7 Historical Figures Famous for Something They Never Did
Even if you disagree with Napoleon Bonaparte’s famous remark that “history is a set of lies that people have agreed upon,” there’s little doubt that myths, misconceptions and outright fabrications have often shaped our understanding of the past. In some instances, these legends have become so ingrained that they overshadow the actual facts of a historical figure’s life. Find out the truth about seven notable people who’ve become forever linked with something they never did.
1. Abner Doubleday (for inventing baseball)
Abner Doubleday was a Civil War general and abolitionist who famously ordered the first Union shots in defense of Fort Sumter. But while he had a distinguished military career, Doubleday is more commonly remembered for inventing baseball—even though he did no such thing.
The story dates back to 1905, when former National League president A.G. Mills headed a commission to investigate the origins of America’s favorite pastime. Based on a letter from a man named Abner Graves, the commission incorrectly concluded that Doubleday had invented baseball in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. In truth, Doubleday was attending West Point in 1839 and had never claimed any involvement with baseball. Nevertheless, the myth persisted for years, and the Baseball Hall of Fame was even established in Cooperstown on the sport’s mistaken centennial in 1939.
2. Lady Godiva (for her naked horseback ride)
Lady Godiva is best known for defiantly riding naked through the streets of medieval Coventry to protest the crippling taxes her husband had levied on the townspeople. According to legend, at some point in the 11th century Godiva pressured her powerful husband, Leofric, to reduce the people’s debts. When he mockingly responded that he would only do so when she rode naked on horseback through the town, Godiva called his bluff and galloped into the history books.
While this story has become the stuff of legend—a tailor who spied on Godiva even inspired the phrase “peeping Tom”—scholars agree that the nude horseback ride probably never happened. Godiva certainly existed, but most histories mention her as simply the wife of an influential nobleman. In fact, the complete Godiva myth didn’t even appear until the 13th century, 200 years after the ride supposedly occurred. The story was later picked up by notable writers like Alfred Lord Tennyson, whose 1842 poem “Godiva” helped cement the tall tale as a historical fact.
3. Nero (for fiddling while Rome burned)
One of the most famous stories of Roman decadence concerns Nero, the emperor who blithely “fiddled while Rome burned” during the great fire of 64 A.D. According to some ancient historians, the emperor had ordered his men to start the fire in order to clear space for his new palace. But while Nero was certainly no saint—he reportedly ordered the murder of his own mother during his rise to power—the story of his fiendish fiddling is likely exaggerated.
While some ancient chroniclers did describe the music-loving emperor as singing while he watched flames consume the city, the historian Tacitus would later denounce these claims as vicious rumors. According to him, Nero was away at Antium during the early stages of the blaze, and upon returning to Rome helped lead rescue and rebuilding efforts and even opened his palace gardens to those who lost their homes. A further strike against the legend is that the fiddle would not even be invented for several hundred years. If Nero played any instrument while Rome burned—which remains up for debate—it would most likely have been a cithara, a kind of lyre.
4. Marie-Antoinette (for “Let them eat cake”)
When she was informed that her people were starving from lack of bread, the 18th-century French queen Marie-Antoinette is said to have quipped, “Then let them eat cake.” This famous line has traditionally served to underscore the monarch’s ignorance of her subjects’ plight, yet there is almost no evidence that Marie-Antoinette ever uttered those words.
The phrase first appeared in reference to a “great princess” in the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s book “Confessions,” which was written in early 1766. If Rousseau were indeed referring to Marie-Antoinette, it would mean she was only 10 years old and not yet a queen when she said it. Scholars think Rousseau either coined the phrase or that it was a common insult used to criticize various aristocratic figures in the 18th century. So if “let them eat cake” was ever directly attributed to Marie-Antoinette in her lifetime, it was most likely part of a deliberate attempt by her political opponents to discredit her.
5. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (for inventing the guillotine)
Contrary to popular belief, the French doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin did not directly invent the feared decapitation machine that bears his name. Ironically, Guillotin was a noted opponent of capital punishment. Desperate to put a stop to the brutal ax beheadings and hangings used in state executions, in 1789 he proposed to the French National Assembly that a more humane and painless method be developed.
