10 Biggest Lies Ever Told In History

[Music] we all know you shouldn't trust everything you see on the internet but as it turns out we shouldn't believe everything that we're taught in school either our textbooks are overflowing with exaggeration misinformation and sometimes downright lies can the Great Wall of China really be seen from space is it true that genius Albert Einstein actually failed math class in high school what other nonsense have we been spoon-fed let's dive in and find out all right ladies and gents let's kick off this countdown of lies when you think of world wonders what comes to mind first Machu Picchu the pyramids or the Great Wall of China for us it's the latter and for good reason because what other world wonder is visible from space exactly but here's the thing the so-called Great Wall isn't even that great the truth is that it simply cannot be seen from outside of our atmosphere even from the moon which in the grand scheme of the universe is relatively close it's still invisible according to NASA the unaided eye cannot see the wall from a low Earth orbit despite it being 13,000 170 miles long while it is a masterpiece of ancient engineering it is not as big as you think in terms of width it's only 20 feet at the bottom and 16 feet at the top this myth first started circulating in the mid 1700s however that's way before we made it up onto the moon or started putting satellites into space while over 10 million people visit the winding Great Wall of China every year unfortunately it's not thick enough to be seen from the Stars myth busted now if you ever took a history class at school in the USA we're pretty sure that you've heard of a certain George Washington no not George Washington Carver the man who invented peanut butter but George Washington the founding father who served as first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797 we've always been told of this famous tale about him and his dad in a cherry tree and we've come to accept it wrongly as fact if you need a quick refresher here's the story in rapid time little six-year-old George Washington was given a hatchet from dad for his birthday George used it to cut down his dad's favorite cherry tree dad was mad and confronted George who instead of denying it said the famous words quote I cannot tell a lie here's the thing though I cannot tell a lie was a lie even though Washington was already a great dude a biographer named Mason Locke weaves exaggerated his notable characteristics even further Weems simply made up the tale to highlight Washington's honesty and his good nature if we hadn't quite quenched your thirst for mind-blowing revelations about world wonders then fret not because we've got an absolute doozy about the pyramids coming right up here if we asked you to tell us who built the pyramids what would your response be the ancient Egyptians right the wealthy put slaves to work dragging incredibly heavy stones up slopes until finally they created an unforgettable landmark well that's not quite true either sorry to burst your bubble Pharaohs but the majority of the manpower was in fact not the slaves that's what the 19th century scientists thought but in reality it was the entire healthy population of ancient Egypt over a span of 85 years between 2589 and 2504 BCE that put blood sweat and tears into their national icon for those who weren't physically hauling the stone they were preparing food for the builders housing them acting as security and some even headed out on long journeys in search of stone and metal after all of that cumulative work it paid off the pyramids are the only wonder of the ancient world that still stands today if you're curious it's these ones that are long gone joining the liar liar pants on fire party next is the one in the only the totally fake Loch Ness monster we know this isn't exactly a giant shock because it's always been speculative evidence supporting Nessie's existence but the real lie in this case is the so-called a surgeon's photo this photo the one that helped Nessie to transition from an urban legend into a realistic and frightening possibility this is the Loch Ness located in Scotland and the stories of a mysterious creature swimming around in its waters actually go back to the 6th century ce e the first shred of evidence wealth false evidence technically was taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson in 1934 and was assumed to be accurate for close to 60 years however all good things must come to an end and in 1994 it was revealed that the shape of Nessie was nothing more than a toy submarine in disguise what was a toy submarine doing there long story short it was deliberately placed by a man named Marmaduke Wetherell he used to work for the Daily Mail newspaper and after they ridiculed him for writing a piece about Nessie's footprints which turned out to be false he got his revenge fooling the newspaper as well as everyone else we've actually got an entire video about Nessie after this one check it out the link is in the description [Music] alrighty moving on ok when you think of a Viking what's the first thing that comes to mind besides the boats that's right it's those big horned helmets yeah well we're sorry to say it folks but that too is a lie it's just a stereotype that emerged as the result of Vikings becoming more and more prevalent in mainstream media as it turns out however historians have looked at a number of Viking tombs and not once not once have they ever found a helmet that had horns yes Scandinavians probably did sports some sort of headgear when they marched into battle but there is no reason to believe that it was bedazzled with horns in fact that actually make it easier for the enemy to grab and remove so where did the idea come from the popular image of the Viking we know today actually dates back to the 1800s it was then that scandinavian artists like gustav Malstrom drew the