The winners write history. However, often victories, discoveries and defeats are overgrown with myths that can be dispelled.
Edison invented the light bulb?
More than one generation is convinced of this! Nevertheless, the light bulb was invented long before Thomas Alva Edison. And he only improved it, extending its service life.
Back in 1840, the Englishman De la Rue passed a current through a platinum wire in a glass cylinder. In 1841, the Irishman De Mollen received a patent for the use of a platinum filament for lighting in a vacuum. In 1844, American John Starr patented a carbon filament light bulb. In 1854, the German Heinrich Goebel created the prototype of a modern lamp with a life of nine hours. On July 11, 1874, a patent for a lamp was obtained by Russian engineer Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin: a carbon rod served as a filament in a hermetically sealed vessel.
The Lodygin lamp was then improved by V. F. Didrichson (1875), P. N. Yablochkov (1975-1976). And only in 1880, the American Edison, taking the Lodygin lamp as a basis, created a light bulb that lasted 40 hours.
The world is poisoned by pure anger
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Salieri killed Mozart out of envy?
The version, firmly fixed in our minds by Pushkin, is still doubtful.
According to the conclusion of the chief physician of Vienna, Guldener von Lobes, a man of impeccable reputation, Mozart died as a result of acute rheumatic fever. “Many crowns suffered from it at the same time with the same symptoms and outcome,” he wrote in the medical report.
Nevertheless, the wife of the composer Constance never tired of repeating that in October 1791, a month before his death, Mozart, feeling unwell, once said: "I must have been poisoned!"
However, for the first time, the name of the court bandmaster Antonio Salieri was associated with the death of Mozart only in 1823: the old man who fell into mental darkness claimed that he was the poisoner. And this despite the fact that Salieri was the teacher of Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt and Mozart's son Xaver Wolfgang!
However, the most important testimony is given by the musician Ignaz Moscheles, who visited the terminally ill Salieri in the fall of 1823: “The meeting was sad; he spoke only in fragmentary phrases, but then turned to me with the words: “Although this is my last illness, but I can assure you with full faith and truth that there is nothing fair in this absurd rumor; you know, they say that I poisoned Mozart. No, this is anger, pure anger, tell the world about it, dear Mosheles …"
The saddest thing is that in the days of Mozart, bloodletting was considered one of the best remedies. No matter what he was sick, the doctors tried so hard that, perhaps, the genius of all times and peoples left us because of the excessive blood loss, when his forces suddenly weakened, he lost consciousness and never came to himself.
Was Napoleon Bonaparte short?
"Yes, he has a Napoleon complex!" - we stigmatize a short, ambitious man, believing that with his exploits he compensates for what nature has not given him.
But Napoleon's height was 169-170 cm, and this is even the average figure for our times. The myth was probably born from a nickname given to him by the English: Little Corporal. But this is not a "short man" at all, but only the nickname Le petit Caporal, incorrectly translated from the French, which he received in his youth from the soldiers, to whom he treated with attention: he listened to them, sitting together at the fire in the evenings.
There is a second version: Napoleon really seemed small next to his commanders: the height of Marshal Murat was 190 cm, Marshal Mortier - 195 cm, and divisional General Suam - 198 cm. And for comparison: the main enemy of Napoleon at sea, British Admiral Nelson was 10 see below it.
In addition, Napoleon was never a corporal: he began his military service as a junior lieutenant.
Andrey Arder