If the premise is wrong, then so the conclusion.
First of all, listing any possible myths has no effect on the reality of the next examined story.
It does tend to establish a pattern -- and if the next story is to be the exception, one should provide a reason why.
And all of your listed myths have some basis in fact.
But they are not facts in and of themselves.
Columbus DID prove to many that the world was not as they imagined it.
No, he didn't -- in fact, if anyone had the wrong ideas about the Earth, it was Columbus himself.
The ancient Greeks hypothesized that the Earth was round around the 6th to 5th century BC, and it was Eratosthenes who not only confirmed it, but measured its circumference accurately in around the 3rd century BC.
No educated person in Columbus' time believed in the flat Earth anymore, the issue had literally been settled over a millennia ago. The "flat Earth" story is just that, a story -- concocted from whole cloth by (of all people) Washington Irving for the writing of
The Life and Times of Christopher Columbus, a three-volume work which eventually became such an international best seller, not nearly enough people thought to fact-check it.
As I said, it was Columbus' ideas about the Earth which were in error -- everyone told him that his trip to the orient was doomed to failure not because the Earth was flat, but because it was
too big. And they were right -- had the American continent not been there, his ships would not have been able to carry enough food to make the crossing. Columbus grossly underestimated the size of the Earth (not being familiar with Eratosthenes' work), and was saved from starvation by pure luck.
Pilgrims DID come to America seeking religious freedom,
No, the Pilgrims
left England seeking religious freedom, and they found it -- in Holland.
They had settled there and lived happily and persecution-free for years before making the decision to move yet again to the New World. The reasons were twofold -- First, Holland, then as now, was a little too liberal and free-wheeling for the strict Puritans.
Second, it was a time when wealth was measured in land, and the New World had literally millions of square miles of free land just waiting to be claimed, which fit in nicely with the Puritan belief of God rewarding His followers through wealth and prosperity, which is why they saw it as their own "Land of milk and honey." Why settle for
just religious freedom when you can have religious freedom
and wealth and status?
IOW, the Pilgrims did not come to America to be free, because they already were. They came here for the same reason everyone else did -- to get rich quick.
people tell the stories about Washington & Betsy Ross after their deaths,
Just as people told the stories of Moses and Jesus after their deaths -- or are you still clinging to the myth that they were eyewitness accounts, quickly scribbled by men in their little notebooks as they followed M & J around the wilderness?
Franklin wrote about the kite & key.........
He proposed the idea for the experiment, but never actually did it himself. We know this because 1: He never wrote about doing so, and Franklin was meticulous when it came to his scientific notes, and (far more telling) 2: had he performed the experiment as described, he would've been fried. Since Franklin died as an elder statesman and
not as 180 pounds of burnt charcoal, the obvious conclusion is that the experiment only ever existed on paper.
they all have basis in fact even if the details of some are unconfirmed.
And I wish I could point out to you the vast difference between
basis in fact and
being fact -- you seem to have missed the point entirely.
You don't seem all that willing to go beyond the "basis" in fact to get to the actual fact. the myths may be close enough for your satisfaction, but not for anyone who's actually interested in the truth of what really happened.
The much-ballyhooed arrival of the Pilgrims and Puritans in New England in the early 1600s was indeed a response to persecution that these religious dissenters had experienced in England.
Which is why they went to the Netherlands. There they were free, but dirt poor. That simply wouldn't do.
"To establish themselves as rightful interpreters of the Bible independent of an inherited social and cultural order, they removed from the Anglican Church in order to re-establish it as they believed it truly should be. This of course meant leaving the country, and they left for Holland in 1608.
After 12 years, they decided to move again. Having gone back to England to obtain the backing of the Virginia Company, 102 Pilgrims set out for America. The reasons are suggested by William Bradford, when he notes the "discouragements" of the hard life they had in Holland, and the hope of attracting others by finding "a better, and easier place of living"; the "children" of the group being "drawne away by evill examples into extravagence and dangerous courses"; the "great hope, for the propagating and advancing the gospell of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world"
Pilgrims and Puritans: Background
