25 history 'facts' that are completely FALSE

Fact from fiction

<p>LANDMARK MEDIA/Alamy ; Collection Christophel/Alamy ; Science History Images/Alamy</p>

LANDMARK MEDIA/Alamy ; Collection Christophel/Alamy ; Science History Images/Alamy

The problem with history is, to state the obvious, that it's already happened. If you're unsure about something, there's no way to go back and check – and almost every historical period is full of gaps, uncertainties and questions that may never be answered. But sometimes historians do know the real truth, only to find that the general public has decided to go a different way, and from Cleopatra to President Kennedy there's a whole range of historical misconceptions that are widely held – and wrong.

Read on the most common historical myths that many people believe. 

President Kennedy told a crowd he was a jelly donut

<p>dpa picture alliance/Alamy</p>

dpa picture alliance/Alamy

In 1963, President John F Kennedy gave one of his best-known speeches (pictured) outside the Rathaus Schoneberg in West Berlin – a direct response to the building of the Berlin Wall and the escalating tensions of the Cold War. Addressing the crowd with his usual solemn dignity, Kennedy ingratiated himself by declaring, in German, "Ich bin ein Berliner" – "I am a Berliner". At which point, the story goes, the crowd tittered, because Kennedy’s language skills did not match his statecraft. He had not said "I am a Berliner". He had said "I am a jelly donut".

President Kennedy told a crowd he was a jelly donut

<p>Landesarchiv Berlin/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain</p>

Landesarchiv Berlin/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

We wish it were true – we really do – but this fun little anecdote is based on a false premise. A Berliner is indeed a type of donut-esque pastry, but the story rests on the idea that Kennedy’s inclusion of the article 'ein' changed the statement’s meaning (pictured here are his phonetic speech notes). The problem is that it just... doesn’t. That is not how the German language works. The word 'Berliner' – the donut, that is – was also not in general use in Berlin at that time. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.

Napoleon was short

<p>Classic Image/Alamy</p>

Classic Image/Alamy

Some political propaganda is so effective that people still believe it 200 years on. It was influential British cartoonist James Gillray who caricatured Napoleon as a short, belligerent, pompous and ridiculous figure, prone to childish temper tantrums.

'Little Boney' actually measured five feet and seven inches (1.68m) – slightly above average for his era – but the image stuck. Napoleon himself saw and despised the cartoons, and was quoted in his later years as saying that Gillray "did more than all the armies of Europe to bring me down".

Napoleon was short

<p>Royal Collection/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain</p>

Royal Collection/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

While we’re busting Napoleonic myths, he also did not shoot the nose off the Great Sphinx while in Egypt, and did not spend the night alone in the Great Pyramid. The recent Ridley Scott film Napoleon did little to dispel his many mythologies. "He came from nothing, he conquered everything", declared the movie poster, above Joaquin Phoenix’s piercing gaze. He came from a family of minor Corsican nobility, and he conquered around 2% of the known world.

 

Greek and Roman statues were white

<p>Alex Segre/Alamy</p>

Alex Segre/Alamy

Today, the white-marble constructions of the classical world represent a popular and particular aesthetic. Neoclassical buildings like London’s Buckingham Palace, the Prado Museum in Madrid and the US Capitol gleam white-hot in the summer sun, while the elegant statues of the Renaissance favoured form over colour – in supposed homage to their Greek and Roman forebears. White marble remains a status symbol thanks to its classical connotations: grand yet graceful, opulent yet austere.

Greek and Roman statues were white

<p>Adam Eastland/Alamy</p>

Adam Eastland/Alamy

It's all rather ironic, because the great works of the classical canon were originally brightly coloured – perhaps too brightly coloured for many modern tastes. Vibrant shades abounded even on stern busts of Roman emperors and the intricate friezes of the Parthenon.

Fast-forward two millennia and the paintwork has long since faded, giving rise to a range of colourless copycats that would have left the Romans cold. Here we see the famous Augustus of Prima Porta statue depicting Rome's first emperor, alongside a replica with rich red robes and patterning.

