[yankeedame]

I know...I know...but, heck, it's Friday. Why not?

[21twelve]

So I guess this means it is also a myth that the cheer “Hooray for our side” did NOT originate when Lady Godiva rode side-saddle down the streets of Coventry?

[Flycatcher]

Does this mean that Frosted Lucky Charms are not magically delicious?

[wideawake]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, wrote about Marie Antoinette who had ignorantly joked about the starving people of Paris but she was only 11 Volitaire's fellow Enlightenment philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, wrote about a princess who had ignorantly joked about the starving people of Paris, telling a courtier: 'Let them eat cake.' That was in 1766, when Marie Antoinette was only 11 years old.

Not quite accurate.

In 1766 Marie Antoinette was a virtually unknown Austrian princess - she was the eleventh of eleven sisters. Most people would have assumed that she would have been married off to an Austrian or Hungarian nobleman.

But two of her older sisters died and one was permanently crippled in a 1767 smallpox epidemic, when she was twelve.

When she was thirteen she was the only healthy unbetrothed daughter left and was promised to the French Dauphin. She did not actually arrive in France until she was fourteen.

During 1766 I believe Voltaire was living in Berlin - far from the Viennese court where the as yet unimportant-to-Frenchmen Maria Antonia (Marie Antoinette) was living. There is no proof of any kind that the princess he was referring to was her, or that she at that time had any knowledge at all of French current events.

there is not a grain of truth in the story. Fiddles weren't invented for another millennium, and Nero was 35 miles outside the city at Antium when the fire broke out

The word "fiddle" was used by Elizabethan translators of Cassius Dio and Tacitus to translate the word lyra or lyre. Like the fiddle it was a stringed instrument played with a utensil - so that was the logical choice of word in an English langauge which was at that time much more fluid than it is today.

Only one source places Nero at Antium. Others place him at estates not far from the city.

In any case, the fire burned for at least five days - more than enough time for an imperial courier to notify him of what was going on.

A couple of contemporary sources attest that while the fire was raging he was acting in a play and playing the lyre in safety and luxury.

The 4th was merely the day that the document itself went to the printers.

False. The 4th was the day that the changes suggested to the document by the Congress were made and officially adopted. It was sent to the printer that day, but its final draft was approved - hence the fact that it is dated July 4th and not July 2nd.

[normy]

Sir Humphry Davy who thought up the concept of a carbon filament arc light. What Edison, or at least his many engineers, managed to do was discover a better filament that would glow for long enough for the light to be worthwhile. Edison did however, take out over a thousand patents in his lifetime, for inventions connected with telegraphy, megaphones, gramaphones, the kinetoscope, and metallurgy

I thought up the idea of the electric car, but I alas never actually made it work.

The story is also told that George Washington as a young boy chopped down a cherry tree, but such was his honesty that when asked by his father who had done it, said: 'Father, I cannot lie: it was me'. He was then beaten soundly. This too, is a complete fabrication.

When was the time machine invented that sent the historian back in time to confirm this was just a fabrication?

[joebuck]

"It is also quite untrue that so-called 'witches' were burned at the stake after the notorious witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692......all by hanging except one who was crushed to death by a door that had heavy stones placed upon it."

I believe this was Miles Corey who when asked if he was ready to confess replied, "more weight"

[paudio]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, wrote about Marie Antoinette ... That was in 1766, when Marie Antoinette was only 11 years old. Yet 20 years later, the story got around that it had been she who had made this remark, which went some way to creating the atmosphere of hatred that led to her execution in 1793.

So, even then the academics (with the help of the media, no doubt) have made untrue story about their government... Not unlike today...

[Oztrich Boy]

Nor was Napoleon particularly small, despite his nickname, Le Petit Corporal ('The Little Corporal'). He was in fact 5ft 7in, which was fairly tall for the average European male of the early 19th century.

Le Petit Corporal wasn't Napoleon but one of his body parts: “one inch long and resembling a grape”.

[Enchante]

"Washington only became the first popularly elected President of the United States"

There's a reason we date the US Presidency from Washington's First Inauguration - it's something called the US Constitution. Washington is the first CONSTITUTIONALLY elected President of the USA.

[Boiling point]

But Al Gore really did invent the internet didn’t he?

[Swordmaker]

That was invented by the Englishman Sir Humphry Davy who thought up the concept of a carbon filament arc light.

Excuse me, but there is no such thing as a practical carbon filament arc light. A filament could not sustain an arc for even a fraction of a second.

We all have probably seen a "filament" arc light... it is the extremely bright light you see when a lightbulb burns out. That light is the arc across the two broken ends of the filament as it falls away from where it broke.

Electric light was not a new thing when Edison invented his vacuum filled carbon filament bulb. What Sir Humphrey Davy invented was the Carbon Arc lamp... which was used up until the 1970s in movie projectors (I was a projectionist in college), stage follow spot lights ... and are still being used in the large ballyhoo lights, which are essentially surplus WWII Siege/air-raid lights, used at theater openings and store grand-openings.

Carbon arc lamps work by using two carbon rods connected to a high voltage source. They are touched together and then backed away from contact after a very bright arc of electricity is started. The rods are consumed by the high heat over a fairly short period of time. As the rods are consumed, the operator or an automatic mechanism keeps moving the points of consumption so that the arc is maintained. IIRC, 2 - 10" by 1/4" carbon rods will last about a half hour... or two reels time of a movie... before having to be replaced.

Edison invented the first successful electric lightbulb after trying and testing over 1500 different filament materials.

[Swordmaker]

Many of these "myth" debunkings are also full or error and false assumptions.

Captain James Cook did not discover Australia . . . nor was he strictly speaking a captain, holding the rank of lieutenant when he sailed there for the first time.

Yes, he was. He was the master of the ship which makes him, very strictly speaking, a Captain, regardless of any official rank. Another such case was Lieutenant William Bligh, the infamous master of the Bounty, who was also a Captain when his some of his crew mutinied against him. Lieutenant Bligh was exonerated of any wrong doing in the mutiny and was commended for his seamanship. He eventually reached the rank of Vice-Admiral... but when he mastered a ship, as Vice-Admiral, he was still a Captain.

To this day, if a military Captain is aboard a US Navy ship, he is addressed as Commodore, not Captain, to avoid confusion with the real master of the ship, who may have an official rank far below the "Commodore's." Captain James Cook had been hired by the Royal Society, a non-military organization, to make the journey to the Pacific to make observations of the Transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. He and his ship were on loan from the Royal Navy to the Royal Society. His rank aboard ship absolutely was Captain... and he was also the expedition Commander. I do not believe it has ever been claimed that Cook "discovered" Australia. That honor actually does go to Abel Tasman. Cook was the first European to circumnavigate New Zealand and map the South Eastern Australia coast.

[SunkenCiv]

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[pgkdan]

George Washington was not the first of America's 43 presidents. During the American War of Independence, the Continental Congress sitting in Pennsylvania chose Peyton Randolph as their first President.

I see this pop up from time to time...Peyton Randolph and John Hancock were both President of the Continental Congress...they were not President of the United States. There were no United States to be President of.

Washington only became the first popularly elected President of the United States.

As if being elected meant nothing.

[pgkdan]

George Washington was not the first of America's 43 presidents. During the American War of Independence, the Continental Congress sitting in Pennsylvania chose Peyton Randolph as their first President.

I see this pop up from time to time...Peyton Randolph and John Hancock were both President of the Continental Congress...they were not President of the United States. There were no United States to be President of.

Washington only became the first popularly elected President of the United States.

As if being elected meant nothing.