Some men live and just die, while others gain immortality in people's memory. These men are so well known that sometimes they could be seen as legends, inspiration and guide. However, when telling their stories through generations and languages, some unwanted "alterations" can occur. This article relates ten of the most funny misconceptions about men who truly made history.
1. Napoleon:
Before digging deeper into this myth, I feel obliged to ask you a
question, a little one: “Are you short?” Oh, just kidding. Instead, do you know
what the Napoleon complex refers to? Whether you do or not, here is a quick
refresher: The Napoleon complex describes men who suffer from being short and
continuously show inferiority complex syndromes. The thing is, the so-called
Napoleon complex doesn’t apply on the man it was called after, quite a
surprise, isn’t it?
So yes, Napoleon was not short. He is listed as 5 feet 2 inches at the
time of his death. You may find it pretty short but let us not forget that
these are in French measurements. In modern units, Napoleon is 5 feet 7 inched
tall, surpassing the average height by 2 inches. After all, he was quite tall
at his time.
Still, there is evidence he was considered short by the time of his
death. This ingrate reputation can be explained by the fact that Napoleon was
always surrounded by his bodyguards who were even taller than him.
Consequently, wherever he stood, he was seen short in comparison, earning him
the title “Le petit Caporal” translated to “The little corporal”.
2. Einstein:
To make things clear right away, history’s most known scientist was NOT
weak in math. In fact, he was always at the top of his class, which is not so
hard to believe due to his later great accomplishments. This myth is widely
held thanks to a dramatic reversal in the grading system back in Switzerland,
where his school was. At the age of 16, Einstein scored 1 on a scale of 6 in
the math exam which was the highest score a student could have, with 6 being
the lowest. In the following term, he scored 6, the thing that led people to
think Einstein had lost his mathematical abilities, except that his school
officials reversed the grading scale allowing the mark 6 to be highest. So
after all, Einstein was excellent in math.
However, he
did fail his first attempt to enter the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School (ETH) in 1895, when he was 2 years younger than the
other candidates. There, he found his passion in physics, allocating more time
and energy in studying it at the back of mathematics, while always having good
marks in it, the thing that led one of his math professors to call him “the
lazy dog”
3. Hitler:
Adolf Hitler,
the führer, the German Chancellor, the dictator, the
one that wanted power, that considered himself “superior”, the one that turned
the world downside to expand Germany’s territories. But did he really want to
conquer the world? As far as I am concerned, I am pretty sure that if the world
was offered to him in a platter of sliver, he would have rather accepted it,
but fortunately, that was not the case.
Germany
didn’t have enough resources nor manpower and machinery to feed such an egoist
fulfillment, and Hitler knew that. In fact, he didn’t even plan to. All he
wanted was Eastern Europe’s natural resources and an end to the Soviet
socialism. His battles against France and Britain aimed to prevent the West
from stopping his march to the East, nothing more. So even with the history’s
most despised man, egoism has its limits.
4. Leonardo Da Vinci:
It all began with the Mona Lisa, the most discussed work of art ever, of
her being happy or sad, smiling or not, hiding some secret codes. Then the myth
was enhanced with Dan Brown’s best-seller “Da Vinci Code”, which held a great
deal of theories and speculations all orbiting around the genius, the gifted,
the artist Leonardo. But stop it people, that’s enough. It has been rather
frustrating to read art-focused articles entitled “Why isn’t the portrait
smiling?” or “why does he hold a cigar? Could it be some sort of code?” or even
“Why is it painted nude? Oh, I know, the artist’s gay”
No, Leonardo didn’t put secret codes in every work of art. He may have
done it in some works, probably the Mona Lisa, but the hints and unusual
fragments seen in his paintings were there to convey some sort of meaning or religious
message, rarely as a secret code. So, I think it’s high time we enjoyed pieces
of art as they are, in their natural grandeur and splendidness, and started
learning that, sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.
5. Shakespeare:
Champion, eyeball, gloomy, mimic, birthplace… These are words we owe to
the novelist and writer William Shakespeare. Indeed, Shakespeare invented 1700
plus words of the English language by transforming nouns to verbs, verbs to
nouns, adding prefixes, suffixes, combining words in a fashion never seen before,
gracefully writing his name in history, forever. But, is he really the first
ever to write down these words on paper?
All his impressive and intimidating works and
achievements might make us think he is the one, but as surprising as it may
seem, he is not. This common misconception relates to dictionaries and how they
are made, now and in the past. In the 18th century, when writing
down both the definition and the origin of a given word, a prior research
should have been done. Specialists gathered all the resources where that very
word appear and study the chronological sequence, attributing the origin of the
word to the oldest book found. Due to the lack of accurate research means at
the time, and the tremendous popularity of Shakespeare, his name was often
paired with uncommon words in the English language, thinking he was the one
inventing them, and that without even conducting further and deeper search of
older manuscripts and books.
Fortunately, modern computers and the rise of artificial intelligence
enabled the search of millions of texts in a matter of seconds, mysteriously
and gradually revealing the true origin of words mistakenly thought to be
Shakespeare’s.
6. Washington:
As by American customs, when a president is elected, he will
automatically live in Washington’s famous The White House. Surprisingly, this
was not the case for the US very first president, George Washington. Back in
1789, when he was inaugurated as the first president, the white house was not
even built yet, or worse Washington D.C. was not even the capital of the US.
