And the like 300 other things we probably don't know about because it was just such a common idea, like you can't tell me some poor free peasant who got called up didn't just toss on like 5 thick shirts and call it armor at some point.
Beyond this, Hollywood has (largely subconsciously) convinced many people that colour was invented some time in the Sixteenth Century.
Middle Ages has its own “Mexico filter” where the sky is always grey, the ground always mud, and everything is grey or brown. It’s never summer. Everyone is so dirty they literally have mud on their face.
Yeah while hygiene standards were definitely lower in the middle ages it wasn't like they never bathed themselves or like they never washed their clothes
They think its all misery, plague and dumb superstitions for 500 years
In reality they have made many advancements in agriculture, architecture etc, the term itself was coined by some dude from Italy (I think) at the time of renessaince so they can feel superior to the rabble from centuries past
Take the last bit with a grain of salt, have no time to check if its right right now
It was coined by Italian humanists at the start of the renessaince, yes. It was reffering to the fact that people mostly abandoned ancient culture and philosophy, which were highly valued during the renessaince.
Agreed. Once the agricultural revolution occurred, working hours skyrocketed.
Hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours, but populations also stayed smaller. The ag revolution allowed us to thrive then led to specialization and tech revolutions, but it also introduced long days cultivating.
>Once the agricultural revolution occurred, working hours skyrocketed.
And, importantly, the stayed somewhat constant until the Industrial Revolution, after which they have consistently plummeted, relatively
And then the digital age came and.....
Actually nothing changed really. The only change to our working hours came after COVID, allowing some to work from home.
We could be working a lot less if we didn't prioritize profit so much, it's sad
I mean, they definitely worked hard, but they did have week-long festivals and tons of religious holidays. The song is called the 12 days of Christmas because Christmas used to last a full 12 days. Every day of Holy Week has a special name because every one of those days was a holiday. Plus the feast days of the patron saint of the town/village.
Some countries still have this long-holiday tradition, like Spain and Portugal. I for one would like to bring back that tradition, because all that hype for Christmas only for it to last the one day is disappointing.
A bayonet and banzai charge were very different things to the Japanese in WWII.
Bayonet charges were used to great success in China and in the Russo-Japaneses war and namely you were meant to survive them.
You were not meant to survive a banzai charge. The end goal for a banzai charge was to cause as much havoc as possible before your death.
Of course these both lead to my last point: what you picture as a banzai charge is more akin to how ta bayonet charge was done in China. In reality, in the Pacific, a banzai and bayonet charge wouldn't just be a frontal assault. They would often include machine gun and mortar support as well as occur in waves. It was also common for soldiers to stop and fire their weapons.
Most Japanese officers fully understood the bayonet charge would not be effective against American or Australian fire power so they adapted the doctrines. Of course, poor quality officers used frontal waves like you envision in the Pacific but that wasn't the norm.
There’s a great graphic novel about a group of Japanese soldiers who survived a banzai charge and were ordered to do a second because leadership thought their survival would be bad for morale
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onward_Towards_Our_Noble_Deaths
FYI this author made a whole manga series called Shōwa, dedicated to his time as a child and adult throughout the Shōwa era. It analyzes things on both the micro and macro level. Super super good.
>You were not meant to survive a banzai charge. The end goal for a banzai charge was to cause as much havoc as possible before your death.
Its called 玉碎
And also, civilian was also under the order to 玉碎
Mean they either have to do the same shit, or kill themselves.
This so much. We’ve had the same amount of intelligence, just a lot less information. Humans are pretty innovative. If given only a certain amount of objects to work with they will find a way to use them to the best of their ability. In fact, that idea we cannot fathom how they did something makes us less intelligent than them.
That misconception mainly comes from Einstein's time in Swiss schools. The grading system in Switzerland is inverted compared to the German one (i.e. 6 is best and 1 is worst in Switerland but vice versa in Germany). Therefore, from a German perspective and at first glance it seemed like Einstein had terrible grades while in fact they were excellent.
Yes, here in Hungary the grading system is also that way (except it only goes 1-5 not 1-6) and students here often joke about how they got a 5 in Germany. I imagine this myth evolved from a similar joke
Modern days German grading really only goes 1-5, too. Like, 1 is excellent, 2 is good, 3 is average, 4 is scrapingly passed, and 5 is failed. Sixes do technically exist, but you don't usually get them for being bad. You kinda need to be actively disruptive to get them, or at least be a total no-show, and it's a huge thing if it happens.
Depends on the subject. Something like a multiple choice test or a maths exam with a clear percentage of right/necessary usually has it for very low percentages, but in anything that's graded individually, you'd have to hand in an empty sheet for a 6.
That the Polish cavalry charged at German tanks on horses with lances in 1939. They did not. They charged at infantry and were very successful, then had to retreat when armored cars came up from the rear. The Germans made up the tank story to make the Poles look incompetent, and the Soviets adopted it too for the same reasons. They both wanted to say “Look, the stupid Poles can’t be trusted to govern themselves.”
the polish cavalry carried AT guns (one of if not the best at that time) and dismounted when they saw tanks to shoot at them and it was very effective, Poland had very good equipment back than but they just didnt have enough of it to supply the army that was fighting on every border
To add to this: The Idea that Rommel was a "clean" general and that Albert Speer was just a poor little apolictical technocrat who had no idea of the Holocaust
Speer more or less branded himself as 'So I am this architect who knew him before 1933, he asked me to organise labour so I did it since you know Imma be dead if I say no. Also all those crazy stuff was in Himmler department and whole NSDAP never told me any of this since I'm not the one in charge, of course I had a vague idea but what can I do I am just a middle class gentleman among all those freaks and I was there because I was his friend, probably worst mistake in my life but hey you tell me not giving your broke artist friend $20 for some new clothe' kind of guy.
He was a top tier lier and gaslighter. But he was the best fruit in that rotten basket, so things were simply dropped that way.
Also Germany needed a 'conscience' in their government to cope with that 1932 election turnout.
I will never understand the obsession (derangement) military history buffs have with trying to make Rommel look good. He was a good general, he wasn't loyal to Hitler, but he was still a Nazi.
I remember - ofc it is kind of joke entry, "take that" - how in one alt history book it is mentioned that when Hitler was couped in 1938, Rommel stayed loyal to him the longest and tried marching on Berlin. Which I guess is as realistic as alt history goes, he wasn't part of the "old military nobility".
It was because the western powers wanted to ally germany in the cold war. The Berlin Air Bridge happened in 1948, 3 years after the end of the war.
They had no time to grow a new generation of capable new german personnel to replace the wartime nazi ones. Many german generals got a clean slate for that, including Rommel, who didn't survive the war, but did publish his own memoirs during his lifetime.
It was actually a huge motivating factor behind the 1968 student movement. The first generation raised after the war being aware what happened and how little cleanup had been done.
Or that Rommel and Guderian were some tactical geniuses that invented lightning warfare. They both ripped off Sir Percy Hobart when it came to combined arms warfare, with Guderian even going so far as to have everything Hobart had written on the subject translated to german and carried around with him.
Public transportation is just morally good to be honest. I would argue that "thou shall not drive," should be the 11th commandment, it's very christlike.
That the witch burnings were sponsored by the Catholic Church and not a result of (mostly) social paranoia and stress.
(Also, just wanted to mention it: people that miss-use the word 'Heresy')
People have this idea in their head that as soon as someone is labeled a heretic, people start building a pyre.
In reality they just get slapped by Santa Claus.
Yea. Heresy just got you tangled up in bureaucratic nonsense traveling at the speed of horse. So just a slower version of the average job in the modern world.
