30 Historical Figures Who Might Not Have Existed We might think of history as over and settled, but it's rarely that simple. Disclaimer: We excluded historical figures who only overlapped a few years in their lives. That's way less impressive than being a time-traveling snake-vanquisher. As Scientific American outlined, back in 1980, researchers at California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory had gotten a particle accelerator to make out with a lead-like substance called bismuth. Despite Vlad's reputation for posh cannibalism, there are no reliable accounts of him actually imbibing body wine. But examining Chapman the myth and Chapman the chap is like comparing apples to orange schnapps. He was apparently also pretty likable for an attempted mass murderer. Alchemists were only right once in a millennium, and only by accident." ... Of course, the details were hush-hush, but Paul had a good idea of Julia's duties because he too was an OSS Officer. Stalin was just that good. Pervasive bacteria often made consuming H2O a no-no. Winston Churchill: One of the most famous men to … Although originally merely a catch-all representation of these women and a symbol of Japanese villainy during the conflict, often depicted in American cartoons and films as highly sexualized and manipulative, in September 1945 the moniker became indelibly attached within popular imagination to one individual: American-born Japanese Iva Toguri D’Aquino. However, for all its barbarity and fratricide, the conflict is often associated with a famously gentlemanly general by the name of Robert E. Lee. According to folk tradition Henry was a “steel-driving man”, a manual laborer responsible for hammering a drill into rock to make holes for blasting explosives during the construction of railroad tunnels; so great was he at his job that according to his legend Henry won a race against a steam-powered rock drilling machine, before suddenly dying with his hammer in his hand from a heart attack. Despite the enduring popularity of John Henry within American folk culture, there is a distinct lack of evidence for the existence of any such person with this particular story and personal description. There are many more people of the past and in the present that have shown all the good qualities of citizenship; Truthfulness, Justice, Equality, Respect and Responsibility. Okay, time to consult The Telegraph. This confusion over the true identity of Laozi and the time period he inhabited, in conjunction with the Taoist belief that Laozi lived to the age of 990, has supported the academic opinion that the works attributed to him were not the product of one mind. That's a pretty stellar track record for a discipline seen as a historical laughingstock. At 17, he got his overdone odes published in a high-profile journal with the help of a Georgian prince. According to Vice, if the countess' reported kill count is correct, it makes her the all-time queen of killers (as opposed to a killer queen). The genesis of this doubt began with attempts to identify Laozi within the historical record, with his earliest depictions, dating from the 1st century BCE, representing him as either “Li Dan” – a contemporary of Confucius during the 6th or 5th century BCE – or as a different  philosopher of the same age named Lao Laizi; a third ancient source asserts Laozi was the court astrologer of Duke Xian of the Qin Dynasty during the 4th century BCE, whilst other later accounts place the philosopher as Keeper of the Archives during the time of the Yellow Emperor (c. 4th century BCE). Per The Atlantic, the JF-King of Camelot was constantly besieged by colitis, ulcers, and Addison's disease, which together wreaked havoc on his intestines, blood, and back, and then on everything else by extension.He was also wracked by crippling back spasms. Which historical figures were actually the Emperor So we know the Emperor has walked among us for thousand of years, sometimes taking on public personas to guide humanity on the right path. 40 Historical Figures Who Were Actually Drop-Dead Gorgeous. Per Miller's reading, the text actually claims Vlad had the hygienically questionable habit of washing his hands in his victims' blood before dinner. Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star in 1919 because, his editor said, he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”. When Luddite attacks began in the early-1800s the damages were initially facetiously blamed on Ned Ludd by their employees, and after the emergence of an organized movement in 1812 Ludd emerged as the supposed leader of the movement; possessing various nicknames, including Captain Ludd, King Ludd, or General Ludd, this mythical individual was popularly regarded as the founder and head of the movement bearing his name. As reward for his treason and attempted regicide, he got a nifty rhyme and an island named after him. 20 Villains Who Were Actually Right. He was the picture of virile vigor, so much so that his looks gave him a decisive advantage over haggard-faced opponent Richard Nixon in a 1960 presidential debate. J. Edgar Hoover. Some of history’s