bad history

The erasure of women's roles in combat. That's a big one.

The concept of terra nullius. That's another big one.

(I don't think misnomer is the word you want)

Stage coaches didn't circle in defense, that was covered wagons. There were no cowboys back then. there were drovers who drove cattle, horses, etc. However, there were cow boys -- a big time insult calling grown men boys.
The shoot out at high noon is more kabuki than old West. They were more likely to shoot people in the back.

No educated person in Christopher Columbus's day thought that the world was flat.

No Viking wore horned helmets (they'd be terrible in combat -- just one more thing for an enemy to grab).

Age at first marriage was greatly dependent on era and social class. It's not true that all girls in the past were married off in their early teens. In Shakespeare's England, for example, such early marriages only happened among royalty and the higher nobility -- middle class and poor women typically waited until their mid 20s, when they and their suitors would have acquired enough belongings to set up a household. Juliet's extreme youth is meant to shock the audience by showing how decadent those Italians were!

Helix said:

The erasure of women's roles in combat. That's a big one. ...

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When I finish my sci-fi duology I plan to write a non-fiction book, The Real History* of Nursing.

Did you know Florence Nightingale was a statistician and one of the first real modern medical researchers? She made meticulous observations about wound healing and wrote up her data. And it was the midwives in Dr Semmelweis' hospital that recognized hand washing mattered. But Semmelweis gets the credit because he noticed their patients survived at much greater rates than the medical interns who ignorantly came straight from the autopsies of women who died in childbirth, and without washing their hands, delivered the next baby, dooming yet another woman to a postpartum puerperal infection.

I have lots of stories.

*I debate whether to call it Herstory but I fear the reaction will overshadow and detract from the book so I'll probably put something about that in the introduction.


Harold Zinn's A People's History Of The United States should be required reading in every US high school and if it isn't and you have high school kids you should see they read it. I think I learned more about history when I traveled around Central America than I had in high school. American-centro history taught in schools in the US is terribly unfortunate.

Not sure if Zinn said it (I think he did) but it has been noted that students entering history classes in college in the US come completely unprepared out of high school.

creativemechanic said:

How Stella got her groove back. It actuality the man who the protagonist fell in love with on her island trip was gay and he just wooed her to get citizenship

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That's not exactly bad history, is it?

The bloodiest gun battle in the wild west happened in Newton, Kansas, not the OK corral. --s6

creativemechanic said:

How Stella got her groove back. It actuality the man who the protagonist fell in love with on her island trip was gay and he just wooed her to get citizenship

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creativemechanic said:

Well maybe... but still shocking turn of events when u consider the movie wouldve ended happily

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This has what to do with history? Also, how would the movie end happily with fraud? Huh?

I'm fond of Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. He's got several books out.

cmhbob said:

I'm fond of Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. He's got several books out.

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Haven't read that one but I did see the author interview in CSPAN Book TV Booknotes and loved it. It's free online streaming.

Lies My Teacher Told Me Professor Loewen described how his recent book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, published by The New Press, resulted from two years of research at the Smithsonian Institution studying twelve popular high school history textbooks. It focuses on how these books omit certain events and gloss over others to mythologize American history. He points out that this homogenization alienates minorities and others by making history extremely uninteresting. In addition to criticism, he also provides remedies to make textbooks and teaching methods more useful and appealing to students.

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creativemechanic said:

Well maybe... but still shocking turn of events when u consider the movie wouldve ended happily

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You know if a visually disabled dyslexic old lady using an iPhone can approach Modern English, you can do better.

I'm always fond of reminding folks that during the American Revolution, a large number of people were loyal to England and moved there after the war. That entire period has a lot of misinformation spouted in our classrooms.

Great thread, I find all of this so interesting. I want to check out the suggested books.

What I find even more interesting is how horses were thought of before autos and how autos really, in some ways, saved the horse from horrible conditions and treatment.

Here's a good one: musket wounds. The size of the shot was much larger than modern day bullets, yet they seem (in movies) to do no damage whatsoever aside from a bit of blood.
The reality was smashed limbs that needed amputation and lots of blood and gore.

Then there's cannon shot. They seem to produce nothing but smoke in movies depicting battles where they would be used.

Alessandra Kelley said:

A lot of the "ye olde ancient" folklore of the British Isles was embellished, to put it charitably, by over-imaginative amateur folklorists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century eager to dredge up the remnants of the colorful and exciting ye old ancient pastoral times and religions that must have survived in pockets, they hoped.

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Most medieval towns had a sewerage system consisting of a bunch of boys with barrows and shovels who carried the shit to a nearby stream. Not the sort of "ye olde folklore" modern folk want to think about.

