History is bunk, said American industrialist Henry Ford. Now a new book backs him up - with some very surprising examples... - The Vikings never had horns on their helmets
None of the helmets unearthed from Viking archaeological sites have horns.
These appeared as an illustration of Viking headgear only in the 19th century, thanks to Swedish artist Gustav Malmstrom, who used them in an edition of an ancient Scandinavian tale.
Some historians have even doubted the Vikings’ reputation for violence. A 1995 investigation by the BBC Timewatch series poured cold water on the image of the Viking as a deranged pillager.
Professor Janet Nelson, a medieval historian at King’s College, London, said it was difficult to find evidence of specific raids in contemporary accounts.
“In fact, there isn’t a single case of rape,” she told the programme. Instead, the average Viking was more likely to be “a decent, respectable migrant” who was “a little dull”. Anglo-Saxon England, it seems, was invaded by an orderly band of gentle accountants.
- The kilt was an English invention
In 1727, Thomas Rawlinson, an immigrant Lancastrian ironworks owner, wanted a more practical outfit for his Scottish furnace workers than the traditional native dress - a long, flapping, pleated cloak.
The shortened, skirt-like result was safe and comfortable in the heat of the works.
Kilts became a national symbol only when the English banned them after the Scots tried to depose George II in the Jacobite Rising of 1745.
They became associated with the cause of Scottish pretender Bonnie Prince Charlie.
- King Harold wasn’t shot in the eye
The number one date in British history is 1066 - the year of the Battle of Hastings when Harold was killed by an arrow through the eye.
The only problem is that the arrow story was created more than a decade after the battle.
Thirty accounts in Latin, written immediately after the battle, make no mention of it. The accounts of those present, such as the Norman knight William of Poitiers, record Harold being killed by four of William the Conqueror’s knights.
They captured Harold in the melee of the battle, and beheaded and disembowelled him on the battlefield. One even cut off his “leg” - a Norman euphemism for the penis - and carried it away as a souvenir.
The arrow story was introduced 15 years later to convey a symbolic message. An arrow in the eye was the punishment for perjury - the Norman invaders regarding Harold as a perjurer for breaking his promise to back William’s claim to the throne after Edward the Confessor’s death.
The Bayeux Tapestry - which enshrined the arrow myth - was intended to black Harold’s reputation and act as a lesson to anyone contemplating treachery against the new regime.
- The Wild West wasn’t very wild
More people have died in Hollywood westerns than in the real Wild West.
Dodge City, Kansas - described as a hotbed of anarchy in countless books and films - had just five killings in 1878, the most deadly year in the town’s history. The most deaths Tombstone, Arizona, saw in a year was five, too. And the record in Deadwood, South Dakota, was four. Nor is there much evidence that disputes were resolved by shootout duels at high noon. The image appears for the first time in The Virginian, the 1902 novel written by Owen Wister, the father of western fiction.
High noon shootouts were dramatised on Broadway and mythologised in silent films before Gary Cooper starred in the iconic Hollywood classic, High Noon, in 1929.
Red Indians weren’t bloodthirsty, either. Of the 250 000 pioneers who set out across the West between 1840 and 1860, only 362 died in violent clashes with them.
- Columbus didn’t discover America
Christopher Columbus wasn’t the first European to set foot in America. Norse settlers, under the command of intrepid explorer Leif Ericsson, reached Newfoundland in 1000 AD.
In fact, Columbus never set foot on mainland America in any of his four voyages across the Atlantic. His inaugural 1492 trip took him to the Bahamas.
His second voyage (1493 - 96) took him to Dominica in the Caribbean; his third (June - August 1498) even further south to Trinidad; and his final visit (May - June 1502) took him back to the Caribbean, this time to Martinique.
Lady Godiva didn’t take off her clothes
She was immortalised in an Alfred Tennyson poem, but Lady Godiva may not have ridden naked through Coventry Market to protest at taxes levied by her husband, the Earl of Mercia.
While there is evidence to suggest she did at least exist - she was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman in the mid-11th century - there is no contemporary account of the famous ride. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - which is usually reliable as a record of that historical time - is silent. The first record surfaces in 1236, in the writings of chronicler Richard of Wendover.
As with other folklore tales, over the centuries the story acquired romantic additions.
It was a poem by Tennyson in 1842 that popularised the final story. His Godiva, published 800 years after the supposed event, cemented all the elements into the version we know today.
- Waterloo wasn’t won on the playing fields of Eton
So SUPPOSEDLY spoke the Duke of Wellington after his triumph at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, implying it was on Eton’s playing fields that British officers learned the discipline that later served them so well.
But when the Duke of Wellington was a pupil at the school in the 1780s, it didn’t have playing fields. Nor was the Duke said to be at all sporty.
His supposed phrase surfaced only in 1856 - four years after his death and 41 years after the battle - in a book about English politics by a Frenchman, Count Charles de Montalembert.
He appears to have simply chosen the phrase as a decent soundbite.
- Black Death wasn’t caused by rats
Historians have always argued that rats caused the Black Death, which killed 75 million people between 1347 and 1351.
In 2001, researchers at Liverpool University pointed to the fact that communities in the 14th century found the only effective way of dealing with the disease was to put affected individuals into quarantine.
But rats certainly don’t respect quarantines, so the disease must have been transmitted from person to person.
The symptoms - rapid onset of fever, aching and bleeding from internal organs, and red blotches caused by blood under the skin - are classic signs of Ebola-like illnesses, which attack the central nervous system. - Daily Mail