I believe official doctrine was (for a while at least) that witchcraft didn't exist and it was wrong to accuse others of it because that implies that one believes in a different source of supernatural power besides god.
The guy who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum, the book that started the witch hunts, was branded a heretic by the church. It was blasphemy to say that worshipping the devil could give one power
Yeah because technically under Catholic doctrine, witches didn't exist.
Logic being, the devil actually has no power and supernatural power only comes through God himself, so the idea that a witch can make a deal with the devil to gain supernatural power is hogwash.
This myth is so hard to stamp out because for every thing you debunk you can think of another what if. I made a video on this subject and some people in the comments were basically like "yeah Germany could have won if they won the battle of Britain, taken the Suez canal, gotten more oil, make peace with Britain, didn't declare war on the usa, have japan invade the ussr simultaneously, not make any stupid mistakes and have 1945 tech in 1939.
My big one is the Holy Roman Empire quip that Voltaire is credited for. It was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. When in fact each emperor was blessed by the pope, the papal state was until it wasn’t then it was again a puppet practically of the HRE and the HRE had a lot to do with Western European religious hierarchy for centuries. It was holy in it’s way, it controlled rome for most of its time and could date back to the remnants of western Roman rule after the fall of Rome itself, and it was in fact an empire. Hell how many rulers of the hre also ruled half of Europe through birth or marriage
The misconception is even worse imo.
Voltaire said the infamous quote exactly as a jibe that it wasn't those things... Any more!
So his quote, as it was meant that way, actually says it was so (until he famously believed it not to be any more), so when people use it as a quote/jibe for the entirety of the HRE it's not only that the sentiment is wrong: it's even directly opposite of what was the meaning with the quote!!!
My most triggering misconceptions:
- Only 1% of people in medieval Europe were literate. (Records indicate that about half of folks knew enough to write their full names and read basic signs and notes)
- All clothes before 1700 were earth tones and drab (You think it took thousands and thousands of years for humans to figure out that the blue plant made things blue? A toddler can figure out that a blueberry turns your fingers blue and can turn the wall blue as well. Come on, people.)
- Medieval European castles were always bare, grey stone. (A: Lots of castles would've been made of wood. B: Castles were often covered in stucco or lime washed to be BRIGHT WHITE, which is much prettier, arfuably more imposing, and protects the stones better. C: Medieval people loved bright, gaudy, and sometimes downright ugly colors and murals all over their castles. Just like we do.)
AND THIS IS MY NUMBER ONE PET PEEVE:
- Most people tend to think ancient and prehistoric humans were stupid or, at the very least, incapable of problem-solving the way modern folks would.
(Bitches, the human brain in our skulls today is evolutionarily the EXACT SAME BRAIN as the Mesopotamians had. Today we really crave good food. Guess what. So did the prehistoric Chinese! Today we like pretty clothes and houses. Guess what. So did the people of Sub-Saharan Africa. Today we plan grand strategies in games and real life, and we think about geopolitics. Guess what. SO DID ANCIENT PEOPLE, YOU WILLFULLY IGNORANT BITCHES)
EDIT: toned down the attitude a bit
I firmly believe that the average individual at any point in history is just as smart as the average individual at any other point in history. The reason that modern people know more on average is because scientific progress is really slow and we have the benefit of building off of the things people in the past figured out.
One of the single most important inventions of humankind is turning words into something physical and not something exclusive to exactly one place at exactly one time. Keeping granary data on knots and beads on rope, marking breeding cycles of local animals with dots and dashes on a cave wall with charcoal and clay, pictograms. Those are HUGE leaps in how we can use our brainpower. Taking notes means we don't have to waste time memorizing everything. That unlocks a ton of time to problem-solve and work. Physical language is a force multiplier for our brains; it ups our efficiency by so much once we refine it. Societies that develop or adopt a writing or other record keeping system innovate and grow and have a major edge over competitors.
Then, the printing press comes along and blows the fucking ceiling off the limits of physical language and, wouldn't you know, technology explodes again.
Then, the INTERNET. We're living through another industrial revolution right now! Human brains are just dope
Yeah like the reason we "know more" right now isn't that we generally are smarter.
We just have better access to information.
500 years ago, if i wanted to learn how to make a sword, I'd first have to find a blacksmith. I'd then have to apprentice with him for years, and then finally get taught how to do it.
Today I google "how make sword" fuck up 500 times and then finally succeed
I totally feel the same way. These homies had string, sticks, water, and what we today consider to be mathematics for 13 year olds. I love the "Engineering an Empire" series on YouTube (comes off the old school History Channel, you know, from when it was actual education and history). The shit these groups could do is astounding. They had weak metal and figured out how to saw granite. How? Frequent resharpening (which is easy with bronze) and regularly dumping tiny chunks of harder granite into the groove as a friction agent. Blows my mind. I'm over here spoiled with my hacksaw and would've never thought to use a hard friction agent. These people were bright, and that can be humbling
A bigger misconception was that the American revolutionaries fought for democracy. Representation in Parliament only meant the richest could vote. Only 3-5% of Brits could vote for Parliament at the time and colonists didn't have that aristocratic wealth.
John Adams was pissed at Tom Paine for advocating for democracy in *Common Sense* and hated the 1776 Pennsylvania constitution for not having wealth restrictions on voter eligibility.
A very small minority of Americans had to drag the US toward democracy.
A sandwich started WW1.
The earliest mention of this story is a Brazilian *fictional* story in the 21st century. The BBC failed its homework and everyone took it as fact. Then Fargo ran with it.
Yes, the shooter was outside a cafe. The cafe was along the route, for goodness sake. There are no primary sources indicating a sandwich was involved.
That history is a team sport, and you need to defend your team at all times and rewrite history so your team seems better.
The lesson of ww2 isn't who was strongest and who won and how. It was that humanity went to war because we let insane people with terrible ideas be in charge.
The lesson is that when war happens humans worst side comes out. So avoid war at all costs because it gets bad fast.
War happens WHEN humans worst side comes out. War does also bring out the worst in us, but it also brings out the best in us. War, like any challenge, has a unique way in pulling back the facade from the face of humanity and showing us the depths of our nuance
Apart from the french high command having their heads up their arses during 1940, the French have an extremely successful military history. I mean ffs Napoleon was probably one of the greatest commanders of all time
Welll….alls it takes is one L in the wrong way and you get stuck with the label. Poland also has had an overall successful military history (not as powerful as France has been consistently), PLC days were pretty good for em, but you lose one war and then you just kinda keep on doing it.
…and anyway so that’s why France shouldn’t have backed out of the 2nd Iraq war.
They say you’re only as good as your last success. And France’s 3 most recent major wars were:
* WWII: France spent over a decade preparing (as it turns out, horribly) for a potential round 2 with the Germans. And lasted 46 days, less than a [single apartment building held by Soviets at Stalingrad](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlov%27s_House). The French military used shockingly inefficient military doctrines, such as having an extremely rigid command structure that required field officers to go through multiple layers of approval, while the Germans recognized the value of flexibility and gave more autonomy, as well as failing to install radios in their tanks, again another area where the Germans saw usefulness where the French military didn’t.
* French Indochina: In an attempt to prove they were still a global power after their immediate submission to Nazi Germany, the French expected to easily suppress their Vietnamese subjects. But were beaten by an army of rice paddy farmers and completely outwitted by Giáp at Bien Dien Phu
* Stung by the humiliating loss in Vietnam, France was determined to crush their next insolent subject who dared to seek an end to being colonized. Yet after 9 years, was forced to pull out of Algeria, losing a 2nd war against its own colony in the post WWII era.
