Old timers might remember the History Channel
as a stream of World War II documentaries, but a lot has changed since then. The new History is a cranky old conspiracy
theorist who secretly binges reality shows. Here are some of the times the History Channel
lied to you. In 1945, Adolf Hitler took his own life in
his underground bunker. That's reality. Conspiracy theories about how he might've
escaped aren't just wrong, but deeply offensive. Unfortunately, back in 2014, people got riled
up when the FBI declassified documents reporting on the possibility that Hitler had actually
run away to South America, shaved his mustache, and assumed a new identity. Here's the thing: FBI reports don't mean something
really happened, because the FBI has to document everything, no matter how stupid it is. So every time a lunatic or attention seeker
claimed to see Hitler, the FBI wrote it down - that's their job. As Skeptoid points out, they have been forced
to document all kinds of nonsensical falsehoods. Then in 2015, according to Variety, the History
Channel basically gave real history the middle finger. The reality show Hunting Hitler, apparently
an effort to finally settle the matter with a crack team of investigators, was really
nothing more than a ratings ploy. The series showed the team go to Argentina
and investigate false leads which proved nothing whatsoever… because, well, no genuine evidence
exists. Aside from trivializing the subject matter,
Hunting Hitler also trivialized reality. Biopics deserve some leeway because turning
a real person's life into an interesting movie - or series - can be hard. But according to historian David Nasaw, the
epic eight-part drama series The Kennedys, first optioned by the History Channel in 2009,
played so fast and loose with reality that it might as well have used a different name
for the family. Overall, the big problem seems to be that
the show's producer was trying to turn the Kennedy family into the family from The Godfather,
leading to a series full of crazy escapades, sibling rivalry, and big money bribing. Some of the more bizarre fictional plot twists
inserted into the story involve patriarch Joe Kennedy Sr., who is depicted as giving
Jackie Kennedy a $1 million trust fund to stay with his son - which makes no sense - and
also paying off a Chicago mobster to secure JFK's presidential win. Neither of these theories have any credibility,
and are basically just there to spice up the narrative. The actual Kennedys are a powerful family,
but whether you love 'em or hate 'em, these TV characters weren't the real deal. The History Channel spent two years holding
a place on their schedule for The Kennedys premiere, but when the series was finally
ready in 2011, they quietly moved the series to their Canadian branch, History Television,
according to The Globe and Mail. It's long past time to rectify a sin that's
been perpetuated for centuries. Assuming the biblical characters were real
people, none of them were white folks. All those people were from either North Africa
or the Middle East, so there's no way they had European features or English accents. Yes, both classical artwork and Hollywood
have been lying about this for a crazy long amount of time, but it's the 21st century,
and the History Channel miniseries The Bible has no excuse for featuring such a whitewashed
cast. To make things even worse, The Guardian notes
that out of the few major characters played by minority actors - one of them is Satan. Yes, the devil. Could they be more offensive? Ironically, the show's producers claimed their
program was made out of a quest to cure "Bible illiteracy," but the series is Bible illiterate
itself. The show cherry-picks elements from the "easy"
biblical tales while ignoring more ambiguous, dark, or confusing aspects. The result is a clean, sanitized, easy-breezy
version that distorts the entire message of the text, rendering it unrecognizable. In other words, if your knowledge of the Bible
comes from History's The Bible, you really don't know all that much about the Bible. The ancient Maya were unquestionably amazing. Their brilliant insights regarding mathematics
and astronomy were so far beyond their time that it's hard to even conceptualize how they
did it. That's why in 2012, people got freaked out
that the Mayan calendar randomly ended on December 21, 2012. The History Channel did a lot of fear-mongering
about this stuff, even referring to 2012 as the long-awaited "Doomsday." "2012, a date that is prophesied as the end
of the world." Then 2012 came and went, with no apocalypse. What happened? Don't blame the Maya; blame the History Channel. As National Geographic explains, the Maya
never predicted a doomsday. December 21, 2012, was simply the end of the
13th cycle, at which point the calendar would reset to zero. Basically, it's like how you put up a new
calendar every January. So if those ancient Maya had ever visited
us via time machine, they would've scoffed at how all these silly 21st-century folks
totally misinterpreted their calendar. Wouldn't it be awesome if Bigfoot was real? The world would feel a little more magical,
for sure. But there's no magic to be found in the 2015
History Channel special Bigfoot Captured, a ratings stunt that depicted a supposedly
"real" sasquatch being apprehended. While some cool stuff came out of the program,
such as an 8-foot 3-D-printed Bigfoot skeleton that was reported on by the Idaho State Journal,
the special was deceptively advertised, featuring no clear documentation that it was fake outside
of a small disclaimer saying the program featured, quote, "some dramatization." "Something's out here, dude, something's watching. I don't know." As Paste points out, people all over Twitter
freaked out about the whole thing. Snopes even wrote up the series. Considering that much of Bigfoot's popularity
today is the result of pranks, the fakeness of Bigfoot Captured perhaps isn't shocking. Still, the whole thing raises questions about
