# your favorite historical event that didn't really happen **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 1, 2019, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369 "2019-07-01T21:59:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2019, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/81 "2019-07-05T00:08:43Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > From your link: > That’s IT? That’s the whole story? And the ironic thing is that the story is preceded by an epigram attributed to Kipling. > > _“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”_ > > WTF? What’s historically notable about that? I feel…cheated. It’s like Washington and the cherry tree: what’s historically notable about that? Alfred and the cakes is an origin story for the UK. FWIW, one of the reasons these stories are significant is because it’s how we learn about “The Presidents of the United States.”. Which begs the question: why should we learn the presidents? Or the names of the States? Or, in this case, the history of England? ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2019, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/82 "2019-07-05T00:19:07Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > Moon landing. > > (runs away fast) > [@Lubricious\_Integument](#): > > The moon landing! > > Reported for forum change. > > p.s. Beat to the punch by Ulfreida. Goddammit! I was going to say that! :mad: ---
**Author:** ![rsat3acr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@rsat3acr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsat3acr)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2019, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/83 "2019-07-05T13:30:36Z")
The storming of the airports during the Revolutionary War ---
**Author:** ![Hapax\_Legomenon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8c91f0/32.png) [@Hapax\_Legomenon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hapax_Legomenon)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2019, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/84 "2019-07-05T15:48:20Z")
Frederick the Great’s clever method of introducing the potato to Germany: post guards around a potato warehouse, turning them into something mysterious and obviously valuable, then instruct the guards to look the other way whenever someone tried to steal the potatoes … … was actually done, but by a Frenchman (Antoine-Augustin Parmentier) years later, after he’d spent time in Germany as a prisoner-of-war and taken a liking to potatoes. Frederick himself used the more straightforward method of subsidizing potato farmers. (Source: John Reader, “Propitious Esculent”.) ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2019, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/85 "2019-07-05T16:27:16Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > And Charles Napier didn’t really send “Peccavi” as a report. I WAS JUST GOING TO LOOK THIS UP. Because I’ve always liked the story, but the thread title suddenly made me think, I wonder if that’s real? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2019, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/86 "2019-07-05T16:32:06Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > And Charles Napier didn’t really send “Peccavi” as a report. Yep. That was a joke made in “Punch” as I recall, about what Napier should have reported. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2019, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/87 "2019-07-05T17:40:02Z")
> [@Hapax\_Legomenon](#): > > Frederick the Great’s clever method of introducing the potato to Germany: post guards around a potato warehouse, turning them into something mysterious and obviously valuable, then instruct the guards to look the other way whenever someone tried to steal the potatoes … > > … was actually done, but by a Frenchman (Antoine-Augustin Parmentier) years later, after he’d spent time in Germany as a prisoner-of-war and taken a liking to potatoes. Frederick himself used the more straightforward method of subsidizing potato farmers. > > (Source: John Reader, “Propitious Esculent”.) It might have happened multiple times, but the story I read was that it was Ioannis Kapodistrias of Greece. > **[Ioannis Kapodistrias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ioannis_Kapodistrias)** > > Count Ioannis Antonios Kapodistrias (Greek: Κόμης Ιωάννης Αντώνιος Καποδίστριας;\[alt 1\] c. 10 February 1776 –27 September 1831 ), sometimes anglicized as John Capodistrias, was a Greek statesman who was one of the most distinguished politicians and diplomats of 19th-century Europe. > He only had one romantic affair, with Roxandra Strudza > Capodistrias' involvement in politics begun as a minister of the Septinsular Republic in the early 19th century. He went on to serve as the foreign minister of t... ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2019, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/88 "2019-07-05T19:43:32Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Yep. That was a joke made in “Punch” as I recall, about what Napier should have reported. Catharine Winkworth suggested it as the sort of thing Napier _ **ought** _ to have telegraphed ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2019, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/89 "2019-07-06T10:06:42Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > And Charles Napier didn’t really send “Peccavi” as a report. > [@Mk\_VII](#): > > Catharine Winkworth suggested it as the sort of thing Napier _ **ought** _ to have telegraphed Ignorance fought – I’d always imagined until now, that he did indeed telegraph the word. I take it then, that the companion episode of classical wit a decade-and-some later – Lord Dalhousie taking over Oudh state into direct British rule, and telegraphing back home “Vovi” – “I have owed” [Oudh] – is equally spurious. Still, true or not, I can go on enjoying my fantasy of the telegraph company’s directors’ imploring the empire-building types: “Guys, please knock it off with the Latin puns: they bewilder our rank-and-file employees, and they’re not even very funny.” ---