Great Britain stood alone against the Nazis

<p>Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Getty Images</p>

Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Getty Images

Between the surrender of France in 1940 and Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Britain technically stood alone against the Nazis – but the word 'alone' is so misleading it might as well be false. At that time the British Empire covered nearly a quarter of the globe, and a mixture of carrot and stick saw men and munitions pour in from Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and beyond. India mobilised two and half million soldiers, the largest volunteer army ever assembled, while a thousand men from the Cayman Islands joined the Royal Navy – equivalent to roughly two-thirds of the adult male population.

Great Britain stood alone against the Nazis

<p>H F Davis/Getty Images</p>

H F Davis/Getty Images

With Nazi strategists readying invasion plans and the Luftwaffe raining fire on London, the British people must have felt very isolated. Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches certainly drew on this spirit of gutsy defiance – "we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be" – and for a few months the situation looked grim. But the popular image of Britain as a plucky David standing alone against the Nazi Goliath was never accurate – even in its darkest hours.

Ferdinand Magellan was the first person to sail around the world

<p>ClassicStock/Alamy</p>

ClassicStock/Alamy

Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan is famous for exactly one thing – being the first person to circumnavigate the globe. His achievement has rung down the centuries, and to date Magellan has lent his name to a NASA spacecraft, two dwarf galaxies, countless cruise liners and container ships, the straits around the southernmost tip of South America and a species of penguin – the Magellanic penguin.

This lofty reputation is not entirely unearned. He set sail under the Spanish flag with a fleet of five ships in September 1519, and one of those ships, the Victoria, crawled back into port at Seville in 1522, having rounded the world in two years and 351 days.

 

Ferdinand Magellan was the first person to sail around the world

<p>Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images</p>

Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

There was just one problem: Magellan wasn't on board. The treacherous expedition had been gutted by starvation, desertion, mutiny, hostile encounters with natives and above all scurvy – the perpetual sailor's disease. Magellan himself was killed in battle on the Philippines (his body was never recovered), and only 18 of his 270-strong crew made it back to Spain under the command of Juan Sebastián Elcano – the actual first man around the world. Magellan died thinking he'd failed, and would find his modern reputation gratifying, baffling and amusing.

Vikings wore horns on their helmets

<p>Wolfmann/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0</p>

Wolfmann/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0

A stalwart of HBO shows and children’s birthday parties, the horned Viking helmet is at once both instantly recognisable and utterly mystifying.

Once you know that Vikings didn’t wear them – and they didn’t, the trope emerged in the 19th century – it’s hard to understand why they ever would. Horns serve no purpose in combat besides weighing down the wearer and sometimes getting caught in trees, and would have posed a needless challenge for 8th to 10th-century blacksmiths. Only two intact Viking helmets have ever been found (pictured), and both are conspicuously smooth-sided.

Vikings wore horns on their helmets

<p>Wikimedia Commons/Public domain</p>

Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

Away from headwear, some Viking stereotypes are gratifyingly accurate. They did indeed travel in wooden longboats with lines of oarsmen assisted by a single sail. They did indeed wield round wooden shields and fearsome battle axes (swords were upper class weapons). And they did indeed pillage settlements across Europe with a targeted savagery that inspired fear everywhere from Asia Minor to Ireland.

But they did not drink from the skulls of their enemies (because ew), and nor did they boast a class of frenzied berserker warriors who charged into battle without any clothes.

Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake"

<p>Palace of Versailles/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain</p>

Palace of Versailles/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

Poor Marie Antoinette. As if being publicly beheaded wasn’t bad enough, she’s now gone down in history as a byword for greed, callousness and excess, thanks mostly to a line of dialogue that is, at best, a mistranslation. The notorious phrase reads "Qu’ils mangent de la brioche", and while brioche bread was considered a luxury in 18th-century France, it’s hardly the Victoria sponge so often imagined by modern minds.

More importantly – she never said it. The phrase is drawn from Confessions, a work by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau which was written 24 years before the French Revolution when Antoinette was 11 years old.

Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake"

<p>Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy</p>

Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy

Antoinette was viscerally hated in her era, but modern historians take a kindlier tone. She was a convenient lightning rod for French frustration – foreign, female, royal – even though her unhappy marriage left her with minimal power. Salacious pamphlets libelled her with cruel innuendo, and depicted her as a scheming behind-the-scenes manipulator.

But, references to baked goods aside, her reputation for extravagance was well-earned. She once had an entire farm built in the grounds of Versailles so that she and her attendants could play at being milkmaids. Pictured is Kirsten Dunst in the 2006 film Marie Antoinette.

