6 Debunked Myths About History

Napoleon Wasn’t That Short

You’ve probably heard the phrase “Napoleon complex,” which refers to the idea that small creatures — whether people or Pomeranians — often act as if they’re much bigger than they really are, supposedly in an attempt to overcompensate for their lack of stature. Of course, it’s also a reference to Napoleon Bonaparte, the early 19th-century French emperor who wreaked havoc on the European continent for nearly two decades. Yet French sources say Napoleon probably stood at about 5 feet, 5 inches. While that might seem somewhat short by today’s standards, it was only an inch shorter than the average height of a Frenchman at the time. It’s possible he even stood an inch or two taller than this estimate.

So why does history remember Napoleon as such a tiny tyrant? Turns out, it’s actually an enduring piece of British propaganda. In 1803, British political cartoonist James Gillray — arguably the most influential caricaturist of his time — introduced the character “Little Boney,” which portrayed Bonaparte as both diminutive and juvenile. In his cartoons, Napoleon was often seen throwing tantrums while stomping around in oversized boots, military garb, and bicorne hats. The image stuck, and the sight of a raging, pint-sized Napoleon echoed through history. Before his death in 1821, the twice-exiled Napoleon even admitted that Gillray “did more than all the armies of Europe to bring me down.”

People Have Known the World Was Round for 2,500 Years

“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” in an effort to prove to European naysayers that the world was round, right? Not at all. In fact, Italian explorer Cristoforo Colombo (his real name), his European contemporaries, and basically all educated humans dating back to the ancient Greeks knew the Earth was a sphere. Famous mathematician Pythagoras of Samos (of a2 + b2 = c2 fame) figured out as much around 500 BCE, and 260 years later, another Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes accurately measured the Earth’s circumference. But defying the status quo and risking a deathly plunge into the vacuum of space certainly adds some dramatic tension, which is probably why Washington Irving invented this fictional flourish for his 1828 biography The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. Although he was known for his inventive works of fiction, such as Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Irving’s creative history of Colombo became one of the most persistent myths of the Age of Exploration.

Marie Antoinette Never Said “Let Them Eat Cake”

During the French Revolution in the late 18th century, royals and nobles didn’t fare very well — perhaps least of all Queen Marie Antoinette. Married to the last ruler of the ancien régime, King Louis XVI, at the age of 14, Antoinette was seen as an Austrian outsider (her dad was Holy Roman Emperor Francis I) and was often the recipient of France’s ill will. Although the aristocracy was certainly divorced from the harsh realities of the French peasantry, Antoinette was both intelligent and giving, often donating to charitable causes. This didn’t save her from being frequently implicated in various scandals (including a famous one involving a pricey diamond necklace), despite being generally innocent of the charges.

But the most damaging accusation when it comes to Antoinette’s historical reputation is her alleged cold reaction to the plight of the starving French peasantry when she supposedly uttered the phrase “Let them eat cake.” Yet Antoinette didn’t do it. For one thing, the actual French quote — “qu’ils mangent de la brioche” — doesn’t mention cake at all, but instead brioche, a type of sweet bread. Semantics aside, folklore scholars for nearly two centuries have traced the famous phrase to other sources and regions from long before Antoinette was even born. A 16th-century German tale, for example, features a noble woman wondering why peasants didn’t instead eat krosem, also a kind of sweet bread. In 1843, French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr found the same sentence in a book dated 1760 (when the Austrian princess would have been only 5 years old). Even the 2006 film Marie Antoinette (starring Kirsten Dunst in the eponymous role) mentions that the French queen never said the words. Yet despite nearly two centuries of debunking, the myth remains.

The “Wild West” Wasn’t That Wild

The famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881, pitting the lawmen Virgil and Wyatt Earp against outlaws known as the “Cowboys,” is often seen as an emblem of the Wild West. Although depicted in many Hollywood films as evidence of the rampant lawlessness of the West, the real gunfight lasted only 30 seconds, killed three people, and didn’t happen at the O.K. Corral but in a vacant lot down the street. Overall, the episode was a relatively minor one in the history of western North America, but it’s a moment that has become almost legendary in the romanticization of the Wild West, a period of American history stretching from about 1850 until 1900.

Although areas where people struck gold saw a relatively significant uptick in crime, most of the supposedly “wild” West was tamer than you may imagine. Economists, historians, and authors argue that for the most part settlers understood the importance of solving matters civilly, and some towns even passed gun control measures. Although Native Americans suffered egregious injustices during this period, the idea that they massacred white settlers in large numbers has also been exaggerated, and many were actually tolerant of wagon trains headed west.

Another of the most famous tropes associated with the Wild West is also a fabrication, or at least an exaggeration. Many cowboys preferred bowler hats or other lower-crowned hats; what we think of as a cowboy hat didn’t become popular until around the end of the 19th century. (The name “10-gallon hat” didn’t arrive until the 1920s.) Even the ubiquitous saloon-style doors were mostly a myth, as nearly all watering holes in the West had normal doors to keep out chilly winds.

There Were Actually 12 U.S. Colonies (Until 1776)

Thirteen stripes on the U.S. flag mean 13 colonies originally rebelled against British rule in 1775, right? Strangely, this too is also a myth of sorts. While it’s true that the former British colonies did begin the American Revolution in earnest in 1775 with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, there were technically only 12 colonies at the time. Although it had its own legislative assembly since 1704, the little stretch of coast known today as Delaware was then a part of the Pennsylvania Colony. Delaware didn’t declare its independence until June 15, 1776 — just in time to send delegates to the Second Continental Congress to vote on the Declaration of Independence less than a month later. Although Delaware was the last colony to fully form in America’s colonial period, it certainly wasted no time ushering in the new era, as the state was the very first to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 7, 1787, technically making it the first U.S. state in the union.

Thomas Edison Didn’t Invent the Lightbulb

Thomas Edison has plenty of world-changing inventions to his name, such as the phonograph and the kinetograph, but history largely remembers his genius in the shape of the lightbulb. Edison can certainly be thanked for perfecting the lightbulb and making electric light economically feasible, but he’s far from the technology’s inventor. Although many could claim credit for the lightbulb’s invention, one of the earliest examples of a lightbulb comes from an English scientist named Ebenezer Kinnersley, who in 1761 — some 86 years before Edison was born — described getting a wire so “red hot” that it gave off light. Kinnersley was describing a process known as incandescence, where electrical resistance actually causes a material to glow. This idea forms the scientific foundation of the incandescent bulb, and many inventors before Edison, including Frederick de Moleyns and Joseph Swan, successfully created incandescent bulbs and lamps. However, in the end it was Edison who by 1880 devised a bulb that lasted some 1,200 hours thanks to its carbonized bamboo filament. Suddenly, lightbulbs transformed from an expensive oddity to the way of the future.