Great Misunderstandings Throughout History

Helen of Troy was not, as widely reported, the Face that Launched a Thousand Ships.

In fact she was a washroom attendant whose duties included cleaning out the toilet bowls. What Christopher Marlowe originally wrote was The Face that Washed a thousand Shits, but sadly he spilled mulled wine on his manuscript and the writing got smudged.


Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte had an insatiable love of ice cream. He often changed his mind about which flavor he wanted which made life miserable for his staff. Eventually, they figured out to bring two or three flavors at a time. The concept became popular and over the years, the name morphed to avoid trademark issues. The next time you hoist a spoonful of strawberry, chocolate and vanilla Neapolitan ice cream, remember the fussy French general and his resourceful staff.

Ben Franklin

Ben Franklin was one of the few colonists with a passion for origami. Armed with the delicate scrolls of rejected submissions from earnest authors, he would practice his folding and shaping in secrecy. His favorite shape was a foot wide eagle with wings that expanded. After Mrs. Franklin and the household was asleep, Ben would tie a string to his masterpiece to see if the cat would chase it. Late one night in the early spring out they scampered into the field. A gust of wind from a storm front caught the origami creation and the cat jumped to grasp it in its claws. As they rose into the air a lightening bolt struck the origami and burned it in a burst of flame. The cat landed unhurt on all fours and Ben dropped this hobby and took up fiction.

Jesse James

Jesse James is one of the most misunderstood figures in American history. His undeserved reputation as a outlaw began when his bank account was closed through a clerical mistake and he was unable to purchase a train ticket to go home to his ailing mother. The unfortunate events that followed have been blown all out of proportion by sensational journalists and other hack writers out to make a quick sale.

Martin Luther

Despite being exommunicated, many of his followers bought indulgences on his part, and promised only to have a diet of worms till Mr. Luther's name was cleared. Pity they weren't french; I hear escargot tastes better...

Venerable Bede

The Venerable Bede was not very venerable. He was actually The Venereal Bede because he kept catching the clap from unprotected sex.


Moses

Moses was trying to discover America, not lead his people out of slavery. He just had a good PR guy.

Thomas Crapper.

Wallace Reyburn's satircal biography of Mr. Crapper was actually all true. It's also reported that Crapper was the first to make homage to the porcelain god.


Caligula

Hadrian was a simple soul who loved gardening. His plan for a brick wall around his rose garden was hugely misinterpreted by well-meaning officials, but he was too nice to embarrass anyone by pointing out the error.

Abraham Lincoln

Mr. Lincoln was a great man to be sure, but did tend to sway on the verge of dislexia quite a bit and was prone to mistakes when he read too quickly. Luckily, he had a great friend who liked to proofread all of his work and double check his contracts for him. Otherwise, on the day when Lincoln was quite preoccupied with his termite problem in the white house, he might have ironically been known as the great exterminator instead of the great EMANCIPATOR. He was quite taken aback to find out that he had NOT, in fact, signed a contract to hire someone to take care of his pest problem. He finally realized that the state of the union, however, was a bit more pressing than bugs... some think perhaps he might have been slightly ADHD as well. Those termites were REALLY distracting.

George Washington Carver

George was cheated out of his bestest invention: The electric knife.

Aristophanes.

Cleopatra
In a time when discretion and personal space intertwined easily the legendary beauty Cleopatra held power through an astute understanding of the weaknesses of men. After all, Cleopatra was a transvestite who appeared exactly as what people wanted to see and then said what she wanted them to hear.

The Wright Brothers

Although they should be more aptly named the Wrong brothers, the Wright brothers only stumbled upon the plans for a flying machine after a drunken night of trying to figure out how to play a halloween prank on their Mom by making a machine that looked like a giant condor and to try to take advanteage of her extremely unrealistic, but very severe, fear of birds.

Adolph Hitler

Adolph Hitler was not afflicted with syphilis that led to him trying to take over the world as was rumoured but rather afflicted by a syllabus that led to him trying to take over the world whose origins remained a mystery.

-

Alexander Mackenzie

Alexander Mackenzie
Underneath the kilt, he wore spanks.

Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi wore that cloth because his suit was at the dry cleaners.


Noah

Noah
A victim of a secret fishing trip someone let out of the bag (I'm looking at you Dinosaur...)


Ivan the Impaler

PS love that signature flytart...

Ivan the Impaler
This poor man, he took every thing everyone said so literally and it always got him into trouble. It all started when as a youngster he attended a children's birthday party. They held a simple and innocent game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. There was a classmate who had big ears and had just recently earned the nickname Donkey. Well Ivan nailed the tail and was an over achiever ever since....

The Bird Man of Alcatraz

The Bird Man of Alcatraz

was not as commonly believed, half man half bird, but rather an inmate who was fond of women. He requested a transfer to Al because he'd heard of all the 'birds' there.

'The boy who plugged Denmark's dyke'
(em, reading that just doesn't sound right somehow... ah well)

(non-porn version)
There were in fact several thousand dyke pluggers. (Think about it - how many dykes do you know that aren't full of holes?)


The Boston Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party
Often confused with the mad hatter's tea party.
Basically a buch of uppercrust longshore men swore off the whiskey and chose tea instead, resulting in an unhappy British Empire, who felt the challenge to expected gender and social roles to be an affront to colonial identity (further intensified when it was revealed the LSM were of Irish & Scotish extract).
A war ensued.

Fall of the Berlin Wall

Reagan did not say "Bring down the Wall" to mean bring down the Berlin Wall but, rather, the impregnable defenses on his most despised football team. The "Wall" did not fall, unlike the Berlin Wall which did.

Perestroika