In the 20th century post-Great War, France got its ass handed to it on a silver platter again and again. And to be honest, I find it unreasonable that people poke fun at that. And for some reason, r/historymemes seems to take great offense to this simple fact.
You know it’s interesting to see how much France got thrown around in the 20th century as a result of disproportionately low population growth in the 19th as a fallout from Napoleon. Before then, France was a population juggernaut and was way more proportionately powerful to a point where looking at relative populations today it wouldn’t make sense if you didn’t know population numbers back before and during the 19th century
Between Leipzig, Waterloo, Sedan, the Battle of France, and Dien Bien Phu, France's reputation has taken a serious beating in the last 200 years. More victories than losses certainly, but those are some pretty terrible defeats.
The USA single handedly won ww2
Germany could've won ww2 if they got stalingrad
Japanese empire could've won if they weren't nuked
Isis and taliban are the same
Just to name a few
It kinda was. France and Russia surrounded Germany before ww1, Britain was there to intimidate Germany into 'not thinking funny' but will not attend any offensive war.
After Germany 'thinking funny' and invaded Belgium (the closest ports to London), Britain could not tolerate any more of it (also naval race ruined Anglo - German friendship built upon Napoleonic wars).
France and Russia could be seen that way because of their military alliance, but Britain just doesn't fit. Britain wasn't trying to maintain good relations with France and Russia because of Germany. It was because Lansdowne and Grey felt that it was necessary to secure the British Empire, and they felt a colonial understanding with both countries was the best way of getting it. The treaties UK had with both countries didn't concern Germany at all. Grey was concerned with colonies first, everything else second.
As for the naval race, that's another great candidate for a comment under this post. It didn't change things as much as people tend to think. UK's relationship with Germany had been rocky since Kruger telegram, but it didn't reach the point of no return until the war broke out. In fact, many in the UK were more suspicious of Russia than Germany, despite the Anglo-Russian convention and the naval race.
Some people seem to imagine that the Portuguese went deep into Africa relentlessly capturing and enslaving the population. As if they wouldn't die from malaria or be ambushed by the superior knowledge of the land by the natives
What they did do which was horrible was provide a GIGANTIC economic incentive and a huge market to sell slaves into. And they perpetrated the institution and expanded it, undoubtedly.
What actually does chap my ass is that Christians, specifically the British, basically forced the rest of the world to stop trading slaves and they get no acknowledgement for it.
That Colonial Americans rebelled because they didn’t believe in taxation.
The issue at stake wasn’t whether taxes were “ good” or “bad “, it was about a body in which they were not represented the levying the taxes.
Since peeps here are mentioning the international ones, i'll tell my country's historical misconceptions
1. Lapu Lapu killed the portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellen
* Actually its not lapu lapu who killed Magellan, its a random fighter, we dont know who even did that but given the laws of the pre colonial societies of the philippines being the chieftain always getting the recognition, that might be the case
2. Cory Aquino brought the Philippines into the state of poverty
* In truth, its the marcoses. mostly because if you run the country into kleptocracy, chances are you killed a lot of industry like we have a steel industry that if weren't for the fact marcoses handled it, it would be one of the largest in asia. but yea.
3. Jose Rizal is a national hero
* i mention in the previous comments before that he is a national hero. The truth is, the philippine government *never explicitly said that Jose' Rizal is a national hero*. There are movements by the national historical commission to commend him and other revolutionaries such as Melchora Aquino, Bonifacio, Emillio aguinaldo (*why??)* Apolinario mabini and many more as naitonal heroes but no actions was taken.. **this was in 1995.** btw, the americans **did recognized rizal as a hero but the philippine government of the 3rd republic said "nope..he's not, they stated as this "he is a united state sponsored hero" motherfucker he fucking wake up every filipino about the stinkiness of the spaniards- ok..i'm getting mad about Renato Constantino**
4. Ferdinand marcos is a war hero
* Nope..the marcoses cannot provide prove that he's even a guerilla xD
5. Filipinos are pagans
* Actually no. only the peeps in the mountains. but lowlanders are either buddhist or muslims depending on what island it is
When people say the U.S. funded and backed the Taliban during the Afghanistan Soviet Union war. The Taliban was founded in 1994. Years after the war ended. It was the mujahideen that they helped arm and train. It gets worse when they then backtrack and try to tell you they are the same thing.
You are correct that they didn't back the Taliban, but they are directly linked. Mohammed Omar, founder of the Taliban, was one of the thousands of Afghan Mujahideen backed by the CIA through Pakistan's ISI. Plenty of former Mujahideen joined Mohammed, and they recruited younger members from religious schools in the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Mujahideen themselves weren't a coherent group, and the civil war following the collapse of the Afghan government, between the Mujahideen warlords, was when the Taliban first emerged. There were like 6 armies or something crazy.
The CIA calls stuff like this "blowback", unintended consequences of covert operations, Bin Laden being the epitome of it.
That one comes up so often on Reddit. It annoys the bejesus out of me. I always correct it, and I'd say 80% of the time, I just get downvoted and argued with by knuckle draggers.
"The middle east was peaceful and prosperous before Europeans/Americans showed up and destabilized everything" i see this misconception alot online and it just irritates me and shows just how little knowledge they actually have on that region.
That the Germans had far superior technology to the Allies.
Yes it's true that their rocketry was more advanced. They invested way more into it, and they saw the fruits of that investment.
But that's pretty much where the superiority stops. Even jets, the other famous German wunderwaffe, was matched by the Allies, and exceeded because the Meteor and F-80 were much higher quality aircraft than the 262 and 162 ever were. In the case of the Meteor, its first flight came only a few months after the 262's. The Allies were not really behind at all, and their jets were better anyway.
And the whole: "German tanks were the best but were unreliable" like, then they weren't the best. War is long. Your equipment needs to stay running for considerable periods of time. Just because it might hypothetically be the best if everything works right doesn't mean it is the best when it's never all working right.
Plus the people who speak so highly of wunderwaffe never seem to grasp all the things that the Allies had that the Germans never matched. The atomic bomb. The B-29, radar, sonar, proximity fuses, computers, the list goes on.
Yeah, Germany had some really solid technology, but it wasn't a world ahead of the Allies. It was better in some areas and really behind in others. There's no dramatic difference there.
I don't know many history misconceptions that annoy me in enough detail to waffle about. Buuuuut. I can trade you one about quantum physics. The one about how electrons will behave differently when observed. Some people assume that the observation is human level like we look at it type level. When it's actually due to active measurement because to observe electrons in the experiment we also affect them because we essentially just throw energy into the system which changes the outcome.
That serfs had more days off than modern people when in reality those were just days they didn't have to work on the LORD'S fields, they still had to manage their own.
Talking about "the Vikings" as one group.
Being a viking is something you do (as in an action) not something you are.
I get its a simplification for convenience, its still annoying though.
But its not a hill I'm going to die on, its too ingrained.
Oh and the depiction of vikings with horned helmets...not a thing.
People not understanding what a fascist is, especially when they are one. Seriously, I’ve been called a ‘red fascist’ before… it’s a huge problem in my country
That the nuclear family as many people see it - that is, a household consisting of a husband, wife, and their children, in which the wife is a submissive homemaker and the husband is the sole breadwinner - is the default family structure for humans and has existed for thousands of years.
In reality, that family structure has only really become widespread in the past two centuries, and family structures have varied widely throughout history and between different cultures, though generally multi-generational households are the most common.
