Of the 13, I believed two (Napoleon’s height and Washington’s teeth) and had never heard of four of them (cow tipping, touching baby birds, undercover police policies, Iron Maiden) at all. The remaining seven I was aware of were myths.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
These guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Kraemer
https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=44112
wrote a book on this subject more than 20 years ago. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be translated in (and adapted to) English. Thanks to them I know most of the 13 myths.
I missed on Al Gore and sort of on the brain and the Iron Maiden. The video is technically right, which is the best kind of right. But…
I last heard that humans use only 10% of their brains, at the same time. Which sounds reasonable since different parts of the brain is used for different things, and humans are bad at multitasking.
The Iron Maiden may not have been used for torture, but it certainly existed historically, for whatever reasons. Plenty of crap exists based on legends, like the Shroud of Turin. Also: Stay away from torture museums. I’ve been to one, and I regret it.
According to accounting books, George Washington purchased teeth from slaves, which might not be as horrible as it sounds. But his dentist definitely looked for people willing to part with their front teeth for money.
Also: Terrible video.
Sounds very wrong to me. You seem to think your consciousness is what your brain is about, when that’s just a high-level feedback system that sits on top of all the stuff that goes from staying alive up to forming/deleting memories, none of which are conscious acts and are happening at the same time.
May I caution you on the “Iron Maiden” ?
The stories about the European witchburnings change each generation, and before there were faithheads and MRs lying on each and every topic, there were academics who got their chairs by distorting everything my wave of feminsts found out about the religious terror between 1450 and 1667, which is causal to the European overpopulation.
WE were the ones who found out, that the “enlighteners” (from the 1800s on) DESTROYED most of the documents about witchburnings, (their motive also something to speculate about) therefore naturally lots of details can be twisted nowadays.
To this specific torture tecnique: the exhibition pieces come from the 1900s or even the 20th century.
Nobody was interested in preserving the pieces in their time. But chain mail and leg and arm protections and a lot of helmets of the knights were preserved by families of nobility, the ability of smiths 14oo-and something to forge something like that is a fact.
The only argument against the Iron Maiden´ s existence is that it would provide a rather quick death (I agree with Smokey on knowing details, so: if somebody wants, I´ ll supply them!) -- and still nowadays all forms of torturers go to lengths to delay their victims´ dying. In a torture situation dying means being out of it.
My gut feeling about this not very good video is that he is one of the males who could use a good bashing by We Hunted The Mammoth.