Medieval people thought the world was flat

<p>Aus fernen Welten by Bruno H. Brugel/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain</p>

Aus fernen Welten by Bruno H. Brugel/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

Medieval societies did think some pretty eyebrow-raising things. Widespread beliefs included that evil spirits lived inside Brussels sprouts, that cats were vessels for Satan and that rubbing yourself with a live chicken could cure plague. But 'flat Earth theory' – still occasionally believed today – was old hat even before the beginning of the Dark Ages.

Ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras was the first to argue that the world was round in around 500 BC, with fellow countryman Aristotle confirming his findings 150 years later. Fast-forward another century and Greek astronomer Eratosthenes had measured Earth's circumference – and got it right within a few miles.

Medieval people thought the world was flat

<p>Associated Press/Alamy</p>

Associated Press/Alamy

We don't know what Fred the feudal farmer thought about the shape of the Earth, but, in the words of historian Jeffrey Burton Russell, "no educated person in the history of Western civilisation from the 3rd century BC onwards believed that the Earth was flat".

Pictured here is a replica of the Erdapfel – the oldest surviving globe constructed by Martin Behaim in 1492. Fittingly, that's the same year Columbus sailed for America, and perhaps the most prevailing part of this myth is that he'd set out to prove the Earth was round. It's true that Columbus was trying to reach East Asia, but he was solely seeking a new trade route.

Castles poured boiling oil off their battlements

<p>GRANGER - Historical Picture Archive/Alamy</p>

GRANGER - Historical Picture Archive/Alamy

Even by the standards of medieval warfare, sieges were brutal affairs. Attackers would bombard ramparts with complex siege engines like trebuchets and ballistae, tunnel beneath fortifications to undermine their foundations, and set up perimeters to starve out garrisons over months or even years.

Defenders would fire crossbow bolts through arrowslits, dig ditches to hamper ladders and siege towers, and construct tunnels of their own to maintain their crucial water supply. There aren’t many things that didn’t happen during medieval sieges, but pouring boiling oil from the battlements – a Hollywood favourite – was exceedingly rare.

Castles poured boiling oil off their battlements

<p>Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy</p>

Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

Oil was valuable, difficult to use and usually in short supply, so it would have been an expensive and cumbersome addition to a fortress’s arsenal. As a general rule, ancient and medieval warfare was a lot less elaborate than pop culture would have you believe, particularly during sieges when resources were scarce. Why bother raiding your depleted kitchens for cooking oil when you could simply scald your enemy with boiling water, or, better still, clonk them on the head with a rock?

 

Gladiator contests were fought to the death

<p>Livius.org/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain</p>

Livius.org/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

Two heavily armed fighters locked in a single battle before a crowd baying for blood – it can be hard to see how gladiatorial combat wouldn’t end in death. But the life of a gladiator was not always nasty, brutish and short.

Too much death was bad for business: if you were going to put on a good show you needed fighters that were well-trained and well-equipped, and a high fatality rate meant a poor return for promoters and investors. Gladiators may have fought to wound rather than kill, and the fate of defeated fighters was left up to the crowds. A successful gladiator could become a celebrity – with portraits in public places and even product endorsements.

Gladiator contests were fought to the death

<p>Teo Moreno Moreno/Alamy</p>

Teo Moreno Moreno/Alamy

Some modern estimates suggest that only one in 10 gladiatorial contests ended with death, and enough victories in the arena could earn an enslaved gladiator his freedom – symbolised by the bestowing of a wooden sword. It was Roman author Juvenal who famously wrote that "bread and circuses" were the only things necessary to keep the common people from revolt. And it’s hard to maintain a steady supply of circuses if you keep killing all the clowns.

The Taj Mahal’s builders were mutilated

<p>Michele Falzone/Alamy</p>

Michele Falzone/Alamy

Called 'a teardrop on the cheek of time' by Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, the Taj Mahal is world-renowned for the transcendent beauty not only of its architecture, but its backstory. Built by heartbroken Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, the Taj is a symbol of enduring love and beauty that was always intended to ring down the centuries. So determined was he that no future monument should ever rival its beauty that Shah Jahan cut off the hands of each of the 20,000 labourers who worked on the site.

