Part 13 (1/2)
6 Well-spread Fabrications
The fifth-century-BCE dramatist Sophocles once said that ”a lie never lives to be old.” Clearly, Sophocles never heard the one about suicidal rodents, or about the world-famous animator frozen in suspended animation. Here's hoping that, at the very least, these lies don't live to be any older.
_01:: Elephants and Mice In spite of what you may have seen at the circus, elephants aren't afraid of mice. Actually, they're not afraid of anything, which is why it's not all that hard for poachers to kill them for ivory. For decades, circuses have featured elephants rearing up and trumpeting with fear upon catching ”sight” of a scurrying mouse. But in reality, the elephants probably can't even see the mouse in questionthey have notoriously poor eyesight. Due to their excellent memories, however, elephants can learn a variety of tricks, including rearing up on their hind legs when ordered to do so by whip-brandis.h.i.+ng circus trainers. And while we're dispelling elephant rumors: There's no such thing as an elephant graveyard. When elephants are ready to die, they just fall down and do it, like the rest of us.
_02:: Betsy Ross In all likelihood, Betsy Ross did not design, or for that matter even sew, the first postUnion Jack American flag. Ross, a seamstress who took over her husband's upholstery business after he died fighting in the Revolutionary War, purportedly sewed the flag based on a pencil sketch from George Was.h.i.+ngton himself. But no evidence has ever been found to back up the Ross family story. In fact, most historians believe the flag was either based on the British East India Company's flag or designed by Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and early member of Congress. Regardless of who designed it, the Continental Congress officially adopted the Stars and Stripes in 1777, on June 14, which, in an amazing coincidence, happens to be Flag Day.
_03:: Disney's Remains Despite the ubiquitous rumor to the contrary, Walt Disney was not cryogenically frozen after his death. Disney, who won more Academy Awards (26) than any other person, expressed a desire to be cremated, and his wish was carried out two days after his death on December 15, 1966. There's scant evidence, in fact, that Disney even knew that cryogenic freezing existed. At any rate, it's highly unlikely that cryogenic freezing could have saved Walt. Putting aside the fact that most scientists think frozen bodies will never be resurrectable, Disney's lung cancer necessitated the removal of his left lung a month before his death. So even if future scientists could have brought Walt back from the dead, he would have been awfully short of breath.
Touch of Evil It was a fascinating story how struggling musician Charles Manson auditioned for The Monkees back in 1965. Fascinating, and false! Manson was behind bars when the tryouts took place.
_04:: Lemmings The poor, oft-maligned lemmingsyou couldn't blame them for being suicidal, if they are, which they aren't. The notion of lemming suicide extends back at least to Freud, who in Civilization and Its Discontents (1929) explained the human death instinct in the context of lemmings. But the notion didn't really take hold until Walt Disney's 1958 so-called doc.u.mentary White Wilderness. .h.i.t the big screen. For his film, the lovable animator s.h.i.+pped dozens of lemmings to Alberta, Canada, herded them off a cliff, filmed them falling to their deaths, and pa.s.sed it off as nonfiction. In reality, though, lemmings aren't suicidal. They're just dumb. Lemming populations explode in four-year cycles in Scandinavia, and when the tundra gets crowded, they seek out new land. Being stupid, they sometimes fall off cliffs, but not on purpose.
_05:: Rice at Weddings These days, it's become common practice for eco-friendly couples not to feature rice throwing at their weddings. After all, the science-deficient theory claims, birds eat the rice, which expands in their stomachs and causes them to explode. Rice farmers from Thailand to Arkansas probably wish that rice-eating birds blew up, but quite simply, they don't. The fact is, nuptial rice poses no more danger to birds than combining pop rocks and soda does to kids. So, how'd the rumor come about? It all started in 1988, when old Ann Landers discouraged readers from the practice. Of course, the USA Rice Federation (motto: ”Proving there is a federation for everything”) immediately debunked Landers's story, but, surprisingly (and disappointingly), Ann Landers had a broader readers.h.i.+p than the USA Rice Federation.
