Untertitel (77)
0:06What would a Viking be without his trusty
battle helmet and its impressive horns?
0:09The answer is: a more historically accurate
viking.
0:11Think, for a moment about wearing headgear
like that into battle: the horns are just
0:15easy targets for your opponent to hit and
knock off your helmet.
0:18Or, if you strap on your helmet, now your
opponent has a convenient lever with which
0:21to drag you to the ground and something to
hold onto while slitting your throat.
0:24Horned helmets are a terrible idea, which
is why archeologists have never found them
0:28at viking battle sites and there's no evidence
that they were ever used.
0:31It was poets and artists -- people not known
for caring about facts and reality -- who
0:34gave the Vikings their silly hats during the
late 1800s, long after the vikings could 'correct'
0:38their misconceptions.
0:42The story of this 11th century English noblewoman
is that her mean husband the Earl raised taxes
0:45on the townspeople of Coventry which Lady
Godiva -- and not surprising the locals -- thought
0:50She badgered her husband and he conceded in
exasperation to lower the taxes if she rode
0:54through town naked -- assuming that she never
would, but she did.
0:57Because people don't likes taxes -- even though
they're how civilization is purchased -- Lady
1:01Godiva's story lives on notably in the Godiva
logo and in popular songs.
1:05But while Lady Godiva was a real person and
Coventry is a real town there is no record
1:08of her nude ride from the time when it happened
-- so we can assume the story is false.
1:13Just as with the Vikings, again poets and
artists are to blame, who made up the tale
1:16long after Lady Godiva's death.
1:20Famously this tiny, tiny general -- perhaps
to compensate for his short stature -- took
1:23control of France greatly expanded its influence
and dubbed himself emperor.
1:27Napoleon's official height was indeed 5 foot
2 inches but at the time French inches were
1:32longer than English inches, so doing the unit
conversion, Napoleon's height should have
1:35been reported as 5'7 in England's imperial
units -- which is short by today's standard
1:39but was average or slightly above average
in the early 1800s.
1:42However England, with it's eternal love for
all things French, didn't care and went the
1:46Napoleon-is-so-short-LOL version of the story
in newspapers and cartoons.
1:50Meanwhile, Napoleon was busy introducing the
Metric System to France and the wider world
1:53to standardize measurements so this sort of
confusion would never happen again -- and
1:57thankfully the whole world now uses metric.
2:03Ah, the Roman empire, so great and powerful,
but corrupted by decadence from within.
2:07And what could be a better symbol of that
decadence than the Vometorum: where Romans,
2:10after stuffing themselves with delicious foods,
could vomit them all up to make room to feast
2:16Vometoria are real but this idea of them is
not, though confusion is understandable because
2:19their name -- Vomit-orium -- seems to make
their purpose so clear.
2:23Even if for some reason you know latin -- perhaps
because you live in a country that insists
2:26you waste hundreds of hours of your life learning
a dead, useless language -- this knowledge
2:29still won't help you because the root word
'vomitum' means 'to spew forth'.
2:33So what is it really?
2:34If you've ever been to a big stadium, like
say, the ones made by the romans, you have
2:38already used a vometorium.
2:39This is what the vometoria are -- the passageways
that lets lots of people enter or exit at
2:45The people are what spews forth in the vometoria,
not the contents of the people.
2:51There is so very much wrong with the common
retelling of the story of Christopher Columbus
2:53that it's hard to know where to begin, but
the biggest misconception is that everyone
2:56else thought the world was flat, but Columbus
was the only guy smart enough to know that
3:01It makes a daring story, but knowledge of
a spherical earth goes back to at least 5,000
3:04BC that's six and a half thousand years before
Columbus set sail -- and that knowledge was
3:10never lost to western civilization.
3:12In 200 BC Eratosthenes calculated Earth's
circumference and his estimate was still well
3:16know and being used in Columbus's time.
3:19The argument Columbus had with queen Isabella
was not over the shape of the earth, but of
3:24Columbus estimated the Earth was much smaller
than Queen Isabella and her scientific advisors
3:27did which was way he thought he could make
it across the empty Atlantic to India.
3:31But Columbus's size estimate was wrong -- again,
just like Napoleon's height -- because of
3:36However, his error did send him West to become
the first European to discover America -- as
3:41long as you ignore the hornless vikings who
beat him by 500 years.
