Historical "facts" and popular representations of histrical figures that are wrong

[tmande2nd]

Boudica was not a grand heroine out to save Britain.

She was a violent warlord who slaughtered countless civilians, and got her own army destroyed in her stupidity.
Yes the Romans were not better then her, but honestly she was a terrible person.

She burned three towns to the ground, and killed a lot of people.

I hate it when people present her as some noble hero or some feminist icon.
She got more people killed through her own blind stupidity then the Romans could really kill.

I dont think the Romans were good either, but honestly she was a complete failure as a leader.

 

[thegamermn]

The movie 300 is a thorn in my side. As someone who had looked into the battle of Thermopylae, it got a little bit frustrating with the poor representation of the phalanx, giving the persians elephants, gunpowder, that massive guy, the last stand only containing 300 Spartans (when in reality, there was around two thousand people in the last stand), no mention of Admiral Themistocles, the reasoning for Spartans not sending the full force and the representation of Spartan training as being solely about strength, when in fact they were trained to win at all costs (the right of passage was to murder a slave without being caught, requiring stealth over brute force).

Annoyingly, there are people I know who believe that film was accurate.

The way i like to view 300: It's being told by an unreliable narrator to try and make the spartans with him have a morale boost. Any historian worth their salt knows that alot of the stuff in the film 300 is total bullocks: It wasn't just the 300 as various other nations from Greece also leant aid (The Athenians were present and leant naval aid if i remember), Ephialtes was not a Spartan nor deformed, and Xerxes was not even present when the 300 spartans and others died at Thermopylae...he'd run back home under the pretense of a "Vision". The ephors as well were NOT inbred seers either, that one seriously pissed me off.

OT: Did you know that canons were actually apart of Middle ages warfare and were introduced in the 14th century? Shame Hollywood keeps forgetting that.

I feel the need to point this out briefly: 300 was a movie based on a graphic novel. It was never meant to be presented as historical facts, It is a film representing one man's largely fictional story that just happened To be his own little imaginary version of the battle of Thermopylae.

OT: Yeah...The glorification of Edison has always irritated me greatly. He was a colleague of Tesla and then they had a disagreement on which way their creations should be taken. Edison then proceeded to run a smear campaign that essentially forced out Tesla.

 

[Daveman]

The movie 300 is a thorn in my side. As someone who had looked into the battle of Thermopylae, it got a little bit frustrating with the poor representation of the phalanx, giving the persians elephants, gunpowder, that massive guy, the last stand only containing 300 Spartans (when in reality, there was around two thousand people in the last stand), no mention of Admiral Themistocles, the reasoning for Spartans not sending the full force and the representation of Spartan training as being solely about strength, when in fact they were trained to win at all costs (the right of passage was to murder a slave without being caught, requiring stealth over brute force).

Annoyingly, there are people I know who believe that film was accurate.

Not to mention the whole paedophilia part of the culture being entirely ignored.

Though to be fair to the movie, it isn't about being historically accurate in any way and is purely trying to be faithful to the graphic novel it's based on. Anyone who thinks it is even trying to be historically accurate really needs fewer blows to the head every morning.

 

[Kleingeier]

2) Those of Jewish faith were the largest portion of those put in German concentration camps.

There were actually more Christians placed in the camps. Now the percentage of the whole Jewish community interned was higher, but only due to the fact the there were way more Christians the Jews. (Disclaimer: I do not mean to offend those of Jewish decent/faith. I feel for all those who suffered and died in those horrible places.)

The ingenuousness...it hurts...

That there were more Christians than Jews persecuted doesn't matter quite as much when you consider those Christians weren't interned simply because they were Christians, like the Jews were.

 

[catalyst8]

The claim that the Biblical character of Jesus the Christ is an historical figure is laughable.

With absolutely no primary historical evidence to support his existence he should be considered as real as Krishna, Woden, & Marduk.

Erm

There is substantial evidence to suggest that a holy man called Jesus existed there is even mention of him in plenty of non Christian sources.