_06:: Van Gogh's Ear In the fierce compet.i.tion for the t.i.tle of History's Most Tortured Artist, Vincent van Gogh certainly makes a compelling case. Impoverished, unloved, and underappreciated in his time, van Gogh led a miserable life, potently symbolized by his missing left ear. We've all heard the story: He chopped it off and Pony Express-ed it to a prost.i.tute in a perverse act of lovehere is an artist so tortured, even the prost.i.tutes didn't love him! But wait! He didn't chop off his entire earjust the lower half of it. And it wasn't about women at all. In a fit of rage after an argument with friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin, van Gogh cut his ear to symbolize the end of their friends.h.i.+p, believing that Gauguin had grown ”deaf” to his needs. Some claim van Gogh later visited a brothel to give the half-ear to a prost.i.tute named Rachel (hey, we never said he wasn't crazy), but he certainly never mailed anything!
Playing the Palace:
3 Showy Leaders and the
Envious Imitators They Inspired
A smaller-than-average castle can give a guy a complex, so it's no wonder so many world leaders suffer from palace envy. The following are three characters who were pretty eager to overspend in an attempt to overcompensate.
_01:: Francis I and Henry VIII In the first half of the 16th century, the kings of France and England were more than contemporaries, enemies, or allies. They were personal compet.i.tors. England's Henry VIII, especially, felt it important to keep up with French counterpart Francis I, and boy did it show. When the two were vigorous young men, handsome Hank fancied that his impressive physique outshone that of flashy Frank. But this was more than just a beauty compet.i.tion. When Henry went on a state visit to France in 1520, he had an extravagant pavilion of gold cloth (like a luxury tent village) built to match that of Francis, nearby. The three-week diplomatic campout, known as the Field of Cloth of Gold, was a daily orgy of expensively compet.i.tive pageantry that nearly bankrupted both countries. The compet.i.tion didn't end there. Later, Henry spent heavily on arts and architecture, trying not to be outdistanced by the sophistication of Francis's capital.
_02:: Louis XIV and Leopold I and...
If a finance minister builds a house bigger than the king's, the king gets suspicious. That isn't exactly what happened to Nicolas Fouquet, who in 1661 threw a party for his boss, the ”Sun King” of France, at Fouquet's magnificent new chateau, Vaux-le-Vicomte. Impressed, Louis XIV moved straight past the suspicion phase, and threw his host in jail. Then, he put Fouquet's former architects and builders to work on the royal estate outside Paris. Completed in 1682, the huge and incredibly ornate Palace of Versailles inspired envy in monarchs everywhere. In response, Leopold I of the Austro-Hungarian Empire commissioned a ”hunting lodge” outside Vienna, the 1,440-room Schonbrunn Palace, completed in 1695. Other monarchs who retaliated with a Versailles of their own: ”Mad” King Ludwig II of Bavaria (Castle Herrenchiemsee) and Empress Elizabeth of Russia (the Winter Palace).
Touch of Evil As America's fifth president, James Monroe was so flattered by comments about his resemblance to George Was.h.i.+ngton that he dressed in the same style the Father of Our Country did. Sadly, that style was way out of date by then.
Scandalicious CAMBODIAN WIVES LASH OUT AGAINST ADULTERY (WITH BATTERY ACID).
Adultery is frowned upon in most societies, but in Cambodia it can mean taking your life into your hands. During the late 1990s, a rash of attacks by high-society ladies against their husbands' mistresses broke out. In the most famous case, Bun Ray, the wife of Prime Minister Hun Sen, hired hit men to murder Piseth Pilika, a Cambodian film star who was reputed to be a.s.sisting the prime minister with his homework after hours. Another infamous incident occured on December 5, 1999, when Tan Chhay Marina, a teenage actress and singer, was horribly disfigured when five liters of battery acid were dumped on her by the wife of Svay Sitha, an undersecretary of state.
