Myths about history



Myths and Legends
a collection of 29 lists
Legends & Myths Confirmed by Real Science
Mythical Creatures Found in Real Life
Dumb Myths All Movies Perpetuate
Sounds Fake, But These Tales Really Happened
Historical Myths That Simply Aren't True
Bizarre Myths of Eastern Europe
Untrue Myths You Totally Believed
Creepy Demons of Japan
Urban Legends Based on True Stories
Urban Legends About Hitchhikers
Fascinating Folklore About Mirrors
Insanely Creepy Urban Legends
The Legend of the Hollow Ship
Popular (but Untrue) Myths About Animals
Creepy Legends from South Korea
Japan's Famed Suicide Forest
The Truth About Rat Kings
Pictures of Bigfoot You Need to See
Convincing Legends About Rock and Roll
Japanese Urban Legends
Terrifying Legends About Christmas
Folk Tales That Inspired Foreign Horror Movies
Sea Monsters Around the World
Terrifying Legends from Russia
Real Encounters with Werewolves
Creepy Chinese Myths & Legends
Pricked with an AIDS Needle
Persistent Food Myths, Debunked
The Creepiest Local Legends
The Biggest Historical Myths That People Think Are Fact

Devon Ashby
12.8k votes 2.8k voters 21 items
List Rules: Vote for the mythbuster that surprised you the most

Did Edison really invent the lightbulb? Did Catherine the Great really die in a compromising position with a horse? Did Vikings really wear those silly hats? These questions, and others like them, have haunted all of us from time to time. Fueled by artistic licenses taken by historical TV shows or just often repeated public misconceptions, there's a surprising amount about history everyone seems to get dead wrong. History is a vast, complicated, and confusing subject, composed of lots of really weird stories and characters. Some of these stories are true, some are exaggerated, and some are just blatant, shameless lies. Which silly historical myths have you been buying into all this time? Prepare for your preconceptions to be brutally shattered below.

Photo: Roger Patterson
1
What Medieval Torture Devices Were

Photo: via Twitter
Torture wasn't exactly unheard of during the Middle Ages, but a lot of the specific torture devices that were supposedly used during that period have been made up by future generations wanting to cash in on their titillation factor. The most common of these is the Iron Maiden, which was originally pieced together for display in a British museum during the 18th century. (Museums were weird and fascinating things back then, existing more for "entertainment" than for actual education, and often contained an equal mix of natural and historical artifacts, and blatant frauds or "curiosities.") Iron Maidens do exist... they just probably weren't ever used to actually torture anyone.
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2
Walt Disney Invented Mickey Mouse

Photo: via Reddit
Actually, it was Ub Iwerks, one of Disney's most prolific and talented animators, who invented Mickey. There's an apocryphal story about Disney doodling an original sketch of proto-Mickey character Oswald Rabbit on an envelope while riding on a train (supposedly, this is also how Lincoln came up with the Gettysburg Address – we're skeptical about that one, too) but this hasn't been verified.
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3
The Original War Of The Worlds Broadcast Caused A General Public Meltdown

Photo: via Imgur
People love this one because it makes them feel smug about how much more sophisticated and media-savvy everyone is now than they used to be 80 years ago. Basically, in 1938, Orson Welles had the brilliant idea of creating a radio drama (this was before television, so radio dramas were popular back then) disguised as a fake news broadcast, where the newscasters would start gradually reporting more and more details of what turns out to be an alien invasion. Popular legend claims Middle America was totally unprepared for this groundbreaking storytelling device, and assumed the broadcast was real – arming themselves with shotguns and taking to the streets in fear.

In reality, although some people did get confused or upset by the broadcast, the actual response was greatly exaggerated in the coming weeks by news media eager to cash in on the novelty of the story and make radio (a relatively new technology that many people were still suspicious of) seem irresponsible and dangerous.

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4
Gun Fights Happened All The Time In The American West

Photo: via Twitter
Needless to say, this popular misconception mostly comes from the film industry. Western movies and paperbacks were once among the most revered genres of all time (in Europe, strangely, as well as the United States), and have only recently begun to wane in popularity. Though notorious outlaws of the era are often described with gusto as ruthless murderers responsible for hundreds of kills, actual gunfights in the early American West were extremely rare, and were certainly not taken lightly by either citizens or law enforcement.

Outlaw gunfighter stories were popular, though, because they were exciting, scary, and glamorous, and the appropriation of them decades later by popular writers and the burgeoning film industry only added to their endurance.
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