There are many colorful events throughout history that have been written about but not verified with evidence. It leaves the burning question, did they really occur?
What document(s) would you like to see discovered that prove a particular unsubstantiated historical event of your liking?
I’ll start: “In 1787, the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent several weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with Mozart. No reliable records survive to indicate whether the two composers ever met.”—Wikipedia
Mozart did have a close association with Joseph Haydn, who told Mozart’s father, “I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition.” That’s delightful.
Mozart extensively studied the works of J.S.Bach, and when he was a child met his son, J.C. That’s pretty cool.
But, the thought of Mozart meeting the great Beethoven is an event I want to be true. For two of the greatest composers of all time be so close to meeting and not doing so would be a historical crime.
I’d like verified letters to be discovered written by both Mozart and Beethoven detailing their encounters with each other. Critiquing each other’s performance and composition skills would be a mind-blowing bonus.
What historical event would you like to see proven? You may choose more than one (but not more than three).
Ignoring biblical events as they are blurry at best when it comes to history, and don’t really qualify as they were written after generations of oral tradition and don’t really count as history.
I would say Trump’s election in 2016, which I believe was not examined for fraud as Hillary did not contest it but I suspected that Trump did not win and 2020 reveals the lengths Trump would use to get elected despite his presidential oath to defend the constitution and his willingness to subvert the will of the American people.
In Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus * near the end he has the “venticelli” citing from the notebook in which visitors wrote to communicate with the now-deaf Beethoven has some notes in which people “talked” to him about Mozart. I haven’t verified , but I suspect Shaffer is quoting from the actual source. It doesn’t say they met but it’s the closest thing I’ve encountered.
In the Oxford Music Online bio of Beethoven, I find this:
… which isn’t really much help, except that other people are sure they met, too.
Shaffer’s play is a very different thing from the movie, and I much prefer it.
The construction of the Antikythera Computer. We have the device but cannot verify the method of it’s creation.
What was the environment that produced it? Could the capability to produce such a complex system exist to create only one example or did it have to be made on a production line? Was it the unique product of Plato’s Academy or perhaps just one of many like computers purchased in the Rhodes Computer store? Or?
Mozart’s father, Leopold, died in 1787, the year of the supposed meeting. Otherwise I’m confident Mozart would have written to his father about meeting Beethoven, had the meeting occurred. Although Beethoven was not a child prodigy pianist, like Mozart, by 16 he was a virtuoso and beginning to show compositional talent (though he didn’t compose much till after 1790). Had they met, I’m confident Mozart would have written of meeting the precocious teen Beethoven, at least to Constanza. And, surely Beethoven would have written of meeting the by then famous Mozart.
It’s a shame they didn’t plan to meet a couple of years earlier, pre-1785 before Mozart became ill and over-worked.
A document settling, once and for all, that William Shakespeare’s true identity was a man named… William Shakespeare. Or wasn’t. (But it was).
Documentation credibly establishing the true historical influence of later mythological figures (Robin Hood, King Arthur) would be awesome, though I don’t know what form it could even take.
ETA: Since that last one might not count, I choose Roanoke instead.
The obvious one is the Trojan War(s); what we have about it pretty much comes from The Iliad and the fragmentary Ancient Greek ‘Epic Cycle’ but the historiography are uncertain since none were written by eyewitnesses and probably not even from direct sources. The Sack of Troy probably refers to the apparent destruction of Troy VII but it is likely that The Iliad is a conflation of multiple campaigns over a period of decades or perhaps even separate wars over a period of a couple of centuries.
It wasn’t a single event but it would be very interesting to understand the confluence of events and conditions that led to the Late Bronze Age Collapse. There are so many conflicting or inconsistent hypotheses and no definitive evidence of causes or even when the collapse really began that we will likely never have a conclusive history.
What would that look like in addition to what we already have? I mean, we’ve got plays and poems published under his name during his lifetime; more plays published under his name shortly after his death and accompanied by various dedicatory epistles and poems written by people who verifiably knew him; and several other texts by contemporaries that praise and / or criticize him as a writer by name, one of which helpfully includes a near-complete list of works he’d composed up to that time. Short of personal letters or papers – which would be nice, but we don’t generally have them for playwrights in this era – it’s hard to imagine what further evidence of authorship would look like.
On another nerdy lit-professor note, it would be really amazing to have evidence of a meeting or personal correspondence between Chaucer and Petrarch, or Chaucer and Boccaccio. And, on a personal note, I would love to have proof that my grandfather was drafted into the US Army after he came here from Poland in the 1930s. (Apparently, my brother, cousins, and I might be eligible for dual EU citizenship if he didn’t enlist voluntarily – which our older relatives think he almost certainly wouldn’t have done, but can’t prove.)
It’s been rumored that Jimi Hendrix was once asked a question, something along the lines of “What’s it like being the best guitar player…” and that he responded with something like “I don’t know, ask Rory Gallagher.” I’d like to see that substantiated.
(pause)
Yes it is. Historical.
I don’t know if it qualifies, but I’d love for there to be a full and complete record book of all box scores of any and all Negro League baseball games. There’s a big project at Baseball Reference compiling as much can be collected, but there’s so much history lost there, it’s tragic (in the sports world).