With Guillotin acting in a managerial role, the plans for what became the guillotine were then drafted by a surgeon named Antoine Louis, who modeled the device on similar machines found in Scotland and Italy. After a German named Tobias Schmidt built the first prototype, it was put into regular use by the French government. While Guillotin had neither designed nor built the apparatus, it still eventually became known—much to his disgust—as the guillotine. Another popular claim states that Guillotin was later beheaded by the guillotine during the French Revolution, but this too is a myth.
6. George Washington Carver (for inventing peanut butter)
George Washington Carver was an American scientist and inventor famous for creating alternative food products and farming methods. But while Carver’s many innovations earned him comparisons to Leonardo da Vinci, the erroneous belief that he invented peanut butter has stuck in the popular imagination.
Carver was indeed a peanut pioneer—he is reputed to have found over 300 uses for the legume during his career—but he wasn’t the first person to create peanut butter. In truth, evidence of peanut-based pastes can be found in South America as far back as 950 B.C. Meanwhile, modern peanut butter substances were first patented in 1884 by Marcellus Edson—who referred to it as “peanut-candy”—and later by John Harvey Kellogg, who unveiled a process for creating peanut butter in 1895. While he eventually became its most famous advocate, Carver did not begin his own experiments on the peanut until 1903.
7. Betsy Ross (for making the first American flag)
One of American history’s most persistent legends involves Betsy Ross, a Philadelphia seamstress who supposedly made the first American flag. As the story goes, in 1776 Ross was commissioned to sew the flag—which then featured a circle of 13 stars—by a small committee that included George Washington. Ross supposedly produced her famous flag a few days later and even changed the design to make the stars five-pointed rather than six-pointed.
While versions of this story continue to be taught in American classrooms, most historians dismiss it as a tall tale. Newspapers from the time make no reference to Ross or the meeting, and Washington never mentioned her involvement in creating the flag. In fact, the Ross legend didn’t even make its first appearance until 1870, when her grandson, William Canby, related it to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. But outside of showing affidavits from family members, Canby never produced any convincing evidence to support his claim. It’s true that Betsy Ross made American flags in the late 1770s, but the tale of her very first flag is likely untrue.
Vlad III Dracula—better known by the gruesome moniker “Vlad the Impaler”—was a 15th-century ruler of Wallachia (now part of Romania) who became notorious for his rampant use of torture, mutilation and mass murder. Vlad’s military exploits saw him praised by many as a hero, but his unmatched cruelty and penchant for barbaric executions—often against his own people—contributed to his reputation as one of history’s most coldblooded leaders.
Much of Grigori Rasputin’s life is shrouded in myth, but history paints the picture of a “mad monk” who steered Russia toward chaos. Rasputin began his career as a populist holy man and was known to preach a religious doctrine arguing that true salvation was only possible through indulgence in sin. His reputation as a faith healer eventually saw him summoned to the court of Czar Nicholas II, where he ingratiated himself to Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna after helping her hemophiliac son recover from an injury. By 1911 Rasputin had secured himself a place as the czarina’s closest advisor. He then began using his influence to appoint incompetent and crooked officials while also indulging in drink and perverse sexual appetites.
Born Herman W. Mudgett, the notorious serial killer H.H. Holmes spent his early career as an insurance scammer before moving to Illinois in advance of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. It was there that Holmes built what he referred to as his “castle”—a three-story inn that he secretly turned into a macabre torture chamber. Some rooms were equipped with hidden peepholes, gas lines, trap doors and soundproofed padding, while others featured secret passages, ladders and hallways that led to dead ends. There was also a greased chute that led to the basement, where Holmes had installed a surgical table, a furnace and even a medieval rack.
Gilles de Rais was a 15th-century French nobleman, soldier and companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc during the Hundred Years’ War. Rais’ military career earned him many plaudits, but his distinguished reputation and opulent lifestyle hid a horrific dark side that included charges of Satanism, rape and murder. Beginning in the 1430s, Rais reportedly began torturing and brutally killing young children, many of them peasant boys who had come to his castle to work as pages. After sexually molesting these servants, Rais would murder them by cutting their throats or breaking their necks with a club. Others were decapitated and dismembered, and Rais was even known to kiss the severed heads of some of his victims.
