Myths, lies

Article first appeared on Ammoland. Email address:. Acquitted on five charges, Rittenhouse walked out of the Kenosha courtroom a free young man.

I look forward to hearing from the jury. This is a moment for them to explain how they came to their decision. The reality is, a white gunman was free to cross state lines with a semi-automatic assault weapon, shoot three people, and be portrayed as the victim….

Contrast speeches given in the old oratorical style with the more colloquial approach that took hold in the s. Paradoxically, this loss of rhetorical polish has not meant a loss of eloquence. See how writing styles have changed by comparing typical school reading assignments in the United States from the beginning and end of the 20th century. Then search out the reasons for this marked shift.

Language with Spice. Until recently, poetry had a central role in American culture. Why has this distinctive form of elevated language declined, and how has poetry itself changed? Chart this transformation in poets from Longfellow and Edna St.

Do the shortcuts and informality of e-mail and text messages represent bad writing? Probe this controversy in light of the unique niche filled by these new forms of expression. Until the advent of e-mail and texting, there was no truly conversational form of writing analogous to conversational speech. Drawing on what you have learned about the history of English, look ahead to its possible future course. Some things will stay the same; others will change radically. Close by analyzing a famous 20th-century sentence to chart the curious pathways to our modern tongue.

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Note: This profile prompts automatically for keyboard users. Content Adjustments. Content Scaling. The bald eagle had a "bad moral character," Franklin wrote, and was a "rank coward" who "does not get his living honestly" because it just steals food from other birds and is "too lazy to fish for himself. He noted that the proposed drawing looked more like a turkey, which he joked was a better idea, as a turkey is "a true original native of America" and a bird of courage who would not hesitate "to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.

The legendary animation pioneer, the guy who made "I'm going to Disneyland" the most common expression of celebration in the free world, didn't actually draw his most famous creation. Sure, Mickey Mouse was his idea, and he provided the voice. But everything iconic about Mickey Mouse—the pancake ears, the red shorts—are the creation of Ub Iwerks , Disney's favorite animator.

The next time you see somewhere wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt, be sure to tell them, "Ah, I see you're a fan of Ub Iwerks. Probably never. Real cowboys from the American frontier, both the good guys and the bad guys, had no interest in those big, bulky Stetsons that everyone associates with them. The most popular headgear among 19th century gunslingers was a bowler, sometimes called a derby.

We don't know what Billy the Kid is wearing in his most iconic photo. Maybe an almost crushed top hat? You know how people today like to complain that you can never trust the government? Turns out that's been true since the beginning. The Continental Congress voted for independence and drafted the declaration on the 2nd of July, a revision was approved on the 4th, it was read aloud for the first time on the 8th, and the final document wasn't signed until August 2nd.

John Adams , our second president, was convinced that July 2nd would become the annual holiday. You were sooooo close, Johnny boy. Black Tuesday, October 24, , is still considered the most shocking stock market crash in U. Not just because of the financial devastation, but because of the bodies that apparently rained from the sky in New York and other cities, as financially ruined investors jumped from skyscrapers.

Except, well, it didn't really happen. There were only two suicides by jumping from tall buildings after the Wall Street crash, and one of them was an elderly female clerk named Hulda Borowski , who may or may not have made the leap because her stocks had plummeted. The 37th U. But then again, this was during a period when many U. If you're a president in a country that's overrun with zombies, saying, "Hey, let's do something about all those zombies" is not a bold stance.

Also, Nixon once purportedly told leaders at the Ford Motor Company that environmentalists wanted to "go back and live like a bunch of [dang] animals. They're a group of people that aren't really one [dang] bit interested in safety or clean air. What they're interested in is destroying the system. Never get your history for Disney movies. A young Native American girl did befriend an Englishman, and their relationship may have saved the Jamestown colony.

But Pocahontas was just 12, which would make a romantic relationship with a 28 year old dude just gross, even by 17th century standards. Also, her real name wasn't Pocahontas. Edison had a record number of patents—1,, to be exact—and the vast majority of them weren't his own inventions. He was just a guy smart enough to find real inventors and steal their ideas before they could take the credit.

Edison got the patent for the light bulb in , but it's true father was Warren de la Rue , a British astronomer and chemist, who created the first light bulb forty years earlier.

Orson Welles fooled the world with his radio broadcast, an homage to H. Wells that reported on a Martian invasion as if it was a thing happening in the real world.

Thousands bought into the prank. Okay, hundreds. Fine, a baker's dozen. At least one guy, a farmer, who may or may not have been coaxed into posing for a photo for Life Magazine while angrily brandishing a shotgun. The point is, Orson Welles tried to trick listeners into thinking we were under attack from extraterrestrials, and at least one guy in overalls believed him, so obviously mass hysteria!

The only proof we have that Betsy Ross had anything to do with creating the American flag came from her grandson, William Canby , who argued in —a full decade-plus since the events in question—that his "gam-gam" came up with the whole idea.

You'll forgive us if that sounds fishy. Betsy at least had one contribution to the flag; she suggested a five-pointed star instead of a six-pointed one because it'd be easier to sew. The real creator was likely Francis Hopkinson from New Jersey, who signed the Declaration of Independence and designed many seals for U. When he tried to get paid for coming up with the American flag, it was denied by the Board of Admiralty, on the grounds that "he was not the only one consulted.

Pretty much everything you know about Thanksgiving isn't true. The story we're told, time and time again, is about Pilgrims having a happy meal with Native Americans, and everybody realizing, "Hey, we're not so different from each other after all.

Let's have some turkey and stuffing to celebrate. The real story involves plagues, and Pilgrims showing up because they thought the Native Americans were sick or dead, so it'd be easy to steal their food. It's probably closer to the holiday experience many people experience today, with all the screaming and tears and accusations and hurt feelings. Just add in a lot more violence to make it a little more realistic. When we think of the first car, we think of Henry Ford's Model T, first introduced in It was a swell automobile, but not by any stretch of the imagination the "first" horseless carriage.

That happened back in the 19th century, when European engineers like Carl Benz and Emile Levassor were making automobile innovations that were light years ahead of Ford. Benz patented the first automobile in Ford wasn't even the first to sell cars in the U. That would be Ransom E. Abraham Lincoln may have given us the Emancipation Proclamation in , but he had complicated and conflicting ideas about slavery. In an letter to a prominent newspaper editor, he shared these ambiguous emotions: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union. But it's also fair to note that he was totally open to a plan B. Not even close. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were deists, which means they believed in God but just not one with holy books and commandments written in stone.

George Washington was an Episcopalian, though not a strong enough believer to summon a pastor on his deathbed. John Adams , a Unitarian, claimed that "The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. I mean c'mon! What is that about? It's one of those stories that people with bad grades love to tell.

Einstein was always brilliant, even at an early age. The story that he was terrible at math was invented by a Ripley's Believe It or Not! Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus.

You think with the constant reminders to "Remember the Alamo" that somebody would've realized that what was being remembered maybe wasn't all that noble. The or more Americans who died at the Alamo weren't fighting for freedom.