History questions with obvious answers - that are wrong.

Quid est Veritas? · Mar 26, 2018

What is the capital of England?

The easy answer is London, but that depends what you mean. The royal court, parliament and royal institutions are located in Westminster since the 1200s. This is outside of the City of London and has had its own municipal government. It has been added to Greater London or the modern London as a metropolitan, though.
London has been the largest city and financial centre, but England has historically been ruled from just outside its technical boundaries in a neighbouring town.

Before this, Winchester acted as the capital for a while in Anglo-Saxon times and a number of kings had preferences for different locales. For much of the Roman period, the capital of Roman Britannia was Camulodonum (Colchester), not Londinium - the latter only became the capital of the diocese of Britannia after Diocletian's reforms.

laura5814 · Nov 19, 2018

I saw (in an encyclopedia) that the native American tribes the Choctaw and the Chickasaw lived in the Southeast woodlands and the Chippewa in the Northeast Woodlands. Wouldn't we assume that ,them having similar names, they would be from neighboring tribes. Since most tribe names were named by their enemies or for something they were seen doing (Araphaho) this would make it possible.

Quid est Veritas? · Nov 20, 2018

laura5814 said:
I saw (in an encyclopedia) that the native American tribes the Choctaw and the Chickasaw lived in the Southeast woodlands and the Chippewa in the Northeast Woodlands. Wouldn't we assume that ,them having similar names, they would be from neighboring tribes. Since most tribe names were named by their enemies or for something they were seen doing (Araphaho) this would make it possible.

I don't think those names are that similar though. It may also be artifact from Europeans. The Cherokee for instance, pronounce their name closer to Tsalaghee, but the English struggled to pronounce it - thus creating the Cherokee exonym.

It reminds me of the Pennsylvania Dutch - who are really German. The Dutch comes from the old Germanic endonym Deutsch for German, that the English confused with their own exonym for the inhabitants of the low countries (Dutch), though this ultimately derived from the same source.

Radagast · Nov 20, 2018

Q. In what month did the October Revolution happen?

A. November (7 November 1917, to be precise).

Quid est Veritas? · Nov 20, 2018

When did the Roman Empire fall?

So this has a number of problems. Traditionally, we say 476 AD - for the end of the Western Roman Empire. This was when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor. But wait, this Emperor was an usurper in the eyes of the Eastern Empire, who recognised his predecessor Julius Nepos - so the West fell by that reckoning in 475 in Italy, but only 480 in Gaul and Illyricum, where Nepos still ruled. Further, Theodoric deposed Odoacer with Eastern backing as a foederati, as Odoacer himself had been as well. So a clear cut 'end' doesn't really exist, and no one in the period thought that a significant Fall had occured then. It is more of a retrospective opinion. The sacks of Rome under the Vandals (455) and Goths (410) mattered far more.

The Eastern half however, continued on until 1453. People just often fail to realise this, because we Westerners started calling that half the Byzantine Empire - usually from about Constantine onwards. It tends to be called both Roman and Byzantine until about Justinian or Heraclius, and Byzantine after that, but there is no real break. The Empire continued to call itself the Roman Empire till its end. This is more Westerners trying to isolate the mediaeval Roman Empire from the ancient one, especially post Renaissance where the West saw itself as the true heir of Rome. After all, the Byzantine Empire didn't rule Rome itself for significant periods.

Babe Ruth · Nov 20, 2018

A common, and understandable, misconception I encounter.. the Civil War abruptly ended @ Appomattox.
There were several subsequent Confederate surrenders after Appomattox. Johnston was still in the field, etc..

A historical debate/revision I've been interested in recently.. is the assertion that America's first Thanksgiving was in Virginia (a couple years before Massachusetts). The assertion makes sense, except the Virginia' thanks giving didn't have the feast that defines/links current tradition..

Quid est Veritas? · Nov 21, 2018

How long was the Hundred Years War?

116 years, from Edward III claiming the throne of France in 1337 till 1453 when the last English territory in Gascony fell. Although technically the war is even 20 years longer, since only then it was formally ended, though the British monarchs continued claiming the throne of France till 1803 (and the Jacobyte pretender still does so, along with the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland).

jayem · Nov 21, 2018

Another Presidential question: Who had the shortest term?

The usual answer is William Henry Harrison. The 9th President who was elected in 1840. And died of pneumonia 31 days after his inauguration.

But strictly speaking, a correct answer would be Dick Cheney. Who was officially appointed Acting President on July 21, 2007 when Pres. G.W. Bush was under anesthesia for a colonoscopy lasting 2 hours and 5 minutes. And this was actually Cheney's second term as Acting President. His first was on June 29, 2002. When Pres. Bush had an earlier colonoscopy lasting 2 hrs and 15 minutes.

USincognito · Nov 24, 2018

Babe Ruth said:
A common, and understandable, misconception I encounter.. the Civil War abruptly ended @ Appomattox.
There were several subsequent Confederate surrenders after Appomattox. Johnston was still in the field, etc..

If people are interested in a digest version of the end of the Civil War I recommend the History channel production April 1865: The Month That Saved America based on Scott Minnich book.

