6 Historic Events That Were Nothing Like You Picture Them - The Spit Take

about 200,000 years ago our species air-dropped into existence with the same exact fancy brains and clumsy generals we have today five and a half thousand years ago we invented writing stuff down and history start the first 97% of the existence of our species is prehistory and it's like those years in the 70s that David Bowie doesn't remember we created some cool art and otherwise we have no clue what we were Lord of the Rings sure could have happened twice we would have been surprised both times today that we're prehistory makes us picture a caveman with a big forehead dragging a woman around maybe painting a deer on a cave even though it's by definition the part after evolution stopped changing our foreheads and our body in general and all signs point to women creating most of the early art so over to on the only two things we know about the vast majority of our species history which should give you some idea of how bad we are at the last 3% otherwise known as history here's what Jesus probably looked like and the reason we know that is because his name was Jesus of Nazareth and not Jesus Christ that man shaped thing has eyes the color of sky kill him what about history's pinups nope other kind of pinups that people who aren't Mel Gibson jerk-off - ah yes Cleopatra who a page full of Google Image Search Results assure us look like Kim Kardashian with more dramatic eye makeup in her own time her beauty was described by Plutarch the guy who writes stuff down as not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared to her so don't get Plutarch to write your wedding vows I guess but actually Cleopatra's family was famously ugly after generations of inbreeding and here's a portrait of her from an Egyptian coin as for that little vixen Pocahontas who won over early white settlers by looking like a half Asian jewel cording to reports from her time she was apparently bald but you'd never know it from that hat that's clearly not overcompensating for anything well grant that standards for what's attractive have changed over time but those eyes seem less like they're begging to tell you about the colors of the wind and more like they're daring you to play cards without checking her for a switchblade when I say Shakespeare the image that pops into your head is probably actually this 19th century forgery it was on the cover of every shakespeare paperback printed before forensic x-rays revealed that the name and date conveniently finger-painted up in the corner was lying there's actually only one portrait that we know was intentionally a drawing of Shakespeare fortunately it was etched by Martin drew [ __ ] an artist known in his time as not very good at this we probably shouldn't give him anything important and yes I believe that's a plausible pronunciation of his name so every image you've ever seen of Shakespeare bald guy with a flair for dramatic collars and a moustache probably is based on this one illustration on the plus side it looks like what we think of as Shakespeare but on the other hand so do that artists other etchings such as this one titled guy you can tell isn't Shakespeare because I put a hat on it it's worth noting that he probably sketched Shakespeare after he was dead and for some context here are some portraits of celebrities drawn by a police forensic artist who was allowed to consult photographs when he drew them from left to right that's Bill Cosby Tom Cruise Ronald Reagan and Michael Jordan but you knew that we're sure our image of Shakespeare based on an illustration by a terrible artist who'd never met him is right on but something that gets a tad out of history for some reason the awkward early years when staving off boredom suddenly replaced starvation and bear attacks as the number one activity to stave off we didn't know whether to go see Macbeth or watch a bunch of teenagers cram themselves into a phone booth footage of Houdini performing the tricks that captured the world's imagination was recently discovered by us on the Internet here he is jumping into a river in his underwear like a crazy person or wriggling around his straitjacket until it busts loose because it's poorly so you never suspect he has magical powers but you do get the sense that he would definitely eat a bug if you dared him to that's because Houdini has less in common with the magicians of today than the insane things people found amusing when boredom was first invented such as throwing picnics to watch the Civil War like a spectator sport or setting up bleachers to watch nuclear bomb tests that's miss atomic bomb 1957 keep your hands to yourself fellas she's extremely radioactive very dangerous your parents had Woodstock but their grandparents had crushed Texas a temporary town built for the 40,000 spectators who flocked to watch a rich guy crashed two trains into each other at full speed actually that'd be extremely popular today and probably sponsored by Tostitos the difference is we'd talk about how the Tostitos train crunch was a new low in our selfie taking a motor using cat captioning cartoon porn drawing garbage TV watching modern culture even though as you can see we've always been into all of that the one time you made edible spaghetti as TV show three's a crowd in which a man's wife and his secretary are asked uncomfortable questions and try to tear each other's hair out well the guy feigns concern and tries to hide his erection see their culture was just as trashy they just chose not to talk about their equivalent of The Real Housewives of New Jersey and pretended they only ever watched Leave It to Beaver but at least the visual spectrum has painters and nature's the only way to make sure history remember that Abe Lincoln's voice was high-pitched was to teach her kids to do an undignified girly voice but there are some weird ways we can glimpse what the world sounded like before recorded noise for instance you know the rebel yell is that thing Bo and Luke Duke did before ramping their car awesomely but on the battlefield it apparently sounded more like a coyote being raped by a bird call also this Gruber rail from early twentieth century movies seems to indicate that everyone was just pretending to speak like that sorry I started speaking like a real person for a moment I don't know what got into me they must never know we don't speak like carnival barkers what's really weird is that if you took a time machine a few hundred years ago you might not understand a single word of English those are the people from Smith Island and they've stayed almost completely isolated since landing off the coast of Virginia in the 1600s they still talk like people did before there was a mass media piping proper TV English and every home when you spoke English the way your parents and their parents before your English was only as good as the drunkest branch of your family tree which turns out is pretty drug that's the gym in the 1930s having not the faintest clue how exercise works it was possible because back then food was still food in that it went stale and mostly tasted bad corporate America hadn't scientifically engineered snack chips to be more addictive than heroin so people tended to stay person-shaped until they smoked themselves to death and if that makes you jealous wait till you hear how drunk they were just all of the time for instance the Boston Tea Party was actually the Boston rum party which explains the costumes the Puritans stopped in Massachusetts because they were out of beer the Congress of Vienna is famous for dividing up Europe after the fall of Napoleon but in Vienna it's known more as the time the world's most powerful kings and diplomats spent nine months blacked out in our city fighting [ __ ] drunk driving their horses into everything in their path ulysses s grant was openly roaring drunk while commanding the union to victory in the Civil War which Abraham Lincoln went on record saying made him a better field general and finally two days before signing the US Constitution Washington's Ben Franklin James Madison and the 52 other delegates who were in the process of forging the greatest political document in human history went into a Philadelphia bar and Queen them drank 100 bottles of wine 22 bottles of Porter 12 bottles of beer 8 bottles of whisky 8 bottles of hard cider and 7 bowls of spiked punch which you might recognize as way more alcohol than 55 human beings should be able to consume without dying Yankee per also charged them 2% for all the bottles and chamber putts they broke because they had toilet fights I guess and that's how they pregame the signing of the US Constitution so just to recap we spent the first 97% of our existence shrouded in the cultural equivalent of a blackout finally claw our way out of the bladed darkness and pulled the starter cord on human progress and upon completion of what some consider to be the finest use of the written word we celebrated by getting so drunk nobody could remember their own name which makes you wonder if we invented writing so that we could just get as stuff as we wanted without worrying about remembering stuff hey thanks for watching you guys I want you guys to pitch the best action movie that could possibly take place in an unknown pocket of history that no movie has taken place in yet and I'm gonna steal that and then make millions of dollars off of it you're welcome

Channel: Cracked

Views: 2,183,511

Rating: 4.7787228 out of 5

Keywords: William Shakespeare, Caveman, Jesus Christ, Mel Gibson, Cleopatra, history, world history, historic events, Cracked, cracked.com, sketch, funny, spoof, humor, native americans, Al jolson, racism, dating shows, the 1970s, US Constitution, congress, USA

Id: N3uJAxLtedM

Length: 8min 51sec (531 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 28 2015