea. The crossing took 19 days and had several “layovers”.
Or how they all speak English (in the World’s Fair episode, they travel in time, and everybody throughout history can understand them), or they know what “BC” is (in the flashback to when Fred and Barney met Wilma and Betty, they go watch the movie “1,000,000 BC” - “it’s all about life in the future”)?
Now there’s a historical myth, sort of - “Wilma’s maiden name is Slaghoople.” In at least three episodes (Bony Hurdle (the rodeo cowboy), one where Fred has to wine and dine a client for Mr. Slate who turns out to have gone to college with Wilma, and one about an insurance policy and Fred trying to get a job with a hotel chain), her maiden name is Pebble. No, they never do explain why her mother’s name is Slaghoople.
As for an actual historical myth, I have some:
“The Germans and Soviets were allies throughout World War II”
“The South could have won the Civil War had they managed to occupy Washington” (which they came close to doing - in how many other wars was one country’s capital literally on the border with an enemy?) - if that was the case, then why didn’t the USA surrender to the British in 1812?
“The real reason marijuana was made illegal in the USA was because William Randolph Hearst wanted to protect his lumber stock holdings from collapse if hemp was available as a cheap source of paper pulp”
Huh? 
Never heard of anyone believing this.
Me neither. If anything people believe… ok not exactly the opposite but they don’t know that the USSR was crossing the Polish border on the east while the blitzkrieg was hitting the west. Many people assume the Soviets were against the Germans from the beginning.
The South’s plan, at least in the invasion of Pennsylvania, was to threaten DC, not capture it - to besiege the capital and force the North to accept a deal. Actually occupying the city was the last thing the South wanted to do, for the reasons you pointed out.
The first non-stop transatlantic flight was in 1919, from Newfoundland to Ireland, by Alcock and Brown, and there was a £10,000 prize, which they won. (A flight to the Azores, scarcely counts as crossing the Atlantic. They are only about two thirds of the way. So that flight did not win any prizes.)
Lindberg is famous in America principally because he was the first American to do it, and because he was media friendly. In fact, he freely admitted that “Alcock and Brown showed me the way,” (see link).
World War I was part of it, but there were also some intellectual property disputes that slowed down aircraft development in the U.S. and let the Europeans take the lead. In a nutshell, the Wright brothers invented a control mechanism they called “wing warping”, and sued anybody who built similar controls into their airplanes.
I didn’t say Lindbergh made the first non-stop flight-- I said he made the first non-stop NY/Paris flight, which was something that had been specially sought, and there was a prize offered. He was also the first person to do it solo, although that wasn’t one of the requirements of the prize.
Many people who tried for the prize before Lindbergh tried to carry food storage and prep equipment (one tried to carry a refrigerator, and couldn’t get his plane off the ground), and wanted to arrive in a sort of luxury, unruffled, as it were. Lindbergh flew a plane with no toilet, and had pretty much a salami and a loaf of bread. He looked pretty rough, and I imagine didn’t smell so good when he arrived, but he arrived, which was the point.
Napoleon wasn’t actually short - he was of average stature for a man of his era.
Mama Cass didn’t choke on a ham sandwich. It was tuna. No, just kidding, it was “natural causes”, not choking.
I also tire of people attributing “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans” to Lennon. It appeared in print (Reader’s Digest, IIRC) at least 15-20 years before JL used it.
Nobody is claiming that Lindbergh didn’t do what he did, or that it was not an impressive achievement, in its way, or that the didn’t win a prize for it. The point, however, is that it is not very impressive as a first, and only a first at all if you gerrymander the criteria quite assiduously.
On the other hand, your earlier post, which mentions Curtis’s flight to the Azores, albeit dismissively, but does not even allude to Alcock and Brown’s (prizewinning) non-stop flight to Ireland, almost looks like deliberate obfuscation. Alcock and Brown clearly have the best claim to have flown the whole width of the Atlantic, from America to Europe, in one hop (without stopping off for rest, recuperation, and refueling along the way, as Curtis did twice in the Azores). They did it. Lindbergh also did it, and perhaps with a bit more panache, but several years later.
Non-serious but still awesome scientists do too: xkcd: Birds and Dinosaurs
That and the whole DC being fortified like the Maginot Line shortly after the first Union defeat.