Historical Lies You Might Still Believe

Napoleon wasn't short. Gladiators rarely fought to the death. Nobody ever dug up a Viking helmet with horns. In this video, we look at 8 historical lies you still believe, where each one really came from, and the surprising people who invented them. 00:00 – Intro 00:20 – The Horned Viking Helmet 01:37 – Napoleon Was Short 03:00 – The Gladiator's Thumb 04:22 – The Library of Alexandria 05:49 – The Medieval Chastity Belt 07:05 – The Three Hundred Spartans 08:18 – The Sphinx's Nose 09:25 – The Iron Maiden 10:33 – Closing Which of these myths did you believe? Let us know in the comments. Sources include Roberta Frank's "The Invention of the Viking Horned Helmet," Napoleon's autopsy report and James Gillray's "Little Boney" caricatures, Fik Meijer's The Gladiators, ancient accounts of the Library of Alexandria by Galen, Seneca and Athenaeus, Konrad Kyeser's Bellifortis and Albrecht Classen's work on the chastity-belt myth, Herodotus's Histories with Paul Cartledge's Thermopylae, the medieval historian al-Maqrizi and Frederic Louis Norden's 1737 drawings of the Sphinx, and Johann Philipp Siebenkees's late 18th-century account of the iron maiden. Disputed claims are flagged in the narration itself. This video covers history and real-world context only. Subscribe for more deep dives into the stories history got wrong. #history #historymyths #historicalfacts