10 Dubious Legends Everyone Believes About Historical Figures
By Jo Rodriguez, Listverse, 24 September 2014.
It’s easy for us
to remember the famous deeds of historical figures, from the horde of
warriors led by Genghis Khan that swept away empires to the calming
words and leadership of Abraham Lincoln. But some of the legends that
have surrounded these figures for decades or even centuries are little
more than myths. The most outrageous have been debunked, but some remain
hotly debated to this day.
10. Jose Rizal Was Jack The Ripper Or Hitler’s Grandfather
Jose Rizal is the national hero
of the Philippines, an eloquent and well-educated man who campaigned
for the freedom of the Filipino people. Persistent tales surround the
man’s life, especially his stay in Europe. Most notable are claims that
while Rizal was in London, he might have been doing some serial killing
on the side.
The notorious Jack the Ripper was on the prowl during Rizal’s stay
in the city from 1888–1889. During that time, no one really knew where
Rizal went at night, and the Ripper’s method of murder led people to
believe that he might have had a background in medicine, as Rizal did.
The similarity in their initials (“J.R.”) was also noted.
Another tale
regards Rizal’s alleged dalliances with beautiful European women. One
woman, Klara Polzl, was a chambermaid in a small town in Austria when
the two had a chance encounter. But this short-lived romance might have
led to something historic, as Klara was none other than the mother of Adolf Hitler.
Naturally, whispers abounded that Rizal who fathered the Fuhrer, but
historians and genealogists were quick to debunk the rumour.
9. Nicolaus Copernicus Invented Bread And Butter
An article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association
in 1970 claimed that famed astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus might have
revolutionized more than our understanding of the solar system but also
our daily diet by introducing the practice of spreading butter on bread.
The tale involves
Copernicus and a colleague, physician Adolf Buttenadt, during the siege
of a Polish castle in 1521. Copernicus saw that many of the castle’s
inhabitants were getting sick, as if a plague had swept through the
castle, and noted that the bread regularly eaten by the castle-dwellers
was coarse and blackened.
He suspected that
the bread had been contaminated by dirt and bacteria, so he instructed
the people working in the kitchens to apply a layer of cream to the
loaves so that dirt and other contaminants could readily be seen. After
Copernicus’s passing, Buttenadt continued to encourage the practice,
which came to be known as buttenadting (later evolving to the term “buttering”).
It might seem far-fetched, but the story has been reported in various newspapers
and declared a factual historical event by the Polish Ministry of
Health’s advisory council. Owen Gingerich, on the other hand, regards it
as nothing more than a comedic anecdote. The Harvard professor of astronomy and expert on the life of Copernicus met with one of the authors of the JAMA
article and believes that he might have had a severe case of
“Copernicana,” or excessive fascination with the astronomer. Gingerich
notes that Adolf Buttenadt did exist, but he lived during the 1900s.
We may never know who invented bread and butter, but we do know that the practice was first described in print decades before Copernicus and the siege of the castle. In 1496, an obscure manual on sport fishing called The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle suggested a hearty snack of “browne bread toasted with honey in lyknesse of a butteryd loof.”
8. Empress Theodora Was A Depraved Harlot
The life of Empress Theodora,
wife of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, remains shrouded in mystery
over a millennium later. However, much of what we think we know about
her is based on the interpretation of a dubious source, a book called Secret History written by contemporary chronicler Procopius of Caesarea.
According to
Procopius, Theodora was an “actress,” which was an ambiguous term that
loosely meant “prostitute” at the time. “Theodora From the Brothel,” as
Procopius called her, regularly engaged in a variety of indecent behaviours, including dalliances with slaves, taking 40 men in a single evening
of pleasure, and allowing geese to peck grain from her nether regions
to the delight of onlookers. She was even said to express regret that
God gave her but three orifices. Since Theodora wielded considerable
influence in her time, Procopius and later historians were keen to speculate that her skills must have come from somewhere.
Procopius was a fanciful and biased writer, however, who also wrote of Justinian I as a nefarious villain. He called him the “prince of demons” and wove tales
about servants finding him walking without a head. Other sixth-century
Byzantine historians - such as John Lydus, John Malalas, and Evagrius
Scholasticus - had virtually nothing to say concerning the Empress’s sexual activities regardless of their views on the emperor.
Unfortunately, it
was Procopius’s work of scandal and depravity that persisted from the
17th century onward, influencing the works of many writers and
historians. Some embellished their own tales, while others merely
alluded to them.
