Bizarre History (15 page)

In the late 1600s, Peter the Great of Russia wanted his traditional, long-bearded countrymen to look more like smooth-faced Europeans. When banning beards proved difficult (some believed you couldn’t get into heaven without an untrimmed beard), he instead imposed a beard tax. Nobles were required to pay one hundred rubles per year. Commoners paid less. He also taxed long Russian coats, trying to encourage the shorter French style, and changed the Russian calendar to follow the Julian one. (Imagine thinking the year was 7207, only to have your king change it to 1700.)

On February 12, 1933, a twenty-one-year-old Japanese student (some sources place her age at nineteen) killed herself by jumping into the crater of Mount Mihara, an active volcano on the island of Izu Oshima. This started a trend in Japan, and suddenly tourists were flooding the island not to see the crater, but to witness the suicides. Hundreds killed themselves before authorities thought to put up a fence around the crater.

“How many evils have flowed from religion!”—Lucretius

The ancient Aztecs believed that the sun would disappear without food. What did the sun eat? Human hearts. Lots of them. Meanwhile, priests sacrificed crying children so their tears would appease the rain god. And not to be outdone, their maize goddess required a virgin be killed and skinned. A priest would then dance wearing her skin.

In the thirteenth century, a young shepherd claimed to have been visited by Jesus, who told him to go on a Crusade to liberate the Holy Land. Thousands of French children followed him to the docks, where French merchants agreed to take them all to Jerusalem. The merchants then sold all the children into slavery.

In 1096, thousands of Christians marched to free the Holy Land from infidels. They weren’t led by a child, however; they were, instead, following a goose. There’s no word on whether or not the goose of God approved of the army killing all the Jews they met on the way. Thousands were brutally murdered.

Back in the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church decided it was immoral for women to sing or act on stage. So who would sing the girl parts? No problem! The Church castrated young boys so their voices wouldn’t change as they grew older.

What did William Tyndale do to deserve both strangulation
and
being burned at the stake? He was arrested by church authorities in 1535 for translating the Bible into English, which was against the law. Only Latin translations were legal, meaning only educated people could read it. A lot of Tyndale’s translation was eventually used to create the 1611 King James version of the Bible, which is still in use today.

W
e rely on our historical record for a sense of what happened in the past, who we were and are today, where we came from and why. So perhaps the most unsettling aspect of history is just how little of it is true. There’s so much myth mixed up with our history, we might as well call it mythtory. And whether or not this mythmaking is accidental or purposeful, once it’s out there, it’s almost impossible to reign it in. In today’s digital age, we have the historians correcting the record, and then we have other historians correcting the corrected record, and so on. This chapter highlights some of our most cherished beliefs about historical figures and events, and then shows you why you are wrong to ever repeat these tidbits as truth again. (Until someone else comes along and tells us we were wrong.)

Not only did Magellan fail to circumnavigate the globe, it wasn’t even the point of his voyage. In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese captain in the service of Spain, set out with five ships to find a safe way to the Spice Islands. However, the three-year tour turned into a horror show of storms, mutiny, starvation, and war. Magellan was killed in the Philippines by natives, ships had to be burned and left behind, crew were captured, etc., until finally in 1522, one remaining ship limped into a Spanish harbor with fewer than twenty of the original crew members aboard. They were never paid their full wages.

There’s no easy way to say this … Betsy Ross did not design the first American flag. George Washington did not, in June 1776, visit Betsy’s upholstery shop at 239 Arch Street with a rough sketch and ask her to complete and execute the design. The story didn’t even exist until 1870, when William J. Canby told this captivating tale to the Pennsylvania Historical Society. Who was William J. Canby? Betsy Ross’s grandson. While it’s true that Ross sewed uniforms and flags for the Continental Army, it’s unlikely there was an approved United States flag earlier than 1777. Historians claim this story gained popularity because Philadelphia was preparing for its centennial celebration and it jived with the patriotic mood in the city.

Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, was not crushed to death while having sex with a horse. (Yes, she had her lovers, but they were all human.) In fact, she passed away (very boringly, I might add) in bed. Basically, Catherine was the object of an eighteenth-century smear campaign launched by the French soon after her death. Those quick to debunk the horse myth sometimes state Catherine died on the toilet. That, too, is untrue. She may have passed out in the bathroom, but she didn’t die there.

Sorry, but Marie Antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake.”

The story goes like this: In 1789, France was undergoing an economic depression and bread was scarce. A crowd of poor French mothers marched to Versailles to plead with Louis XVI. While the angry mob gave Louis a piece of their minds, Marie supposedly said, “If they have no bread, let them eat cake.”

First of all, taken in context, what Marie meant was that at that time, when bakers ran out of cheap bread, by law, they had to sell their better bread at the same price as the cheaper bread. One type of expensive bread was
brioche,
which is often translated as “cake.” Second, she didn’t say it, anyway. In fact, the writer Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote in his book
Confessions,
“I remembered the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, ‘Then let them eat cake.’” The great princess couldn’t have been Marie Antoinette, since
Confessions
was published twenty-three years before Marie’s fictitious suggestion. Most likely this rumor was started by antiroyalists.

Sure, Paul Revere played a part in the American Revolution. But why is he the one (and only one) remembered for the midnight ride when it was actually up to forty different messengers raising the alarm about the Redcoats coming? On the night of April 18, 1775, he and another man, William Dawes, were told to ride from Boston to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that British troops were heading out to arrest them and then capture weapons stored in Concord. Both Revere and Dawes made it to Lexington, warning patriots along the way, although Revere did not yell, “The British are coming!” (That would have alerted British patrols, duh!) On the way to Concord, Revere was captured by the British. Dawes and Samuel Prescott (who joined them on the ride) both escaped, but only Prescott made it to Concord in time to alert the militia.

Revere didn’t become the hero of the midnight ride until nearly forty years after his death. In fact, his obituary didn’t even mention it. But when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” in 1861, everything changed. You know the poem, even if you don’t think you know it:

Longfellow’s poem was treated as history for nearly one hundred years. It appeared in textbooks and historians referred to it. Unfortunately, Longfellow made a lot of it up. Using his poetic license, he got the lantern signals mixed up; sent Revere all the way to Concord, even though he never made it that far; and perhaps worst of all, he neglected to mention any of the other heroes from that night. So basically, he used Revere’s name because it rhymed better than
Dawes
or
Prescott.

In 1896, Helen F. Moore, angry that William Dawes had been forgotten by history, wrote a parody of the poem:

We all think we know about Napoleon Bonaparte—Emperor of France, great military commander, and famous person of short stature. In fact, these days, many people ignore the first two facts and focus on his height. (I mean, there aren’t many basketball players suffering from a Napoleon complex, eh?) History placed Napoleon at five feet, two inches tall, and indeed that is true … if you’re using the old French foot, which was longer than the English foot. After doing the conversion math, Napoleon was actually five feet, six inches or so. No giant, but perfectly average for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.