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Henry Ford wasn’t an inventor of the car
Henry Ford made cars better. He made cars cheaper. And faster. And like electric cars being built today, these were all revolutionary feats that changed the automotive marketplace. But unlike what some folks think, he did not invent the car. It was German mechanical engineer Karl Benz who designed and built the first practical automobile powered by an internal-combustion engine. The original car, Benz’s three-wheeled Motorwagen, first ran in 1885. And there were others after him. Ford did not start building his first car until 1886. However, it was Ford’s ingenuity in building larger factories with moving production lines to mass produce cars that made them affordable to the masses. Although he may not have invented the car, he certainly had a large hand in fueling America’s love story with the automobile.
Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb
Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb, he developed it. There is a huge difference. “Edison was in a very competitive race where he borrowed—some said stole—ideas from other inventors who were also working on an incandescent bulb,” explained Ernest Freeberg, author of The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America, to U.S. News & World Report. In his book, Freeberg shows that the light bulb reflected the work of many inventors, rather than Edison’s lone genius. “What made him ultimately successful was that he was not a lone inventor, a lone genius, but rather the assembler of the first research and development team at Menlo Park, N.J.”
Washington’s Delaware crossing was in a much bigger boat
Hung in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Washington Crossing the Delaware” is one of America’s best-known paintings. Artist Emanuel Leutze depicted a glory filled crossing on a tipsy rowboat. In reality, it was probably a 60-foot-long flatboat ferry, guided by cable, according to the New York Times, and crowded with dozens of troops, and cannons and horses. In the painting Washington’s face is lit by lantern and torch against a night sky, but weather records show the crossing happened during a northeaster. More likely the ferry had to cut through thick layers of ice on the Delaware without a glowing sky to guide them nor a wide river to travel. The records are more in keeping with a dead-of-night crossing at a section of the river less than 300 yards wide. And the flag in the Leutze painting?
Hamilton may not have been the abolitionist portrayed on Broadway
Although Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the musical Hamilton, tried to remain true to the character as possible, experts have raised concerns that the musical over-glorifies the man, inflating his opposition to slavery. In the show’s last song, his widow, Eliza, sings that Hamilton would have “done so much more” against slavery had he lived longer. But would he have? Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history and law at Harvard and the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello, said in an interview “that while Hamilton publicly criticized Jefferson’s views on the biological inferiority of blacks, his record from the 1790s until his death in 1804 includes little to no action against slavery.” She believes race and slavery are invoked directly in the show mainly to underline Hamilton’s “goodness,” especially in contrast to Jefferson. But Hamilton the ardent lifelong abolitionist, she said, is “an idea of who we would like Hamilton to be.”
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Paul Revere didn’t ride alone
Paul Revere did alert the colonies that the British were coming, but he wasn’t the only loud mouth. There were many riders who went out the night of April 18 to warn the colonists of the British forces. Four men and one woman made late night rides, alerting the early Americans of what dangers lay ahead; Paul Revere, Samuel Prescott, Israel Bissell, William Dawes, and Sybil Ludington.
What’s interesting about that particular situation is neither Revere nor any of the other riders were remembered by history for their actions on April 18, 1775 until Henry Wadworth Longfellow wrote his poem in April 1860, just shy of 85 years later. And it wasn’t until the Colonial Revival Movement of the 1870s that Longfellow’s poem brought Revere to fame.
The War of the Worlds broadcast did not cause a panic
It’s widely believed that this highly realistic radio play about aliens invading earth caused a national panic attack. (It was based on H.G. Wells novel War of the Worlds.) This couldn’t be further from the truth. It turns out that not a lot of people even tuned in. Plus, the broadcast provided disclaimers regarding the show’s fiction throughout.
According to Slate,”Far fewer people heard the broadcast—and fewer still panicked—than most people believe today. How do we know? The night the program aired, the C.E. Hooper ratings service telephoned 5,000 households for its national ratings survey. ‘To what program are you listening?’ the service asked respondents. Only 2 percent answered a radio ‘play’ or ‘the Orson Welles program,’ or something similar indicating CBS. None said a ‘news broadcast,’ according to a summary published in Broadcasting. In other words, 98 percent of those surveyed were listening to something else, or nothing at all, on Oct. 30, 1938. This minuscule rating is not surprising. Welles’ program was scheduled against one of the most popular national programs at the time—ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s Chase and Sanborn Hour, a comedy-variety show.”