greatest icons were philanderers, racists, and dabblers in animal cruelty. Adding to his aura of healthy hotness, he famously got it on with Marilyn Monroe, blowing Bill Clinton out of the water in terms of White House infidelity. In fact, he was just one of 13 conspirators who really disliked Protestants. Written on sewn-together bamboos slats and detailing the strategic principles of war, early versions of the foundational military text were proliferated across the Far East, with copies known to have existed in Japan by the 8th century CE, to become one of the most famous writings of ancient China. Most notably, plans to remove a Lee monument in Charlottesville, Virginia, were met with protests and deadly violence in August 2017. Later embellished by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1138), the first narrative account of Arthur’s life, the warrior-king moves from being merely legend into the realms of fantasy. Benedict Arnold fought for the British during the American Revolution. Lives overlap. " To Hitler he was a bad winter cold. Simple luxuries like standing or sitting upright entailed the use of a brace. Specifically, she soaked herself in the blood of 650 female servants that she tortured to death and sometimes turned into sausages. Huh, it turns out that that in 1605, Fawkes tried to turn King James and the British House of Lords into a giant fireworks display with the help of 36 barrels of gunpowder. Per The Atlantic, the JF-King of Camelot was constantly besieged by colitis, ulcers, and Addison's disease, which together wreaked havoc on his intestines, blood, and back, and then on everything else by extension. Cited as the sole primary source for his family’s history, Haley employed the services of a Gambian “griot” – the West African equivalent of a historian under the oral tradition – named Kebba Kanga Fofana, who claimed to know the history of the Kinte clan. Fletcher found this account compelling on account of Patrick's pre-priest life as a Roman noble in Britain. These people have done such great things, that most people assume that they are all great people. The Luddites, so-named after Ludd, were a group of English textile workers opposed to the introduction of machinery to their industry; fearing mechanization and automation would result in the eradication of their skilled jobs, in addition to a resultant decline in labor practices in the aftermath of said introductions, the Luddites engaged in a practice of civil disobedience and vandalism by destroying the new machinery. Originating in Nottingham, the movement expanded into a region-wide rebellion between 1811-1816 before being suppressed by the military and its leaders killed or imprisoned. Given his family's reliance on forced servitude, it's also plausible that Patrick sold slaves to pay his way to Ireland, which hadn't yet discovered money. Specifically, she argued that their translation of the poem was woefully wrong. ... Next article 10 Famous Historical Figures Who were Perverts; You May Also Like. Good PR is often a part of it, of course. Per the BBC, Catesby was a Catholic who tolerated Protestant rule until the death of his Protestant wife. Not mentioned personally until the period of the Babylonian exile during the mid-1st millennium BCE, over a thousand years after the presumed date of the Exodus, there is no corroborating archaeological or historical evidence of Moses – itself meaning simply “man of” in many ancient languages – beyond the bible depicting his specific actions or the wider events of Exodus and Deuteronomy; as a result, many historians have disregarded the figure in his entirety as a fiction, along with the traditional biblical history of the Israelites, dismissing them both as part of a broadly untrue origin narrative. It doesn't take a rocket historian to explain that the U.S. Civil War wasn't civil. Through... 2. Popularly considered the original Luddite, Ludd allegedly broke two stocking frames in Anstey, near Leicester, in 1779 in a “fit of passion” after having been whipped for idleness; a version of this story was later widely circulated in John Blackner’s History of Nottingham (1811), but there is no independent corroboration of this event or of Ludd himself in any official records. (Does that mean he technically invented dragon's blood soap?) Despite this, one should not be too quick to dismiss the culturally significant saga as fictional. However, as a result of confusion, lost histories, mistaken identities, or sometimes the simple desire to tell a better story, these great individuals are sometimes conflated into untrue and fanciful adaptations of their lives whilst the real stories and people behind the legends become undeservedly forgotten to popular memory. The character was actually stolen from Cotton Club singer Esther ... General Dumas was such a good … That was probably a plus for Chapman, who sold his orchards to arriving settlers. Instead, the stories and lives depicted, including that of Kunta Kinte, should be regarded as composites, reflecting the suffering and experiences of countless unknown and unnamed African slaves and, even if unintentionally, for the purposes of narrative encapsulated into one unfortunate individual and his family. 