what are some of the common historical myths ![]()
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before muqawwee ask me you first i myself start:
Slaves built the pyramids
We have all seen the movies and heard the tales of slaves captured by Egyptian military excursions being used to build the pyramids and temples of Ancient Egypt, but, in fact, they are all completely wrong. Contrary to popular belief, excavated skeletons show that the pyramid builders were actually Egyptians who were most likely in the permanent employ of the pharaoh. Graffiti indicates that at least some of these workers took pride in their work, calling their teams “Friends of Khufu,” “Drunkards of Menkaure,” and so on—names indicating allegiances to pharaohs.
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Spanish flu came from Spain
The Spanish flu pandemic (the same virus as Swine flu) lasted from March 1918 to June 1920, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. It is estimated that anywhere from 50 to 100 million people were killed worldwide, or the approximate equivalent of one third of the population of Europe. Although the first cases of the disease were registered in the continental US and the rest of Europe long before getting to Spain, the 1918 Flu received its nickname “Spanish Flu” because Spain, a neutral country in WWI, had no special censorship for news against the disease and its consequences. Hence the most reliable news came from Spain, giving the false impression that Spain was the most—if not the only—affected zone. So thanks to the honesty of Spain, they are now marred forever by the title of the worst flu epidemic in modern history.
common historical myths
Flu ka ilzam bhi country pe ? ![]()
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^ I had Hong Kong fever several decades ago. Remember clearly eating bajji. ( fried dish) the evening before. Yummy.
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^ wht is hong kong fever ![]()
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That is what they called it. Fever or flu - I think flu. Several decades ago. It flattened me for abt 3 weeks.
Thinking back, just occurred to me got great care from parents. Oh well.
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Congo virus came from Congo? What about American Sundi ![]()
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viruses ko choray zara myths ki bhi baat kr le
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This very common myth of baseball credits Doubleday with inventing the game, supposedly in Elihu Phinney’s cow pasture in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. In 1905, a committee was appointed to investigate the origins of the game, their conclusion was:
“the first scheme for playing baseball, according to the best evidence obtainable to date, was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. [In] the years to come, in the view of the hundreds of thousands of people who are devoted to baseball, and the millions who will be, Abner Doubleday’s fame will rest evenly, if not quite as much, upon the fact that he was its inventor … as upon his brilliant and distinguished career as an officer in the Federal Army.”
In fact, this conclusion was based on the testimony of one man, who was of questionable credibility. Jeff Idelson of the Baseball Hall of Fame has said that baseball was not really invented anywhere, but as far as history is concerned, the first written rules of baseball were penned by Alexander Joy Cartwright for the baseball club The Knickerbockers. On June 3, 1953, Congress officially credited Cartwright with inventing the modern game of baseball.
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in 1692 and 1693, anti-witch Mania hit Salem, Massachusetts resulting in a series of trials that lead to the deaths of 20 accused witches. Over 150 people were tried for the crime of Witchery. Contrary to the popular myth that the witches were burnt, they were, in fact, hanged to death. Of the 20, 14 were women and 6 were men. All were executed according to this method with the exception of one man who died during judicial torture
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In fact, Thomas Edison not only did not invent the lightbulb, he did not invent many of the things attributed to him. His shrewd business skills enabled him to steal, improve, and patent many ideas before their original inventors were able to. He was, in addition, a ruthless man who attempted to discredit other inventors in order to gain popularity for his own. Prior to Edison’s patent for the electric lightbulb in 1880, electric lights had already been invented. In 1840, British Astronomer and Chemist, Warren de la Rue, enclosed a platinum coil in a vacuum tube and passed an electric current through it, thus creating the world’s first light bulb – a full 40 years before Edison.
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Apples continued to get bad press with the famous story that scientist Sir Isaac Newton was under a tree, minding his own business, when an apple fell on his head. Just as well it provided him the inspiration for the laws of gravity, or the poor apple would never be forgiven! But while the falling apple is a good story, it probably never happened. The story was first published in an essay by Voltaire, long after Newton’s death. Before that, Newton’s niece, Catherine Conduitt, was the only person who ever told the story. It was almost certainly an invention.
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One of the world’s most famous fictitious characters, Mickey Mouse, is credited to Walt Disney. However, Mickey was the vision of Disney’s number one animator, Ub Iwerks. Disney, never a great artist, would always have trouble drawing the character who made him famous. Fortunately for him, Iwerks was known as the fastest animator in the business. He single-handedly animated Mickey’s first short film, Plane Crazy (1928), in only two weeks. (That’s 700 drawings a day.) But give some credit to Disney – when sound films began later that year, he played Mickey’s voice
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When it was released in 1903, “The Great Train Robbery” pioneered several techniques, includes jump cuts, medium close-ups and a complex storyline. But the first feature film? It was only ten minutes long! Even most short films are longer than that. The first feature-length film was a 100-minute Australian film, “The Story of the Kelly Gang”, released three years later. Even if you think of a feature film as the “feature” of a cinema program, the title would go to one of a number of French films made during the 1890s
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Van Gogh is known as the archetypal starving artist, only selling one painting in his lifetime, and – in a quarrel with Gauguin – slicing off his ear, not long before committing suicide. Though he did face a tragic end, and his own paintings sold poorly, it is worth noting that he spent most of his life teaching and dealing art. He only spent eight years of his life painting, which helps to explain why he didn’t starve to death. Also, he didn’t slice off his entire ear, just a portion of his left lobe. Painful, but not nearly as bad as you might have thought.
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Some people believe that Napoleon’s domineering ambitions were to compensate for being so physically small. Not so. True, Napoleon was called Le Petit Corporal (“The Little Corporal”), but he was 5 feet, 7 inches tall – taller than the average eighteenth-century Frenchman. So why the nickname? Early in his military career, soldiers used it to mock his relatively low rank. The name stuck, even as he became ruler of France.
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Many Australians will agree that this isn’t so – but for the wrong reasons. They will point out that, many years before Cook arrived in Sydney in 1770, Australia had already been visited by Dutchmen Abel Tasman and Dirk Hartog, and an English buccaneer, William Dampier. Of course, it had been previously been discovered some 50,000 years earlier by the indigenous Australians.
But in fairness to Cook, he did discover a new part of the country – and more importantly, this led to the first white settlers (an opportunity that Tasman, Hartog and Dampier didn’t take). So let’s say that Cook DID discover Australia! Fine, but Cook was actually a Lieutenant when he sailed to the Great South Land. The “captain” rank might be a minor point, but it’s certainly inaccurate – and as he is called “Captain Cook” so often that it might as well be his name, it’s one worth correcting.
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William Shakespeare is generally known as the greatest playwright who ever lived, even though most of his plays were not original, but adaptations of earlier stories. “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” (1603), probably his most famous play, was based on an ancient Scandinavian story. But while it might not have been the original version of the story, we can safely assume it was the best.
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Hold the fireworks! As most American school children (and many non-American ones) are aware, America’s founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. However, the war raged for another seven years before independence from England was finally granted on September 3, 1783. On that day, Britain’s George III and US leaders signed the Definitive Treaty of Peace.