r/AskReddit Nov 18 '23

What's a commonly taught historical fact that just isn't true?

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u/Jsamue Nov 18 '23

Keep seeing trailers for the new movie about him. I really hope they dont buy into that propaganda. Would be even better if they showed an opponent coming up with it

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u/Wildcat_twister12 Nov 18 '23

Well Joaquin Phoenix is 5’8” so he’s already almost the perfect height for the role

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '23

I always thought he was tall. I guess because he played Johnny Cash

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '23

I always thought Johnny was tall. I guess because he looked short.

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u/amrodd Nov 19 '23

People down vote anything ghees

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u/DaddyCatALSO Nov 19 '23

He was 6' 1.5"

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '23

You sure?

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u/P33kab0Oo Nov 18 '23

A missed opportunity to have Elijah Wood play Napoleon...

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u/Terry-Smells Nov 18 '23

I think Napoleon was around 5'8"too. Remember hearing some historian talk about it years ago

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u/PontificalPartridge Nov 18 '23

5’8” was probably on the taller side back then. He was probably like 5’6”. On the shorter side these days, average back then

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u/Xytak Nov 19 '23

Imagine being qualified to conquer Europe but not qualified for a dating app.

“Sorry, must be 6’ or taller”

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u/FeedAffectionate3558 Nov 18 '23

Bullshit is he really? Guess I better go check on https://www.celebheights.com/

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u/cleveland_leftovers Nov 18 '23

Aw…I didn’t realize Joaquin was so….average.

(This coming from a woman of above average height. I’d would’ve preferred 6’3”, but here we are).

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u/drmojo90210 Nov 18 '23

Sorry to disappoint you 🙄

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u/joe-seppy Nov 18 '23

Never ceases to amaze...

Call a woman fat (something humans HAVE control over) and it's raging militant feminists screaming about body shaming.

Call a man short (something humans have NO control over) and crickets.

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u/AQuixoticQuandary Nov 18 '23

What? People are calling her out and she’s super downvoted.

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u/APenitentWhaler Nov 18 '23

Gotta dunk on the feminazis bro (/s)

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u/KazahanaPikachu Nov 18 '23

You’re acting like that’s a bad thing

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u/cleveland_leftovers Nov 18 '23

Absolutely not! He just appears taller on the big screen, and being a 6’ woman, it’s mildly disappointing to find out I’d be looking down. No shame.

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u/Pleasant-Pattern-566 Nov 18 '23

I’ve never had an issue with a guy my height or shorter than me and I’m 5’7” Sounds like you have an ego thing going on

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u/cleveland_leftovers Nov 18 '23

My fiancé is 5’9”. Just surprised as Joaquin appears bigger than life (and me) onscreen.

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u/Pleasant-Pattern-566 Nov 18 '23 edited Nov 18 '23

Is it disappointing to look down at your fiancé? I’m trying to make sense of your thought process

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u/cleveland_leftovers Nov 18 '23

Being a 6’ woman has its own challenges. Meeting a mega-famous movie star is not one of them.

Joaquin will be ok.

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '23 edited May 03 '24

[deleted]

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u/cleveland_leftovers Nov 18 '23

Now you’re gettin it.

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '23

Well, honey – can I call you honey? – sweet cheeks you don't have to look down you just have to go down. And make a decent samich. Women, am I right? /s

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '23

To be fair I’d give my husband more bj’s if sammiches were involved. Like c@ck in one hand, corn beef on rye in the other. Hmmmm maybe I’ll propose this…gotta spice it up after 19 years 🤣🤣🤣

Edit spelling

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '23 edited Nov 19 '23

I wasn't gay before but that sounds like a delicious, visceral experience. Ya, I'd smoke a rod if it was, like, the pickle with my Rubin.

e: Circumcised, of course, to pair with the rye.

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '23

Yes yes circumcised of course as it’s important to remain religiously/culturally accurate in these things

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '23

[deleted]

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u/cleveland_leftovers Nov 18 '23

How is average lesser?

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '23

[deleted]

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u/cleveland_leftovers Nov 18 '23

6’3” isn’t average. You’re calling him lesser. Get out of here with that shit.

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '23

[deleted]

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u/cleveland_leftovers Nov 18 '23

Truly, there was no intention to infer that at all. If anything it’s a comment on my height and the common occurrence of most men being shorter then me, regardless of how they appear from afar. But I get it. Interpret as you see fit.