Slate also argues that there’s no data to support the idea that many radio listeners heard about the broadcast and tuned in during it. And it points out that “several important CBS affiliates (including Boston’s WEEI) preempted Welles’ broadcast in favor of local commercial programming, further shrinking its audience.”
So how did the story of the “panic” grow over the years? Slate blames newspapers, which allegedly “seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted.”
Einstein never flunked algebra
Unless you have dyscalculia, a type of math learning disability, telling Mom and Dad that you’re flunking math because you’re a genius like Albert Einstein is sure to backfire for many reasons. No eye-rolling please, but seriously did the man who came up with an alternate proof for the Pythagorean theory as a teenager really fail math? Nope. In fact, when Einstein heard the myth he just laughed it off and said that he had already mastered differential and integral calculus by 15. According to the New York Times, his academic records contained in a collection of the great theorist’s papers confirmed that he was a child prodigy, remarkably gifted in mathematics, algebra and physics, a ”brilliant” violin player who got high marks in Latin and Greek. But his inability to master French was the bane of his school days, and may have been chiefly responsible for him failing college entrance examinations.
Princess Anastasia didn’t make it out alive
For many years it was believed that Princess Anastasia the daughter of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, may have survived the brutal 1918 assassination of her family. However, in 2007 genetic testing determined that she did not escape the massacre. On the night of July 16, 1918, she and her family were executed in Yekaterinburg, Russia. In 1991, a forensic study identified the bodies of her family members and servants, but not hers or her brother Alexei’s. The 2007 DNA test of a second grave identified both of their bodies. In response to numerous movies made about Anastasia surviving (20th Century Fox, we’re looking at you) and women claiming to be Anastasia, it’s easy to see how the legacy of her surviving stuck around for so long
President Lincoln wasn’t all that when it came to opposing slavery
A PBS film called The Abolitionists tells the story of five abolitionist leaders who arguably did more than Lincoln to end slavery.”There’s this perception that good old Lincoln and a few others gave freedom to black people. The real story is that black people and people like [Frederick] Douglass wrestled their freedom away,” Erica Armstrong Dunbar, a historian who is featured in the film, told CNN.
Eric Foner, a historian and author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, also told CNN that “it was not Lincoln who originated the Thirteenth amendment, it was the abolitionist movement.” According to Foner it wasn’t until 1864 that Lincoln changed his mind and favored the amendment.
Finally passed in the Senate on April 8, 1864, the bill didn’t clear the House until January 31, 1865, when enough Democrats added their votes. Almost a year later, on December 18, 1865, the required three-quarters of states had ratified the amendment, ensuring that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude… shall exist within the United States. In the end Lincoln was just trying to hold the Union together.
The Dred Scott decision outraged the North, but it wasn’t for not freeing Scott
Dred Scott was a slave whose owner, an army doctor, had spent time in Illinois, a free state, and Wisconsin, a free territory at the time of Scott’s residence. In 1846, Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that he had lived in a free state and a free territory for a prolonged period of time. It took 11 years for his case to reach the Supreme Court. The court held that Scott was not free based on his residence in either Illinois or Wisconsin because he was not considered a person under the U.S. Constitution. In the opinion of the justices, black people were not considered citizens when the Constitution was drafted in 1787. According to the majority opinion, Dred Scott was the property of his owner, and property could not be taken from a person without due process of law.
“Most folks think that the North was outraged because the decision did not free Dred Scot from slavery,” says William D. Carrigan, chair and professor of history at Rowan University. “But only abolitionists cared about that outcome. Many more Northerners were outraged at the decision because it said that Congress could not restrict slavery in the territories at all (as had been done for many years, starting in 1820 with the Missouri Compromise).
Froot Loops are all the same flavor
Sure those sweetened O’s are all different colors but that doesn’t mean they are different flavors. Kellogg’s, the company who makes them, has admitted that each Froot Loop is “froot flavored” which they describe as “a blend of fruit flavors.”
Anne Frank and Martin Luther King, Jr. were born the same year
Anne Frank is an iconic symbol of the Nazi brutality of World War II in the 1940s while Martin Luther King, Jr. was the face and voice of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The two events seem so far apart in history but both figures were born in 1929—January 15 for King, and June 12 for Frank.
Most Canadians live south of Seattle
Canada and the United States are both large countries which can make understanding the relative geography difficult. But the contiguous United States goes farther north than you think and the majority of Canadians live near the southern border. The result? At 45 degrees latitude, Seattle is farther north than Toronto and Montreal, meaning that 64 percent of Canadians live south of Seattle.
