History myths: what really happened

Myth: Napoleon was a tiny man compensating for his size.

Reality: Three sources, including his physician Francesco Antommarchi, put him at just over 5 pieds 2 pouces in the old French units, which converts to about 1.67 m, just under 5 ft 6 in, and slightly above average for a Frenchman of the period (History.com).

Why it persists: a French inch was longer than an English one, so "5 foot 2" sounded short to English readers. British caricaturist James Gillray also drew him as a tantrum-prone "Little Boney," and the image stuck.

Myth: Viking warriors went raiding in horned helmets.

Reality: The National Museum of Denmark calls the image "a myth rather than reality," partly because "no such headgear of a Viking Age date has ever been found" (National Museum of Denmark). The Gjermundbu helmet from Norway, a rounded iron cap, is the best-known Viking Age helmet and has no horns (National Geographic).

Why it persists: 19th-century artists, including painter Johan August Malmström and costume designer Carl Emil Doepler for the 1876 premiere of Wagner's Ring cycle, put horns on Norse figures, and older Bronze Age horned helmets made it seem plausible (National Geographic).

Myth: Medieval Europeans believed the Earth was flat until Columbus sailed.

Reality: Educated Europeans knew the Earth was a sphere. The dispute over Columbus's voyage was about its size: he badly underestimated the distance west to Asia. The flat-earth version was popularised in 1828 by Washington Irving's The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, which dramatised a confrontation with flat-earth scholars that historians regard as fiction (History.com).

Why it persists: a lone visionary defying ignorant authorities is a more satisfying story than an argument about arithmetic, which Columbus lost.

Myth: The greatest physicist of the 20th century flunked maths at school.

Reality: When a rabbi in Princeton showed him a 1935 Ripley's clipping headlined "Greatest living mathematician failed in mathematics," Einstein laughed and said, "I never failed in mathematics. Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus" (TIME).

Why it persists: it reassures every student who has struggled with maths, which is a kind motive for a false story.

Myth: Told that peasants had no bread, the queen replied, "Let them eat cake."

Reality: Britannica says there is "absolutely no historical evidence" she said it. A version of the line appears in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, attributed to an unnamed "great princess," written when Marie Antoinette was still a child in Austria (Britannica). Her biographer Antonia Fraser has called the remark highly uncharacteristic of her (History.com).

Why it persists: it is a perfect one-line summary of aristocratic indifference, and the French Revolution needed villains. The original French word was brioche, not cake.

Myth: Before modern medicine, a 30-year-old was elderly.

Reality: Low historical life expectancy figures are averages from birth, and they were dragged down by child deaths. Our World in Data notes that "child mortality used to be high and contributed significantly to short lifespans in the past" (Our World in Data), and that across many historical societies, around half of all children died before reaching adulthood (Our World in Data). An average of 30 does not mean a typical adult died at 30.

Why it persists: "life expectancy" sounds like "typical age at death." It's the same statistical trap as confusing an average with a typical case, covered in our cognitive biases guide.

Myth: The Salem witch trials ended in burnings.

Reality: None of those executed at Salem in 1692 was burned. In accordance with English law, 19 were hanged (History.com), and Giles Corey was pressed to death under heavy stones (Salem Witch Museum).

Why it persists: burning was used for witchcraft in parts of continental Europe, and the image of the stake has absorbed every witch trial into one picture.

Myth: Medieval jailers locked victims inside spiked iron cabinets.

Reality: The story was likely spread by German philosopher Johann Philipp Siebenkees in the late 18th century, who described a coin forger supposedly executed in one in Nuremberg in 1515. "The first known iron maidens were constructed in the 19th century" and were passed off in museums as medieval (History.com).

Why it persists: the Victorians loved a barbaric Middle Ages, and a physical object in a museum feels like proof.

Myth: Emperor Nero played the fiddle while watching Rome burn in 64 AD.

Reality: The fiddle didn't exist in ancient Rome; music historians date the viol family to the 11th century. Nero was at his villa in Antium, about 35 miles away, when the fire started, and returned to organise relief. Tacitus reported the rumour that he sang during the fire but stated that it was unconfirmed by eyewitnesses (History.com).

Why it persists: Nero was genuinely unpopular, and "fiddling while Rome burns" became a useful idiom for any leader ignoring a crisis.

Myth: Van Gogh sliced off only his earlobe.

Reality: A sketch by Dr Félix Rey, who treated Van Gogh after the night of 23 December 1888, was found in the Irving Stone papers at UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library. It shows "a clear incision across the base of the ear," indicating he cut off the whole ear. Researcher Bernadette Murphy also identified the woman he gave it to as a young maid at a brothel, not a sex worker called Rachel as long assumed (UC Berkeley Library).

Why it persists: early accounts were vague, and "earlobe" was the less gruesome reading. Some specialists still question the drawing, which was made decades later.

Myth: Thomas Edison invented electric light from scratch in 1879.

Reality: Many inventors were working on incandescent lamps. In England, Joseph Swan's lamps contained the same major elements as Edison's (an evacuated glass bulb, platinum lead wires and a carbon light-emitter), and Swan demonstrated his lamp months before Edison's October 1879 breakthrough (Smithsonian). Edison's real achievement was a longer-lasting filament plus a whole commercial system to power and sell electric light (Smithsonian).

Why it persists: Edison was a gifted self-promoter, and a single genius makes a simpler story than parallel invention.