He used to live in Samuel Osgood house in New York city, not very far
away from the countryside. In the spite of the house reputation of being the
best in New York, its location proved unsecure and its size too small and
unworthy of the US first president, the one that brought freedom to the
Americans. He then moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. But still, he was the
one that selected The White House location in 1791. After 8 years of
construction, president John Adams, the successor of Washington moved to the
unfinished house in 1800, becoming the first president having ever lived in The
White House.
7. Edison:
If you take any child and ask him who invented the lightbulb, the answer
would almost certainly be Thomas Edison. Well, as this list goes with misconceptions,
he was not. Even the idea to come up with electricity-generated light wasn’t
his. So, who on earth did it? Actually, the story is quite complicated.
Around 1875, two scientists, Evans and Woodrow, came up with the idea
which they patented, and started working on it right away. However, the lack of
the necessary money and resources proved to be the obstacle and kept them from
taking their idea to fruition. Meanwhile, another scientist whose name is Swan,
was also interested in lightbulbs and made better results in making them, to
say the least. And that was when Thomas Edison came into play. With
entrepreneur’s eye, he saw potential in this invention and bought the rights
from Woodrow and Evans. As far as the core invention is concerned, he took
Swan’s creation and made it, let’s say, more practical. This chase of
perfection took him and his team almost 10,000 tries and fails to finally come
up with a lightbulb that could last 1,200 hours.
8. Mozart:
Very few artists die poor, especially musicians
and singers since music is, for most people, the biggest relief, the greatest
entertainment, the one form of art that they interact the most with. But was it
true in the 18th century? Were musicians like Mozart really poor?
Well, Mozart was everything but a poor man. He
was actually very well-paid for his concerts. He earned 1000 Hungarian guldens
for just one concert while the yearly income of an average 18th
century servant was barely about 20 guldens. Assuming he plays 6 concerts per
year, he would earn 6000 guldens which convert to today’s $60,000, only from
his concerts. Naturally as an artist, concerts are not the only source of
income. It is believed that Mozart made more than $10,000 annually.
However, Mozart did encounter some financial
problems (yes with all that money) to nourish his lifelong passion, gambling.
In one day, Mozart could afford to gamble more than 2000 guldens, leading him,
undoubtedly to serious financial issues that showed off in him being buried
under a common tomb rather than an aristocratic grave.
9. Newton:
Everyone today knows what gravity is, who discovered it, how it was
discovered, that Newton was sitting under a tree, meditating, the apple that
fell on his head and bla bla bla. Like seriously, who would believe that such a
fairy tale could inspire one, if not the most important concept in physics?
This “tale” is one of the most famous and most wrongly-believed
anecdotes in the history of science. It is now almost certain that this version
of the story was embellished by both Isaac Newton and the continuous
generations of eager storytellers. At the time of the discovery, Newton was
interested in astronomy, especially in the moon circuit. He was wondering how
the moon managed to orbit the earth, what forces sealed it to perform its
eternal dances, and where these forces came from. For his gorgeous mind, it was
pretty obvious and crystal-clear that these forces came from Earth. But then he
questioned himself whether humans could sense this attractive power or not, and
the whole picture of gravity came to his mind when he was sitting in his
mother’s garden, imagining how the so called gravity helped an apple to fall
from a tree. There is absolutely no evidence at all proving the fact that the
apple did fall, let alone on his head, to make matters more magnificent.
10.
Gandhi:
What if I told you that Gandhi’s non-violence was not so non-violent
after all? It is really juvenile to think that just sitting there, peacefully
protesting against the oppressor’s crimes, without laying a finger would be the
best solution for revolution; and Gandhi understood that quite well. Although
Gandhi’s reputation orbits around peace and non-violence, he really got is
hands dirty while claiming independence.
First of all, he traveled to South Africa and there quite interesting
events happened. He joined the British ambulance corps during 1896 Boer war,
and then in 1906, he served the British army as a stretcher, during the Zulu
revolution, where he should have shown a bit of compassion and piety to native
Africans, given his might sense of peace. Let us not dig into the
nitty-gritties of Gandhi’s personality, and let us just assume that his
non-violence principles hadn’t flourished yet, by the time. Back to India, he
found himself confronted to angry Indians eager to take back independence. His
solution however, was to help Britain win its wars outside of India against
full freedom. All these acts and more show pretty well that Gandhi, though
known as the saint, was not as non-violent as his reputation claims.
By Yacine GACI
Ressources:
- https://www.quora.com/Did-Nazi-Germany-have-plans-to-conquer-the-whole-world
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions
- http://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-man-the-myth/ten-misconceptions-about-washington/
- https://blog.oup.com/2014/04/leonardo-da-vinci-myths/
- http://www.historyrundown.com/was-mozart-really-poor/
- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-core-of-truth-behind-sir-isaac-newtons-apple-1870915.html
- http://acua.org/acua/documents/ACUASEP2012PresidentsMessage.pdf
- http://www.history.com/news/6-things-you-might-not-know-about-gandhi
- http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/03/napolean-bonaparte-having-been-short-is-a-myth/
- http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/local-blogs/dark-matter/7482540/Hero-or-puppet-Gandhi-s-role-in-India-s-freedom
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