From 1483 to 1498, Tomás de Torquemada presided over the Spanish Inquisition, the notorious Catholic tribunal used to try heretics and nonbelievers. In order to force their confession, these victims were subjected to gruesome punishments including strangulation or being stretched on the rack. Others were waterboarded or put through strappado, a grueling torture in which subjects were hanged by their wrists until their arms dislocated.
The 1789 mutiny on the Bounty saw a rebellious crew hijack their ship and build their own island community. Commanded by William Bligh, HMS Bounty left England in December 1787 on a mission to collect breadfruit saplings in the South Pacific. During a five-month layover in Tahiti, many of the ship’s crew became enamored with island life and even married the local women. They also became increasingly dissatisfied with Bligh, who often flogged his men for dereliction of duty. Shortly after the Bounty left Tahiti in April 1789, a group of disgruntled crewmembers revolted and took their commander prisoner. Led by master’s mate Fletcher Christian, the mutineers forced Bligh and 18 loyalists into a small launch and abandoned them at sea. Amazingly, Bligh eventually led this dinghy on a 3,600-mile voyage to a safe port in Timor. He would go on to weather two more mutinies during his long naval career.
Although it was initially sparked by a mundane argument over food, the Potemkin mutiny became one of the pivotal events in the 1905 Russian Revolution. The revolt occurred during the Russo-Japanese War when the 700 crewmen of the battleship Potemkin were given rations of borscht made from maggot-ridden meat. Told to eat the tainted broth or face extreme punishment, the sailors rebelled. Under the leadership of a revolutionary mariner named Afanasy Matyushenko, the crew killed nearly half the ship’s officers in a bloody shootout before commandeering Potemkin and the torpedo boat Ismail.
On the night of September 21, 1797, the Royal Navy vessel Hermione was trawling the Caribbean when the crew initiated the bloodiest mutiny in British naval history. Furious at the draconian punishments meted out by their captain, Hugh Pigot, roughly 30 men split into groups and launched a coordinated attack on their superiors. The rebels—many drunk on rum—stabbed Pigot to death in his cabin and then proceeded to brutally slaughter several officers with cutlasses and tomahawks. Once in control of the ship, they dragged the rest of the officers to the main deck. Those whom the crew approved of were spared, but the rest were simply tossed overboard. In total, 10 officers were murdered during the uprising.
The British explorer Henry Hudson made four famous voyages to the United States and Canada, but his tireless efforts to locate the Northwest Passage ultimately provoked his crew to rebel against him. In 1610 Hudson led his ship Discovery to the frozen waters of modern-day Canada in an attempt to find a new western route to Asia. While the explorers succeeded in locating the Hudson Bay—later named in Hudson’s honor—their ship became lodged in pack ice, forcing them to spend a treacherous winter ashore.
Germany’s Kiel mutiny began as a sailors’ rebellion and eventually sparked the German Revolution and the end of World War I. The uprising began in October 1918 when Germany’s exhausted sailors learned of a plan to launch a last-ditch attack against the British Royal Navy. Unwilling to take part in what they saw as a suicide mission, crews at the port of Wilmershaven simply ignored their orders and refused to prepare their ships for battle. When the protest’s ringleaders were rounded up and arrested, it triggered a bloody mutiny that soon spread to the nearby city of Kiel.
One of the only shipboard mutinies in American history occurred during the Vietnam War. In March 1970 two merchant marines named Clyde McKay and Alvin Glatkowski held their captain at gunpoint and commandeered the supply ship Columbia Eagle. Abandoning most of the crew in lifeboats, the two hijackers changed course and steered toward the neutral nation of Cambodia. After arriving in the port of Sihanoukville, the mutineers informed authorities that they had seized the ship and its cargo of 10,000 tons of napalm as an act of protest against the Vietnam War.
1. Lincoln is enshrined in the Wrestling Hall of Fame.