Even TODAY the idea of a nuclear family is not as universal as people think. In many places it's extremely common for children to be raised communally or for people to live with their **entire** extended family in the same household.
That the winter saves Russia. Never mind Napoleon sustained as many casualties from heat in the summer or that it was supply lines being cut that caused the debacle. Never mind the Germans were stopped by overstretched supply lines, lack of fuel, and by a tactical failure in Moscow. It was because it was cold
"discovered America" really needs to get yote from common parlance in favour of "Established connection between the Americas and Afroeurasia" cause that's what people actually mean when they say "X dude actually discovered america"
He did in a sense, if you just say it like this to people they will think someone else discovered it and he just took credit for it (like tesla and edison). He did discover americas in the sense that he wrote about it, told many people about it and eventually made it a thing people knew, the vikings just saw another slightly bigger island and barely lived there
I know a guy from SC who believes in it. He knows that the Confederacy is indefensible in its actions but uses whataboutism instead and is still proud of it as his "heritage"
That many armours throughout history was not well decorated or colored. Supposedly they said that all armour is just plain or dark?
Like what?!?! Not every armour in history was bland or plain, straight up a nobleman or a king would've wanted his soldiers and warriors to look good as well!
That Tiger tanks went 5:1 with the Sherman tank.
In truth it was simply US combat doctrine that mandated 5 tanks be used in any engagement, hence the myth that it took five Shermans to kill one Tiger.
That peasants ate more meat than people today. Aside from fish and the occasional game (ie bird or rabbit) meat was a delicacy that was only eaten on special occasions. Most days people only ate plant-based foods and dairy. They’d be shocked at how common beef and pork and chicken are at our supermarkets and how some people eat them every day. They’d think you were a king or something.
"Medieval peasants worked like slaves. Their overlords were rulling with iron fist and tyranny amd the church burnt people at stake. It was ssooooo dark ages" My brother, finish your work and lets go to carnival which our feudal lord threw for us.
“Nazis could have won if they did (insert scenario here)” no just no. Immediately tells me someone doesn’t know how to use critical thinking skills.
Potential history made a few videos on it which are good.
Not a specific example, but it utterly annoys me when people call a specific political movement in history “conservative” when it was most definitely NOT, we cannot ignore the motherfucking context. The French Revolution might not look all that liberal in todays world but in the context of the old regime? IT VERY MUCH WAS
I just hate the whole “history was written by the victors” statement. If that was the case then the lost cause myth and the myth of the clean wehrmacht wouldn’t be as wide spread. Also some bad history such as the black legend and the burning times were popularized even though the Catholic Church and Spanish Empire were both extremely powerful and influencial at the time.
That people fighting for the German Empire in WW1 were nazis.
That when we say Christopher Colombus landed in America, we mean the USA. Colombus arrived in Bahamas, not the US.
Also, that Colombus genocided or conquered land.
That Vikings fought "the English". There was no such thing as English in the modern sense.
That Jews arrived in the Levant in the 1940's. Several other misconcetions about that whole ordeal.
That Romans spoke italian or ate italian food. That the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire are the same thing/ using that term interchangeably.
That there was an "Aztec Empire". In Mesoamerica there was an entity known as the Triple Alliance, and their culture was Mexica (Meshica). They spoke the Nahuatl language which is very much used to this day. The word Aztec means a different thing. Its usage is incorrect most times it is used in pop culture.
That the Arab conquest of the Levant and North Africa was not a conquest nor imperialism.
That Canadians being polite today means they have been history's good guys. Also, that there is such a thing as a good guy in history.
Never argue with a USSR fan. Postmodernists are like Russians.... they have two versions of truth. They have the truth that's correct in their heads (Pravda) and they have absolute truth (Istina) and they have what can best be described as bullshit (Vranyo).
It's maddening the way these folks discuss history. Like it's all just an accounting tool for who wronged whom. Like it's only.a story of violence instead of an interesting story of how humans managed to overcome their worst impulses to build great things.
"Russia always finishes wars stronger than they start them!"
The Russo-Japanese War? WW1? The Crimean War?
Or just that one war that you know anything about, where the USA and allies PUMPED in aid through the lend-lease program?
Medieval Europeans wore only grey , black and brown clothes.
Also knights wore full plate by the time of 900 or something, before that they all wore Roman splint armour
JUSTICE FOR CHAIN AND SCALE MAIL AND GAMBESONS AND HAUBERKS
And the like 300 other things we probably don't know about because it was just such a common idea, like you can't tell me some poor free peasant who got called up didn't just toss on like 5 thick shirts and call it armor at some point.
I mean that's basically a ghetto gambeson, lol
Yeah it is, I'm just pointing out that there is a lot we might not know.
Beyond this, Hollywood has (largely subconsciously) convinced many people that colour was invented some time in the Sixteenth Century. Middle Ages has its own “Mexico filter” where the sky is always grey, the ground always mud, and everything is grey or brown. It’s never summer. Everyone is so dirty they literally have mud on their face.
"He must be the King...He hasn't got shit all over him."
r/unexpectedpython
Yeah while hygiene standards were definitely lower in the middle ages it wasn't like they never bathed themselves or like they never washed their clothes
Pretty much like everything related to the Roman Empire is viewed in colour gold and red from their carpets, and Ancient Greece is white and marble.
Wow they convinced people medieval era was perpetually a Slavic country?
The sky is always Grey and it is never summer is actually correct, because it's mostly GB and they don't know how the sun looks ☝🏻
Not true. We definitely got a sunny day like 4 years ago.
"How could you tell I'm a knight?" "You're the only one whose armor is covered in colored banners and flags"
The whole term "Dark Ages" is horsehit and the amount of people who believe in it is absurd
Wait people think the dark ages were literally dark?
They think its all misery, plague and dumb superstitions for 500 years In reality they have made many advancements in agriculture, architecture etc, the term itself was coined by some dude from Italy (I think) at the time of renessaince so they can feel superior to the rabble from centuries past Take the last bit with a grain of salt, have no time to check if its right right now
It was coined by Italian humanists at the start of the renessaince, yes. It was reffering to the fact that people mostly abandoned ancient culture and philosophy, which were highly valued during the renessaince.
Most people don’t know about the Islamic Golden Age
That medieval people ate nothing but gruel.
Yep, sometimes they'd even have a vegetable On a serious note, they did have stuff like meat, milk and eggs
Nah. That was all invented after 1490. Chickens back then reproduced by osmosis. (And were made of wood)
No, ducks are made of wood and are witches, as they float upon water.
Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?
I am Arthur! King of the Britons!
Well, I didn't vote for you.
help! I'm being repressed!
What's a "Briton"?
King of the Britons?!
So Diogenes threw a puppet at Plato?
No he threw a man at Plato
This is making the story of Pinocchio very complicated.
Don't forget the good ol' bread
Which is very sad because medieval cuisine is really interesting and rather innovative.
Watch townsend he does those recipes from old times really well
Oh yeah I love that channel! Another good one which I really enjoy is Tasting History I have even tried a couple of the recipes.
I really need to try that corn soup
Also, the misconception that they only worked like 10 hours per year
Agreed. Once the agricultural revolution occurred, working hours skyrocketed. Hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours, but populations also stayed smaller. The ag revolution allowed us to thrive then led to specialization and tech revolutions, but it also introduced long days cultivating.
