Things everybody knows that are actually wrong

[minionofmidas]

Segolene Royal has a brain and/or is mentally stable.

This.

Oh, and: Segolene Royal is even dumber than Nicolas Sarkozy.

[minionofmidas]

That Salem witch trials were burned instead of hanged [and there were a fair percentage of men too]

Or that it was an American phenomenon.  The Euros that stayed behind killed many MANY more innocents.   link

I am proud to proclaim that the city of Frankfurt never executed a single witch since the beginning of complete records (late 14th century).

[minionofmidas]

Witch trials had largely gone out of fashion in Europe by the time Salem rolled around, as had Inquisitions, and all the other like.  There was one last major flare up in Germany I think about 50 years before Salem, but that that time much of Germany was still a backwater of Europe.

The last witches were burnt in Germany and Spain within shouting distance of the French Revolution.
Witch persecution in Germany peaked right around the time of Salem.

(You're right about England and France though, I think.)

Of course, there's the theory of Salem being largely a failed attempt to weed out Huntington's Disease in the colony.

[minionofmidas]

Meh. I retract that - Salem was later than I remembered.
And Spain's apparently a total red herring.

[minionofmidas]

If they executed a witch before the late 14th century, it would be quite the discovery! The first witch executions recorded were not until the mid-to-late 15th century.

That's because comprehensive records begin around then (the later structure of the witch trial was developping around that time, too).
The legal offense of witchcraft certainly existed throughout the middle ages in Germany.

[minionofmidas]

EDIT: I can't resist, here's another: rape is related to issues of dominance and power and has nothing to do with sex.

Serial rapists usually are (mostly) about dominance and power, or just hatred of women, though.

And they're the ones who get thoroughly analyzed, hence where the mistake crept in (later, it got perpetuated for reasons of political expediency, of course.)

If they executed a witch before the late 14th century, it would be quite the discovery! The first witch executions recorded were not until the mid-to-late 15th century.

That's because comprehensive records begin around then (the later structure of the witch trial was developping around that time, too).
The legal offense of witchcraft certainly existed throughout the middle ages in Germany.

Quite simply not true--but I don't have the source on hand to discuss this right now. The first witch executions almost certainly took place in southern France and French Switzerland around 1450, making their way into the Rhineland and northern Italy by 1500 and then across Germany and northern France during the 16th century, continuing until about the mid-17th century before rapidly declining around 1640. Scotland experienced some significant witch burnings in the early 17th century. Witch trials elsewhere in the Catholic or Protestant spheres (England, Ireland, Spain, Poland, central and southern Italy, Hungary, Scandinavia) were mild or nonexistent.

"Witchcraft," of course, is a loosely defined offense. There was a crime called sorcery for which a few men were earlier executed, but it was not witchcraft in the later sense. There was no demon-summoning or otherwise heretical aspect to it, for one. Records exist quite far back in the earliest areas, e.g. Toulouse, far enough back to say that witches were not being burned or otherwise executed before ~1450. (The northern Italian city-states are the best source for this sort of thing, of course, although they started executing witches a little later than southern France. Modena in particular has detailed records.)

Records of individual criminal cases in Germany are rare before quite late in the middle ages, not because they have been lost but because none were kept at all. The lawbooks of the time, however, are well known. They agree that the penalty for sorcery is burning at the stake.

The mass witchhunt is, of course, an early modern phenomenon (though foreshadowed by witchhunts for heretics in the 13th century). Nobody's denying that.

[minionofmidas]

That we are perfectly safe and beagles & squirrels are not secretly plotting to take over the planet and enslave us.

Hate to break it to you, but that's rabbits.

[minionofmidas]

Also that people were somehow much shorter only 200 years ago.

They were.
Or their feet and inches were longer.

Actually, people were much shorter even fifty years ago.

[minionofmidas]

The oldest continuously inhabited city is Jericho.

That, at least, is the received wisdom. I've no idea how much truth there is to the claim... was Jericho really inhabited continuously? And as a city?

It also wouldn't surprise me to hear people chime off some Egyptian city like Cairo even though Cairo was long after ancient Egypt.

Oh, but some of the cities of ancient Egypt are still cities today. Same caveats apply, of course. Although the dates usually given for Jericho are millennia before the Pyramids, in the very early days of cities full stop.

[minionofmidas]

The oldest continuously inhabited city is Jericho.

That, at least, is the received wisdom. I've no idea how much truth there is to the claim... was Jericho really inhabited continuously? And as a city?

The same doubts exist pretty much for all other candidates.

Oh yes, I would assume so.