**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:** [July 6, 2019, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/90 "2019-07-06T12:57:01Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > The UK and France weren’t somehow the world leaders in slavery abolition despite how desperately they want you to believe it, slavery ended in the United States before it did so in the British and French Empires. Slavery abolished throughout the British Empire 1833. And that after several previous Acts outlawing the slave trade starting in 1793. From 1808 The British military actively suppressed the slave trade, capturing slave ships and releasing their prisoners. In what way did it end in the United States first? ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2019, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/91 "2019-07-06T14:50:34Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Yeah, in fact it’s pretty much a hoax. > > Oddly Frederick Cook might have actually reached it. > > [North Pole - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pole#Dispute_over_who_reached_the_Pole_first) Umm, that’s a link that points to a discussion about Peary, which doesn’t mention Cook at all. Even taking the wider page, it’s hardly accepting of Cook’s claim. For, surely, pretty much nobody accepts Cook’s claim at this point, though he certainly had his contemporary supporters. The evidence that he’d previously faked his claim about climbing Denali is pretty unambiguous. The current consensus seems to follow Wally Herbert’s conclusions: Peary didn’t reach the Pole, but made a fist of it and only then lied, while Cook barely went out onto the ice and fabricated the whole thing from there. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2019, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/92 "2019-07-06T18:32:09Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Slavery abolished throughout the British Empire 1833. And that after several previous Acts outlawing the slave trade starting in 1793. From 1808 The British military actively suppressed the slave trade, capturing slave ships and releasing their prisoners. > > In what way did it end in the United States first? A lot of European countries officially abolished slavery in the early to mid 1800’s but their African colonies remained with slavery just simply not called slavery, and because they were way out there nobody really seemed to notice or care. The British and French African colonies were still working local Africans to death with no/minimal pay to help produce supplies during World War 2 for example. ---
**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:** [July 6, 2019, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/93 "2019-07-06T18:39:46Z")
And during the same period America treated their persons of color with the utmost respect and equality? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2019, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/94 "2019-07-06T18:45:11Z")
The whole of The West Wing. When the series first ran, and before I moved to the U.S., occasionally I would forget if something had really happened or if it was in an episode of The West Wing. Sadly, that is no longer the case. ---
**Author:** ![Tempe\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tempe_jeff/32/7328_2.png) [@Tempe\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tempe_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2019, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/95 "2019-07-06T19:17:35Z")
“Hands up, don’t shoot !” Too soon? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2019, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/96 "2019-07-06T19:42:39Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Slavery abolished throughout the British Empire 1833. And that after several previous Acts outlawing the slave trade starting in 1793. From 1808 The British military actively suppressed the slave trade, capturing slave ships and releasing their prisoners. > > In what way did it end in the United States first? wiki “The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73) abolished slavery throughout the British Empire. This Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom expanded the jurisdiction of the Slave Trade Act 1807 which made the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal within the British Empire, \*with the exception of “the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company”, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Saint Helena. Yet slaves in the colony of Jamaica were not emancipated until 1838. \*” Italics mine. Now, that just means it ended in ALL parts of the British Empire much later than we think (India 1843) . Still they beat out the USA in 1865, but not by a lot. Perhaps, maybe the other exception is: “In Australia, blackbirding and the holding of indigenous workers’ pay “in trust” continued, in some instances into the 1970s” but that more gets into types of modern slavery. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2019, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/97 "2019-07-06T19:51:21Z")
> [@bonzer](#): > > Umm, that’s a link that points to a discussion about Peary, which doesn’t mention Cook at all. Even taking the wider page, it’s hardly accepting of Cook’s claim. > > For, surely, pretty much nobody accepts Cook’s claim at this point, though he certainly had his contemporary supporters. The evidence that he’d previously faked his claim about climbing Denali is pretty unambiguous. The current consensus seems to follow Wally Herbert’s conclusions: Peary didn’t reach the Pole, but made a fist of it and only then lied, while Cook barely went out onto the ice and fabricated the whole thing from there. Just because Cook faked his ascent of Mount McKinley doesnt mean he faked his trip to the Pole. There is solid evidence that Peary caused Cooks evidence Polar trip to be lost. Cook _was_ gone for 14 months into the Arctic. > **[Frederick Cook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Cook)** > > Frederick Albert Cook (June 10, 1865 – August 5, 1940) was