More French soldiers died during World War I than American soldiers during all of U.S. history
World War I was catastrophic on levels that most of us alive today cannot even comprehend. One example? The numbers of total deaths. During the first world war, France lost about 1,360,000 soldiers. In contrast, the United States has recorded about 1,350,000 military deaths total, over every war since 1775.
There is a species of jellyfish that is immortal
Think that immortality is just a fantasy? Well, it is for humans. But scientists have discovered that the Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish can revert back to its juvenile polyp stage after maturing, continuing in an endless cycle making it the only known officially immortal creature.
The U.S. government has an official plan for a zombie apocalypse
Think The Walking Dead is straight-up fiction? Well, it is—but the government wants to be prepared for a real-life version anyhow. The 31-page Counter-Zombie Dominance Plan, or CONPLAN 8888-11, was designed in 2011. And just in case you think it’s weird bureaucratic humor, the first line reads, “This plan was not actually designed as a joke.”
There is a country with no capital
Nauru is the only country in the world without an official capital city. The government offices of the tiny Pacific island nation are located in the Yaren District.
The “word of the year” in 2015 was a picture
Proof that Internet culture has overtaken reality: In 2015, Oxford dictionaries chose the “smiling with tears of joy” emoji as its official word of the year. The pictograph “best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015,” they said.
Prince Charles has a car fueled by wine
In the search for more efficient fuels, Prince Charles is taking a strange-but-entertaining approach: The heir to the British throne had his vintage Aston Martin reworked to use wine as it’s primary fuel.
It’s totally legal to escape from prison in Mexico
Several countries, including Mexico, Germany, and Austria, see the desire to escape prison as basic human nature rather than an unlawful act. Consequently, a prison break isn’t considered to be a crime itself but before you started masterminding the perfect escape plan, know that they’ll still try to catch you and you may be punished for any criminal act you commit during or after your escape.
There is such a thing as male PMS
Premenstrual syndrome—the collection of symptoms that hit women in the week or so before their menstrual cycle starts—is the butt of many jokes and has even been cited as a reason a woman should not be president of the United States. But men should stop chuckling as medicine recognizes the male equivalent called “irritable male syndrome,” a behavioral state defined as “hypersensitivity, frustration, anxiety, and anger that occurs in males and is associated with biochemical changes, hormonal fluctuations, stress, and loss of male identity.”
Eventually, a day on Earth will be 25 hours long
The Earth’s speed as it orbits the sun is not a fixed rate. No matter how constant it may seem to us mortals, it’s actually slowing over time. The length of a day will become 25 hours…in about 175 million years.
A strawberry isn’t actually a berry—but a watermelon is
Raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries aren’t true berries. The scientific definition of “berry” is a plant that has three distinct layers: an outer skin (exocarp), a fleshy middle (mesocarp), and—here’s the key—internally contained seeds (endocarp). So because their seeds are on the outside all those berries aren’t actually berries. However, watermelon, bananas, grapes, and eggplants are all technically berries!
The Earth isn’t round
Don’t get excited yet Flat Earthers—the planet we all call home isn’t flat but it’s not round either. Technically the Earth is known as an “oblate spheroid” due to the bulge at the equator and the flattened poles.
One of the most painful stings known to mankind is from the platypus
Many people think cuddling this adorable cross between a duck and an otter would be fun. But beware to the person who tries it! The duck-billed platypus has poison glands in its hind legs and can release the venom using a hollow spur on its heel. While generally not deadly, the sting is said to be incredibly painful and causes a large amount of swelling.
If you’re shot by a sniper, you’ll be dead before you hear the gun
The speed of sound is 343 meters/second. But a bullet fired from a rifle travels at 762 meters/second. This means that if you’re ever targeted by an expert marksman you’ll be dead before you hear the gunshot.
The city of London only has a population of 9,000
London may be one of the largest metropolises in the world but when it comes to actual people, only 9,000 reside in the City of London. The city is a small area surrounded by the Greater London region—which has 8.1 million people.
A parrot ruined a presidential funeral
Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, was very fond of his pet parrot and apparently spent a lot of time talking to the bird—as became evident when the president died. The parrot was present in the home where Jackson died and as the funeral commenced began cursing in such colorful language that it had to be removed from the house.
There are more trees on Earth than stars in the galaxy
There are about 3 trillion trees on Earth but only 300 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way. Space is big but relatively empty, it turns out.