In January 1911 Marie Curie was the most decorated scientist in France. The French Academy of Sciences voted against admitting her by two votes, then voted 90 to 52 to bar all women permanently. She responded by refusing to let them publish her work for a decade. Later that same year she won her second Nobel Prize. France did not admit a woman to the Academy until 1979.
Columbus never set foot on the North American continent across four voyages. He landed in the Caribbean, believed he was in Asia until he died, and the continent is named after someone else because he refused to accept he had found anything new. The first European to reach North American soil was Leif Eriksson, 500 years earlier.
The claim that the Great Wall of China is visible from space was written in 1754, 215 years before anyone went to space. Every astronaut who has specifically looked for it from orbit has reported they could not see it. The Wall is 6 metres wide. At 400 kilometres altitude, that is below the resolution threshold of the human eye.
Hitler was Austrian. He remained an Austrian citizen until 1932, one year before becoming Chancellor of Germany. For 43 years of his life he held no German citizenship. His antisemitism was formed in Vienna, where he lived homeless for five years after being twice rejected by the Academy of Fine Arts. Austria later spent decades presenting itself as Hitler’s first victim.
The story everyone knows about Rasputin’s death comes from one source: the man who killed him. The autopsy found no poison and no water in his lungs. He did not survive cyanide. He did not drown. A 2024 forensic evaluation concluded he was executed by a single close-range shot to the forehead. The legend was built by a man with every reason to exaggerate.
Her name was not Joan. It was not Arc. She never called herself by either. She never killed anyone in battle. She was not burned for witchcraft. And she is the only person in the history of the Catholic Church to have been both condemned and canonised by that same institution.
Einstein did not fail mathematics. His 1896 Swiss certificate shows perfect scores. His Nobel Prize was not for relativity. He played no role in building the atomic bomb and described signing the Roosevelt letter as the greatest mistake of his life. Three myths. Three corrections.
Genghis Khan killed 40 to 60 million people. He also created the first direct trade route between Europe and China, a system of religious tolerance that exempted all faiths from taxation, and the largest contiguous legal system in history. Both things are true.
Tesla did not lose to Edison. His AC system powers the entire planet. The War of Currents was fought between corporations, not men. Edison did not cause Tesla’s poverty. And DC is quietly making a comeback in data centres. Marco Bellinari goes through the myth carefully.
