Leland Gregory - Stupid History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions Throughout the Ages

Other Books by Leland Gregory

Whats the Number for 911?

Whats the Number for 911 Again?

The Stupid Crook Book

Hey, Idiot!

Idiots at Work

Bush-Whacked

Idiots in Love

Am-Bushed!

Stupid History copyright 2007 by Leland Gregory. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. For information, write Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, an Andrews McMeel Universal company, 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106.

E-ISBN: 978-0-7407-9210-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2006932202

www.andrewsmcmeel.com

The SFI label only applies to the text stock.

Book design by Holly Camerlinck
Illustrations by Kevin Brimmer

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Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere

The Landlords Tale: Paul Reveres Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (not The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, as most people call it) is one of the best-known poems in American historical literature. But its a poemit isnt actual history. Paul Revere didnt make the historical ride into Concord, Massachusetts, to warn the citizens the British are coming! He did, however, ride into Lexington on April 17, 1775, warning the regulars are coming! (The British army was referred to as the regular troops.) On April 18, Paul Revere, a cobbler named William Dawes, and a doctor named Samuel Prescott were heading toward Concord to warn the citizens about British troop movements. Unfortunately, the three were spotted by a British patrol, and Revere was captured and detained. Dawes headed back toward Lexington, but Prescott continued on into Concord and was able to warn the citizens. Revere was released by the British the next day and had to return to Lexington on foottheyd kept his horse. So actually, it was a doctor named Samuel Prescott who made the immortal ride into Concord, not Revere. I suppose Longfellow chose Revere because its easier to rhyme than Prescott.

After learning about Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492, we were taught that Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the world in a single trip (or circumnavigated the globe, if you will). Well, he didnt. Magellan, a Portuguese captain in the service of Spain, set out on August 10, 1519, from Seville with five ships and a crew of 250 men. Things didnt go so well for old Magellan, though. His three-year journey was plagued with terrible weather, maps that werent up to date, starvation, and a violent mutiny. The truth of the matter is only one of Magellans ships, the Victoria, arrived back at Seville, with only eighteen of its fifty crewmembers alive. One other person who didnt make it was Ferdinand Magellan himself. When his ship landed on Mactan Island in the Philippines, he was met with a less than friendly reception party. Magellan died, face down on the beach, looking like a pincushion from the numerous spears sticking out of his body.

Buttermilk does not contain butter, It is a
by-product of the butter-making process and
contains less fat than whole milk

C lement Clarke Moores famous poem is not called Twas the Night Before Christmas, but is actually titled A Visit from Saint Nicholas. The sugarplums mentioned in the poem (and seen in Tchaikovskys Nutcracker Suite) have nothing to do with plums. They are actually hard candies.

A lot of erroneous history is passed down in books, plays, movies, and poemsusually these were intended to be entertainment, not historical truths. But some of these false facts are so ingrained in our consciousness that theres little chance of the truth becoming as popular as the fiction. Heres an example: What do you think of when you hear the name Lizzie Borden? Everyone chant with me:

Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks,
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one,

Since she was first suspected of hacking her parents to death in 1892, Lizzie Borden has stood out as one of the few female homicidal maniacs in historyand if it wasnt for this little refrain, her name would have been forgotten years ago. What is forgotten is that a jury acquitted Lizzie Borden after only sixty-six minutes of deliberation and all charges were dropped. I hope the truth about Lizzies innocence becomes as popular as the songand then we can all just bury the hatchet.

Heres the quickest way to disprove that Benjamin Franklin discovered electricityit already had a name. Electricity comes from the Greek word elektron, which means amber. (The Greeks discovered they could generate static electricity by rubbing amber with fur.) What Franklin was trying to prove in his 1752 experiment was the electrical nature of lightningthat lightning was, in fact, electricity. It is true that Franklin flew a kite with a key tied to the stringbut the kite was not struck by lightning. If it had been, Franklin might have become a has-Ben. The spark that leapt from the key to Franklins knuckle was caused by the flow of electrons that exists at all times between the ground and the skybut during a thunderstorm, the electrons are more active. Had Benjamin Franklin, the inventor of bifocal glasses, actually been struck by lightning, he would have made a real spectacle of himself.

Horseshoe crabs are not crabs, They are survivors
of a species that became extinct 175 million years ago,
Their closest modern relatives are scorpions and spiders,

Abraham Lincolns Gettysburg Address is considered one of the most moving and brilliantly written speeches of all time. And the most fascinating aspect of the speech is that Lincoln wrote it on the back of an envelope while traveling by train through Pennsylvania. Wrong! It would be wonderful to believe this masterpiece was so divinely inspired that Lincoln dashed it off in a matter of minutes. But the truth is, Lincoln began working on the Gettysburg Address eleven days before he gave the speech on November 19, 1863. In fact, there are five drafts of the speech still in existencesome even written on White House stationery. Maybe because the speech is fewer than 300 words, people have assumed he just pulled it out of his hat.