15 Historical Figures You Probably Didn't Know Were Black 1. A one-man orchard-maker, he spent the 1800s keeping many a doctor away by painting America red with delicious plant ovaries. Kennedy's life was basically several circles of hell rolled into one. History is especially susceptible to such mental editing. This finding is supported by linguistic analysis of the oldest discovered extracts of the Tao Te Ching, dated to the 4th century BCE, in addition to subsequent surviving early versions across the following centuries, wherein the language used and the style of writing strongly suggests multiple authors; this close inspection has increased speculation that the ancient text was “a compilation of Taoist sayings by many hands”, with several individuals gradually making additions over a prolonged period of time and merely attributing their ideas to a centralized figurehead called “Laozi” – itself an honorific ancient Chinese title meaning “old venerable master”. Chapman belonged to the Swedenborgian Church, which sadly had nothing to do with meatballs or chef's hats. Providing plot outlines and character details, ghostwriters were paid a fee of $125 per completed novel, reduced to $75 during the Great Depression, and required to legally renounce all rights to the work and maintain strict confidentiality. 39. Chapman had no choice but to turn to alcohol. The past provides beginnings, middles, endings, and deep lessons to be learned. As Smithsonian Magazine elaborated, admirers see Lee as a reluctant hero for the pro-slavery South, an honor-bound battler who joined the fray out of duty. Ana Frank (1929-1945) Annelies Marie Frank was a Jewish girl who was born in Germany and was a victim of the Holocaust. And at the terrifying height of his power, Stalin often showed mercy to poets, as if somewhere in his hollow chest beat the semblance of a heart.Â. People know Ness as the courageous cop who opposed the Prohibition Era's baddest of baddies, Al Capone. Identifying an individual by the name of John William Henry who was arrested for burglary in the 1870s, Nelson speculated that Henry was a prisoner licensed out for work as leased labor for the C&O Railway Company wherein died due to the stresses of the job; due to the lack of documentation for prisoners in such programs, with records for John William Henry ending abruptly in 1873, in conjunction with his low social class, Nelson contends this Henry was responsible for setting the spark to the legend. The true brain behind the badness was forgotten villain Explodey McEvilplot, known more accurately as Robert Catesby. Other times people suffer from bad timing, and some are just overlooked by historians and the media for whatever reason, rendering their accomplishments and deeds largely ignored by the general public. These contentious icons have broken the bonds of friendly affection, beckoning the bitter angels of man's nature. (Detractors of Lee think that's bull-duty.) Fawkes likely got assigned to figuratively and literally lower the boom due to a background in handling explosives. Welcome to Picture-in-Picture! goodshit. Moses was a legendary figure of ancient history and a prophet in the Abrahamic religious tradition, traditionally thought to have existed during the 2nd century BCE. However, Canadian professor Elizabeth Miller has politely impugned their position. You might feel tempted to reply, "So what? John Henry, believed to have existed at some point during the late 19th century, was an African-American who appeared in classic American folk songs known colloquially as “The Ballad of John Henry”; possessing an upbeat tempo, the song is typically divided into four sections: a childhood premonition, a legendary race against a steam-hammer, his death, and the fate of his wife. It's the satisfying end to a search for one's true soulmate, at least until the next, definitely truer soulmate comes along. That's stirringly breezy for a budding man of steel. JK Rowling Shutterstock.com“>Featureflash / Shutterstock.com. Sure, it sounds brutal, but lawless times call for lethal measures, and Earp was always very measured in his fierceness –- at least according to Earp himself. Subsequent journalistic investigations of Fofana revealed the man to be a fraud, changing crucial details including key events, names, and places in addition to misplacing other key figures from history in the wrong generations. (Science clearly wasn't her strong suit.) FRIDAY LATE AFTERNOON BONUS: NSFW. More jarringly, he and his team of Untouchables didn't prohibit themselves from touching alcohol. Surprising Facts About Famous Historical Figures, As the book Arizona Gunfighters described. The issue wasn't how often Bathory bathed, but what she allegedly bathed in. To avoid getting his man bits lopped off plus a bunch of other horrid punishments you're better off forgetting, Fawkes leaped to his death. 20 Beloved Historical Figures Who Did Truly Terrible Things 1. Gandhi That's got to be the nincompoopiest notion ever. Also check out 6 Historical Villains Who Were Actually OK Guys and 21 Beloved Famous People Everyone Forgets Did Awful Things. