RUMOR SOMETIMES BECOMES MYTH

~~PL - 2013~~

 

How many of you have 1300-plus emails still in your computer? I do. One day, I decided to see what was happening in November of past years. I clicked back to November of 2012.                 Several emails evoked a smile, an eye-rolling (and a “delete”), a “good grief!” or some such reaction. One thread was from an across-the-continent relative. I had lately worked the polls with a high school classmate of his. During a lull in the voting, she had asked about him. I told her, and she said she seemed to remember he worked for/ at/ in the Jet Propulsion Lab.                 This was news to me. Unless he’d been keeping secrets all these years. He replied thusly:                 “Surely there’s a Will Rogers quote that fits this moment. (Or was it Mark Twain?) ‘The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.’ Never worked as scientist or engineer or admin or clerical or host or janitor for JPL. No connection whatsoever. Cannot imagine where such an accusation/ rumor/ report might have originated. Pure pap nonsense.”

I had an idea: Were there any historical rumors that weren’t true, but became told as truth? Here are three.

                Abner Doubleday was a Civil War general and abolitionist who famously ordered the first Union shots in defense of Fort Sumter. But while he had a distinguished military career, Doubleday is more commonly remembered for inventing baseball—even though he did no such thing.

                The story dates back to 1905, when former National League president A.G. Mills headed a commission to investigate the origins of America’s favorite pastime. Based on a letter from a man named Abner Graves, the commission incorrectly concluded that Doubleday had invented baseball in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. In truth, Doubleday was attending West Point in 1839 and had never claimed any involvement with baseball. Nevertheless, the myth persisted for years, and the Baseball Hall of Fame was even established in Cooperstown on the sport’s mistaken centennial in 1939.

              Lady Godiva is best known for defiantly riding naked through the streets of medieval Coventry to protest the crippling taxes her husband had levied on the townspeople. According to legend, at some point in the 11th century Godiva pressured her powerful husband, Leofric, to reduce the people’s debts. When he mockingly responded that he would only do so when she rode naked on horseback through the town, Godiva called his bluff and galloped into the history books.

               While this story has become the stuff of legend—a tailor who spied on Godiva even inspired the phrase “peeping Tom”—scholars agree that the nude horseback ride probably never happened. Godiva certainly existed, but most histories mention her as simply the wife of an influential nobleman. In fact, the complete Godiva myth didn’t even appear until the 13th century, 200 years after the ride supposedly occurred. The story was later picked up by notable writers like Alfred Lord Tennyson, whose 1842 poem “Godiva” helped cement the tall tale as a historical fact.
 

              One of the most famous stories of Roman decadence concerns Nero, the emperor who blithely “fiddled while Rome burned” during the great fire of 64 A.D. According to some ancient historians, the emperor had ordered his men to start the fire in order to clear space for his new palace. But while Nero was certainly no saint—he reportedly ordered the murder of his own mother during his rise to power—the story of his fiendish fiddling is likely exaggerated.

            While some ancient chroniclers did describe the music-loving emperor as singing while he watched flames consume the city, the historian Tacitus would later denounce these claims as vicious rumors. According to him, Nero was away at Antium during the early stages of the blaze, and upon returning to Rome helped lead rescue and rebuilding efforts and even opened his palace gardens to those who lost their homes. Another strike against the legend: the fiddle wouldn’t be invented for several hundred years. If Nero played any instrument while Rome burned . . . it would most likely have been a cithara, a kind of lyre.            [Information from www.history.com]
 

             Perhaps Mr. Doubleday, Ms Lolita and poor old Nero would have said the same thing as my relative: “Can’t imagine where or how such an accusation/ rumor/ report got started.”