Quid est Veritas? · Jan 25, 2019

Another common misconception is that the Battle of New Orleans was fought after the war of 1812 had formally ended, and that the participants were just unaware of the peace. This is false. A preliminary agreement was signed at Ghent in December 1814 and ratified by the British Parliament, but the treaty would only come into effect when the US Congress did likewise (which it did in February 1815). Before this, the Battle of New Orleans was fought in January, so the two countries were technically still at war. Both Jackson and Pakenham, the two commanders, were aware that peace was likely to be made immanently, and in fact Pakenham's orders expressly told him to continue offensive action until the peace was formally ratified by both legislatures. So even if they had known that the Treaty of Ghent had been agreed to, but not yet ratified, the campaign would probably still have gone ahead - the British did not put much trust in constancy from the American Republican structures.

Radagast · Jan 25, 2019

Babe Ruth said:
A common, and understandable, misconception I encounter.. the Civil War abruptly ended @ Appomattox.
There were several subsequent Confederate surrenders after Appomattox. Johnston was still in the field, etc..

Right. Lee only surrendered his own army. He did not surrender on behalf of the Confederacy.

I believe that the last surrender was of the commerce raider CSS Shenandoah, on 6 November 1865. The Shenandoah also fired the last shot of the war (because it took a while before the crew found out that the war was over).

As a side issue, it is possible that the last shot of the war was fired by an Australian crewman (who snuck aboard when the ship briefly stopped in Australia).

GodLovesCats · Mar 20, 2019

This is a great thread idea! I am sure there are many more historical "misfacts" that none of us know.

GodLovesCats · Mar 20, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
So the West fell by that reckoning in 475 in Italy

There was not country named Italy in 475. The boot-shaped peninsula was actually many little sovereign states for a long time. At one point Venice was part of Austria. The name Italy came into existence in 1860. Its first ruler was a king and he lived at Pitti Palace in Florence.

JackRT · Mar 20, 2019

Which nation made the most effective contribution to the ending of WWI?

Americans would almost unanimously say "The USA, of course!" But the answer is Canada by a slight margin.

November 11, 2018 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I. Canada fought this war from the beginning but the last hundred days was our finest hour. It began with the Canadian Corps assault at Amiens. For the first time in four years the German defences collapsed completely and well disciplined and battle hardened German soldiers fled for their lives. When General Ludendorf reported to the Kaiser he was asked “We have lost the war haven’t we?” Ludendorf replied “Yes sir”.

Following this, the Canadian Corps fought five more major battles back to back ending with the Persuit to Mons where the Germans finally surrendered.

About half way through that hundred days the American Exoeditionary Force began its own offensive, fighting as a unified force entirely under its own command for the first time. It is instructive to note the comparative performance of the two fighting forces:

Troops engaged:

Americans: 650,000
Canadians: 105,000

Duration of Operations:

Americans: 47 days
Canadians: 100 days

Maximum Distance Advanced:

Americans: 34 miles
Canadians: 86 miles

German Divisions Defeated:
(Out of a total of 200)

Americans: 46
Canadians: 47

Average Number of Casualties Suffered per German Division Defeated:

Americans: 2,170
Canadians: 975

Total Casualties:

Americans: 100,000
Canadians: 45,830

The CC and the AEF each defeated about 25% of the German army. This puts into much better perspective the real contribution of the USA in ending the war.

GodLovesCats · Mar 20, 2019

Here is one that will confuse everybody: America's Independence Day is July 2. How so? On that date the U.S. Congress voted in favor of independence from England. That was before Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, so there is some controversy about it.

Quid est Veritas? · Mar 20, 2019

ChristianForCats said:
There was not country named Italy in 475. The boot-shaped peninsula was actually many little sovereign states for a long time. At one point Venice was part of Austria. The name Italy came into existence in 1860. Its first ruler was a king and he lived at Pitti Palace in Florence.

Italy only became a country as a nation-state then, but it existed as a geographic entity since Roman times. The Social War we see the Italian cities with Latin rights using the name Italia for themselves, and before then when Livius Drusus was killed or the Gracchi reforms, the Romans already spoke of Italia.

In Roman times however, Italia was the area from Tuscany down - modern Northern Italy was called Cisalpine Gaul. Only in late Roman times was the concept expanded up to the Alps. The Romans considered themselves a form of Italian, as is clear from the Aenead. We also see the Ostrogothic Kingdom that succeeded the Western Empire called themselves by that name.

The concept remained in use in the mediaeval period and beyond, for instance Frederick II crowned his one son King of Italy. The various states that made up the peninsula only united in 1860 as a modern post-Westphalian state, yes.

It is similar to Germany, which only existed as a country from 1871, but was a known geographic and cultural unit from Roman times - though again, its rough borders shifted around, and its actual existence merely borrowed the Roman name for the entity descended from the Eastern division of the Carolingian Empire at Verdun.

GodLovesCats · Mar 20, 2019

Of course in Germany's case there was a 45-year interruption (1944-1991) of the nation's unity.

Quid est Veritas? · Mar 21, 2019

ChristianForCats said:
Of course in Germany's case there was a 45-year interruption (1944-1991) of the nation's unity.

You could say Germany was only really united under Nazi Germany, as strictly speaking Austria is also one of the Germanies of yore.

GodLovesCats · Mar 21, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
You could say Germany was only really united under Nazi Germany, as strictly speaking Austria is also one of the Germanies of yore.

When did Austria become a soverign state?

The easy answer is 1945, when Germany split roughly north and south.

History questions with obvious answers - that are wrong.

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