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Myth 1
His name was Fleming, and he was a poor
Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to eke out a living for his
family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped
his tools and ran to the bog. There, mired to his waist in black
muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself.
Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and
terrifying death.
The next day, a fancy carriage pulled
up to the Scotsman's sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed
nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy
Farmer Fleming had saved.
"I want to repay you," said the
nobleman. "You saved my son's life." "No, I can't accept payment for
what I did," the Scottish farmer replied, waving off the offer. At
that moment, the farmer's own son came to the door of the family
hovel. "Is that your son?" the nobleman asked. "Yes," the farmer
replied proudly. "I'll make you a deal. Let me take him and give him
a good education. If the lad is anything like his father, he'll grow
to a man you can be proud of."
And that he did. In time, Farmer
Fleming's son graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in
London and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted
Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin.
Years afterward, the nobleman's son was
stricken with pneumonia. What saved him? Penicillin.
The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph
Churchill. His son's name? Sir Winston Churchill.
Reality:
Interesting story that ties together two Nobel Prize winners. Too
bad it isn't true. Churchill did contract pneumonia in 1943 and
1944, but he wasn't treated with penicillin.
Myth 2
The standard distance between railroad
rails in the U.S. is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That gauge is used because
that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates
built the U.S. railroads.
The English built them like that
because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built
the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. They used
that gauge because the people who built the tramways used the same
jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that
wheel spacing.
The wagons had that particular odd
wheel spacing because if they tried to use any other spacing, the
wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long-distance roads in
England, since that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
[to top of
second column in this article]
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So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first
long-distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The
roads have been used ever since.
Then what caused the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial
ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their
wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they
were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
The United States' standard railroad
gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original
specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot, which was made
just wide enough to accommodate … the rear ends of two war horses!
Reality:
This story is also false, according to
TruthOrFiction.com,
which investigates myths and urban legends. This story started
sometime after World War II, but it's not known where it originated.
Myth 3
The design of the white star on
Montblanc pens, which represents the white snow-capped mountain Mont
Blanc, was designed for Adolph Hitler by a Jew, who actually
designed it to resemble the Jewish symbol, the Star of David. As a
result, Hitler carried the Star of David in his pocket without even
knowing it.
Reality:
The design does resemble the Star of
David, but it is probably just a coincidence. The Montblanc company
was founded in Germany in the early 1900s under a different name and
then became Montblanc in 1910, according to
TruthOrFiction.com. They
quote "The Montblanc Diary and Collector's Guide," which says that
the first pens with the white star on the cap were produced in 1914,
which is long before Hitler rose to power.
- - - - -
What do these three myths have in
common?
They're
about as real as cow tipping and snipe hunting!
[Paul
Niemann]
Paul Niemann is a contributing
author to Inventors' Digest magazine, and he also runs
MarketLaunchers.com,
helping people in the marketing of their new product ideas. He can
be reached at niemann7@aol.com.
Copyright 2003 Paul Niemann
Last week's
column in LDN:
"Take a ride back to the 1800s to
see how bicycles were invented and reinvented"
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