[minionofmidas]

Aswan (anciently called Swenet) has been the largest city and administrative center of the South of Egypt for 4 millennia or so.

[minionofmidas]

The answer is St. Augustine, FL by the way for European settlements

Only if you count only the time of European occupation. Otherwise, the answer is Hampton, VA (which was continuously occupied, despite the change in occupants in 1610 or some such year.)

[minionofmidas]

Also that people were somehow much shorter only 200 years ago.

They were.
Or their feet and inches were longer.

Actually, people were much shorter even fifty years ago.

Germans grew five inches over the past 150 years. 18-20 year old Germans currently are an inch taller on average than the entire 18+ population.

[minionofmidas]

Winston Churchill once said:

"The only statistics I trust are the ones I doctored myself."

Churchill never said this, often repeated, quotation... even in jest.

The original quote is actually:

Ich glaube nur der Statistik, die ich selbst gefälscht habe.

And as you can guess from that, it was utter Nazi propaganda, that was actually picked up upon by the Labour Party and Left-wing intellectuals and used by them against Churchill in later years.

I've seen it attributed to numerous different people - Bismarck, Churchill, Adenauer being the standard choices (I sense a common theme here - no, not "Conservative" - "Powerful old man with a reputation for shrewdness".) No idea about the ultimate origin.

There's also the variant where a politician is accused of "using statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost - not to shed light on something but just to cling to."

[minionofmidas]

Beastie Boys - Fight For Your Right To Party: Insanely popular at keg parties and the like and usually seen as sort of an anthem for rebellious teens (including myself back in the day embarassingly), despite the fact that the song is actually making fun of the people who love it so much now.

It's both, really. It's making fun of itself. The whole album is like that.

[minionofmidas]

That Hitler seriously claimed to be a Socialist.

[minionofmidas]

The word wasn't there yet, but the concept of a homosexual in the sense you describe as a 19th century invention was certainly fully formed by the time John Cleland wrote Fanny Hill.

[minionofmidas]

The majority of Italians supported Italian Unification in the 1860s. Actually it was a tiny minority and long, long guerrila war took place in the South which at one point involved 100,000 Italian troops in the field. When the Papal States were captured in 1871 there was very little support by the populace.

There was even less opposition from the populace.
You're right about the Two Sicilies though - people wanted the ancien regime to end, but they wanted it replaced with something very different from what they got (e.g. Sicilians wanted Sicily's old autonomy back, and thought that a far away King in Turin would be much less capable of intervening in Sicilian affairs than the Napolitans had recently gotten into the habit of doing). It took them about a year or so to understand that they'd been hoodwinked, and they rebelled as soon as they did.

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That's a question of definition. The Italian dialects are quite divergent, of course - after all, Italic languages have been spoken across much of Italy since the beginning of recorded time - but then so are German dialects. The more relevant bit is that Working Class Italians (and that would be 80-85% in the period in question. And actually, the same holds for most though not all Middle Class women, taking us to your 10% figure) were not literate and not aware of what the distinctions between standard Italian and the local speech might be, though they would have heard of the concept. Half a century further back, and even that is not necessarily true in the South - A Calabrese would then have considered his language a dialect of Latin rather than Italian.

[minionofmidas]

gay men considered a separate branch of person (which is what I'm aiming at)?

I wouldn't exactly consider gay men "a separate branch of person" today either. Transsexuals, maybe.

[minionofmidas]

John Paul II was a progressive pope

Once again:

LEARN THE PURPOSE OF THIS THREAD OR SHUT THE FUCK UP.

How doesn't this fit the purpose of the threat?

Because it is not what is commonly believed.  I loved the man but he was no progressive- on moral matters or politics.  He literally shouted down the leftists and liberation theologists.  His Nicaragua homily was a fascinating exchange.  "Silencio."  At the same time he spoke out against some of the tinpot quasi fascist dictators in C. America   

On the other hand, he greatly improved relations with other religions. This is certainly progressive.

I would call it more strategic.  In a world with increasing godlessness you try to find some fellow travellers. 

No. I don't think that was his motivation.

[minionofmidas]

This is not a "thing everyone knows" but rather an addendum to my last point:

Contrary to what everyone today thinks, it was the Protestants who had this strange obsession with codifying, regulating, and normalizing sexual behaviors.

Yes - well it was always there within Medieval Catholicism, but they never particularly successful. Prostitution was legal throughout Europe in the Middle Ages.

[/quote]But regulated.

[minionofmidas]

Bump!

Few people know that and it isn't strictly true anyways.