One thing that really vexes me about education in general, and the teaching of history in particular, is that most of it is absolute codswallop through and through.
Take the Marathon, for instance. Every kid is taught at an early age that the Marathon is based on the distance that a messenger ran from the battle of Marathon to Athens to tell the people there of their victory over the persians, upon which he fell down dead from exhaustion.
It never fucking happened! It's simply not true, there is no way around the fact that it is absolute nonsense! There was no such messenger, no such run and no such death!
And how about the earth being round? Every kid is taught at an early age that everyone thought the earth was flat up until Columbus proved that it wasn't.
Utter claptrap! At least for the last 2000 years people have commonly known perfectly well that the earth was more or less spherical. The reason why Columbus was initially laughed at was because he thought the world was much smaller than it really was, and everyone knew that. If he hadn't discovered the West Indies, him and all his crew would have starved to death, and his contemporaries knew that. They knew perfectly well that one could, in theory, travel to India across the Atlantic ocean, but in practice, it wasn't doable due to the immense distance. Columbus was in fact just an idiot who thought the distance was much smaller.
Now what about the V-sign? Nothing to do with archers wanting to show the french that they still had their fingers, or whatever. Do you know what it means?
FUCK OFF!
So, stop corrupting history, stop teaching bullshit to the kids, or I will come to your house and shove a copy of the collected works of Herodotus up your candy arse!
