Things everybody knows that are actually wrong

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Oh yeah.. Karl Marx was the first person to use class as way of analyzing historical events. There was long tradition of associating the French Revolution with the Bourgeoise classes long before 1848 and the Manifesto, but he was the first to use class as the engine of history.

Robespeirre was a Socialist.

Until very recently people did not realize the debt Westerners owed to Medieval Arab science. Actually Auguste Comte mentions this in his writings, which are now nearly 200 years old.

Shakespeare was widely considered the greatest playwright in the English language since his death. Actually his reputation was mostly built by 19th Century romantic writers and their predecessors (like Hamann).

Artists have traditionally (by-and-large) leaned to the Left in political matters.

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.

The majority of Italians speak Italian and Spoke Italian during this period. Actually only at the very most 10% did. Perhaps as low as 2.5%

Oh to really throw the cat among the pigeons... All governments deny the existence of extraterrestial beings on UFOs. Actually the French defense department in a 1996 report claimed otherwise - that hoaxes were easy to spot and the rate of sightings too rate to claim anything other than Extra terrestial contact. Read into that what one wants.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

That the electric chair is a painless and instant method of executions

Who the hell thought that?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

That the electric chair is a painless and instant method of executions

Who the hell thought that?

Entire Florida legislature in the late 1990s

[paul718]

Nice post, Gully.  Allow me to dig a little deeper...

Also everything you read about the sex lives of the Romans (except the occasional mad emperor) and their eating habits is a myth. The vomitorium simply didn't exist.

From what I understand, the sexual behavior of Romans and Greeks are often conflated.  The Greeks were more promiscuous, while the Romans were more conservative.  However, homosexuality was far from taboo among among the Romans.

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What were they?  Pagans?

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Who did?

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If they aren't Celts, then what are they?  And who are Celts?

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Can you expound on this?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

No problemo.

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Yeah something like that. But far more complicated - Roman males were allowed to have concubines (occasionally in place of a wife - but with lower legal status) and Slave girls (and boys) were pretty much fair game for all, especially adolescents. Yet in saying that there was a great of emphasis especially in the early period of the empire - when stoic morality grew more and more important - on the idea of the couple and the husband and the wife type family, not the same as modern nuclear family, how many nuclear families own slaves? but the ideal was there and was increasingly followed. Paedophilia was very much illegal and as the empire went on and morals began to grow more and more rigid, this even before the conversion to Christianity, homosexuality was less and less tolerated. Orgies were unheard of - actually only the Greeks ever held orgies (at rare occasions). Only the Greeks idealized homosexuality, actually the Greeks believed that homosexual relations were a sign of manliness and virility as one then did spend one's time then with weak women - who were often seen as just for procreation (in official writings).

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Well "Classical Paganism" (to put a simple term on it) was still present in Europe up until the conversion of Kingdom of Lithuania in the 15th Kingdom. However very few people among the population of Europe at the time could genuinely understand Christian doctrine in any time. Rather, and this has survived much more in Catholic countries than in Protestant ones, christian shrines were just built over previous existing polytheistic ones. In Ireland for example there is a direct continuity between the cult of the saints and holy wells (two very traditional features of Irish catholicism) and pre-existing pagan cults. St. Brigid was almost certainly a christian gloss onto a pagan myth-goddess who was believed to reside in the same area (Kildare). The story of St. Patrick is probably the conflation of the story of a real person with pre-existing legends. This is true throughout Europe (and later, Latin America). Practice thus was a continuation in many ways of went before - instead of worshipping trees one worshipped the cross; Christianity as we commonly understand it was mostly a movement of intellectuals and aristocrats (usually the same thing in pre-industrial societies) and was often strongly elitist in temperament. Among common folk, anything we would recognize as Christian morality did not exist - including obviously sexual morals.