The Taj Mahal’s builders were mutilated

<p>history_docu_photo/Alamy</p>

history_docu_photo/Alamy

It’s easy to see why this mix of high romance and unspeakable cruelty appeals to storytellers, but it is just that – a story.

Unfortunately, mass mutilations do appear elsewhere in the historical record. In the 13th century, some Mongol conquerors kept track of their victims by severing their right ears, and then counting them up in large piles. Byzantine emperor Basil the Bulgar-Slayer (pictured), meanwhile, is thought to have blinded up to 15,000 Bulgarian prisoners in AD 1014, leaving just one man in every hundred with his sight so he could lead the others home.

The Aztecs thought Hernan Cortes and the conquistadors were gods

<p>piemags/rmn/Alamy</p>

piemags/rmn/Alamy

History is written by the winners, and perhaps nowhere is this truer than 16th-century Mexico. The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs is prime myth-making territory, as most of our sources are self-aggrandising retrospectives by victorious conquistadors describing events that happened deep in the jungle. A profound sense of cultural and religious superiority oozes from these accounts, obscuring the customs and perspectives of the defeated Aztecs, many of whom did not live to tell their tales.

The Aztecs thought Hernan Cortes and the conquistadors were gods

<p>IanDagnall Computing/Alamy</p>

IanDagnall Computing/Alamy

Chief among these myths is the idea that the Aztecs thought the Spanish were deities – specifically the prophesied return of the creator god Quetzalcoatl (pictured). This notion was cooked up by Franciscan friars in the late-1500s, and is absent even from most Spanish sources. Even Cortes himself – the leader of the conquistadors, and one of history’s least modest individuals – makes no mention of it.

Einstein failed maths at school

<p>Wikimedia Commons/Public domain</p>

Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

It’s comforting to think that misunderstood genius might lie dormant within us all, and the claim that Einstein failed maths as a child has provided solace to generations of underachieving schoolkids. There’s a grain of truth here – in 1895 Einstein took and failed an entrance exam to study electrical engineering in Zurich aged 16 – but he always excelled at maths and science and had taught himself geometry by the time he turned 12. He earned a PhD in 1905 – the same year he published his paper on the special theory of relativity.

Einstein failed maths at school

<p>Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain</p>

Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

This myth began to circulate in newspapers as far back as the 1930s, so Einstein (pictured, left) had the pleasure of personally dispelling it. "Before I was 15 I had mastered differential and integral calculus," he quipped. We’re not claiming the education system always gets the best out of promising pupils, but if you failed maths at school the Nobel Prize for physics will likely continue to elude you.

Julius Caesar was emperor of Rome

<p>Franc-o/Shutterstock</p>

Franc-o/Shutterstock

Julius Caesar is one of history’s main characters – a military and political leader with an astonishing sense of his own innate destiny. Shakespeare wrote that he sat "bestride the narrow world like a Colossus", and he certainly did some pretty imperial things.

He subjugated Gaul (France) with a ruthlessness that has been compared to genocide, quite literally changed time by instituting the 365-day calendar, and was brutally assassinated by Roman elites on the steps of the Senate – classic emperor behaviour. But although Caesar was Rome’s first emperor – it wasn’t Julius.

Julius Caesar was emperor of Rome

<p>GRANGER - Historical Picture Archive/Alamy</p>

GRANGER - Historical Picture Archive/Alamy

Julius Caesar oversaw the dying days of the Roman Republic – a democracy spearheaded by two elected consuls who were limited to one-year terms. Caesar became consul in 59 BC, and used a mix of military victories and backroom deals to accumulate a frightening amount of power. In 44 BC he was declared ‘dictator for life’ and was promptly murdered by a group of senators, whose own ambitions aligned with concerns that Caesar wished to make himself king.

It was Augustus Caesar – Julius’s great-nephew and adopted son – who emerged victorious from the civil wars that followed, and installed himself as the first emperor of an exhausted Roman state.

The iron maiden was a medieval torture device

<p>Chris Hellier/Alamy</p>

Chris Hellier/Alamy

The iron maiden has entered folklore as one of the cruellest methods of torture to emerge from the Middle Ages – and that’s a crowded field. An upright casket akin to a sarcophagus adorned with rows of inward-facing spikes, one can only imagine the horrors that awaited its victims in windowless medieval torture chambers.