7. Marie Antoinette’s Hair Turned White Overnight
We’ve mentioned before
that the much mythologized Queen Consort of France and Navarre never
said her most famous quote, “Let them eat cake,” but that’s not the only
rumour surrounding Marie Antoinette. Legend has it that the night
before Marie was to face the guillotine, she was so gripped by fear that her hair had turned immediately and completely white.
A condition called Marie Antoinette Syndrome was named after this legend, so it really does happen. It was also said to have happened to Englishman Thomas More
when he was executed in the Tower of London in 1535. However, it’s
unlikely that Marie experienced noticeable follicular distress: The
phenomenon only affects new growth, which means it would have taken weeks for her newly blanched hair to be visible. It is
possible that the stress of her long imprisonment and dreaded execution
caused her to lose hair, and she may have been denied hair dye during
these months, giving the appearance of her hair turning grey.
6. Queen Elizabeth II Gave a Golden Award To A Linesman
The 1966 FIFA World Cup is considered one of the most controversial moments
in soccer history. The English rode a wave of momentum spurred by their
amazing third goal to capture their first and only championship. The
game ended with a final score of 4–2 as the crowd in Wembley Stadium
roared in delight.
Naturally, there
are lots of conspiracies surrounding this historical event, and one
concerns a royal whistle. Some people believe that Queen Elizabeth II gave a golden whistle
as an award to Tofik Bahramov, an Azerbaijani official. It just so
happened that Bahramov was the one who awarded England their
controversial goal. The golden whistle, in essence, was for “services
rendered to England.”
Jilted fans were given some closure in 1996, when an Oxford University study
finally laid the matter to rest. It concluded that, by a narrow margin
of 6 centimetres (2.4 in), the ball did not cross the line.
Nevertheless, Bahramov gained both fame and notoriety, even achieving
immortality as the namesake of Azerbaijani’s national stadium. In 2004,
the unveiling of a statue bearing his likeness was attended by several FIFA officials, including Geoff Hurst, the player who scored the infamous goal.
5. Winston Churchill Was Saved Twice By Alexander Fleming
It is said that
when the pugnacious Winston Churchill was but a young boy, he was
swimming in a Scottish lake when he began to drown. He was saved by a
passing Good Samaritan, who happened to be Alexander Fleming
(although other iterations state that it was his father). Whoever it
may have been, the story goes on to claim that Lord Randolph Churchill
was so relieved that his son survived that he gave Fleming either a
scholarship grant or a large sum of money for his education.
Of course, Fleming
went on to become a genius in the scientific community, discovering
penicillin. During World War II, after the young boy had grown up to be
prime minister, he fell gravely ill. His life was saved by - you guessed
it - a shot of penicillin.
It’s a nice story, but it likely never happened.
Churchill’s biographer stated that there was never any drowning
incident, nor did the patriarch of the family pay for Fleming’s
education. Churchill did get sick in 1943 after the Tehran Conference,
and he did get a dose of an antimicrobial, but it was sulphonamide,
which is completely unrelated to penicillin. Churchill himself
apparently publicly denied the entire story in 1946.
4. Mussolini’s Trains And The March On Rome
Photo credit: Antonio Sebastiani
You might have heard people remark that regardless of the atrocities committed by Fascist Italy, at least the trains ran on time,
but it’s actually a myth. Its spread has been credited to Il Duce,
whose rise to power led to a slew of propagandist claims that bolstered
the Fascist movement across the country.
Italy’s railway
system was not in a good state during World War I. Although repairs and
improvements were made, these occurred two years before Mussolini took
charge of Italian politics, and they didn’t result in remarkable
dependability.
Of course, such a boast could be expected of Il Duce, whose March on Rome
on October 28, 1922 had been a gloriously celebrated occasion. At
least, that’s what you’ve heard. Contrary to popular belief, Mussolini
was actually in Milan the entire time, still hoping for a political compromise. As the British trivia show QI put it, Il Duce must have been “cowering in his jackboots.”
3. The Life And Death Of Genghis Khan
There is no
denying that the Mongols were capable of horrific cruelty, but some of
the Great Khan’s feats might have been greatly exaggerated. For
instance, one grim account
details the death of Toquchar, his favourite son-in-law, at the hands
of an archer in the town of Nishapur in Persia. The Kahn’s daughter
begged him to exact vengeance, so he ordered every single inhabitant of
Nishapur, which had a population of 1,748,000, beheaded in one hour.
However, this event has been viewed with scepticism by historians and mathematicians, as the numbers alone are impossible.