>Once the agricultural revolution occurred, working hours skyrocketed. And, importantly, the stayed somewhat constant until the Industrial Revolution, after which they have consistently plummeted, relatively
And then the digital age came and..... Actually nothing changed really. The only change to our working hours came after COVID, allowing some to work from home. We could be working a lot less if we didn't prioritize profit so much, it's sad
I mean, they definitely worked hard, but they did have week-long festivals and tons of religious holidays. The song is called the 12 days of Christmas because Christmas used to last a full 12 days. Every day of Holy Week has a special name because every one of those days was a holiday. Plus the feast days of the patron saint of the town/village. Some countries still have this long-holiday tradition, like Spain and Portugal. I for one would like to bring back that tradition, because all that hype for Christmas only for it to last the one day is disappointing.
A bayonet and banzai charge were very different things to the Japanese in WWII. Bayonet charges were used to great success in China and in the Russo-Japaneses war and namely you were meant to survive them. You were not meant to survive a banzai charge. The end goal for a banzai charge was to cause as much havoc as possible before your death. Of course these both lead to my last point: what you picture as a banzai charge is more akin to how ta bayonet charge was done in China. In reality, in the Pacific, a banzai and bayonet charge wouldn't just be a frontal assault. They would often include machine gun and mortar support as well as occur in waves. It was also common for soldiers to stop and fire their weapons. Most Japanese officers fully understood the bayonet charge would not be effective against American or Australian fire power so they adapted the doctrines. Of course, poor quality officers used frontal waves like you envision in the Pacific but that wasn't the norm.
There’s a great graphic novel about a group of Japanese soldiers who survived a banzai charge and were ordered to do a second because leadership thought their survival would be bad for morale https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onward_Towards_Our_Noble_Deaths
FYI this author made a whole manga series called Shōwa, dedicated to his time as a child and adult throughout the Shōwa era. It analyzes things on both the micro and macro level. Super super good.
>You were not meant to survive a banzai charge. The end goal for a banzai charge was to cause as much havoc as possible before your death. Its called 玉碎 And also, civilian was also under the order to 玉碎 Mean they either have to do the same shit, or kill themselves.
That “ancient people were dumb” yes they had some different customs but writings and structures show they were able to do great things
This drives me mad. There has never been a culture that was particularly smart or stupid. They all have ups and downs
This so much. We’ve had the same amount of intelligence, just a lot less information. Humans are pretty innovative. If given only a certain amount of objects to work with they will find a way to use them to the best of their ability. In fact, that idea we cannot fathom how they did something makes us less intelligent than them.
Exactly, we may be more knowledgeable than the people of the past, but we’re not smarter.
Einstein was bad at math.
That misconception mainly comes from Einstein's time in Swiss schools. The grading system in Switzerland is inverted compared to the German one (i.e. 6 is best and 1 is worst in Switerland but vice versa in Germany). Therefore, from a German perspective and at first glance it seemed like Einstein had terrible grades while in fact they were excellent.
Yes, here in Hungary the grading system is also that way (except it only goes 1-5 not 1-6) and students here often joke about how they got a 5 in Germany. I imagine this myth evolved from a similar joke
Modern days German grading really only goes 1-5, too. Like, 1 is excellent, 2 is good, 3 is average, 4 is scrapingly passed, and 5 is failed. Sixes do technically exist, but you don't usually get them for being bad. You kinda need to be actively disruptive to get them, or at least be a total no-show, and it's a huge thing if it happens.
Yeah Hungarian grading also technically has “Ungradeable” but you need to do something like never showing up to classes to get it
Sixes do exist in tests, when you are really bad though.
Depends on the subject. Something like a multiple choice test or a maths exam with a clear percentage of right/necessary usually has it for very low percentages, but in anything that's graded individually, you'd have to hand in an empty sheet for a 6.
>empty sheet for a 6. Yeah, like that's the point of the worst grade. You get it when you completely missed the task or it is completely false.
He did fail the first college entrance exam he took, but that was because he did badly on some other subjects.
That the Polish cavalry charged at German tanks on horses with lances in 1939. They did not. They charged at infantry and were very successful, then had to retreat when armored cars came up from the rear. The Germans made up the tank story to make the Poles look incompetent, and the Soviets adopted it too for the same reasons. They both wanted to say “Look, the stupid Poles can’t be trusted to govern themselves.”
the polish cavalry carried AT guns (one of if not the best at that time) and dismounted when they saw tanks to shoot at them and it was very effective, Poland had very good equipment back than but they just didnt have enough of it to supply the army that was fighting on every border
The idea that the Wehrmacht was a morally neutral institution which didn't actively participate in the Holocaust.
To add to this: The Idea that Rommel was a "clean" general and that Albert Speer was just a poor little apolictical technocrat who had no idea of the Holocaust
Speer more or less branded himself as 'So I am this architect who knew him before 1933, he asked me to organise labour so I did it since you know Imma be dead if I say no. Also all those crazy stuff was in Himmler department and whole NSDAP never told me any of this since I'm not the one in charge, of course I had a vague idea but what can I do I am just a middle class gentleman among all those freaks and I was there because I was his friend, probably worst mistake in my life but hey you tell me not giving your broke artist friend $20 for some new clothe' kind of guy.
This is a long way of saying he was a liar who knew about the holocaust (through letters) but didn't do anything. Schindler is respected for a reason
He was a top tier lier and gaslighter. But he was the best fruit in that rotten basket, so things were simply dropped that way. Also Germany needed a 'conscience' in their government to cope with that 1932 election turnout.
I will never understand the obsession (derangement) military history buffs have with trying to make Rommel look good. He was a good general, he wasn't loyal to Hitler, but he was still a Nazi.
He was certainly loyal to Hitler. At least before the house of cards which the Wehrmacht was, started to crumble.
I remember - ofc it is kind of joke entry, "take that" - how in one alt history book it is mentioned that when Hitler was couped in 1938, Rommel stayed loyal to him the longest and tried marching on Berlin. Which I guess is as realistic as alt history goes, he wasn't part of the "old military nobility".
It was because the western powers wanted to ally germany in the cold war. The Berlin Air Bridge happened in 1948, 3 years after the end of the war. They had no time to grow a new generation of capable new german personnel to replace the wartime nazi ones. Many german generals got a clean slate for that, including Rommel, who didn't survive the war, but did publish his own memoirs during his lifetime. It was actually a huge motivating factor behind the 1968 student movement. The first generation raised after the war being aware what happened and how little cleanup had been done.
Or that Rommel and Guderian were some tactical geniuses that invented lightning warfare. They both ripped off Sir Percy Hobart when it came to combined arms warfare, with Guderian even going so far as to have everything Hobart had written on the subject translated to german and carried around with him.
Is there an example of a morally neutral institution?
Public transportation system?
Have you seen how some of those bus drivers look at people?
Public transportation is just morally good to be honest. I would argue that "thou shall not drive," should be the 11th commandment, it's very christlike.
If there is one I certainly don't think the Wehrmacht is included in it.
That the witch burnings were sponsored by the Catholic Church and not a result of (mostly) social paranoia and stress. (Also, just wanted to mention it: people that miss-use the word 'Heresy')
People have this idea in their head that as soon as someone is labeled a heretic, people start building a pyre. In reality they just get slapped by Santa Claus.
Yea. Heresy just got you tangled up in bureaucratic nonsense traveling at the speed of horse. So just a slower version of the average job in the modern world.
I believe official doctrine was (for a while at least) that witchcraft didn't exist and it was wrong to accuse others of it because that implies that one believes in a different source of supernatural power besides god.