_03:: Richard Nixon and Queen Elizabeth II U.S. president Richard Nixon liked a bit of pomp (with occasional circ.u.mstance). After all, Tricky d.i.c.k often saw other heads of state protected by guards in bright-colored uniforms with s.h.i.+ny trim or tall fur hats (as in Britain's famous Beefeaters outside Queen Elizabeth's official London residence). But what did the White House have? Guys in dark, plain security uniforms. Wanting a piece of the regal action, Nixon ordered a redesign of the outfits worn by White House guards (Secret Service Uniformed Division). Unveiled in 1970, the new duds featured gold-trimmed tunics and rigid, peaked hats reminiscent of 19th-century Prussia. The royalist look didn't go over so well with Americans. Critics howled. Comedians snickered. And the White House immediately threw out the Prussian hats. Within a few years the fancy duds (along with their chief proponent) were retired entirely.
Who Throws a Shoe? Honestly!
5 Grossly Mismatched Warfare a.r.s.enals
We know all's supposedly fair in love and war, but somehow these conditions still seem remarkably stilted.
_01:: Romans v. Celts At the beginning of their long march to supremacy, the Romans had an early advantage because they knew how to make steel weapons that were much stronger than their opponents' iron weapons. Iron swords and spearheads were relatively simple to make, requiring that the blacksmith melt down iron ore in a furnace, hammer the metal into a blade, and then shape and sharpen it on a forge. To make steel, the Romans understood, the blade had to be put back in the furnace for a long period to allow carbon from the coals to infiltrate the metal, making it stronger. The results for their enemies were often disastrous: in a series of battles the Romans fought against the Celts, who were armed with iron weapons, the Celts' swords became so badly deformed that the Celtic warriors had to bend them back to their original shape over their knees in the middle of combat.
_02:: English v. French at Agincourt When the English, led by King Henry V, fought the French in the battle of Agincourt, they had a secret weapon: Welsh subjects trained in the use of the longbow. Amazingly, these weapons of war were simply five-foot-high yew arcs that could be used to shoot eight arrows a minute, each arrow about three feet long. And the rapid-fire a.s.sault was too much for the French. With a total force of about 5,000 archers, Henry slaughtered the pride of French chivalry before Genovese crossbowmen in French employ were even in range. In fact, it was said that the ground was covered with so many white feathers from the arrow fletching that it looked like snow.
_03:: Spanish v. Aztecs and Incas When the Spanish invaded Mexico and Peru in the early 16th century, they wielded weaponry far superior to anything the Aztecs and Incas could have imagined. The 600 Spaniards who landed at the site of modern-day Vera Cruz in 1519, under the command of Hernando Cortes, carried firearmsmusketsand small cannons, and rode horses, all of which terrified the Aztec natives. And though the Aztecs fiercely fought back on foot with swords and spears made out of sharp pieces of obsidian, or black volcanic gla.s.s, set in pieces of wood, ultimately they were no match for the Spaniards. Despite Cortes's encountering a few setbacks, there was no contest, and he managed to subdue five million Aztecs with his tiny army. Similarly, beginning in 1530, the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro subdued the Inca empire with 180 soldiers, fighting a native army of about 40,000 men.
_04:: English v. Mahdi in Sudan When the forces of British general Charles Gordon were surrounded and eventually destroyed by Islamic fundamentalist tribesmen at Khartoum, Sudan, in 1885, the blow to British prestige was tremendous. In fact, the imperialist nation was so embarra.s.sed that it decided the event demanded a total and overwhelming response. To get revenge, the British s.h.i.+pped a well-trained army to fight the native Muslim rebels in central Sudan. But the army wasn't just well trained; they were well armed, and were even carrying Gatling gunsprototype machine guns that drew ammunition from a long straight clip filing through the firing chamber. The result at the battle of Omdurman in 1898 was decisive and horrendous, resulting in the slaughter of tens of thousands of native tribesmen with virtually no British casualties.