But imagining is all we can do, as the iron maiden is a late-18th-century fabrication – a myth concocted to make the Dark Ages seem even darker. The first iron maidens were in fact cobbled together in the 19th century and passed off as historic artefacts in museums.

The iron maiden was a medieval torture device

<p>ZUMA Press Inc/Alamy</p>

ZUMA Press Inc/Alamy

We’re quite relieved that no poor prisoner had to end their days becoming a spike sandwich in an airless metal box. But for the more morbid among you, there are plenty of real torture methods that were meted out liberally in medieval dungeons. The rack was a torture chamber staple, and stretched out victims until their joints dislocated, often leaving them unable to walk. So too were thumbscrews, vicious little metal contraptions that would crush a person’s fingers and thumbs.

Christopher Columbus discovered America

<p>North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy</p>

North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy

Perhaps the final boss of all history myths, this misconception is so ingrained that the United States has an entire federal holiday celebrating it. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and made landfall in the Bahamas on behalf of the Spanish crown.

He never actually set foot on the North American continent, but Viking explorer Leif Erikson did nearly 500 years previously, with his landing in modern-day Canada recorded in the semi-mythical Vinland sagas. In the 1960s this legend was confirmed by the discovery of L’Anse aux Meadows, a ruined Viking settlement on the Newfoundland coast.

Christopher Columbus discovered America

<p>IanDagnall Computing/Alamy</p>

IanDagnall Computing/Alamy

If you want to go back even further, the first people to discover America were early humans from Asia, who reached North America by land when the continents were still connected and from whom all Native Americans are descended. Columbus (pictured) was certainly important – his voyages kicked off the rapid colonisation of the New World – but even he didn’t think he’d discovered America. He’d set out to find an alternative route to East Asia, and maintained until his dying breath that that’s what he’d done.

World War I was the deadliest war in history in its time

<p>Buyenlarge/Getty Images</p>

Buyenlarge/Getty Images

It seems entirely intuitive that the first ever 'world war' would be bigger and bloodier than any that came before. The conflict, which set large swathes of the world ablaze between 1914 and 1918, pitted Jamaicans against Turks, Kenyans against Germans and Bulgarians against Brits.

Nicknamed 'the great war' and 'the war to end all wars', World War I claimed 15 to 22 million lives, and only nine countries managed to remain neutral throughout. How could any regional or continental conflict compete with a war that touched every corner of the globe?

World War I was the deadliest war in history in its time

<p>Niday Picture Library/Alamy</p>

Niday Picture Library/Alamy

In fact, when the armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, it brought to an end only the second deadliest conflict in history, and the deadliest was not only regional – it was fought entirely within one country.

The Taiping Rebellion – a complex conflict between the revolutionary Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the ruling Qing Dynasty – brought unfathomable destruction to China between 1850 and 1864. Battles and massacres killed many, but plague and famine killed many more, and analysts estimate a death toll of up to 30 million. Both conflicts would be put firmly in the shade by World War II, with a death toll anywhere from 40 to 85 million.

The Brothers Grimm wrote many famous fairytales

<p>Quagga Media/Alamy</p>

Quagga Media/Alamy

If you've ever watched a Disney movie, you've engaged with the work of the Brothers Grimm. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, The Princess and the Frog and Tangled all come from their literary stable, as do Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel, which have had live-action treatments in recent years. The only fairytale writers anyone has ever heard of – perhaps alongside Hans Christian Andersen, of The Little Mermaid fame – the two brothers got their own starring roles in the 2005 Terry Gilliam film The Brothers Grimm, in which they were played by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger.

The Brothers Grimm wrote many famous fairytales

<p>Tim Graham/Getty Images</p>

Tim Graham/Getty Images

But the brothers – Jacob and Wilhelm – weren't writers so much as folklorists. They didn't compose the tales they told, but collected them – bringing together German morality tales that often predated them by centuries.

First published in 1812, Grimms' Fairy Tales (pictured) quickly became a cultural touchstone for the German people, extolling the virtues of courage, integrity and – pointedly – obeying your parents. These versions are markedly darker than their modern retellings. For instance, in Cinderella, the ugly sisters chop off parts of their feet in a vain attempt to fit into the glass slipper, before having their eyes pecked out by pigeons.