This long continued - during the period of the Spanish inquisition priests regularly called for the money diverted to convert native Americans to convert Spaniards instead. Knowledge - as in Theological knowledge - was very poor as to call them "Christians" in the extent we would understand them would be wrong. One of the aims of the reformers of the reformation was to spread Christianity more among the masses, as previous attempts were obviously unsuccessful. Christianity was also linked to governments (or what passed for government in the middle ages) as it often provided the bureaucracy and was nearly always a large landowner - this often led to popular anti-clericalism which would stretch well into the nineteenth and even Twentieth century in countries like Ireland, France and Spain. In the eighteenth century the Church fell basically into irrelevance except as a marker of tribal distinction and government control (ie. Protestants vs Catholics or Louis XIV's France use of Catholic bureaucracy). As these practices were local in origin as religious worship and practice varied a great deal across the continent - so it could easily be argued that there was no popular religion across Europe. The image we have of Christianity is mostly due to nineteenth century revivalism/medieval romanticism.

Of course I should be clear I'm only referring to the countryside. (Yes I know rambled a bit there but it's a favoured topic of mine).

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The Pre-Indo European inhabitants of Britain who are unknown to us except by their archaeology and remains like Stonehenge. The religion of the druids was a "celtic" import to Britain - this began some time in the 8th Century BC as migrants known as the celts moved further westwards. Stonehenge was built in c2300BC - or roughly fifteen centuries before the arrival of the Celts. By the time of the Romans all the Pre-Indo European languages and cultures have seem to have been wiped out - conquered probably and so almost nothing is known of them and their purpose for building stonehenge. The exception may be the Picts who were speaking a non-Indo European language up until their assimiliation by the Scots (originally a tribe of invaders of Modern day Northern Ireland - Scot comes from the latin Scoti meaning Irish) from the 5th-10th Centuries AD.

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"Celts" is a word to describe a group of varying peoples who lived in Iron Age Europe who had shared similiar "Celtic" languages and supposedly styles of art, pottery and religion. The earliest known evidence of Celtic settlement is in what is now modern-day Austria. They were like therefore all those earlier Indo-European tribes including the later Germanic invaders who destroyed Rome in that they were Eastern Migrants moved ever Westwards from varying reasons. Celtic cultures on the continent were wiped out (or rather, assimilated over a very long period of time) by the Roman Conquests. Before the Romans Modern day France (Gaul) and alot of Spain spoke Celtic languages - Gaullish and Celtiberian. Thanks to the Romans a whole substrain of Celtic languages - Continental Celtic was wiped out.

However Britain and Ireland - the most remote parts of Western Europe - were either not conquered or only very superficially conquered and their status as islands allowed alternative cultures and languages to develop seperately. Thus the association between the Celts and the British Isles. Due to the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England the British (celtic) language was wiped out and Celtic languages moved even more to periphery - Wales, Cornwall and Scotland. Breton is a celtic language which came to the North of France thanks to migrants from Britain in this period. The surviving areas where Celtic languages survived were seen as "Celtic". But mostly modern Celtic imagery and ideas surrounding "Celticism" are due, yet again, to Romantic revivalism and nationalism in the 19th Century. Also, ignoring the problematic relationship between language and Culture, of the relationship between the people termed the Celts (how unified were they exactly? Not at all seems the answer. Certainly the idea of a "Celtic Empire" is complete Pseudo-history) and the inhabitants of the "Celtic" lands is problematic. Recent evidence from genetics for example has shown that Irish people are mostly closely related to - out of all people in Europe - Basques. Very much a non-Celtic group - probably the only surviving Pre-Indo European group in Europe (back about 10,000 years or so). Also Celts were of Germanic stock mostly... Irish people are not. It seems best to think of the Celts as more of a spreading culture and language which often assimilated other groups around it but not as conquerers or as mass settlers.

