Misconceptions about Popular Stories - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep. 32)

Hi, I'm Elliot and this is Mental Floss on YouTube

Today I'm going to talk about some misconceptions about famous stories. Misconception number one

In the original version, Cinderella wore glass slippers. So this is an interesting debate between linguists

Basically, the story that popularized the version of Cinderella that we know today was written by the French writer Charles Perrault in 1697

But versions of the actual folk tale had been around for longer than that. In Perrault's tale he has Cinderella wearing glass slippers, but some claim that she was

supposed to be wearing slippers made of squirrel fur and Perrault wrote it down wrong

Love me some fur slippers. It turns out that the French words for fur and glass sound and look very similar

Ver and ver. We don't know if this is a case of him mishearing another version or updating the story when

he wrote it. Snopes will tell you that ver meaning fur wasn't used during Perrault's time, but that

is wrong. The 1694 official French dictionary has a definition for ver that refers to it as an

obscure word for fur. In use but not common, that's the perfect condition for this kind

of mistranslation. Misconception number two, the Grimm brothers wrote many of the fairy tales that we know

Actually the stories were passed down for ages. For example, the Grimm brothers didn't write their version of Cinderella until 1812 when they included it in Grimm fairy tales That was over a century after Perrault wrote it and he borrowed it from other people too Other stories that the Grimm get credit for but didn actually come up with include Rapunzel Snow White and Hansel and Gretel

Misconception number three, Sherlock Holmes and Watson are middle-aged. It turns out that Sherlock Holmes didn't always look like Robert Downey Jr. or Benedict Cumberbatch

In the novel His Last Bough, which takes place in 1914, Holmes is 60 years old and that would put his birth year at around 1854

We also know from the first book, A Study in Scarlet, that Holmes and Watson are around

the same age and met in 1881. So they were both probably in their late 20s when their adventures started

Finally, there's hope for me yet. More adventures. Speaking of which, misconception number four

Sherlock Holmes had a love interest. Unlike some modern retellings of the story, the original books did not contain romance

In fact, in an 1892 letter to his mentor, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, Holmes is as inhuman

as a Babbage's calculating machine and just about as likely to fall in love

The calculating machine, by the way, was like an early predecessor of the computer. This is terrible news for everyone on the internet

because we all ship Sherlock and Watson. Seriously, check out Tumblr. It's literally everywhere

Misconception number five, in Romeo and Juliet, Wherefore art thou Romeo means

Where are you, Romeo? Wherefore actually means for what reason, or basically, why

People tend to confuse these because wherefore sounds a lot like where but in this situation Juliet is really asking why are you Romeo Because his family name Montague is the reason the two can be together Misconception number six Frankenstein is a green monster

In Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, the monster is not described as green

It's actually more yellow, plus it's partially see-through, making all of its arteries and muscles visible

It's disgusting. He also didn't have bolts in his neck. We can thank Boris Karloff's 1931 movie adaptation, Frankenstein, for the creature we recognize today

Also, a bonus misconception that I'm sure you all already know, Frankenstein was the doctor in the story, not the monster

You knew that, but just, you know, remember. Misconception number seven, Dracula cannot go outside during the daytime

Vampires burning up in the sunlight might be part of the legend now, but in the original 1897 novel by Bram Stoker

Dracula did not need to hide in the dark. There are several times in the novel that he walks around during the daytime

A few other characteristics of the original Dracula that you might not expect include a big mustache, pointed ears, and white hair everywhere

including the palms of his hands. Some experts even believe that Stoker based

Dracula's looks on Walt Whitman, a man who did not look at all like a modern

depiction of Dracula. Misconception number eight, Charles Dickens invented the word humbug for a Christmas Carol. Actually the term was around for about a

century before a Christmas Carol was published. Although we associate it with Ebenezer Scrooge a grumpy old man the word humbug actually started out as hip slang Back in the 1750s it was defined as student slang meaning a trick or deception By 1840 calling someone a humbug was being commonly used as

a mild insult. Three years later Dickens put the term in his novel

Misconception Number 9. There's a real King Arthur. Alternatively, there's no real King

Arthur. The truth is we don't know. I'll start by saying that there is no definitive proof that he ever existed. King Arthur does appear in a 9th century Latin book known as

the History of the Britons. The history compilation claims that the guy fought in 12 battles

But historians aren't sure whether this book is accurate, especially considering it claims

that Arthur killed a total of 940 men in one of those battles

So the debate continues. And that brings me to misconception number 10

The Trojan War was real. Again, we can't be sure. Archaeologists have found evidence that there was indeed a city like Troy that was probably

obliterated by the Greeks during a war around 1175 BCE, but that's pretty much all scholars

can say. The war itself probably wasn't anything like the one that Homer described in the Iliad

it could have been more of a process with many wars rather than a single large destructive war