The Great Wall of China is visible from space

<p>Craig Hallewell/Alamy</p>

Craig Hallewell/Alamy

This is one of those myths that falls apart almost as soon as you think about it. The Great Wall of China is about 15 feet (5m) wide at the top and 21 feet (6m) wide at the base – roughly equivalent to the length of a large car. If that's not evidence enough, China's first man in space Yang Liwei confirmed to interviewers in 2003 that the wall was nowhere to be seen. A more interesting question is where this myth came from – particularly its even-more-absurd variations that the wall is the only monument visible from space, and that it is visible from the Moon.

The Great Wall of China is visible from space

<p>maps4media/Getty Images</p>

maps4media/Getty Images

'Visible from space' is a slightly misleading idea – a lot of things are visible from a low enough orbit, with a good enough camera, on a clear enough day – but a handful of structures can be seen from 62 miles (100km) above Earth with the naked eye. The man-made islands of Palm Jumeirah in Dubai stand out clearly against the dark sea, while NASA has confirmed that China's vast Three Gorges Dam (pictured) can also be clearly spied. Same goes for the sprawling Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah and most major cities – particularly at night.

Cleopatra was Egyptian

<p>Peter Horree/Alamy</p>

Peter Horree/Alamy

This is a controversial subject, but we can say with confidence that Cleopatra was not an ancient Egyptian in the way that many imagine. When the Greek king of Macedon, Alexander the Great, conquered much of the Mediterranean and Near East in the 330s and 320s BC, he kickstarted a three-century period of Greek-speaking dominion known as the Hellenistic Age.

He left no immediate heirs – his last words were supposedly, "to the strongest" – and his empire splintered after his death. Egypt was quickly scooped up by one of his Macedonian generals, Ptolemy, who established a dynasty that would rule until the age of Rome.

Cleopatra was Egyptian

<p>Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy</p>

Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy

Twelve generations later, Cleopatra claimed the throne in 51 BC as co-ruler with her underage brother. She was ethnically Macedonian-Greek (the dynasty made sure of this with generations of in-breeding), and her first language was Greek – though she was perhaps the only Ptolemaic ruler to bother learning the local Egyptian tongue too. She was born in Egypt and ruled it by birthright – whether that makes her 'Egyptian' is up for debate – but she was not an ancient pharaoh in the mould of Tutankhamun or Ramesses the Great.

Rome was one of history’s largest empires

<p>Tataryn/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0</p>

Tataryn/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0

The Roman poet Virgil described Roman dominion as "empire without end", but in fact its limits were pretty well-defined. At its largest in AD 117, the empire’s borders cut a line across central and eastern Europe, running through the modern-day countries of Germany, Austria, Romania and Hungary. In North Africa, the Romans controlled the Mediterranean coast but rarely ventured into the Sahara, while in the east their mastery ended with the deserts of Arabia and the armies of the Parthians in modern-day Iran.

Rome was surely one of history’s most influential civilisations, but for sheer size its 1.9 million-or-so square miles (5 million sq km) put it comfortably outside the top 20.

Rome was one of history’s largest empires

<p>FALKENSTEINFOTO/Alamy</p>

FALKENSTEINFOTO/Alamy

In case you were wondering, the British, Mongol and Russian empires were history’s largest – covering 26%, 18% and 17% of the world’s land respectively – but far less famous dominions also outrank Rome. The sprawling grasslands of the Xiongnu confederation, the rapid conquests of the Umayyad Caliphate, the ancient imperium of Persia and the colonial possessions of the Portuguese all covered more ground. Rome wasn’t even the largest empire of its day (thanks to the Chinese Han dynasty), and would be smaller than six modern-day countries.

The pyramids were built by slaves

<p>Bettmann/Getty Images</p>

Bettmann/Getty Images

The ancient Egyptians were enthusiastic practitioners of slavery. Victory in war often meant the wholesale enslavement of captives, while the Egyptian economy rose and fell on the back of forced labour.

In the biblical book of Exodus, 'pharaoh' (often held to be Ramesses the Great) enslaves the Israelites for many years before Moses leads them out of bondage and into the wilderness. The pyramids were built more than a millennium before these purported events, but the Bible has still helped solidify the image of loincloth-clad slaves heaving heavy stone blocks under the gaze of whip-cracking foremen.

