| Show MISTAKES OF HISTORIANS Complied for the Globe Dcmocratl The African King Prester John never had an existence There never was sucha person as Pope Joan the socalled female Pontiff Portia did not swallow the burning coals The whole story was certainly an Invention I The stars are not innumerable Less than 6000 are all that can be seen on the clearest night I William Tell did not found theSwiss confederation and the story of Gesler has no historic basis I There is no historic authority for tho < 1 statement that llttle George Washington cut down the cherry tree The everburhiag lamps found in ancient an-cient tombs were as real themouse that gnawed King Solomons staff < r The Martin the Iron Ma3kydid not wear a mask ol iron It was of black velvet secured by steel springs Water does not swarm with animal culaj All forms of life are missing from rain spring water and good well water I The wonderful Damascus blades that cut bars of iron in two were not superior to the Toledo blades made today i The Pharaoh of the Exodus was not I drowned in the Red sea His mummy has ben found the skull split by a bat I tleax Francis I after the battle of Pavia did not say All is lost save honor The expression he used was entirely different I The organ of the Middle Ages which when moved into the sunshine played tunes of itself was a play of the mediaeval fancy I I Csesar did not say Et tu Brute Eye witnesses to the assassination deposed l de-posed that he died fighting but silent 1 like a wolf I The mother of Coriolanus did not intercede inter-cede with her son to spare Rome The story has no better foundation than that I of Horatius Wellington at Waterloo did not say Up guards andat them5 The words were put into his mouth by a lively Eng lish writer Charlemagnes paladins had no existence ex-istence and the history of Charlemagne himself is so clouded by myth as to be utterly unreliable Richard III was not a hunchback but a soldier of fine form some pretention to good looks and great personal strength and courage Wolves were not extirpated in England in the time of Edgar Three Hundred years later rewards were paid by the king for wolf scalps The C Round Tower at Newport is not a castle nor was it built by Danish explorers explor-ers It was a mill erected in the early dava of the colony Sir 01 Isaac Newton was not a smoker although al-though he had the reputation of the smoking philosopher He did not use tobacco in any form Augustus was not the public benefactor he is represented He was the most exacting ex-acting tax collector the Romau world had up to his time ever seen Mucius Scocvola never put his hand in the fire The story is a fabrication of a Roman historian hundreds of years after the supposed time There is no reason to believe that Tar quin insulted Lucretia His power was overthrown in a popular tumult which is the only basis for the story The story of King Arthur and his roundtable round-table is a myth although what purports to be thalround table is still to be seen in a south England town Seneca was not a halfChristian philosopher philos-opher but a grasping moneylender and usurer who died worth over 15000000 Horatius never defended the bridge The story was manufactured t > y the same gifted author who gave the world the account ac-count of Scsavolas heroism Pocahontas did not save the life of John Smith It has been ascertained that this worthy man was the most ablebodied prevaricator his century General Cambronne did not say The I guard dies but does not surrender The words were the invention of a Paris journalist and attributed to him Caesar did not cross the Rubicon it lay on the opposite side of the Italian peninsula penin-sula from the point where he left his own possessions and entered Italy Blondel the harper did not discover the prison of King Richard Richard I paid his ransom and the receipt for it is I among the Austrian archives I The Bridge of Sighs at Venice has no l romance worthy the name Most ol the unfortunates who cross it are petty thieves who are sent to the workhouse Fair Rosamond was not poisoned by Queen Eleanor but after a long residence as n nun in the convent of Gadstow died greatly esteemed by her associates The luminous paintings said to have been common among the Japanese 200 years ago were luminous only in the imagination im-agination of the traveler who invented them Alfred the Great did not visit the Danish Dan-ish camp disguised as a minstrel There is no good reason to believe that he could either play the harp or speak Danish The maelstrom is not a whirlpool which sucks ships down into the depths of the ocean It is an eddy which in fair weather can bo crossed in safety by any vessel Columbus did not foretell an eclipse of I the moon to frighten the natives of I Jamaica into rendering him assistance There was no eclipse of the moon at that time There was probably no such man as Romulus The first historian who mentions men-tions him lived at a distance of time so great as to throw extreme discredit on the Ii i story i I |
