Historical "facts" and popular representations of histrical figures that are wrong

[Agent Larkin]

Oh boy where to begin?

America wasn't the only country that fought in Vietnam. Australia, New Zealand and others assisted them. Hell the North Vietnamese were scared of the Australians.

Austria was not in the Soviet Bloc during the Cod War. (This one is more of a common misconception. Especially from where I am from.)

The French military actually fought very well against the Germans but were just screwed over by bad leadership and the monster that was the French military bureaucracy.

The Dutch probably could have held out against the Germans for considerably longer if their government had not folded.

 

[GrimTuesday]

Just to weigh in on this whole Hitler debate, Hitler was a good leader in a sense, however in other ways he was complete shit. When it came to giving speeches, he was a great orator, who's speeches were able to inspire millions of people[footnote]It should be noted that when he started, he was speaking to a people who had been so beaten down by the economic hardships as well as the absolute devastation of national moral with the loss of WWI and the near decimation of the German people that pretty much any good speaker would have been able to inspire them if they were able to find the correct scapegoat for the pent up rage that the German people had.[/footnote], however, almost all his polices were geared towards starting to push Germany's weight around and creating a sense of nationalism that had been severely diminished. The main reason for the success of Nazi Germany was because of all the preparation for war.

Another thing is people think that Martian Luther was somehow a nice guy who just wanted to stop the exploitation of the peasantry by the Catholic Church. In reality he was a total dick, and a power hungry dick at that, who hated the Jews, thought women should be subservient, and all manner of bigotry.

 

[C. Cain]

So let's just throw genetics out the window, shall we? -_-

Hardly. I'm actually very fond of genetics. To the point that I'm well aware that there's no such thing as predestination. Predispositions, on the other hand, account only for so much.

Consider this - cloning research has shown that temperament and personality can differ wildly in cloned animals. The same is true for naturally occurring twins. The expression of genetic patterns is not set in stone. It's dependent on the organism's immediate environment. Even more so if you take epigenetics into account.

This is especially true for complex learned behavioural patternsAs opposed to innate behaviour.. Environmental factors and experience are paramount for what we call "personality". So while one's genes are responsible for the malleability of an individual's personality it's the environment that does the actual shaping.

 

[Eddy-16]

Hitler did not invent the Nazi party, nor was he one of the early members he was like the 600th or something.

Most velociraptors were actually about the size of turkeys and had feathers.

The pyramids were originally white with gold capstones, the gold was stolen over the years and the white rock was eroded.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

People are the product of their environment. You are proposing to change the environment that spawned Hitler beyond recognition.

So let's just throw genetics out the window, shall we? -_-

Genetics IS environment.

wut

Seriously, what? Is that a typo? What you just said makes no sense at all. It's called nature vs. nurture, not... nature vs. itself.

Think about what he's saying - the system the individual is thrown into determines his or her actions. Surely the genes are part of this system.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

I could be completely wrong, but I do seem to remember the thing about people being shorter in the past not being completely correct. The lower classes would have been, but the actual knightly class weren't, lots of them were pretty brutish dudes because they'd been trained for most of their lives. The impression is given because lots of suits of armour we see around today are actually only ornamental, made in 3/4 scale to show of the workmanship better.

 

[Baron_Rouge]

That modern psychology was founded by Sigmund Freud or that his theories are still relevant to this day. He didn't and they're not. Freud's lasting contribution to modern psychology is popularizing it and some of his counseling methods.

Exactly! As a psychology student, it gets rather frustrating...we generally only learn about him for history's sake, his methods were about as scientific as astrology.

Also, Napoleon was an average height for his era.

 

[doggy go 7]

America is responsible for winning World War II/America had nothing to do with winning World War II.

That's right, those are both false. Britain was holding out against Germany and Italy, this is true. Russia dedicated a lot of manpower, and the failed invasion of Russia weakened Germany, also true.

However, Britain didn't have the resources to fight against Japan. Meanwhile, Russia lost a lot of manpower in that failed invasion, so they would have had problems with an attack on Japan as well.

On top of that, without the atomic bombs that the U.S. developed, the back-up invasion plan would have resulted in many more deaths on both sides.

So it's not true that America is the only reason the Allies won World War II, but they were a large help.

It can be safely said that America won the war in the Pacific while the USSR won the war Europe (they were facing 80% of the German forces at any given time).

In fairness the majority of the USSRs weapons and oil and money came from the US. US men may well not have won the war, but US money was a giant factor in it. (I feel I should mention I am English at this point)

 

[Gabanuka]

Hitler did not invent the Nazi party, nor was he one of the early members he was like the 600th or something

Actually he spearheading the rebirth of the party, previously it was named the German Workers Party. Hitler was sent to investigate due to its communist sounding name and eventually he took controller and renamed it, as well as formalizing its ideas and plan.

So he wasn't the origin of the party but he made it what it became.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

People are the product of their environment. You are proposing to change the environment that spawned Hitler beyond recognition.

So let's just throw genetics out the window, shall we? -_-

Genetics IS environment.

wut

Seriously, what? Is that a typo? What you just said makes no sense at all. It's called nature vs. nurture, not... nature vs. itself.

Think about what he's saying - the system the individual is thrown into determines his or her actions. Surely the genes are part of this system.

No, seriously, what? Genetics =/= environment. Your genetics are the things that determine what your brain looks like, how tall you are, what colour your eyes will be, etc. Environment is the culture and the society we are raised in, the way our parents teach us and the things we see. They combine to create the man or woman you are.

Again: nature vs. nurture. It's a thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture

As someone said above, that distinction is outdated by a couple of centuries. Both influence us equally, as a unitary factor and not independently of each other. They are in constant interaction - hence in a loose sense, genetics = environment.