horned headgear in their portrayals of the viking people and then well it just stuck speaking of unique outfits our next fib is all about the former King of Pop Michael Jackson himself no matter how you feel about him as a person and all the controversy surrounding him it's impossible to deny that he had a monumental impact on the music industry when he wasn't releasing toe-tapping chart-topping hits he was creating dance moves like the moonwalk that every fan around the world would try to imitate in front of their mirrors at home sorry to burst your moon bubble but that captivating moonwalk wasn't actually invented by MJ sure he showed it to the world when he was performing Billie Jean at the Motown 25th anniversary live show in 1983 but it wasn't his to show off Jackson actually learned it from Caspar candidate and coolly Jackson who performed it on Soul Train in the 1970s even Marcel Marceau aka bit the clown showcased the move prior to MJ and even before those guys the moves inaugural performance came from tap dancer Bill Bailey back then it wasn't even called the moonwalk any guesses the backslide okey dokey so who here has ever heard of something called carbon dating no it's it's kind of to do with tinder it's a method used to analyze materials that once exchanged carbon dioxide with the atmosphere and decipher when that exchange happened what in other words archaeologists used carbon dating to determine when things were living we thought that this method was a great way to measure when trees humans animals and plants thrived and the professor who produced the first carbon dates way back in 1949 Willard Libby was given the Nobel Prize so as you can see the scientific world took it pretty darn seriously but since then scientists have actually recognized that carbon dating is subject to error why because of a variety of factors including contamination by outside sources of carbon in the environment this affects the natural decay and makes the evidence all a little wishy-washy plus other elements like the fact that the same plant one in America and one in Greenland for example can grow in different eras due to things like temperature variations so if carbon dating isn't actually accurate then a lot of history as we know it could in fact be a lie spooky okay you might not be old enough to remember this we certainly aren't but there was a time where the big tobacco companies ran advertising campaigns that said and we are not kidding cigarettes are good for your health these days we are all well aware of the health risks so we won't dwell on them but back in the mid 1900s companies were getting doctors approval to sell cigarettes in 1951 L&M advertised their filters as just what the doctor ordered in 1949 an advertisement for viceroys featured a dentist that told the customers that as your dentist I would recommend viceroys in the 1920s and 30s Lucky Strike used celebrity endorsements who would say things like I protect my voice with Lucky's and Kraven a began marketing its cigarettes under the slogan for your throats sake as early as 1939 but as we later found out this was nothing but lies sprinkled with misinformation and topped with a few more lies it worked though in 1950s America 45% yes 45% of the population smoked by the numbers that would have been close to 70 million people when medicine proved the Associated health risks companies changed their advertising tactics instead of we're good for you it became we're not as bad for you as everyone else and you're gonna smoke anyway so smoke our product you know who else put out a few false claims Thomas Edison would you believe that one of the most important inventors of the last 200 years a man famous for inventing the light bulb didn't actually invent the light bulb it's a weird thought isn't it Edison managed to file an astounding 1093 patents but the light bulb was not one of them in the year 1800 the first stages of light bulb technology were already in the works thanks to Alessandro Volta our main man Thomas Edison well he wasn't even born until 1847 nearly 50 years later a number of people added different elements to the light bulb Warren de LaRue made Alessandro Voltas version more efficient in the 1840s then English chemist Joseph Swan improved it again in the 1860s but it was Edison in 1879 who created the cost-effective finishing touches and took it to mass-market hardly an original idea if you ask us okay from one famous inventor to another we have no doubt that you've heard of Albert Einstein the man famous for having a giant brain in creating the theory of relativity couldn't even pass math class in high school how is this possible it's not it's a lie for a long time it was widely believed that the ingenious Einstein actually failed basic math in truth it was the complete opposite he'd already mastered differential and integral calculus by the time he was fifteen and just like all kids at that age do in their spare time he came up with an alternative for the Pythagorean theory just for fun for a quick bonus entry can we get a drumroll please this is a modern lie that pops up every single day and it's called Photoshop take a look Miranda Kerr's waistline was changed for the cover of Vogue and according to the 2016 Maxim magazine Priyanka Chopra has no armpits we have seen Photoshop cover-ups in the media time and time again and they are not going away anytime soon which of these big old lies surprised you the most did you already know any of them were lies let us know in the comments hey don't forget to Like subscribe and thanks for checking out the richest we'll see you next time

Channel: TheRichest

Views: 1,312,988

Rating: 4.7885165 out of 5

Keywords: The Richest, TheRichest, lies, history, einstein, pyramids, great wall of china, moonwalk landing, carbon dating, loch ness monster, mysteries, secret, unknown

Id: 6vaWug73kDs

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 31 2020