While the events
of his life may have been subjected to exaggeration, his death is
overwhelmingly steeped in legend and mystery. Marco Polo wrote that the
Great Khan was hit by an arrow,
which caused the infection that led to his death on August 18, 1227.
Others state that, after a weary lifetime of war, he fell off his horse
one day, resulting in fatal injuries. A widely accepted view is that he
merely died of natural causes. A particularly fanciful story claims that
when he attempted to rape a Tangut princess (or servant, depending on
who tells the tale), the would-be victim castrated him
with a knife she had hidden in her sleeve, and he died from the wound.
The Mongols believed for centuries that he was merely in a death-like sleep and would awaken one day to lead his people to glory once more.
2. The Lincoln-Kennedy Coincidences
Rumours of uncanny
coincidences between the lives of these two iconic American presidents
have been spreading for decades. Lists of the coincidences began circulating shortly after John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, finding their way into various newspapers, inboxes, and social media posts.
The purported
coincidences include becoming congressmen and presidents 100 years
apart, having the same number of letters in their surnames, being
assassinated on a Friday, being both murdered and succeeded by
Southerners, and dying as a result of a fatal gunshot wound to the head.
Crude humour was even added to the mix: “A month before Lincoln was
assassinated, he was in Monroe, Maryland. A month before Kennedy was
assassinated, he was in Marilyn Monroe.”
Ultimately, the
myth that the assassinations of both men were somehow connected as if
some cosmic joke was just a product of wily imaginations. Many of these
“facts” are assumptions or fallacies that have nevertheless persisted,
and many can be explained by much more than coincidence. For example,
shooters are more likely to aim for the head when they aim to kill,
their vice presidents were from the South to balance the ticket, and
Marilyn Monroe had been dead for over a year before Kennedy’s
assassination.
In light of these “shocking” coincidences, a publication from Harvard University released a list poking fun
at how others have stretched the truth. One such entry reads:
“Lincoln’s wife’s maiden name was Todd, which (ignoring one of the d’s)
read backwards, is ‘dot,’ one of the symbols used in Morse Code, created
by Samuel Morse, who invented the telegraph in 1844. Kennedy’s wife
Jackie married Aristotle Onassis, from Greece, which had a civil war in
1944, exactly 100 years later.”
1. Gavrilo Princip And The Sandwich That Changed The World
It’s widely
believed that following a failed assassination attempt on Archduke Franz
Ferdinand, Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip stopped at a restaurant
to have a sandwich. In an incredible coincidence, the confused driver of
the archduke’s motorcade drove it right by that restaurant, giving
Princip another shot. This time, he didn’t fail, essentially spawning
World War I single-handedly.
A number of books, newspapers, and trivia websites have repeated the event as a fact, but it may be a complete work of fiction. When The Smithsonian‘s Mike Dash investigated the matter, he found that the story might have originated from the 2003 BBC documentary Days that Shook the World. Dash asked Richard Bond, the writer and director of the documentary, where he learned the tale, but Bond couldn’t remember.
Dash notes that earlier version of the tale might be found in a novel written in 2001, Twelve Fingers,
which is about an assassin with two extra fingers on each hand. The
protagonist meets Princip on that fateful day, when the historical
figure tells him, “I’m eating a sandwich.”
Since older
history books make no mention of the snack or the outrageous
coincidences that led to World War I, Dash surmises that neither fate
nor destiny nudged Princip. He was just at the right place at the right
time.
+ Adolf Hitler Was Jewish
Photo credit: Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F051673-0059 / CC-BY-SA
The rumour mill has been churning out stories
of Hitler’s supposed Jewish ancestry since the early 1920s. Claims that
range from the Jewish origin of his surname to his descendance from a
Jewish family in Bucharest to questions about his father’s legitimacy
have all turned out to be false. One story even claims that one of
Hitler’s own nephews blackmailed him in exchange for withholding the
truth about the Fuhrer’s Jewish roots.
Regardless of
these fabrications, there may be some truth to Hitler’s personal and
genetic ties to the Jewish people. Not only did teenage Hitler fall in love with a Jewish girl, he might have married one. In a controversial episode of Channel 4’s Dead Famous DNA,
scientists analyzed strands of hair believed to have belonged to Eva
Braun, Hitler’s long-time companion and wife for a day, and found DNA
strongly associated with Ashkenazi Jews. Similarly, journalists and
historians managed to obtain saliva samples from 39 of Hitler’s surviving relatives, which revealed a smattering of DNA commonly found in Berbers and Jews. Critics were quick to point out that these results remain inconclusive, but they are certainly intriguing.
Top image credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-10541 / Georg Pahl / CC-BY-SA 3.0
