Yes, thanks Sam.
Conspiracy theories about FDR and Friends allowing the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor chap my glutes. I might be naive, but I just don’t think that he would have gotten us into war by allowing our navy to be crippled.
“Fifty was an old man back then”. This is rarely true; in fact fifty year olds have frequently not been considered as old as they are in today’s youth culture.
“Girls used to marry really young in the Middle Ages/Colonial era/Victorian era- if you were 17 and unmarried you were an old maid.” Nope. As a general rule, the wealthier your family the younger you wed since between your dowry and your husband’s inheritance you didn’t have to worry about getting a farm or nest egg together, and since most historical figures tend to be from wealthier background it may sometimes be easy to get that implication, but a 17 year old bride was considered young, 20 was not a spinster, and even 25 wasn’t considered out of the running. Women often waited into their 20s for any number of reasons, including (as mentioned) potential husbands having to get a stake of some sort, having to help their parents either around the home or financially, or sometimes just not meeting anyone who wasn’t too closely related or too much like family for a while.
Likewise, the average Social Security recipient isn’t living 20 years longer than in the 1930s.
No, but the average life expectancy for a person aged 50 or over has indeed increased about 7-9 years in the past 100 years. Not the same, but it’s also not that far out of the ballpark.
From what I recall one of the main points by the conspiracy theorists is that the carriers Enterprise, Lexington and Saratoga - aircraft carriers in a war where they would play a huge role - were absent when the Japanese struck and that it was a little convenient. Controlled demolitions, yeah, inside job…
In the UK we had similar theory about the bombing of Coventry, that Churchill knew about it via ULTRA but let it happen as defending it would tip off the Germans about ULTRA. The release of the decrypts in 1996 torpedoed this theory…although this is just what the conspirators would *want *you to believe.
The thing I never understood about that particular conspiracy theory is that a disasterously failed Japanese attack would have “worked” just as well as a successful one for the conspirators …
Snopes sez Hitler was “primarily vegetarian during the latter part of his life”.
The White Star Line stressed the safety of Olympic and Titanic, claiming that "as far as it is possible to do so, these two wonderful vessels are designed to be unsinkable".
Lindberg was the first to fly* solo* across the Atlantic and the first to fly New York/Paris non-stop.
But strangely, the Alcott/Brown flight also gets pushed a lot, but it was the Americans who first flew across the Atlantic, in the NC-4 .
“Thus, the NC-4 become the first aircraft of any kind to fly across the Atlantic Ocean – or any of the other oceans. By flying from Massachusetts and Halifax to Lisbon, the NC-4 also flew from mainland-to-mainland of North America and Europe”
So it’s not, as you say *“because Americans tend to be taught that only American achievements count”. *
Americans were the first to fly across the Atlantic.
I’ve never been taught that only American achievements count, nor do I know of any Americans who have been taught that. It does, however, often seem that non-Americans are taught that Americans are taught that only American achievements count. What can you do?
In fact, I had a US History teacher who said that Edison’s real motto was “Success is 1% Tesla, and 99% getting to the patent office first.”
Well, what about the time they went to see the Grand Canyon, and it was so small you could walk across it? “They expect it to be a big thing someday.”
What do you say to that, Mr Smartypants?
Now, BC on the other hand is clearly post-apocalyptic.
It’s a shame you didn’t have better history teachers. 
A very minor one, but I’ll mention it because it pops up a lot and in fact just popped up on a FB repost thing today:
References to witch burnings in America.
There WERE NO witch burnings in America. That’s a European thing. In America, witches were hanged.
For that matter they were hanged more often in Europe than they were burned. Burning somebody at the stake is way more trouble than hanging them, and a lot more expensive because it takes a lot of wood to kill and give a good char to someone.
Thanks for posting, because that one REALLY bugs me when it pops up. In Europe, they burned heretics, and witchcraft was a form of heresy. Whether or not anyone who was burned for “witchcraft” was in any sense a witch, wiccan, or what have you, some of them were actually heretics-- not that they deserved burning, but they were “guilty” of what they were accused of. Some, as I understand it, were simply professed atheists.
The people hanged in Salem were accused of being in league with the devil. Many of them confessed, because they were going to die either way, by being hanged for their crime, or being tortured to death, and if they “confessed and repented” (however falsely), they’d get a Christian burial, and get to go to heaven. If they died without confessing, they wouldn’t get a Christian burial, and wouldn’t go to heaven.
It is true that the RAF did not make too much effort to defend British cities during the Blitz, they knew that while “coming out to protect our people” was nice for propaganda reels, it risked having the RAF destroyed and losing the war then and there. (Plus, British ground based air defences were quite good too).
On the same point, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany. Well, if you discount the largest Empire in the history of mankind.
I suspect you misunderstood your cousin. Juries don’t return verdicts like that. Stella Liebeck’s lawyer told the jury what McDonald’s earned on coffee sales during closing arguments, and told them he thought “one or two days” of coffee sales was an appropriate punitive damages figure. The jury agreed, and awarded her two days’ worth of sales, or $2.7 million.
The punitive damages were reduced in line with New Mexico precedent that limited punitive damages to 500% of a compensatory damage award, not because the jury made a mistake.
Actually, that’s not right.
As far as I know (and I’ve read several books on the Salem witchcraft trials), no one was ever tortured regarding their being a witch, or to confess. Giles Corey was pressed to death, it’s true – but that was because he refused to even enter a plea of “guilty” or “not guilty”.
In fact, a lot of people were NOT hanged because they confessed to being witches, provided they identified other witches. They were later freed. One example is the Carib woman Tituba Ironically, it was the ones who maintained their innocence and were condemned by “spectral evidence” who were executed, like Rebecca Nurse.
One of the two pilots was a Coast Guard aviator, LT Elmer Fowler Stone; actually the very first Coast Guard pilot.
This also falls apart when you consider FDR wasn’t personally breaking the cyphers. Everybody from the guys who break the cypher through the various levels of the chain of command to the guy who briefs the president have to be just fine with him effectivly comitting treason without protest.
I keep coming across statements about Kim Jong-un killing his uncle by feeding him to dogs. That was a “joke” article and uncovered as such within a day or two. But the myth persists.
This will be “history” from now on.