Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1893 — MISTAKES OF HISTORIANS. [ARTICLE]

MISTAKES OF HISTORIANS.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat. There never was such a person as Pope Joan, the so-called female Pontiff. Portia did not swallow the burning coals. The whole story wis certainly an invention. The stars are not innumerable. Less than 6,000 are all that can be seen on the clearest night. William Tell did not found the Swiss confederation, and the story of Gesler has no historic basis. There is no historic authority for the statement that little George Washington cut down the cherry tree. Water does net swarm with animalcule. ‘ All forms of life are missing from rain, spring-and good well water. The wonderful Damascus blades that cut liars of iron in two were not superior to the Toledo blades made day. The Pharaoh of the Exodus was not drowned in the Red Sea. His mummy. has been found, the skull split by a battle-ax. Alexander the Great did not weep for other worlds to conquer. There is reason to suspect that his army met with a serious reverse in India, a fact tjiat induced him to retrace his steps. The immense burning glasses with which Archimqjies burned the ships of the besiegers of Syracuse at ten miles distance were never manufactured, and it is now known that they could not be. Caesar did not say “Et tu, Brute. ” Eyewitnesses to the assassination, deposed that “he died fighting, but silent, like a wolf.” . . Vinegar will not split rocks, so Hannibal could not thus have made his way through the Alps. Nor will it dissolve pearls, so that the story of Cleopatra drinking pearls melted in vinegar must have been a fiction. Columbus did not make an egg stand on end to confute his opponents. The feat was peformed by Bruneleschi, the architect, to silence critics who asked him how he was going to support the dome of the Cathedral of Florence. Louis XVI. did not behave with overwhelming dignity at his execution. On the contrary he screamed for help, struggled with the executioners and begged for mercy. Nor did the attendant priest say: “Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven.” The expression was used for him by a Paris evening paper. The blood of Rizzio, Mary Stuart’s favorite, cannot be seen on the floor where he was murdered by Darnley and the other conspirators. What is seen there is a daub of red paint, annually renewed for the benefit cf gaping tourists. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon did not hang, nor were they gardens. They were erected for the amusement of a Babylonian Queen who had come from a mountainous country. Charles IX. did not fire on the fleeing Hugenots from the window of the Louvre during the massacre of St. Bartholomew. On the contrary, he was frightened almost to death by the reports of the guns, and spent the time weeping and wringing his hands. Mary Stuart of Scotland was not a beauty. She had cross eyes, and to save the trouble of having her hair dressed cut it off close to her head and wore a wig. When, after her death, the executioner lifted her head io show it to tire people, the wig came off and showed a closecropped skull covered iwith gray hair.