an American explorer, physician and ethnographer, who is most known for allegedly being the first to reach the North Pole on April 21, 1908. A competing claim was made a year later by Robert Peary, though both men's accounts have since been fiercely disputed; in December 1909, after reviewing Cook's limited records, a commission of the University of Copenhagen ruled his claim unproven. Nonetheless, in 1911, Cook published a memoir of t... _After the Mount Denali expedition, Cook returned to the Arctic in 1907. He planned to attempt to reach the North Pole, although he did not announce his intention until August 1907, when he was already in the Arctic. He left Annoatok, a small settlement in the north of Greenland, in February 1908. Cook claimed that he reached the pole on April 21, 1908, after traveling north from Axel Heiberg Island, taking with him only two Inuit men, Ahpellah and Etukishook. On the journey south, he claimed to have been cut off from his intended route to Annoatok by open water. Living off local game, his party was forced to push south to Jones Sound, spending the open water season and part of the winter on Devon Island. From there they traveled north, eventually crossing Nares Strait to Annoatok on the Greenland side in the spring of 1909. They said they almost died of starvation during the journey…Cook never produced detailed original navigational records to substantiate his claim to have reached the North Pole. He said that his detailed records were part of his belongings, contained in three boxes, which he left at Annoatok in April 1909. He had left them with Harry Whitney, an American hunter who had traveled to Greenland with Peary the previous year due to the lack of manpower for a second sledge-journey 700 miles south to Upernavik. When Whitney tried to bring Cook’s boxes with him on his return to the USA on Peary’s ship Roosevelt in 1909, Peary refused to allow them on board. As a result, Whitney left Cook’s boxes in a cache in Greenland. They were never found…The Peary expedition’s people (primarily Matthew Henson, who had a working knowledge of Inuit, and George Borup, who did not) claimed that Ahwelah and Etukishook told them they had traveled only a few days from land. A map allegedly was drawn by Ahwelaw and Etukishook that correctly located and accurately depicted then-unknown Meighen Island, which strongly suggests that they visited it as they claimed._ The Peary expedition interviewed Cooks assistants,:dubious::rolleyes: and Peary, personally refused to allow Cooks documents aboard. ---
**Author:** ![Tempe\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tempe_jeff/32/7328_2.png) [@Tempe\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tempe_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2019, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/98 "2019-07-06T20:43:47Z")
Trayvon Martin was attacked. ---
**Author:** ![Tempe\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tempe_jeff/32/7328_2.png) [@Tempe\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tempe_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2019, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/99 "2019-07-06T20:45:07Z")
Hillary Clinton was exonerated by James Comey. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2019, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369/100 "2019-07-06T21:31:09Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Just because Cook faked his ascent of Mount McKinley doesnt mean he faked his trip to the Pole. There is solid evidence that Peary caused Cooks evidence Polar trip to be lost. Cook _was_ gone for 14 months into the Arctic. > > [Frederick Cook - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Cook) > > _After the Mount Denali expedition, Cook returned to the Arctic in 1907. He planned to attempt to reach the North Pole, although he did not announce his intention until August 1907, when he was already in the Arctic. He left Annoatok, a small settlement in the north of Greenland, in February 1908. Cook claimed that he reached the pole on April 21, 1908, after traveling north from Axel Heiberg Island, taking with him only two Inuit men, Ahpellah and Etukishook. On the journey south, he claimed to have been cut off from his intended route to Annoatok by open water. Living off local game, his party was forced to push south to Jones Sound, spending the open water season and part of the winter on Devon Island. From there they traveled north, eventually crossing Nares Strait to Annoatok on the Greenland side in the spring of 1909. They said they almost died of starvation during the journey…Cook never produced detailed original navigational records to substantiate his claim to have reached the North Pole. He said that his detailed records were part of his belongings, contained in three boxes, which he left at Annoatok in April 1909. He had left them with Harry Whitney, an American hunter who had traveled to Greenland with Peary the previous year due to the lack of manpower for a second sledge-journey 700 miles south to Upernavik. When Whitney tried to bring Cook’s boxes with him on his return to the USA on Peary’s ship Roosevelt in 1909, Peary refused to allow them on board. As a result, Whitney left Cook’s boxes in a cache in Greenland. They were never found…The Peary expedition’s people (primarily Matthew Henson, who had a working knowledge of Inuit, and George Borup, who did not) claimed that Ahwelah and Etukishook told them they had traveled only a few days from land. A map allegedly was drawn by Ahwelaw and Etukishook that correctly located and accurately depicted then-unknown Meighen Island, which strongly suggests that they visited it as they claimed._ > > The Peary expedition interviewed Cooks assistants,:dubious::rolleyes: and Peary, personally refused to allow Cooks documents aboard. As a defense of the claim that Cook reached the pole, this all just seems rather, well, incoherent. (Meighen Island, for example, is only about 80[sup]o[/sup] north and so of marginal relevance.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-historical-event-that-didnt-really-happen/836369.md?page=6)