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Rates of Marriage, Illegimate Births, Infanticide, Use of Contraception, Abortion, etc change throughout history and are never stable. Britain in the Eighteenth Century for example had a very high marriage age - late 20s and very, very low illegitimacy rates yet contraception and birth control use varied and of course should never be considered like today (modern devices are much more reliable for a start). Ireland in the (post-famine) Nineteenth Century men - first born sons - often didn't marry until their 30s, sex outside of marriage was a massive no-no in a very, very conformist society and illegitimacy was also low. On the other hand sexual precocious is sometimes found in other cultures, most Australian Aborginial tribes practicised widespread paedophilia (as young as two year olds) yet this was seen as normal and not a block on the child's development or disturbing. Our concept of "sexual frustration" comes mostly from a Freudian Lexicon. Fundamentally one's sex habits are based in large part by one's culture - one can go into further detail if one likes.

Yeah, I'm a bit of a bore.

[Хahar 🤔]

Ireland in the (post-famine) Nineteenth Century men - first born sons - often didn't marry until their 30s, sex outside of marriage was a massive no-no in a very, very conformist society and illegitimacy was also low.

Really? I find this interesting because it's so different from Wales.

[Psychic Octopus]

That the "Roaring 1920's" was a period of nonstop economic growth with no recessions whatsoever.

I have been vindicated.

Excellent analysis, everyone seems to think PROSPERITY! when you hear about the Roaring Twenties.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Ireland in the (post-famine) Nineteenth Century men - first born sons - often didn't marry until their 30s, sex outside of marriage was a massive no-no in a very, very conformist society and illegitimacy was also low.

Really? I find this interesting because it's so different from Wales.

I don't know the situation in Wales. So can't comment.

But the important word is post-famine. The west of Ireland had hardly heard of Middle Class Civilization and its joys and repression in the Eighteenth Century - and controlling the sex lives of peasants (slightly less glamorous than the sex lives of aristocrats, if they had any) proved impossible, even for the Catholic Clergy. This began to change slowly in the 19th Century then the Famine changed everything and then Ireland transformed ridiculously rapidly into the conservative country we know today (ish). In most cases I should add the first born son who was to inherit the land was often the only one who didn't emigrate - thus our 19th Century population collapse. (Before the famine land was divided equally among the sons especially in the most traditional districts which happened to have the worst agricultural land... leading to a predictable result.)

[Psychic Octopus]

That Christopher Columbus was a great western hero.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on Bunker Hill, Boston..........wrong.

The Battle of Bunder Hill was actually fought on Bread's Hill, Boston.

Another good battle of Bunker hill fable regards General Putnam. From what I have read Putnam actually was on Bunker Hill removed from the think of the battle, while Colonel Prescott comanding the battle on Breed's Hill shouted the famous line "Don't Fire till you see the whites of there eye's". Of coures many texts have Putnam on Breeds hill and credit him with the line. Even the History channel agreed with the latter in there series from I think 2003 on the Revolution. I can't remember if there 2006 series got it right or not. I tend to credit Prescott for some reason. I think that if Putnam was on Bunker Hill and not Breeds Hill where the battle took place, this could be the source of the mix up in popular culture as to regards of where it took place. Today Bunker hill would be a better choice militarily, back then though it was beyond cannon range and thus unlikely to provoke a British attack which was Putnam's intent.

[Bacon King]

Gully, I demand you post more.

[ilikeverin]

People throughout history and culture have had the same level of sexual drive and desire to procreate.

"Homosexuality" has been with human beings since the beginning. Actually the concept of there being homosexuals - that is, a form of identity based around the sex of the people you slept with is entirely a 19th Century invention. The term "homosexual" was first invented in iirc 1863 (or some time around then) by a German writer wanted to escape persecution by making that he was male or female but rather "a third sex". Thanks in part to Kraft-Ebing and Freud the idea caught on.

Faugh on the first for arguing something that no one has, and faugh on the second for being misleading (well, of course the thought of an identity around "who you like to sex up" wasn't thought of; but that doesn't mean that people who were primarily attracted to men or women or to both equally didn't exist), though I do applaud many of your other bullet points.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

That there exists a place called Ruby Ridge. The incident there happened somewhere between Caribou Ridge and Ruby Creek. The media invented a term to describe it.

[Ban my account ffs!]