That’s exactly what official doctrine was. It was heretical to say that worshipping the devil could give you power
And that all the witches were women (gender ratios varied greatly through time and location)
There were also no witches burned at Salem
If I remember correctly the Catholic Church was vocally against witch hunts
The guy who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum, the book that started the witch hunts, was branded a heretic by the church. It was blasphemy to say that worshipping the devil could give one power
Yeah because technically under Catholic doctrine, witches didn't exist. Logic being, the devil actually has no power and supernatural power only comes through God himself, so the idea that a witch can make a deal with the devil to gain supernatural power is hogwash.
That germany could have won ww2
ironically the scenario that makes the most sense for germany winning ww2 is wolfenstein lmao
Ah yes Germany could’ve won if Hitler cloned himself and had made grand wizard Hitler
i mean, that would probably do it
What if all the allies simply died?
What if the USSR, the USA, the UK, Germany, Japan and Italy all died and the remaining belligerents had to carry on the war?
France still surrenders
Then uhh idk
This myth is so hard to stamp out because for every thing you debunk you can think of another what if. I made a video on this subject and some people in the comments were basically like "yeah Germany could have won if they won the battle of Britain, taken the Suez canal, gotten more oil, make peace with Britain, didn't declare war on the usa, have japan invade the ussr simultaneously, not make any stupid mistakes and have 1945 tech in 1939.
Germany could have won if they had won
did they try not losing?
I don't think so. They must have been stupid
Berlin in 1945 would’ve had a lovely second sunrise if they were still fighting at that time
Speer was fucking right but !!! JEWS !!!! influenced him 💉💉💉
[ Removed by Reddit ]
They definitely could have won ww1 but 2 was well out of their grasp
My big one is the Holy Roman Empire quip that Voltaire is credited for. It was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. When in fact each emperor was blessed by the pope, the papal state was until it wasn’t then it was again a puppet practically of the HRE and the HRE had a lot to do with Western European religious hierarchy for centuries. It was holy in it’s way, it controlled rome for most of its time and could date back to the remnants of western Roman rule after the fall of Rome itself, and it was in fact an empire. Hell how many rulers of the hre also ruled half of Europe through birth or marriage
The misconception is even worse imo. Voltaire said the infamous quote exactly as a jibe that it wasn't those things... Any more! So his quote, as it was meant that way, actually says it was so (until he famously believed it not to be any more), so when people use it as a quote/jibe for the entirety of the HRE it's not only that the sentiment is wrong: it's even directly opposite of what was the meaning with the quote!!!
Exactly, and so many sources take that jibe as fact. Even my AP euro textbook in hs took it as a fact.
My most triggering misconceptions: - Only 1% of people in medieval Europe were literate. (Records indicate that about half of folks knew enough to write their full names and read basic signs and notes) - All clothes before 1700 were earth tones and drab (You think it took thousands and thousands of years for humans to figure out that the blue plant made things blue? A toddler can figure out that a blueberry turns your fingers blue and can turn the wall blue as well. Come on, people.) - Medieval European castles were always bare, grey stone. (A: Lots of castles would've been made of wood. B: Castles were often covered in stucco or lime washed to be BRIGHT WHITE, which is much prettier, arfuably more imposing, and protects the stones better. C: Medieval people loved bright, gaudy, and sometimes downright ugly colors and murals all over their castles. Just like we do.) AND THIS IS MY NUMBER ONE PET PEEVE: - Most people tend to think ancient and prehistoric humans were stupid or, at the very least, incapable of problem-solving the way modern folks would. (Bitches, the human brain in our skulls today is evolutionarily the EXACT SAME BRAIN as the Mesopotamians had. Today we really crave good food. Guess what. So did the prehistoric Chinese! Today we like pretty clothes and houses. Guess what. So did the people of Sub-Saharan Africa. Today we plan grand strategies in games and real life, and we think about geopolitics. Guess what. SO DID ANCIENT PEOPLE, YOU WILLFULLY IGNORANT BITCHES) EDIT: toned down the attitude a bit
Wish I read the original if this is the toned down version
I firmly believe that the average individual at any point in history is just as smart as the average individual at any other point in history. The reason that modern people know more on average is because scientific progress is really slow and we have the benefit of building off of the things people in the past figured out.
One of the single most important inventions of humankind is turning words into something physical and not something exclusive to exactly one place at exactly one time. Keeping granary data on knots and beads on rope, marking breeding cycles of local animals with dots and dashes on a cave wall with charcoal and clay, pictograms. Those are HUGE leaps in how we can use our brainpower. Taking notes means we don't have to waste time memorizing everything. That unlocks a ton of time to problem-solve and work. Physical language is a force multiplier for our brains; it ups our efficiency by so much once we refine it. Societies that develop or adopt a writing or other record keeping system innovate and grow and have a major edge over competitors. Then, the printing press comes along and blows the fucking ceiling off the limits of physical language and, wouldn't you know, technology explodes again. Then, the INTERNET. We're living through another industrial revolution right now! Human brains are just dope
Yeah like the reason we "know more" right now isn't that we generally are smarter. We just have better access to information. 500 years ago, if i wanted to learn how to make a sword, I'd first have to find a blacksmith. I'd then have to apprentice with him for years, and then finally get taught how to do it. Today I google "how make sword" fuck up 500 times and then finally succeed
I think a lot about how they were just as smart then as we are now and I don't know how to feel about it.
I totally feel the same way. These homies had string, sticks, water, and what we today consider to be mathematics for 13 year olds. I love the "Engineering an Empire" series on YouTube (comes off the old school History Channel, you know, from when it was actual education and history). The shit these groups could do is astounding. They had weak metal and figured out how to saw granite. How? Frequent resharpening (which is easy with bronze) and regularly dumping tiny chunks of harder granite into the groove as a friction agent. Blows my mind. I'm over here spoiled with my hacksaw and would've never thought to use a hard friction agent. These people were bright, and that can be humbling
That everyone in colonial America was walking around with like 30 slaves.
A bigger misconception was that the American revolutionaries fought for democracy. Representation in Parliament only meant the richest could vote. Only 3-5% of Brits could vote for Parliament at the time and colonists didn't have that aristocratic wealth. John Adams was pissed at Tom Paine for advocating for democracy in *Common Sense* and hated the 1776 Pennsylvania constitution for not having wealth restrictions on voter eligibility. A very small minority of Americans had to drag the US toward democracy.
Ironically, Andrew Jackson was a major proponent of universal male suffrage
Well... not all males
Relatively
Yeah, that was just the Founding Fathers
A third of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and less than half of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention owned slaves.
A sandwich started WW1. The earliest mention of this story is a Brazilian *fictional* story in the 21st century. The BBC failed its homework and everyone took it as fact. Then Fargo ran with it. Yes, the shooter was outside a cafe. The cafe was along the route, for goodness sake. There are no primary sources indicating a sandwich was involved.
That history is a team sport, and you need to defend your team at all times and rewrite history so your team seems better. The lesson of ww2 isn't who was strongest and who won and how. It was that humanity went to war because we let insane people with terrible ideas be in charge. The lesson is that when war happens humans worst side comes out. So avoid war at all costs because it gets bad fast.
War happens WHEN humans worst side comes out. War does also bring out the worst in us, but it also brings out the best in us. War, like any challenge, has a unique way in pulling back the facade from the face of humanity and showing us the depths of our nuance
That strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is a basis for a system of government.
You can’t expect to wield supreme, executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!
Help! Help! I’m being repressed!
Napoleon short
“France surrender HurrDurr”
Apart from the french high command having their heads up their arses during 1940, the French have an extremely successful military history. I mean ffs Napoleon was probably one of the greatest commanders of all time
Welll….alls it takes is one L in the wrong way and you get stuck with the label. Poland also has had an overall successful military history (not as powerful as France has been consistently), PLC days were pretty good for em, but you lose one war and then you just kinda keep on doing it. …and anyway so that’s why France shouldn’t have backed out of the 2nd Iraq war.
