We all have heard many stories about the famous moments in history and many of us believed in those stories without any justification or doing research. But the fact is, many such self-made stories are totally wrong and have to do nothing with those famous moments.
Untrue Famous Moments in History
Nero Didn’t Fiddle When Rome Was Burning
Well, Nero the first unconcerned spectator. While this first-century Roman ruler absolutely isn’t innocent in the account of Rome’s burning fall, he wasn’t playing the fiddle during it. For one point, Nero wasn’t even in the city when the fire started; he was in Antium, nearly thirty miles outside of the city. Also, there was no such thing as a fiddle in ancient Rome. While Nero was a musician (and probably relished to play a harp-like instrument called the cithara), he sure wasn’t playing an instrument that wouldn’t surface until the 11th century. A Roman historian has declared that, if anything, he was singing about the mythical fall of Troy when he saw his city was burning, but there were no eyewitness reports to support this up.
Rats are not responsible for Black Death
Some modern researches have found that rats may not be to accuse of this destructive plague that wiped out a third of 14th century Europe. So it’s time to reveal the real criminal. Scientists at the University of Oslo carried an experiment that evaluated the possible transmission paths for the fatal pandemic. They found that the parasites that transferred the virus were much more prone to have come from humans than rats. The example conferring the disease spread by human fleas and lice resembled the death rates of the actual Black Death much more intimately than the model concerning parasite-carrying rats.
The Santa Maria, Nina, and Pinta weren’t the names of Columbus’s Ships
Talking of Columbus, the only truth that the history books have valid is that he sailed in 1492. First of all, he didn’t “discover” America. People had already been living on the continent for thousands of years, after all. And he wasn’t even the first European traveler to reach North America; a crew of Vikings voyaged to Canada around 1000 AD. Even the frequently quoted names of his three ships aren’t historically authentic. In the 15th century, most sailing ships were named after saints, so while the Santa Maria is possibly the real name, the Niña and the Pinta were probably just random sailor nicknames for more piously called ships. According to history.com, the Niña’s real name was most apt “the Santa Clara,” while the Pinta’s real name is unknown.
An Apple never fell on Isaac Newton
The myth that the great mathematician had an epiphany about gravity after being hit on the head by an apple is most likely an exaggeration of what really happened. The first time the apple story rose was in a biography of Newton written by his friend William Stukeley in 1792. The story says, “the notion of gravitation came into his mind…. occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood.” Historians think that he may well have seen an apple fall and started thinking why it did so; but nowhere in any accounts of Newton’s life does it say it hit him on the head.
Suspected witches weren’t burned at the Stake in Salem
Not true. Even though you presumably consider “Salem witch trials” and “witch burnings” as interchangeable, not a single accused witch in 17th century Salem underwent a flaming fate. All but one of the 20 people executed for practicing sorcery in the colonial Massachusetts town were hanged, while the twentieth victim was crumpled to death with big rocks. While a few other accused witches died in prison awaiting prosecution, there were no burnings at least not in Salem. The popular belief that witches were burned most possibly derives from witch hysteria that took place in Europe. In the 15th to 18th centuries essentially, anti-witch hysteria did trend throughout Western Europe and Scandinavia, and many of those accused witches were burned at the stake.
Marie Antoinette didn’t Say “Let them eat cake”
The unfortunate French queen never really made this proud statement about her poor subjects. There are stories of spoiled royals implying that poor people eat delicacies they can’t afford dating back long before Antoinette’s rule. In one such story, a German royalty implies that her subjects eat sweet bread called Krosem in the 16th century (Antoinette was born on the 18th). The “Let them eat cake” quote itself—”Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” in French first surfaced in a 1767 autobiographical account by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He connects the quote directly to “a great princess.” Admitting that Marie Antoinette was a modern girl at the time, it surely wasn’t her.