That our circadian rhythm is 25 hours long.  It's actually 24 hours 12 minutes plus or minus 16 minutes.

There is evidence that animals in the high Arctic don't have any circadian rhythm during winter and summer.. instead only during the times of year when days and nights are relatively equal in length.

I have to wonder if people are affected the same way... or at least partially.. sleeping less in summer than in winter.

[Verily]

Most people in Europe from about c5th Century AD till the Post-WWII era were Christians.

That's stretching it unnecessarily broad at the latter end. Certainly from the Napoleonic Era on, basically everyone was Christian (or Jewish or agnostic or atheist or in a few places Muslim, but not retaining ancient beliefs), and probably stretching back to around 1700. Before then, it drops off drastically, of course, and Europe was definitely majority "pagan" (at least in belief if not willing to admit it) as late as 1400, long after Lithuania, the last officially pagan realm, had converted. The mass peasant movements of the most radical parts of the Reformation period clearly indicate that the much of the peasantry had accepted Christianity by then, though.

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I'm kind of curious how you would disprove this. Although I suppose it might be a basic, "Many more than now were malnourished, of course their sex drives were weaker." Which might not be a bad argument.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Larry Craig never been gay

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Gully, I demand you post more.

I try to.

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Umm.. large parts of Africa today are hardly a beacon of sexual conservatism. Ditto with many peasant societies in Pre-Industrial Europe; actually traditionally it was the aristocracy that was the most conservative and refined. So while a good theory, it's clearly wrong.

I admit though my original claim was badly written... I should have said "People's sexual behaviour has changed rapidly throughout history with no known cause or reasoning". Btw another myth is that the so-called "Sexual Revolution" was caused by the pill, actually most historians consider that the wrong way round - sexual behaviour was already changing with led to further demand for the pill.

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Okay it depends on how one defines "Christianity". The movements of the reformation are ambigious; the Peasants war was clearly driven largely economic development especially the rise of commercial agriculture and agricultural centralization which was eroded the traditional rights and responsibilities of the self-lord relationship. In saying that across Europe in the Early Modern Europe there was a much greater drive towards religious conformity - Cuius regio, eius religio, the great witchcraft trials in Central Germany which ended alot of traditional magic practices, The Inquistions and greater state powers to enforce conformity of behavior due to the expansion of bureaucracies. In all cases though magic practices and beliefs still continued - the countryside is much harder to control than the cities. And the role of priest was hardly different from that of a magic man though this also faded away (slightly) during the Early Modern period. My point is really that Christianity can't really be seen as popular historical entity - or "the basis of western civilization" (whatever that is) that has stretched over the past 2,000 years. That is a complete lie.

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#1: You would be surprised.

#2: The invention of identity is what matters. The Greek soldiers who had sex with fifteen year boys were not considered homosexuals or bisexuals (by modern standards, a large majority of Roman and Greek males would be considered bisexuals - far more than today). What I was commenting on was that the idea that there are certain types of people defined by who they sleep with is a very new thing. The Greeks and most other pre-modern societies would have seen a division - one is a "homosexual" therefore not a "heterosexual" or a "bisexual" - as very, very strange and counter-intutive. 

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Alcon isn't secretly part of the New World Order

[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.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Richius is not an extremist

(he claimed so)

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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.

Interesting. What exactly do you mean by that? I haven't read Fanny Hill (though have read a bit about it) are you referring to the idea of gay men being effeminate and thus separate - or just that gay men were considered a separate branch of person (which is what I'm aiming at)?

Also on Italy: I bow to your superior knowledge.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Richius is not an extremist

(he claimed so)

     Ah yes, but everyone knows that that is wrong, so it doesn't really count.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Another one:

Irish-Americans are overwhelming Catholic. Actually the majority of Irish-Americans are actually Protestants, due to the larger protestant emigration from Ireland before 1847, which stretched back generations really. And this I will add is not just due to the so-called Ulster Scots.

[Хahar 🤔]

However, I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of the Protestants don't identify as Irish.