Top 10 Biggest Historical Lies

There is an old saying: the truth will set you free. But we know there are hordes of lying scoundrels all over the world.

Lying has certain rewards like fame, money and power. Sometimes, it may also be used for exacting revenge. History is fraught with forgeries, perjuries, hoaxes and outright lies that is widely believed.

1-The End of the World in 2012

a rogue planet on a 3,600-year orbit is about to enter the inner solar system and visit a catastrophe upon Earth. This threatening planet was discovered by the ancient Mesopotamians, who named it Nibiru.

It was known also to the Mayans, who associated it with the end December 2012 of their “long count” calendar. Although astronomers and space scientists are tracking Nibiru, this information is being kept from the public as part of a worldwide conspiracy.

The story began in 1976, when Zecharia Sitchin wrote "The Twelfth Planet," a book which used Stitchin's own unique translation of Sumerian cuneiform to identify a planet, Nibiru, orbiting the sun every 3,600 years. Several years later,However, Nancy Lieder claimed to be channeling this information from the Zetans, who warned that a worldwide cataclysm would strike the Earth in May 2003.

As it turned out, May 2003 passed with no pole shift or other cataclysms.Yet ,the same story recycled with an end-of-the-world date reset to December 2012.

2-Cleopatra was Egyptian

Cleopatra was born in Egypt, she traced her family origins to Macedonian Greece and Ptolemy I Soter, one of Alexander the Great’s generals. Ptolemy took the reigns of Egypt after Alexander’s death in 323 B.C., and he launched a dynasty of Greek-speaking rulers that lasted for nearly three centuries. Despite not being ethnically Egyptian, Cleopatra embraced many of her country’s ancient customs and was the first member of the Ptolemaic line to learn the Egyptian language.However, The myth that Cleopatra was Egyptian was most likely born from the fact that she presented herself in public as the reincarnation of the Egyptian goddess Isis, and adopted common Egyptian beliefs and manners.

3-The Spanish Flu came from Spain

The Spanish flu pandemic, the same virus as Swine flu, even spread as far as the Arctic and the Pacific islands. First cases were registered in the US and certain European countries before reaching Spain.

Spanish-flu-epidemic-1918-19-an-everett
Initially called the “three day flu,” the sickness killed somewhere from 50 to 100 million people worldwide between March 1918 and June 1920, which equals roughly one third of the population of Europe in those days.

However, the Allies of World War I came to call it the Spanish flu, primarily because the pandemic received greater press attention after it moved from France to Spain in November 1918. Spain was not involved in the war and had not imposed wartime censorship.

4-Van Gogh was poor

Vincent van Gogh is considered the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt, although he remained poor and virtually unknown throughout his life. His real sickness started In February 1888, when he boarded a train to the south of France, moved into the "little yellow house" and spent his money on paint rather than food. He lived on coffee, bread and absinthe, and found himself feeling sick and strange. Before long, it became apparent that in addition to suffering from physical illness, his psychological health was declining; around this time, he is known to have sipped on turpentine and eaten paint!

van Gogh  cut his ear with a razor, and went to the local brothel and paid for a prostitute named Rachel. With blood pouring from his hand, he offered her his ear, asking her to "keep this object carefully.His brother took him into a mental hospital.

on January 7, 1889, van Gogh was released from the hospital. He was alone and depressed. For hope, he turned to painting and nature, but could not find peace and was hospitalized again. He would paint at the yellow house during the day and return to the hospital at night.

On July 27, 1890, van Gogh went out to paint in the morning as usual, but he carried a loaded pistol. He shot himself in the chest, but the bullet did not kill him. He was found bleeding in his room. Van Gogh was taken to a nearby hospital and his doctors sent for his brother who arrived to find his brother sitting up in bed and smoking a pipe. However, they spent the next couple of days talking together, and then van Gogh asked Theo-his brother-, to take him home. On July 29, 1890, Vincent van Gogh died in the arms of his brother.

5-People only use 10% of their brains

What percentage of the brain is used? The multiple-choice answers ranged from 10 percent to 100 percent.

