Hitler Firing Off

I found this image all over. Anyone know who made it?

Thanks to recent politics, I've been seeing the same myth cropping up over and over. There are several different versions, but each one has the same central core: that part of Adolf Hitler's control of Nazi Germany rested on the fact that he managed to take the guns away from the German people. 

So did he?

Well. No. He didn't. In fact, he did the opposite. 

Fe Lady

The Iron Maiden. Usually this brings up one of two mental images for most people. One's a band.

That's not the one this post is talking about. 

This is about this one:

This is one you'll hear a lot. Medieval Torture Instrument # 1. The Iron Maiden. 

There's only one problem. It's not medieval. 

Ich Bin Ein Schmeckty

It's one of the few non-girlfriend related instances where the former US president JFK still gets ribbed -- his speech in Berlin on June 26, 1963.

It's said that in his speech he claimed to be a jelly doughnut. 

While I'm pretty sure we all know that he wasn't actually a jelly doughnut, did he actually make such a gaffe? 

Long story short, no. No he did not.

If you'd like the longer version, read on.

The Spanish Flu

After the slog that was researching Custer myths last time, this one is going to be short and simple. 

You may be familiar with The Spanish Flu. Also known as The Great Influenza and/or La Grippe.

If you're not, I'll give you a very quick rundown:

The Spanish Flu was a highly contagious strain of Influenza (aka "the flu") that rampaged around the world starting around March 1918 and ending sometime June 1920. From Mid-1918 to late 1919, the United State's death toll was  675,000 people. [*] World wide estimates start at about 50 million fatalities world wide -- on the low end. [**] Higher estimates are closer to 100 million deaths.

But that's not the myth -- because it most certainly did happen. 

The myth is the name, the "Spanish Flu." 

You might have noticed from the dates that the flu coincided with World War I. This meant a lot of censors in the news media, and the countries involved in what was known then as The Great War didn't report anything about influenza epidemic. 

Spain was neutral in the war, and didn't censor its news. Thus, it was the only large European country reporting the outbreak. Since it was only appearing in Spanish papers, people assumed it was a Spanish disease. For the record, Spaniards  called it "The French Flu." [***]

Yep, they got the blame because they were honest. 

For the record, we still don't know for sure where the strain of influenza came from. The three most likely sources are China, Austria, and Kansas USA. [****]

Enstein's Math Fails

Also, he made pretty Rs.

As a child I believed that math was the study of what, exactly, it takes to break the hearts, minds, and souls of children.

 It nearly killed me to get though Math 111 in University. Never have I studied so hard for a B... and I say that as someone who took a medieval French literature class in French. (In complete honesty, I'm not that bad at math, I just have severe text anxiety and all of my math classes were graded entirely via exam performance.)

So I always derived some comfort from the fact that Albert Einstein had also struggled in math at school. This was, in my young opinion, proof of how messed up the school curriculum of judging one's ability to do something in a high stress environment (and the dreaded "answer as many questions as you can in 5 minutes" mini-quiz torture). His failure was my validation that math as it was taught in school was utterly useless.

You can imagine my disappointment when I learned that Einstein had never actually had any problems with math in school.

Viking Longhorns

Hagar's historical accuracy is Horrible.

Everybody is familiar with the visual image. Horned helmets mean you’re looking at a Viking. Horned helmets and long ships, it’s their thing.

Only without the horned helmets.

I know, I know, is nothing sacred?