The pyramids were built by slaves

<p>Reinhard Dirscherl/Alamy</p>

Reinhard Dirscherl/Alamy

That slaves built the pyramids was, for many years, assumed. But scholars now agree that the monuments were instead built by teams of paid workmen. A purpose-built village unearthed near the site boasts spacious dormitories, tombs furnished with grave goods and the remnants of prime cuts of meat. Such luxuries would never have been wasted on mere slaves; pyramid-building, it seems, was a respected profession.

Quarry workers, mortar mixers, masons and more worked together in gangs of 1,000 or so, often named after the pharaoh whose pyramid they were preparing. 'The friends of Khufu' and 'the drunkards of Menkaure' have both been immortalised in millennia-old graffiti.

Pirates regularly buried their treasure

<p>IanDagnall Computing/Alamy</p>

IanDagnall Computing/Alamy

There are only a handful of real-life examples of pirates stowing ill-gotten gains underground, and in none of these cases did ‘X’ mark the spot. English privateer and royal favourite Sir Francis Drake buried tonnes of booty on the Panama coast in 1573, but he left armed guards at the site and quickly returned – no map required.

The tale of Captain Kidd (pictured) is slightly more swashbuckling, as he interred a vast hoard on an island near New York in 1699, but it was quickly retrieved by the British and used as evidence in the trial that saw Kidd hang. In general, pirates were not responsible savers, and the idea of setting aside loot as a subterranean rainy-day fund did not occur to the average marauder.

Pirates regularly buried their treasure

<p>Paul Fleet/Alamy</p>

Paul Fleet/Alamy

Buried treasure is a real historical phenomenon, but it necessitates being on dry land so pirates were not its main source. The sort of pirate seen at children's parties originates in the 1883 novel Treasure Island, and while pet parrots and Jolly Roger flags do have genuine precedent, treasure maps, eyepatches, peg legs, pirate slang and walking the plank are all primarily fantasy.

And if you were to stumble across a long-lost pirate hoard, the so-called 'treasure' might disappoint you. Pirates looted anything they could sell – golden doubloons, yes, but also perishables like spices, sugar, rum, flour and tobacco.

Betsy Ross designed the American flag

<p>Devin Cook/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain</p>

Devin Cook/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

The stars and stripes, the star-spangled banner, Old Glory – today the United States flag is one of the world’s most recognisable symbols. Its iconic design has long been attributed to Philadelphia seamstress Elizabeth 'Betsy' Ross, so much so that the Post Office Department issued a commemorative stamp in 1952 to mark the bicentennial of her birth.

The story goes that Ross was hired by George Washington to embroider his shirt and ruffles, and he was so impressed with her skill that he set her to work sewing the new nation's emblem. It was Ross's idea, supposedly, to use five-pointed stars instead of Washington's preferred six.

Betsy Ross designed the American flag

<p>Chronicle/Alamy</p>

Chronicle/Alamy

It sounds like an old wives tale, and it is – but it comes with a surprisingly specific historical source. In 1870, William Canby – who just happened to be Ross's grandson – gave a speech to the Pennsylvania Historical Society recounting this piece of family lore. Presented in the aftermath of the Civil War at a time of heightened patriotism, the story stuck and still thrives in the popular imagination.

Modern historians have rubbished Canby's claims, pointing instead to one of the Founding Fathers, Francis Hopkinson (pictured), who left a years-long paper trail pursuing payment for his work on the design.

Captain Cook discovered Australia

<p>neftali/Shutterstock</p>

neftali/Shutterstock

Nope – no he didn't. Captain James Cook first set foot on Australian soil on 29 April 1770 at Botany Bay, where he and his crew stayed for eight days. He had already circumnavigated New Zealand (proving that it was not part of a great southern continent), and became the first European to encounter Australia's eastern coastline before heading home via the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope. His visit kickstarted the British colonisation of Australia, which began in earnest with the arrival of the First Fleet 17 years later.

Captain Cook discovered Australia

<p>Hulton Archive/Getty Images</p>

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The most obvious stumbling block here is that Australia had been occupied by humans for millennia, but even when only including Europeans, Cook was 150 years too late. The first European to land in Australia was Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon in 1606 (admittedly, he thought he was landing in New Guinea), while the first to spend the night was Francisco Pelsaert in 1629. Cook was first to several coastal regions, but since Australia boasts around 16,000 miles (26,000km) of shoreline, that's less landmark than it sounds.

Read on to discover the most common misconceptions about the history of the US