the responsibility of filmmakers, and it's shady that the network interviewed professors
without informing them of the film's purpose. "There are no sasquatches. There are no bigfeet." Everything on Ancient Aliens is faker than
fake, according to the Smithsonian. Even when the show pulls from real sources,
it distorts, misquotes, and mischaracterizes them so badly that it becomes a cheesy sci-fi
epic rather than a genuine documentary. When History isn't making up narratives about
how aliens may have slaughtered the dinosaurs to make way for humans, it's promoting even
zanier nonsense like the idea that ancient Egyptians flew extraterrestrial airplanes
and Martians created human life. [Martian stuff] In order to create these zany theories, the
program basically figures out a conclusion, finds a real event that has absolutely nothing
to do with their narrative, and then omits any information that doesn't support that
narrative. Then, if something doesn't make sense? Chalk it up to those oh-so-mysterious aliens. Boom. Ancient Aliens is like a high school prank
that got way out of hand. The disappearance of daring pilot Amelia Earhart
in 1937 is a genuine mystery, and while there are some wacked out theories about what happened,
most people have accepted that her true ending was probably a lot more tragic. That's why the whole world got pumped about
the History Channel's 2017 special Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence, which theorized
that Amelia and her navigator Fred Noonan were captured by the Japanese and may have
even lived for some years afterward. On the surface, this special wasn't just some
Ancient Aliens nonsense: The conversation centered around a new photo the network had
unearthed, reportedly dug up from the U.S. National Archives, which depicted Earhart
and Noonan both alive in Japan. "You think this is Amelia Earhart?” “That's right." While nothing was confirmed, the story got
national attention. Then… two days later, the whole thing got
debunked. According to National Geographic, an intrepid
internet blogger found the exact same photo in a Japanese coffee table travelogue published
in 1935 - two years before the famous pilot disappeared. Oops. The History Channel's program Mountain Men,
about hard-edged survivalists scraping by in the brutal wilderness, is ridiculously
embellished. For example, just ask one of the show's stars,
Tom Oar, who joked to the Billings Gazette that the show always exaggerated his life
to seem more dangerous - and less mundane - than it really was. Even the more exciting incidents, like wild
animal sightings, aren't quite what they seem, such as when a wolf encounter was recreated
with regular dogs. "This is a dangerous wolf, though. I think he'll be back." According to Alabama Entertainment, Oar's
fellow Mountain Men star Eustace Conway once admitted to Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth
Gilbert that his crazy wild man persona was mostly an act. While Conway does live out in the wilderness,
by all accounts, he's not the broke, penniless fella the show makes him out to be. “I feel good about that achievement." Texans take their history seriously, and they
don't like a bunch of outsiders painting them the wrong way. So back in 2015, when the History Channel
aired the drama series Texas Rising, which claimed to be a historical drama about the
creation of the Texas Rangers, Lone Star locals stood up and took notice of the show's many
historical inaccuracies. Soon afterward, the internet got flooded with
so many angry Texans that even the Wall Street Journal commented on it. Texas Monthly ripped the series to shreds,
pointing out lazily incorrect dates, inaccurate fashion trends, and the fact that the show's
desert landscapes had more in common with classic Hollywood Westerns than the real Texas
locations where historical events took place. Basically, the History Channel walked into
a Texas bar, said all the wrong things, and got punched out by the locals. Maybe they'll be more careful next time? "Go ahead, make my day." In 2011, Comedy Central's The Daily Show celebrated
the holiday season with a section called "Tree Fighting Ceremony," where host Jon Stewart
noted an amusing anecdote. Supposedly from the years 1789 to 1856, the
U.S. Congress valued Christmas Day so little that they simply used it as a regular workday. Well, fun-spoiling Politifact swooped in,
studied up, and pointed out that this allegation is completely inaccurate, as both the House
and Senate pretty much always took the day off. Don't blame Stewart or Comedy Central for
this "pants on fire"-level error, however. The true fault lies with their source, the
History Channel, which in 1997 aired a special called Christmas Unwrapped: The History of
Christmas. Stewart aired a clip from the special on his
show. "The United States Congress sat in session
and continued to stay open on Christmas Day for most of the next 67 years." Oops. Clearly, Stewart and The Daily Show producers
thought they could trust a channel named "History." "Ya know what, History Channel, you have f---ed
me for the last time!" Come on, you didn't really think Pawn Stars
was real, did you? If you couldn't tell just from watching it
and cringing every time literally anyone delivers their lines, the actual interactions are highly
staged. Those seemingly spontaneous customer interactions
you see on TV are arranged way beforehand. Even the bargaining and dialogue is lightly
scripted and practiced in advance, probably to make sure neither party storms off in a
huff about getting a bad deal. In 2012, star Corey Harrison told Huffington
Post that these days, he's far more likely to privately meet someone in an empty hallway
than to bargain with them at the counter. Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite
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