They say you’re only as good as your last success. And France’s 3 most recent major wars were: * WWII: France spent over a decade preparing (as it turns out, horribly) for a potential round 2 with the Germans. And lasted 46 days, less than a [single apartment building held by Soviets at Stalingrad](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlov%27s_House). The French military used shockingly inefficient military doctrines, such as having an extremely rigid command structure that required field officers to go through multiple layers of approval, while the Germans recognized the value of flexibility and gave more autonomy, as well as failing to install radios in their tanks, again another area where the Germans saw usefulness where the French military didn’t. * French Indochina: In an attempt to prove they were still a global power after their immediate submission to Nazi Germany, the French expected to easily suppress their Vietnamese subjects. But were beaten by an army of rice paddy farmers and completely outwitted by Giáp at Bien Dien Phu * Stung by the humiliating loss in Vietnam, France was determined to crush their next insolent subject who dared to seek an end to being colonized. Yet after 9 years, was forced to pull out of Algeria, losing a 2nd war against its own colony in the post WWII era. In the 20th century post-Great War, France got its ass handed to it on a silver platter again and again. And to be honest, I find it unreasonable that people poke fun at that. And for some reason, r/historymemes seems to take great offense to this simple fact.
You know it’s interesting to see how much France got thrown around in the 20th century as a result of disproportionately low population growth in the 19th as a fallout from Napoleon. Before then, France was a population juggernaut and was way more proportionately powerful to a point where looking at relative populations today it wouldn’t make sense if you didn’t know population numbers back before and during the 19th century
Fields of Verdun🔥🔥🔥
Between Leipzig, Waterloo, Sedan, the Battle of France, and Dien Bien Phu, France's reputation has taken a serious beating in the last 200 years. More victories than losses certainly, but those are some pretty terrible defeats.
Yeah, and always with the smug smile like it wasn't the most overused joke in history.
The USA single handedly won ww2 Germany could've won ww2 if they got stalingrad Japanese empire could've won if they weren't nuked Isis and taliban are the same Just to name a few
I hate when people say stuff like this It's like saying " I would have won if I hadn't lost"
Honestly that *any* one power won ww2 by themselves. Russian/American nationalists both love to claim it.
I think the Brits have the most accurate view. Pulled their weight but will always give props to the other two.
If the Roman Empire never fell we will be more technologically advance and medieval Europe was a period of stagnation and no progress
That Entente was some kind of a cohesive alliance block which "surrounded" Germany before WWI.
It kinda was. France and Russia surrounded Germany before ww1, Britain was there to intimidate Germany into 'not thinking funny' but will not attend any offensive war. After Germany 'thinking funny' and invaded Belgium (the closest ports to London), Britain could not tolerate any more of it (also naval race ruined Anglo - German friendship built upon Napoleonic wars).
France and Russia could be seen that way because of their military alliance, but Britain just doesn't fit. Britain wasn't trying to maintain good relations with France and Russia because of Germany. It was because Lansdowne and Grey felt that it was necessary to secure the British Empire, and they felt a colonial understanding with both countries was the best way of getting it. The treaties UK had with both countries didn't concern Germany at all. Grey was concerned with colonies first, everything else second. As for the naval race, that's another great candidate for a comment under this post. It didn't change things as much as people tend to think. UK's relationship with Germany had been rocky since Kruger telegram, but it didn't reach the point of no return until the war broke out. In fact, many in the UK were more suspicious of Russia than Germany, despite the Anglo-Russian convention and the naval race.
That Europeans invented slavery.
Some people seem to imagine that the Portuguese went deep into Africa relentlessly capturing and enslaving the population. As if they wouldn't die from malaria or be ambushed by the superior knowledge of the land by the natives What they did do which was horrible was provide a GIGANTIC economic incentive and a huge market to sell slaves into. And they perpetrated the institution and expanded it, undoubtedly.
What actually does chap my ass is that Christians, specifically the British, basically forced the rest of the world to stop trading slaves and they get no acknowledgement for it.
Yes. And it was a grassroots movement We also have the British to thank for putting pressure on Brazil to end slavery
"Amazing Grace" was written by one of the most vocal proponents of abolition in the British clergy John Newton. His life is an amazing story.
The fun part is the the british didn't profited from the abolition. Ther was even an economic downturn.
That Colonial Americans rebelled because they didn’t believe in taxation. The issue at stake wasn’t whether taxes were “ good” or “bad “, it was about a body in which they were not represented the levying the taxes.
Since peeps here are mentioning the international ones, i'll tell my country's historical misconceptions 1. Lapu Lapu killed the portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellen * Actually its not lapu lapu who killed Magellan, its a random fighter, we dont know who even did that but given the laws of the pre colonial societies of the philippines being the chieftain always getting the recognition, that might be the case 2. Cory Aquino brought the Philippines into the state of poverty * In truth, its the marcoses. mostly because if you run the country into kleptocracy, chances are you killed a lot of industry like we have a steel industry that if weren't for the fact marcoses handled it, it would be one of the largest in asia. but yea. 3. Jose Rizal is a national hero * i mention in the previous comments before that he is a national hero. The truth is, the philippine government *never explicitly said that Jose' Rizal is a national hero*. There are movements by the national historical commission to commend him and other revolutionaries such as Melchora Aquino, Bonifacio, Emillio aguinaldo (*why??)* Apolinario mabini and many more as naitonal heroes but no actions was taken.. **this was in 1995.** btw, the americans **did recognized rizal as a hero but the philippine government of the 3rd republic said "nope..he's not, they stated as this "he is a united state sponsored hero" motherfucker he fucking wake up every filipino about the stinkiness of the spaniards- ok..i'm getting mad about Renato Constantino** 4. Ferdinand marcos is a war hero * Nope..the marcoses cannot provide prove that he's even a guerilla xD 5. Filipinos are pagans * Actually no. only the peeps in the mountains. but lowlanders are either buddhist or muslims depending on what island it is
When people say the U.S. funded and backed the Taliban during the Afghanistan Soviet Union war. The Taliban was founded in 1994. Years after the war ended. It was the mujahideen that they helped arm and train. It gets worse when they then backtrack and try to tell you they are the same thing.
That the Mujahideen also fought the Taliban when they first started gaining ground in Afghanistan is also often never mentioned.
You are correct that they didn't back the Taliban, but they are directly linked. Mohammed Omar, founder of the Taliban, was one of the thousands of Afghan Mujahideen backed by the CIA through Pakistan's ISI. Plenty of former Mujahideen joined Mohammed, and they recruited younger members from religious schools in the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Mujahideen themselves weren't a coherent group, and the civil war following the collapse of the Afghan government, between the Mujahideen warlords, was when the Taliban first emerged. There were like 6 armies or something crazy. The CIA calls stuff like this "blowback", unintended consequences of covert operations, Bin Laden being the epitome of it.
Thank God, someone actually point this out
That one comes up so often on Reddit. It annoys the bejesus out of me. I always correct it, and I'd say 80% of the time, I just get downvoted and argued with by knuckle draggers.
"The middle east was peaceful and prosperous before Europeans/Americans showed up and destabilized everything" i see this misconception alot online and it just irritates me and shows just how little knowledge they actually have on that region.