I'm an atheist and even I know that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

:/

And that's why Wikipedia's not as good as so many people think, it's hugely unreliable. The author of the article cites publications which, without exception, use intellectual dishonesty to justify their unsubstantiated fancies. Using adjectives like 'respectable', 'serious', & 'competent' as qualifiers for scholar (e.g. 'In recent years, no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' Grant 2004, ref. 7 in the article) is a very old trick used by the dishonest to attempt to discredit their detractors.

The author goes on to erroneously cite Josephus & Tacitus as credible substantiation, obviously without ever having read either of the works being referenced. If he or she had read those works they'd have found that, while there's plenty to substantiate the existence of Christians there's absolutely nothing, not one single thing written there, to substantiate the existence of the Biblical character of the Christ.

Indeed there is so much evidence to refute the existence of that Biblical character (the census of Luke 2.2, historical errors like the Herods & Quirinius in Syria at the wrong time, lack of any contemporary records whatsoever, etc.) that if anything it's hugely unlikely the character described in the New Testament was a real person.

As I said initially, there's no primary historical evidence to support the Christ's existence. Unfortunately by citing unsubstantiated opinion instead of evidence, that Wikipedia article does nothing to change the situation.

 

[Caverat]

Ghandi was openly racist, particularly against those of African descent. He hated when people compared the suffering of Africans to that of his people, because he saw his race as being inherently superior.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

snip

Well Wikipedia was just a convenient choice there is in depth research on the subject. I'm pretty sure there is even a BBC documentary by a respected scholar.

No one is saying that Jesus was the son of God just that he existed as a holy man at that time. If anything the very fact that he is mentioned so much in secondary sources suggests that someone like him must have existed. There's no smoke without fire.

The wikipedia articles cites plenty of sources both primary and secondary. Just because it's wikipedia doesn't mean it's made up. I'm sorry for that very unscholarly answer but I'm really tired atm.

 

[aattss]

Muslims have been rather awesome and all until the last couple hundred years (or even sooner). During the dark ages, they would prescribe someone herbs that worked instead of chopping the head open with an axe and salting the brain.

 

[acosn]

Fair point. I'm not saying that the U.S. didn't help out a fair chunk. But Britain was holding out for over two years before we officially joined. One missile hitting isn't proof they couldn't have continued, especially since Britain's navy was absolutely crushing the German navy.

The British navy was only successful because of US aid.

Germany had absolutely no plans to invade the British islands. One of the few things Hitler actually got right about the war was just how difficult it'd be to put boots on the ground out there. The initial aims of the Blitz was quite literally to make the British go away.

The biggest thing the British did was turn US opinion, and absolutely destroy the Luftwaffe. While allied air power wasn't a very potent military asset, in terms of it's ability to destroy logistical elements and production, it was absolutely necessary for the total victory the US wanted so badly.

I think Hitler was a great leader. He did a few things during the 30's that he shouldn't have (like dissolving the SA with a knife and locking up the socialists) but underneath the mess there was a fantastic leader. He gets misrepresented and demonized much more than he might deserve.

If he hadn't come into power during the depression, if the upper class had been slightly more varied in ethnic makeup, if the socialists didn't cave to public pressure and open the door for him... Under different circumstances, Hitler may have been the greatest leader Germany had ever known.

Hitler was an awful leader, and had all the typical traits of a man who got into power by stepping on one too many a man's backs.

What he was good at was public speaking. He knew exactly what to tell the German people who were struggling to get out of the ashes of WW1 after they were honestly expected to both rebuild, and repay France and England for what amounted to an armed conflict fought solely because Germany had the audacity to challenge England's trade empire. And then asking to apologize was kind of sulfur in the wounds.

Unfortunately his methods for dragging Germany out of it's economic depression was effectively war spending and theft- generous estimates put the amount of Germany's war treasury stolen from Jews and other minorities at about a quarter of it- and crushing nearby countries that had neither the means or interest to repel a modernized army.

But the man was both paranoid and an idiot. Did I mention he was a meth head too?

 

[BroJing]

Germany had absolutely no plans to invade the British islands. One of the few things Hitler actually got right about the war was just how difficult it'd be to put boots on the ground out there. The initial aims of the Blitz was quite literally to make the British go away.