One reason this myth has endured is that it has been adopted by psychics and other paranormal pushers to explain psychic powers. On more than one occasion we have heard psychics tell their audiences, “We only use ten percent of our minds”.However, The argument that psychic powers come from the unused majority of the brain is based on the logical fallacy of the argument from ignorance.

In this fallacy, lack of proof for a position (or simply lack of information) is used to try to support a particular claim. Even if it were true that the vast majority of the human mind is unused (which it clearly is not), that fact in no way implies that any extra capacity could somehow give people paranormal powers.

A 2013 survey by the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research found almost two-thirds of Americans believe we only use 10 per cent of our brains but exactly where the idea comes from is hard to pin down.

Behavioural neurophysiologist Eric Chudler, the executive director of the Centre for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, says the theory was popularised in the early 20th century by psychologist William James in an influential 1907 essay The Energies of Men.

In the same concern,Professor James wrote, "as a rule men habitually use only a small part of their powers which they actually possess and which they might use under appropriate conditions".

6-Edison invented the electric light

Thomas Edison is known as the world’s greatest inventor. His record output 1,093 patents still amazes us, over a century later. Astonishing, except for one thing: he didn’t invent most of them! Four decades before Edison was born, English scientist Sir Humphry Davy invented arc.

In the early 1800s, English inventor Humphry Davy created the first early electric arc lamp ,and during the next several decades scientists such as Warren de la Rue, Joseph Wilson Swan, Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans worked to perfect electric light bulbs or tubes using a vacuum, but were unsuccessful in their attempts to commercialize an efficient electric light bulb.

7-The Unsinkable Titanic

“God himself could not sink this ship!” This quotation, made famous by Cameron’s film, is reputed to have been the answer given by a deck hand when asked if Titanic was really unsinkable.

It seems incredible to us today that anyone could believe that 70,000 tonnes of steel could be unsinkable, but that was exactly what people in 1912 believed.However, this lie are still remembered with reverence today, as their sacrifice emphasized the necessity of transportation safety for decades to come.

8-Newton's apple

Every psychic  lesson about the Gravity have to start as a story of a young man called Newton is sitting in his garden when an apple falls on his head and, in a stroke of brilliant insight, he suddenly comes up with his theory of gravity. The story is almost certainly embellished, both by Newton and the generations of storytellers who came after him.

It is one of the most famous anecdotes in the history of science.

However, Newton never mentioned the thing with the apple.  Newton’s friend William Stukeley. He published Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life in 1752, becoming one of Newton’s first biographers. Many of the incidences described in the book were recorded much earlier than 1752, including the “apple” story which was first documented in 1726, the year Newton died, and then again a year later by Voltaire in his Epic Poetry.

William said in his epic, after dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden, & drank tea under the shade of some appletrees, only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. “Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground,” thought he to him self: occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood: “Why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? Assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths centre, not in any side of the earth. therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the centre. If matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its quantity. Therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple. However, The fake story was told by another guy named John Conduitt who first told the story some 60 years after it supposedly happened.

Even then, he was decisively vague about whether Newton actually saw an apple, or whether the apple is a metaphor that he used to illustrate the idea of gravity for people less intelligent ,and then it virals ,every one read.

9-Slaves Built the Pyramids

The Great Pyramid a true masterpiece and has rightly earned the title of a “Wonder”. It was built with such precision that our current technology cannot replicate it.  Historical analysis shows that the Pyramids were built between 2589 and 2504 BC.

Egypt displayed  newly discovered tombs more than 4,000 years old and said they belonged to people who worked on the Great Pyramids of Giza, putting the discovery forth as more evidence that slaves did not build the ancient monuments.

10-Napoleon Bonaparte Heights

Some people believe that Napoleon’s domineering ambitions were to compensate for being so physically small.

He is chiefly remembered for two things in the English speaking world: being a conqueror of no small ability ,and for being short.

But he was known as a short leader; because of the English language ,and the French language. In the other words, the problem may have been due to a difference in measurements between the English and French speaking words. Napoleon was called Le Petit Corporal (“The Little Corporal”),

However, Napoleon is sometimes described as being 5 foot 2 inches tall, which would definitely make him short for his era. However, there is a strong argument that this figure is wrong, and that Napoleon was actually 5 foot 5-7 inches tall, no shorter than the average Frenchman.