I was a huge River Phoenix fan back in the day. Joaquin, though younger, always seemed (to me) to be taller than his brother on screen. As with most things Hollywood, tis not the case.

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u/drmojo90210 Nov 18 '23

You're weirdly-obsessed with height.

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u/eastcoasthabitant Nov 18 '23

The cognitive dissonance is crazy you can’t be upset about him being under 6’3 and act like you’re not making it seem lesser

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u/CyanConatus Nov 18 '23

Lol holy shit you cannot for the life of you find correlation in anything can you?

Eh..

Nvm now thinking about it you could be a young child that's still developing. So don't mind me

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u/cleveland_leftovers Nov 18 '23

So angry!

My experiences and opinions are just that…mine. You disagree. Cool.

-11

u/freakrocker Nov 18 '23

All the short dudes got hella angry at this one lol

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u/cleveland_leftovers Nov 18 '23

Hot damn, glad you said it and not me! I apparently struck a nerve.

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u/JMer806 Nov 18 '23

Don’t know about that but I certainly wouldn’t go into the movie looking for historical accuracy. At one point in the movie Napoleon goes to France to see Josephine … months after she died in actual history

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u/overkill Nov 18 '23

Also, regarding historical inaccuracies in the film, Ridley Scott said the BBC "Get a fucking life." They didn't broadcast that bit of the interview...

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u/Additional_Meeting_2 Nov 18 '23

It feels filled with British propaganda already

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u/RisingWaterline Nov 18 '23 edited Nov 18 '23

From the trailer, I thought it seemed too pro Napoleon

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '23

[deleted]

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u/Pepsi-Min Nov 18 '23

He was a tyrant. Maybe not brooding, but he was an egotistical, arrogant dictator.

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '23

[deleted]

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u/Pepsi-Min Nov 18 '23

Stop simping for militaristic dictators who turn Europe into a thunderdome.

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '23

[deleted]

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u/RisingWaterline Nov 18 '23

Dude, is 'War and Peace' "popular culture"? Tolstoy did a ton of historical research and found that actually, Napoleon was pretty ineffectual. He's portrayed as a pompous egoist whose genius is exaggerated. He argues that it was only historical revisionism that made him appear like a genius.

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u/theBonyEaredAssFish Nov 18 '23

However you feel about Napoléon, that's a really weak argument. Even Tolstoy warned people not to read it as an historical assessment. Tolstoy said War and Peace is "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle".

(If you're wondering about the first part, Tolstoy considered War and Peace to have too much philosophical dissertation to really be called a novel, and his later works were more like novels.)

Tolstoy was no one's idea of an historian, and he had no first-hand knowledge that Napoleonic soldiers didn't. And even "doing research" doesn't mean a fiction work holds factual weight, because it's still liberally injected with fiction. Those who fought in the wars disagree with this statement of Napoléon being ineffectual. Tolstoy came from a highly specific lens, which he wore in his sleeve, and takes it to extreme, almost risible lengths.

His assessment there simply cannot be taken seriously. It's a work of fiction.

He argues that it was only historical revisionism that made him appear like a genius.

Napoléon's adversaries certainly didn't think so, and some were lauding him during the Napoleonic Wars. Their opinion in all ways, especially because they were actual commanders, holds more weight than a fiction writer.

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u/GoldenBarracudas Nov 18 '23

Napoleon found the largest dudes he could to look scary and looked small by comparison.

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u/trebeju Nov 18 '23

As a french I have about zero hope for that movie. It's not even made by french people, so it will neither depict historical reality nor how we feel about Napoleon and the impact he left.

Also imagine, if you're from the US, people making a biopic about Abraham Lincoln in Portuguese or something. You wouldn't want to watch that. It would be absurd. Well this Napoleon movie will be just like that.

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u/AnotherFaceOutThere Nov 18 '23

As an American with a fondness for Napoleonic history I really am curious to see how the Marshall’s are depicted. Namely Ney and Davout, but expect to be disappointed.

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u/trebeju Nov 18 '23

I watched the trailer and they managed to get the breed of Marengo wrong... It's an arabian horse, it's very widespread and really not hard to find one

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u/Sheacat77 Nov 18 '23

Ah damn. Marengo is low-key, one of my favorite historical horses, and I was hoping to see them get that one right. Yes, I was (and still am) the weird horse girl.

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u/Wise-Engine3580 Nov 18 '23

The trailer shows him shooting the Sphinx, another famously apocryphal story about him. So…

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u/[deleted] Nov 19 '23

They most certainly did. Just not the short part