Great idea for a thread!

creativemechanic said:

Stage coach attacks were very rare and they never went into a circle for defense.

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I've gotta be that guy. Stagecoach attacks were most definitely NOT rare on the frontier. Shotgun riders (who rode up top with the driver -- that's where the term "riding shotgun" comes from) were a must for most trips and even then were no guarantee against robbery. Before the railroads (and after for remoter towns), anything and everything of value was being transported in and out via coach. While the robberies weren't usually violent they were ridiculously common. Especially around mining towns. So much so that vigilante committees had to be created to hunt down repeat offenders.

Also, I'm not sure where the author of Bad History got the idea people think that stagecoaches traveled in numbers and circled for defense. Coaches traveled alone, on very rare occasions in pairs. I've never seen them portrayed otherwise in popular media.

The concept of "circling the wagons" comes from a common practice among freighters and settlers who traveled in groups for protection and support. At the end of every day's travel, when the terrain allowed for it they'd circle up. This was a long and difficult process. Which is why old movies that show a wagon train circling up at the gallop while under attack are so ridiculous. Of course, the whole concept of an Indian lurking behind every rock to scalp the men and rape the women is a bit overblown, too. While raids did happen (a LOT), they were almost always small scale affairs more intent on looting than killing, and usually targeted isolated individuals and/or remote homesteads. Ironically, off the top of my head, the only large-scale attack on a wagon train I can think of was perpetrated by Mormons, not Indians.

creativemechanic said:

Heres one gladiators didnt fight to the death. To maintain a gladiator would cost lots of money so it made no sense to let him fight to the death. While deaths did occur it was by accident and the manager could be compensated.

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Gladiators USUALLY didn't fight to the death. Most fights didn't end in death, but enough did that this isn't so much myth as exaggeration. A new gladiator's life expectancy upon taking the oath could usually be counted on one hand. Two if they proved particularly adept. Many didn't survive their rookie year.

noirdood said:

The shoot out at high noon is more kabuki than old West. They were more likely to shoot people in the back.

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I often see this repeated as gospel. Mostly it is, but not entirely. While it's true that the majority of gunfights were less fights and more ambushes, the showdown in the street happened more often than you might think. Hickock was involved in a famous one in Kansas. Jim Levy had a stand up shootout in the street outside a Cheyenne bar. He let his opponent empty a cylinder at him, all while calmly standing and taking aim. Then he plugged him. Twice. It was such a famous fight at the time that Bat Masterson used Levy as an example of why a quick draw mattered less than calm deliberation.

So while nobody sober and/or sane squared up at twenty paces and tried to outdraw one another, the common practice of "calling out" an opponent could and did result in the sort of theatrics that were expanded upon to become the Hollywood showdown. Another factor that contributed to head-to-head gunfights was the law. Back then, if you shot somebody in the back, you were probably going to hang. But if you shot somebody in the front while they were reaching for or holding a gun, it was almost universally ruled self-defense.

Also, since bullets rarely kill immediately, many of those aforementioned ambushes turned into stand-up fights. Often at spitting distance.

creativemechanic said:

Any more that you can add?

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That's a dangerous question to ask a pedant like me. Too many. I'll have to pace myself. Today I'm working on my Ancient Egypt WIP, so I'll limit myself to that quarter for the time being.

1) Ancient peoples weren't morons in loincloths. They were as smart and observant as we are, and often far more industrious and innovative. Belief in the "ignorant ancient" trope is why utter drivel like Ancient Aliens exists. The fact that we can't figure out how our ancestors built the pyramids says more about our own ignorance than theirs.

2) Camels in remote antiquity, Ancient Egypt and all points Biblical especially. You see this everywhere in popular media, even occasionally in the odd documentary. Ridley Scott even fell for it in his lamentable Exodus:Gods & Kings. Problem is. . .no camels in Ancient Egypt or the Middle East until the Iron Age. Putting a camel in the ranks of the Exodus, or having a member of Ramses' court ride one makes about as much sense as having George Washington drive a Corvette.

3) "Egyptian" is a cultural term, not a racial one. Not everyone looked the same. Egypt had a very diverse population, something reflected by their rulers. Ramses II was a redhead. Other Pharaohs were Nubians. Still more were of mixed heritage. Color mattered very little to the Egyptians. Yet popular portrayals opt to be absurdly. . .monochromatic.

4) Chariots were not the ancient equivalent of tanks, and people didn't gallop everywhere on them. In fact, they were rarely used for transportation, only for battle. 1) Because horses were prohibitively expensive and treated like royalty; 2) Riding a chariot was hell on the knees, and extremely dangerous to boot; and 3) there were very few roads in Ancient Egypt. Travel was almost exclusively waterborne.

I'm sure I'll be back with more.