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and YouTube, where you can catch all our video content, such as Why 'The NeverEnding Story' Is Actually Buddhist Propaganda and other videos you won't see on the site! Or it was until scientists proved that it's totally possible. Spanning a range of heroic 5th century Britons, including King Riothamus and Ambrosius Aurelianus, in addition to earlier figures such as Roman military commander Lucius Artorius Castus, the historical opinion is now that if such a figure did indeed exist that he was most likely more than one person. It did, however, forbid him from using horticultural methods like grafting, which homogenizes fruit. (Unluckily for them, they all got executed after her trial.). The current historical consensus is divided in two: one which contends Homer did indeed exist and was the sole author of these works, and another which asserts that the Homeric poems were the work of many contributors in which “Homer” merely serves as a label for the poetic tradition they followed. ... After he died, many good paintings were retrieved from his personal chambers. The most convincing account is that of Lewis Tunnel, Virginia, proposed by Scott Reynolds Nelson in 2006. This strongly suggests that either the treatise was written much later than the time attributed to Sun Tzu, or that it was gradually compiled as the strategic wisdom of multiple generations of Chinese generals. Related Posts. You might also know him as Vlad Dracula, the 15th-century Romanian prince who draculed his enemies and inspired Bram Stoker's vampire count. Generally speaking, General Lee seemed to think monuments to civil conflict perpetuated civil conflict. Seriously, turning lead into gold? Clearly, he had never heard of tomato soup. Some allege that the ultra-pious priest exorcised the snakes from Ireland, which would have required time travel so he could introduce them there in the first place. In fact, as Live Science revealed, there aren't even any unreliable accounts of his blood-drinking. Kali Ini Admin Akan Membagikan Sebuah Informasi Mengenai Respected Historical Figures Who Were Actually Terrible People , Semoga Bermanfaat Despite this enduring appeal, since the 12th century CE,¶ the question of authorship has been explored and the predominant historical opinion now regarding Sun Tzu as a legendary figure. From Nobel Prize winners to the authors of great literary works, the inability to spell correctly has plagued some of history's most influential people. The good guys are great, the bad guys get hate, and most remaining details disappear or get distorted. As a result, he literally walked around with sacks of apple seeds that bore largely inedible fruit. The truth was finally revealed in the 1980s, when in an attempt to change publishers Adams claimed she was the original creator and author; in response, Benson was called to testify regarding her earlier role and function to contradict Adam’s claim to ownership. Furthermore, Romans were about to be driven out of Britain like Irish snakes, making it intensely tempting to flee. 25 Historical Figures That Were Actually Drop-Dead Gorgeous. For starters, the first mention of Bathory's blood baths didn't appear until 100 years after she died, and its author had an obvious agenda. Man, that's extra wrong. The past can only be reconstructed with the evidence we have available, and there frequently isn't enough to make claims with confidence- … We all know Winston Churchill for his … Carolyn Keene, the listed author of The Dana Girls and Nancy Drew mystery stories published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, was actually a pseudonym designed to encourage sales and maintain ownership of the intellectual copyright of the characters. With the earliest accounts of the Battle of Baden, notably the 6th century De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, absent of any mention of an Arthurian figure, historical investigation has shifted to parallels in the legend with other known individuals and whether an intentional or accidental conflation occurred. goodshit. Well, then it must have been his protege, old-timey British Natalie Portman, right? They might have drawn Betty Boop white, but her history is black. But per The Guardian, it was nothing unusual for pre-homicidal Stalin. Furthermore, linguistic assessments of the text of The Art of War has yielded several possible anachronisms in the ancient work; among these, references to technology and terms not present at the time of writing, such as crossbows, in addition to no records of professional generals as described existing in China until the Warring States period. Emphasizing and exaggerating the hardships faced by troops, including focusing on the supposed terrible conditions of their loved ones back in America, these broadcasts were designed to demoralize the Allies as a form of psychological warfare; in actuality these radio broadcasts were dismally unsuccessful, with studies finding that less than 10% of listeners felt “demoralized” by them and 84% of the men listening did so because they found it “good entertainment”. What's not to admire about Wyatt Earp? But many of these men and women are hardly remembered for their attractive appearance. Kunta Kinte, according to American author Alex Haley, was a Gambian man born in 1750 who was enslaved and transported to Ameria where he died in 1822. As The Independent described, "Ness and his agents, hardly saints, boozed it up as much as anybody. Well, you might think so by looking at these 40 historical figures! miniseries in 1977; described as a watershed moment in American understanding of the history of African slavery by CNN, Kunta Kinte has since become an icon of African heritage worldwide. Although Ludd’s identity was most likely appropriated by the Luddite movement as a known figure in local folklore to attract sympathy and support, if indeed he ever existed, countless unknown individuals matching his story did exist and in sufficient numbers to require the deployment of 12,000 troops to quell their insurrection. Booze didn't have that problem. That same voracious killer also wrote flowery poems as a teen. He later got himself kicked out of a Texas town for passing off a painted rock as gold and trying to sell it. Despite over a millennia of historical writings on the individual known as King Arthur, including a time in which the confidence in his existence was sufficiently strong that the sub-Roman period was colloquially known as “The Age of Arthur”, it remains highly questionable whether such a person ever actually existed; today, the historical consensus has coalesced around the opinion that “one can only say that there may well have been an historical Arthur but the historian can as yet say nothing of value about him”. In fact, if Earp were alive today, he'd likely have a criminal present. Joseph Stalin, a man whose favorite language was murder, stopped at nothing to maintain power. By Staff Writer. Here's an example courtesy of The Telegraph: "The pinkish bud has opened / Rushing to the pale-blue violet / And, stirred by a little breeze / The lily of the valley has bent over the grass." Freeze and sought to set the government ablaze. Furthermore, despite Fofana claiming that “about the time the king’s soldiers came, the eldest of these four sons, Kunta, went away from the village to chop wood and was never seen again”, at the time Kinte was allegedly enslaved his village was already a British trading post where Gambians worked alongside slavers to capture other Africans for transportation; if anything, an individual such as Kinte in the Gambia at the time suggested was far more likely to have been a slaver than a slave. In 1610, the Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory was imprisoned for her unspeakably heinous hygiene. The Assassin’s Creed franchise takes a good deal of liberties with the historical figures it depicts in order to fit it all into their story of Assassins and Templar. If John "Johnny Appleseed" Chapman were alive today, he'd be a child's worst Halloween nightmare, the straight-laced neighbor who hands out nothing but fruit. As a bank-robbing Bolshevik, he allegedly recited poems to his accomplices during getaways. Alchemists: history's dumbest smart people. In desperate need of money to finance her repatriation, Toguri accepted a fake offer of $2,000 for an exclusive interview with “Tokyo Rose”; instead of payment, she was arrested and her statements were broadcast as a confession. The now-entrenched image of Vlad as a vampiric impaler came from the 1972 book In Search of Dracula, in which historians Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally reference a 15th-century German poem as evidence. As part of her imprisonment, Toguri was forced to broadcast and eventually became a host on the Japanese show “The Zero Hour”, making a total of 340 known appearances on the program. 6 Historical Villains Who Were Actually OK Guys 6 Genghis Khan. King James even commended his would-be assassin's "Roman resolution.". So who are these historical “coulda-beens”? Didn't Guy Fawkes blow some building to embers? The fact that his speeches weren't endless streams of groans and swear words is a testament to his unearthly perseverance. 12. Most descriptions of Vlad come from his adversaries, who made him sound like the second-coming of Satan. History is full of famous individuals, each distinguished by their legendary deeds and great works, destined to survive eternally in the sagas of their people in reward for their accomplishments in life. What most don't remember about that November is that Fawkes didn't plan the now-infamous Gunpowder Plot. 2. slew 960 men. Showing Good Citizenship is an awesome thing, as we have learned with our historical figures, and that’s just to name a few! That's right; Johnny Appleseed grew booze orchards. Historical Figures. Mahatma Gandhi, probably one the ten most peaceful men of all time, had a much bigger problem than the British... Winston Churchill. No? Isn’t this why Photoshop was invented in the first place?

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