These are the most common misconceptions.
When it comes to past centuries, his contemporaries decided to take everything, even the awesome, assertions about that time at face value. It is believed that people in the middle Ages did not live to be 40 years, and the chastity belt, the knights put on their pious before you go camping. About these and other popular misconceptions are discussed in the review.
1. The Vikings wore helmets with horns
In the traditional view of the Vikings is a huge warriors in horned helmets. In fact, the helmets of the Scandinavians was the same as the vast majority of other European countries. For ritual purposes the Vikings used headdresses made of animal skins. “Horned” Viking helmet began in 1876 as the costumes of the performers in Opera of Richard Wagner’s “der Ring des Nibelungen.
2. The average life expectancy in the Middle ages were up to 30 years
In many reputable journals and literary works tells that in the Middle ages people lived very long. Mostly their average age was 30-35 years. In fact, this statement is only partly true. The constant epidemics, wars contributed to a long and happy life of Europeans. Was high child mortality. However, those who crossed the 30 year mark, despite the cataclysms, lived usually to the 64-67 years.
3. Napoleon Bonaparte was small in stature
It is considered that Napoleon Bonaparte was a very small increase (for this reason in the literature there are a lot of jokes). Actually this is not true. The fact that its growth was 5.2 feet. In the French system of measurement that was equal to 169 cm, and in English – only 158 cm, That’s because of this misunderstanding with the translation quantities of Bonaparte “had done” is much lower than it really is.
4. Chastity belt appeared in the middle Ages
Looking for iron fixture for marital fidelity, the modern inhabitants do not cease to be surprised by a medieval savagery.” When the knights went to the Crusades, they put their wives in a chastity belt, that their pious was not looking for the joy of the other “knights”. Scientists have already proved that a chastity belt is a fiction. The most ancient of them date back to XVIII-XIX centuries, but not to the Middle ages. And wore them not for the preservation of conjugal fidelity, and to limit their teenagers from Masturbation, which allegedly led to madness.
5. Count Dracula is a vampire
Not lost its popularity the legend of the graph-bloodsucker Dracula. In fact, the hospodar of Wallachia Vlad III, earned his nickname because of his cruelty during military battles with the Turks. The count liked to put prisoners on the number and eat around them, waiting until they die. In the early twentieth century the tomb of Vlad Dracula opened, but the body wasn’t there. With a light hand of the writer Bram Stoker about count Dracula as the vampire spoke the whole world.
6. Salieri was Mozart’s enemy
It is considered that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was poisoned out of envy Antonio Salieri. This statement became public after the publication of the works of A. S. Pushkin “Mozart and Salieri”. But, if we follow the historical sources, both composers worked in different musical directions, and this Mozart was jealous of his opponent, because were that much more successful and in financial terms was much more secure standing of the musician.
7. An Apple fell on Isaac Newton on the head
Probably no such person who has not heard about the Apple fell on his head Isaac Newton, why physics came the enlightenment, and opened the law of universal gravitation. Apple really was, it fell not on the head of physics, and next to it.
