10 Historical Facts Everyone Gets Wrong (That Will Make You Sound Smart At Parties)

“Corsets were not typically tight laced. They were only tight laced by the highly fashionable women, and usually only for particular events or portraits. Corsets were designed to be comfortable. Women wore a cotton layer underneath the corset, so it didn’t rub against the skin. The corset was more like a bra, but instead of using the shoulders to support it, it used the whole torso. Some people claim they are much more comfortable than modern bras. The intense proportions of the past were achieved with Corsets AND padding. Tight lacing was uncommon, but layers of petticoats or hoops or bum rolls or whatever else at the time was very common to give women the trendy body shape at the time.” — yikesemu

“The general public is not aware that classical Greece and Rome had colored paints all over those statues, much less colored dyes in their clothes. Point being, we tend to believe that there was a lot of white in the Classical period, which isn’t actually the case.” — Fortyplusfour

“The image of Roman gladiators fighting to the death is incorrect. While there were many exhibition fights in the arenas where the goal was death, these were not gladiator contests. Prisoners, and the condemned, were thrown out to fight to the death, but not real gladiators. Training a gladiator was an expensive, and lengthy, investment and having them die constantly would be bad for business.” — Sorripto

“The Lady who sued McDonalds didn’t do so frivolously. She received third degree burns from how hot that coffee was, and needed a skin graft. It was quickly found that that location was keeping the coffee well above the temperature you can legally serve a hot drink in a cup at. The fact that most people think this suit was over the temperature of the coffee, and not the debilitating burns that woman received, is one of the PR worlds greatest triumphs. You are not immune to propaganda.” — P41nB0i

“Paul Revere did not run around Massachusetts shouting, ‘The British are coming’ because if he did everyone would look at him like he’d lost his mind. ALMOST EVERYONE IN THE COLONIES WAS BRITISH! He actually said, ‘The Regulars are coming.'” — Kind-Detective1774

“The idea that Vikings (Early Medieval Norsemen) were dirty with shaggy hair and wild beards, who wore leathers and furs. In reality, Vikings were notorious for being very clean by medieval standards (bathing every day and washing their hair). They wore shoulder length, very well combed hair, which they sometimes lightly bleached with potash to accentuate the blond. They wore short, very neat beards and carefully trimmed stache. Later on in the Viking Age, some wore undercut/crewcut kind of a trim, but with longer bangs. Instead of leathers, which they almost NEVER wore, they had woolen clothes in bright colors; with blues and pinks being particularly popular. They almost never wore actual fur, they sold it all, and instead wore ‘fake fur’ made of pulled wool (basically fur rug trims). Instead of crusty men, they were fabulous, clean and neatly fashionable, to the point that the Church chronicles of England note that this excessive dandiness was dangerous in itself, because it helped them lead Christian women astray. (Still of course, they were quite often murderers, slavers, thieves and raiders. Just well-groomed ones.)” — Freevoulous

“Pretty much most of the common public image of the ‘stone age.’ Paleolithic peoples didn’t primarily live in caves. They were used for habitation sometimes, but tents or even relatively permanent huts were probably far more common. ‘Art caves’ like those found in France and Spain often show no signs of habitation at all. In fact, even the name ‘Stone Age’ is misleading. A lot of tools were made from flint or similar material, if available, but that’s just the material that preserves the best. Wood, bone, clay, plant fibres, furs, etc. were also used, they just usually didn’t survive long enough for us to find. It’s likely that South East Asian pre-metallic cultures even used bamboo in a similar way flint and bone was used in Europe.” — SyrusDrake

“Ninjas dressed in all black to stay stealthy in the night or something like that. Ninjas dressed like normal people to blend in, the all black look stemmed from Japanese theatre to make it more obvious to the audience who the ninjas were. If they wore all black it’d be quite obvious and they’d stick out like a sore thumb.” — Darth_Fatass

“So many people completely misunderstand pre-industrial lifespans. The average age of death was 30 not because our bodies wore out faster, but because of how averages are calculated. A lot of people died as children. A much larger chunk of the population died in wars. If you got in an accident, healing without modern medicine was difficult. But for people who reached adulthood, and then avoided violence, injury, and plague, living to be 60 or 70 was pretty normal.” — GenghisCoen

“A stegosaurus never fought a t-rex. They lived millions of years apart . Stegosaurus 144 lived million years ago T rex 65 million years ago. Insane difference. Still almost most every dinosaur related media places them together.” — NLSecondguess