History Myths
Napoleon was an ordinary height and the confusion was in the units
The figure quoted after his death was measured in French inches, which are longer than English ones. Converted properly, he was…
History Myths
Events that did not happen the way the story goes, and who improved them.
21 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 1 of 2
History Myths
Viking helmets got their horns from a costume department in 1876
No horned helmet has ever been recovered from a Viking-age grave. The design was created for an opera and adopted by the entire nineteenth century within a decade.
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History Myths
Educated Europeans knew the Earth was round the whole time
The story that Columbus argued against a flat-Earth establishment was written into a popular biography in 1828. His actual dispute…
History Myths
Marie Antoinette never said let them eat cake
The anecdote appears in a philosopher's memoir written when she was a child in another country. It was attached to her name decades…
History Myths
Nero could not have fiddled, and Tacitus said it was a rumour
The instrument did not exist for another millennium, the emperor was reportedly out of the city, and the source everyone cites was…
History Myths
Ring a Ring o' Roses has nothing to do with the plague
The plague reading appears only in the twentieth century, long after the rhyme was first written down. The early versions do not…
History Myths
Nobody was burned at Salem, and the method mattered
The executions were hangings, with one death by pressing. The burning image comes from continental European practice and from a…
History Myths
Einstein did not fail mathematics, and he saw the story in print
The claim can be traced to a novelty column in the 1930s. He read it, denied it, and it outlived him anyway because it is far too…
History Myths
The iron maiden was assembled by showmen, not by medieval torturers
No medieval source describes the device, and the famous example seems to have been put together from unrelated pieces in the…
History Myths
The nine million witches figure came from one man's bad arithmetic
A late eighteenth-century writer extrapolated from a small local sample to the whole of Europe across several centuries. Every part…
History Myths
The Boston Tea Party was a protest against cheaper tea
The legislation that triggered it reduced the price of legally imported tea. What it changed was who was allowed to sell it, and…
History Myths
Nobody knows which way the thumb pointed in a Roman arena
The famous downward gesture comes from a nineteenth-century painting. The Latin phrase behind it describes a turned thumb without…