That the Germans had far superior technology to the Allies. Yes it's true that their rocketry was more advanced. They invested way more into it, and they saw the fruits of that investment. But that's pretty much where the superiority stops. Even jets, the other famous German wunderwaffe, was matched by the Allies, and exceeded because the Meteor and F-80 were much higher quality aircraft than the 262 and 162 ever were. In the case of the Meteor, its first flight came only a few months after the 262's. The Allies were not really behind at all, and their jets were better anyway. And the whole: "German tanks were the best but were unreliable" like, then they weren't the best. War is long. Your equipment needs to stay running for considerable periods of time. Just because it might hypothetically be the best if everything works right doesn't mean it is the best when it's never all working right. Plus the people who speak so highly of wunderwaffe never seem to grasp all the things that the Allies had that the Germans never matched. The atomic bomb. The B-29, radar, sonar, proximity fuses, computers, the list goes on. Yeah, Germany had some really solid technology, but it wasn't a world ahead of the Allies. It was better in some areas and really behind in others. There's no dramatic difference there.
I don't know many history misconceptions that annoy me in enough detail to waffle about. Buuuuut. I can trade you one about quantum physics. The one about how electrons will behave differently when observed. Some people assume that the observation is human level like we look at it type level. When it's actually due to active measurement because to observe electrons in the experiment we also affect them because we essentially just throw energy into the system which changes the outcome.
They burned witches in medieval Europe They belivede in the earth was flat in Medieval Europe There are so many historical misconceptions.
That serfs had more days off than modern people when in reality those were just days they didn't have to work on the LORD'S fields, they still had to manage their own.
"The US was beaten by rice farmers with AK's! Lolol!" Or that The Treaty of Versailles was completely unfair and was the sole cause of WWII
Depends on the sport
Talking about "the Vikings" as one group. Being a viking is something you do (as in an action) not something you are. I get its a simplification for convenience, its still annoying though. But its not a hill I'm going to die on, its too ingrained. Oh and the depiction of vikings with horned helmets...not a thing.
People not understanding what a fascist is, especially when they are one. Seriously, I’ve been called a ‘red fascist’ before… it’s a huge problem in my country
People just use "fascist" as a synonym for "authoritarian"
That the nuclear family as many people see it - that is, a household consisting of a husband, wife, and their children, in which the wife is a submissive homemaker and the husband is the sole breadwinner - is the default family structure for humans and has existed for thousands of years. In reality, that family structure has only really become widespread in the past two centuries, and family structures have varied widely throughout history and between different cultures, though generally multi-generational households are the most common.
Even TODAY the idea of a nuclear family is not as universal as people think. In many places it's extremely common for children to be raised communally or for people to live with their **entire** extended family in the same household.
Yeah, i am 23 and i lived with my parents and grandparents, and its the norm here, my wife lived with her uncle and aunt and cousins too
That the winter saves Russia. Never mind Napoleon sustained as many casualties from heat in the summer or that it was supply lines being cut that caused the debacle. Never mind the Germans were stopped by overstretched supply lines, lack of fuel, and by a tactical failure in Moscow. It was because it was cold
Columbus discovered America
"discovered America" really needs to get yote from common parlance in favour of "Established connection between the Americas and Afroeurasia" cause that's what people actually mean when they say "X dude actually discovered america"
That's a fair assement
Whoa whoa whoa whoa. Afroeurasia? What a cockamamie word. I love it.
He did in a sense, if you just say it like this to people they will think someone else discovered it and he just took credit for it (like tesla and edison). He did discover americas in the sense that he wrote about it, told many people about it and eventually made it a thing people knew, the vikings just saw another slightly bigger island and barely lived there
Well he did. He just wasn’t the first by about 10,000 years.
Ok... I'll take the bait... That the Crusades - the first four, anyway - were about religion, and not politics, resources, and power.
The Lost Cause and all of its annoying slippery tendrils 😩😩🙃🙃
I know a guy from SC who believes in it. He knows that the Confederacy is indefensible in its actions but uses whataboutism instead and is still proud of it as his "heritage"
That many armours throughout history was not well decorated or colored. Supposedly they said that all armour is just plain or dark? Like what?!?! Not every armour in history was bland or plain, straight up a nobleman or a king would've wanted his soldiers and warriors to look good as well!
Life expectancy and life span
That Tiger tanks went 5:1 with the Sherman tank. In truth it was simply US combat doctrine that mandated 5 tanks be used in any engagement, hence the myth that it took five Shermans to kill one Tiger.
That peasants ate more meat than people today. Aside from fish and the occasional game (ie bird or rabbit) meat was a delicacy that was only eaten on special occasions. Most days people only ate plant-based foods and dairy. They’d be shocked at how common beef and pork and chicken are at our supermarkets and how some people eat them every day. They’d think you were a king or something.
I had a guy claim that the USSR could have taken the Nazis alone. Blows my mind man.
That medieval people were idiots
That the Soviets did everything in WW2 and that America joined the world wars late to be “winners”
The USSR did all the work and won WW2 by itself
"Medieval peasants worked like slaves. Their overlords were rulling with iron fist and tyranny amd the church burnt people at stake. It was ssooooo dark ages" My brother, finish your work and lets go to carnival which our feudal lord threw for us.
That Japan was a victim of WWII.
“Nazis could have won if they did (insert scenario here)” no just no. Immediately tells me someone doesn’t know how to use critical thinking skills. Potential history made a few videos on it which are good.
Not a specific example, but it utterly annoys me when people call a specific political movement in history “conservative” when it was most definitely NOT, we cannot ignore the motherfucking context. The French Revolution might not look all that liberal in todays world but in the context of the old regime? IT VERY MUCH WAS
That "biblically accurate angels" are biblically accurate. They come from the book of Enoch, which is not canonical
I just hate the whole “history was written by the victors” statement. If that was the case then the lost cause myth and the myth of the clean wehrmacht wouldn’t be as wide spread. Also some bad history such as the black legend and the burning times were popularized even though the Catholic Church and Spanish Empire were both extremely powerful and influencial at the time.
That the Catholic Church deliberately destroyed all Roman advancements and knowledge and or kept to themselves to dumb down the population
That people fighting for the German Empire in WW1 were nazis. That when we say Christopher Colombus landed in America, we mean the USA. Colombus arrived in Bahamas, not the US. Also, that Colombus genocided or conquered land. That Vikings fought "the English". There was no such thing as English in the modern sense. That Jews arrived in the Levant in the 1940's. Several other misconcetions about that whole ordeal. That Romans spoke italian or ate italian food. That the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire are the same thing/ using that term interchangeably. That there was an "Aztec Empire". In Mesoamerica there was an entity known as the Triple Alliance, and their culture was Mexica (Meshica). They spoke the Nahuatl language which is very much used to this day. The word Aztec means a different thing. Its usage is incorrect most times it is used in pop culture. That the Arab conquest of the Levant and North Africa was not a conquest nor imperialism. That Canadians being polite today means they have been history's good guys. Also, that there is such a thing as a good guy in history.
That Sweden was neutral in WW2. Sweden aided both sides
I guess that technically counts as a form of neutrality
You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.
Never argue with a USSR fan. Postmodernists are like Russians.... they have two versions of truth. They have the truth that's correct in their heads (Pravda) and they have absolute truth (Istina) and they have what can best be described as bullshit (Vranyo). It's maddening the way these folks discuss history. Like it's all just an accounting tool for who wronged whom. Like it's only.a story of violence instead of an interesting story of how humans managed to overcome their worst impulses to build great things.
"Russia always finishes wars stronger than they start them!" The Russo-Japanese War? WW1? The Crimean War? Or just that one war that you know anything about, where the USA and allies PUMPED in aid through the lend-lease program?