May 26, 2007
Is this old dead duck still circulating?
The story is that a poor farm kid in England Scotland saves a rich kid from drowning, and the rich family offers to pay for college for the poor kid. The poor kid goes to college, and later makes a great discovery, and that discovery later saves the life of a member of the rich family, who goes on to save the world.
Churchill in Tunisia, 1943, visiting New Zealand’s 2nd Division, with Bernard Freyberg, known as Tiny
In various forms I’ve seen this story, that a member of the Churchill family, or Winston Churchill himself, was saved by a member of the Fleming family, or Sir Alexander Fleming himself (the discoverer of penicillin). Then, years later Churchill has a deadly infection, but his life is saved by Fleming’s discovery.
It’s a great story, actually, but it is fabrication from start to finish, laced with famous names, our natural ignorance of some parts of history, and our desire for such coincidences to be true. It’s such a great story that the wrong, hoax version still circulates even after it is so easy to learn that the story is wrong.
The Churchill Centre, in England, has a denial that should be embarrassing to Americans and Christians — they point out it was distributed in the 1950s by churches here.
The story apparently originated in Worship Programs for Juniors, by Alice A. Bays and Elizabeth Jones Oakberg, published ca. 1950 by an American religious house, in a chapter entitled “The Power of Kindness.”
Here are several ways to tell the story is false: Read the rest of this entry »
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
10 Comments | 
Accuracy, Bogus history, History, Hoaxes, Science, Winston Churchill, World War II | Tagged: Accuracy, Alexander Fleming, Bogus history, History, Hoaxes, Science, Winston Churchill, World War II | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
May 11, 2007
Daily Kos I don’t get to daily. But here’s a post I did see that all history teachers ought to read, if only to raise their consciousness about the frauds that plague us every day: Help Fight Fake History that Powers the American Right.
Chris Rodda needs help supporting her research against all the old dogs of history revisionism, and the post from Troutfishing goes through most of the dishonor roll: D. James Kennedy, David Barton, Catherine Millard, and Chuck Norris
Rodda’s blog series can be found at Talk2Action.
My interest in getting history done right was kindled when high school teachers mentioned early versions of David Barton’s work — stuff that showed up on tests, though anyone who had read our texts and had a passing knowledge of real history would have known was in error. As a staffer in the U.S. Senate I had to got to read letters from people who bought the Barton tales lock, stock, and monkey barrel, and who consequently felt that everyone else on Earth was lying to them.
I wish Rodda luck.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
4 Comments | Accuracy, Bad Quotes, Bogus history, Capturing history, Citizenship, Current History, Curricula, Education, History, History Revisionism, Hoaxes | Tagged: Bogus history, Education, History, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Quotes | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 14, 2007
The DVD release of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s latest cinema episode is probably driving the traffic to the post I did a while ago noting that the movies are not based on any Texas incidents (see “Based on a true story, except . . .). The original movie, in 1974, was billed as “based on a true story.” “The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin,” the Narrator says opening the film.
The latest enfilmations apparently carry the same claim (I say apparently because I have never seen any of them through, and only a few snippets on television of any of them — I go by what I hear and see from others).
We have the testimony of the author of the original screenplay that it is fiction, loosely based on a famous case in Wisconsin which was also, very loosely, the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and the later, more horrifying Silence of the Lambs. Other internet sites say it’s fiction, such as Snopes.com (a favorite and very good hoax and error debunking site).
Still, the kids ask.
Why not turn this into a geography and/or history exercise? Read the rest of this entry »
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
34 Comments | 100 Milestone Documents of U.S. History, Accuracy, Bogus history, Geography - Physical, History, Lesson plans, Movies, Texas | Tagged: Accuracy, Bogus history, geography, Hewitt Texas, Hoaxes, Lesson plans, Movies, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Thomas Hewitt | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
October 8, 2006
Nota bene: Be sure to see update, here.
First, there was the woman who squealed in class when I mentioned Travis County, the Texas county in which resides Texas’s capital city, Austin. She said later she had thought it was a fictional county. By the way, she asked, was the rest of the “Texas chainsaw massacre” story true, too? (I have never seen any of these movies; I understand the 2003 version was set in Hewitt, Texas, which is a real, small Texas town near Waco, between Dallas and Austin — but not in Travis County. I’m not sure what Travis County has to do with any of the movies.)
Victims of a real Texas chainsaw massacre: Victims await “processing” at a sawmill in Nacogdoches County. Photo by Ron Billings, Texas Forest Service.
Since then, in the last couple of weeks I have had at least a dozen requests to teach the history behind the movie, the “true story.” The movies are all highly fictionalized, I note. Perhaps I should plan a day to discuss real Texas murders, and just what fiction is, especially from Hollywood.
According to Snopes.com, one of my favorite debunking sites, there was never a Texas chainsaw massacre. There was a Wisconsin farmer who stole corpses from the local cemetery, and upon whom was based the earlier Alfred Hitchcock movie, Psycho. There was the chainsaw exhibit at Montgomery Ward seen by writer/director Toby Hooper, when he needed inspiration to finish a screen treatment. That’s about it.
But it’s nearing Halloween, and the studios in Hollywood hope to make money.