Um you mean other then an entire plan, troop schedules and campaign name?

Operation SeaLion was the Nazi plan to launch a full scale invasion of the British Isles, depose the government and replace it with a Nazi one headed by Oswald Moseley (yes, we Brits had home-grown Nazis, or BlackShirts).

Now, according to the British Officer school at Sandhurst it wouldn't have worked:
http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/hobbies/seelowe.txt

But it was still in place and ready to go, it was only the somewhat inexplicable decision to switch Luftwaffe bombing from RAF bases to civilian targets that allowed the RAF to rebuild and redeploy enough aircraft and pilots to fend off the Germans.

In fact, if they had kept on their original plan the RAF would have been almost entirely destroyed.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Well there's all that stuff about Jesus and God and religion in general....

 

[Porygon-2000]

Well there's all that stuff about Jesus and God and religion in general....

No! Bad!

You take that flame bait out of here! No one wants it!

OT: Um... The notion that the US was the only force against the Japanese in the Pacific. Granted they were the biggest, but there were still the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the Dutch and more.

 

[acosn]

Germany had absolutely no plans to invade the British islands. One of the few things Hitler actually got right about the war was just how difficult it'd be to put boots on the ground out there. The initial aims of the Blitz was quite literally to make the British go away.

Um you mean other then an entire plan, troop schedules and campaign name?

Operation SeaLion was the Nazi plan to launch a full scale invasion of the British Isles, depose the government and replace it with a Nazi one headed by Oswald Moseley (yes, we Brits had home-grown Nazis, or BlackShirts).

Now, according to the British Officer school at Sandhurst it wouldn't have worked:
http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/hobbies/seelowe.txt

But it was still in place and ready to go, it was only the somewhat inexplicable decision to switch Luftwaffe bombing from RAF bases to civilian targets that allowed the RAF to rebuild and redeploy enough aircraft and pilots to fend off the Germans.

In fact, if they had kept on their original plan the RAF would have been almost entirely destroyed.

Plans and means are two different things.

How the hell was Germany going to put feet on the ground in the British islands, with the British still fielding a navy no less? You can't just will troops across the English channel.

It's important to remember that Hitler was pretty half-hearted about going to war with Britain in the first place.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Well there's all that stuff about Jesus and God and religion in general....

No! Bad!

You take that flame bait out of here! No one wants it!

But.... but....

Fine....

 

[catalyst8]

Well Wikipedia was just a convenient choice there is in depth research on the subject. I'm pretty sure there is even a BBC documentary by a respected scholar.

I have no doubt there is, however that doesn't change the lack of primary historical evidence.

No one is saying that Jesus was the son of God just that he existed as a holy man at that time. If anything the very fact that he is mentioned so much in secondary sources suggests that someone like him must have existed. There's no smoke without fire.


The wikipedia articles cites plenty of sources both primary and secondary. Just because it's wikipedia doesn't mean it's made up. I'm sorry for that very unscholarly answer but I'm really tired atm.

Please, if you genuinely believe 'The wikipedia articles cites plenty of sources both primary and secondary' to support the Christ character then cite those primary sources, because I've checked & they aren't there - not one. As for 'There's no smoke without fire', surely I don't really need to point out what spurious logic that is do I?

As I've mentioned previously, if one considers the Biblical character as an historic figure, the complete lack of any contemporary evidence is astonishing. In the article you linked the author, again as I've already pointed out, incorrectly cites sources like Tacitus & Josephus which do not corroborate the existence of the Biblical Christ. Not only is he or she incorrectly citing sources, they've obviously never even read them! The Wikipedia article is so amateurish & badly informed it doesn't even qualify as a competently researched tertiary history. I simply can't decide whether it's by deceit or incompetence that the author has produced such a shabby piece of work.

But once again I ask you to substantiate your claim that there are plenty of primary sources & evidence which confirm the existence of the Biblical character of Jesus the Christ; please cite them.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

snip

Playing Dark Souls atm but I will try and put something together later on.x

It is an interesting discussion.