There are real Texas crimes that would be good fodder for movies, in the hands of intelligent and creative people. One wonders why more movies aren’t done on the real stories. Read the rest of this entry »
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
120 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, History, How do we know what we know, Movies, Texas | Tagged: Accuracy, Bogus history, Hewitt Texas, History, Kent Biffle, Movies, Texas, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Texas Mass Murders, Thomas Hewitt | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
August 27, 2006
This might be a better topic for another blog I have in early creation stages — except that the difficulties with the anti-science program broadcast this weekend by D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries are exactly the same difficulties the same group has with history, and the concerns about revising history textbooks and history classes — to make them inaccurate and militantly polemic — also come from the same groups. The history errors alone in Kennedy’s program justify discussing it here. Read the rest of this entry »
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
2 Comments | Bogus history, Charles Darwin, Creationism, Education, Evolution, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Holocaust, Holocaust denial, Intelligent Design, Science, Science and faith, Voodoo history | Tagged: Bogus history, Charles Darwin, Creationism, D. James Kennedy, Educaiton, Evolution, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Holocaust, Holocaust denial, Intelligent Design, Science, Science and Faith, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
July 26, 2006
Catching false quotes is a key goal of this enterprise.
Back in April, Josh at The Everyday Economist linked to Tim Blair with an almost snarky catch of John Kerry citing a line from Jefferson that, alas, Jefferson didn’t write or say. Tim links to The Jefferson Library. It’s short; here’s the entirety of Tim’s post:
John Kerry:
No wonder Thomas Jefferson himself said: “Dissent is the greatest form of patriotism.”
The Jefferson Library:
There are a number of quotes that we do not find in Thomas Jefferson’s correspondence or other writings; in such cases, Jefferson should not be cited as the source. Among the most common of these spurious Jefferson quotes [is]:
* “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
Jefferson could have said something like that (and did — posts for another time, perhaps). I don’t find this common error nearly so irritating as those where a founder is quoted saying quite the opposite of what he or she would have said, or did say. Read the rest of this entry »
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
5 Comments | Accuracy, Bad Quotes, Dissent, Fake Quotes, Famous quotes, Quotes, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson | Tagged: Bogus history, Fake Quotes, Thomas Jefferson | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
July 19, 2006
Update, March 24, 2007: Be sure to see the updated flag ceremony, which you can find through this post on the news of the its release.
Yes, the flag amendment is dead, again. Yes, the Fourth of July is past. False history continues to plague the U.S. flag, however. When my wife forwarded to me the post below, it was the fourth time I had gotten it, recently. Bad history travels fast and far. Let’s see if we can steer people in a better direction with real facts.
A flag folding at a funeral for a military person carries great weight, without any script at all. Wikimedia image from DOD release: Members of the U.S. Navy Ceremonial Guard fold the American flag over the casket bearing the remains of sailors killed in the Vietnam War during a graveside interment ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on May 2, 2013. Lt. Dennis Peterson, from Huntington Park, Calif.; Ensign Donald Frye, from Los Angeles; and Petty Officers 2nd Class William Jackson, from Stockdale, Texas, and Donald McGrane, from Waverly, Iowa, were killed when their SH-3A Sea King helicopter was shot down on July 19, 1967, over Ha Nam Province, North Vietnam. All four crewmembers were assigned to Helicopter Squadron 2.
Here is the post as it came to me each time — I’ve stripped it of the sappy photos that are occasionally added; note that this is mostly whole cloth invention:
Did You Know This About Our Flag
Meaning of Flag Draped Coffin.
All Americans should be given this lesson. Those who think that America is an arrogant nation should really reconsider that thought. Our founding fathers used God’s word and teachings to establish our Great Nation and I think it’s high time Americans get re-educated about this Nation’s history. Pass it along and be proud of the country we live in and even more proud of those who serve to protect our “GOD GIVEN” rights and freedoms.
To understand what the flag draped coffin really means……
Read the rest of this entry »
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
28 Comments | 1776, 4th of July, Accuracy, Bogus history, Boy Scouts of America, Flag ceremony, Flag etiquette, Freedom - Political, History, Patriotism | Tagged: 1776, Accuracy, Bogus history, Boy Scouts of America, Flag etiquette, Flag Folding, Flage Ceremony, Fourth of July, History, Hoaxes, Patriotism, U.S. Flag | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
July 3, 2006
History is a study of what happened and why. Often, high school and college studies of history are ruined by rote memorization of a long list of dates with a couple of words describing an event. That is not history. Often, studies of history are ruined through unreliable sources.
H. L. Mencken, the famous newspaper columnist from Baltimore, wrote a column published December 28, 1917, about the history of the bathtub, specifically that it was rare in the U.S., and how President Millard Fillmore introduced it to the White House, thereby making bathtubs and bathing popular. The column was brilliant, and it was a complete fabrication, a hoax. Within two years, however, Mencken’s column had found its way to reference books, encyclopedias, and bad history books. Here is Mencken’s original column: “A Neglected Anniversary.” [3/19/2009 – that link is dead; see Mencken’s column here.] You can read a history of the hoax and its spread at this site, Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.
It’s a great story, about a do-nothing president, the press, and errors of history. To know the story, dates are unimportant. No one cares what years Fillmore was actually in office, no one cares exactly when Mencken’s column was published. Knowing lists of dates has never stopped a bad historian from reciting the erroneous claim that Millard Fillmore introduced the concept of bathing in a bathtub to the White House.
But now you know better.
This site is dedicated to knowing history, especially U.S. history, better.
Thank you for visiting. Noodle around, see what articles are here, leave some comments if you care to. Especially, if you find errors, leave a note of correction.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
23 Comments | Bogus history, Fillmore's bathtub, Hoaxes, Journalism, Millard Fillmore, Presidents | Tagged: Accuracy, bathtub, Bogus history, H. L. Mencken, History, Hoaxes, Journalism, Millard Fillmore | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 