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So you've run across a trope or story element that seems unspeakably old. It simply drips with antiquity and grandeur, so you assume that it must have been around since the first caveman. But then you research it a little more, and discover... that it was invented by a Los Angeles advertising executive in 1989?
Congratulations: You've learned that some things are Newer Than They Think — a relatively recent invention that people tend to assume has much deeper roots in history and popular culture than it actually does — or the roots are considerably further from the end result than you realize. It usually arises from the myth being presented as part of an older myth and tied into it; or the assumption that because the mythology is old, it hasn't been changed.
It may also tie into Our Monsters Are Different, as many "standard rules" seem like they should come from folklore and legends, but really come from more recent media. Some neologisms can be mistaken for being very old as well.
Compare Lost In Imitation (well-known elements of a story are a lot more recent than the story itself), The Newest Ones In The Book.
Contrast Older Than They Think.
Examples:
Dress and Costume
- The classic "suit of armor" — metal plate over the entire body — didn't reach the form depicted in most famous works of art until around 1400, way way too late for it to have been worn by Saint George or King Arthur. Chain mail, however, is very old; the Romans used it, under the name lorica hamata, and the Celts before them again, so it's likely that King Arthur (who was probably Romano-British if he was anything at all) would have worn it, as well as the Crusaders having done so.
- The tradition of the "white" wedding dress originated in 1840, when Queen Victoria of England wore an ivory gown to her wedding. (Before then, brides wore either a new blue dress (thus fulfilling half of the traditional wedding custom) or, failing that, their best Sunday dress.) The ivory or cream dress quickly became immensely popular among the wealthier upper classes, as it was a sign that the family was rich enough to afford a dress the bride would never wear again. But until the turn of the 20th century no woman wore a pure white silk dress — bleaches gentle enough to inexpensively whiten silk without dissolving it weren't available in the West until the late 1890s. The pure white dress became a symbol of chastity and purity only after it became possible to publicly gossip about whether a bride was a virgin or not — and after white silk became cheaper to produce than ivory silk, giving dressmakers a reason to promote the use of white silk. Shame is a great motivator.
- In Sweden the traditional colour for a wedding dress was black. That didn't change until the 1920's.
- Mink was only colored brown (and possibly black) until the mid 20th century, when breeding brought out mutation colors, like white and silver. If you see a woman wearing white mink in fiction before the late '40s, either the costumer Did Not Do The Research, or they didn't have the time or budget to find ermine, which is what would have been worn.
- Pink and blue weren't always considered to be "girl" and "boy" colors (it used to be the other way around).
- The clans of Scotland all being identified with a particular tartan is an idea that only stems back to the beginning of the 19th century.
- For that matter, Scotsmen didn't wear kilts until the 16th century, well after the time of Braveheart.
- William Wallace's men wore saffron, not plaid. Now that would have been a movie!
- The Scottish kilt developed over a period of about 200 years, from a simple cloak made from a single length of wool cloth which started out wrapped, then belted, then gathered, then finally pleated about the waist. Tartan plaids developed in the early to mid 16th century; and did not become common until the late 18th century. Prior to this, plaids were symbols of wealth (the ability to afford the widest range of dyes, particularly blue dyes, and more complex and labour-intensive patterns); and the most common colours for cloaks and kilts were saffron and brown.
- The modern association of kilts exclusively with Scotland also make them Older Than They Think.
- The first black belts were awarded for completion of martial arts training in the 1880s.
- Black belts were never awarded for "completion" of training. Most of the time, such as in Kodokan Judo, they were used simply to differentiate beginners from intermediates and above. Once you had earned a black belt you could begin teaching others. Beginners wore white belts, everyone who could be considered a journeyman equivalent or above wore a black one. Some historians suggest this came from the fact that after years of practice your white belt was black from being haggard and dirty. There also certainly wasn't the whole rainbow collection of colours found today.
- In fact, the colored belt system of rank found in most modern martial arts was founded during the 20th century. This was due to a large number of injuries that was occuring during sparring. The different colored belts meant that you could tell who was at what level of skill in a single glance.
- The gi uniform and its variants which are associated with martial arts was not created until the early 20th century for use in Judo.
- Panties as we know them were only invented a bit over a century ago.
Food and Drink
- Carrots were white, pink, red and yellow historically; orange carrots appeared in the Netherlands only in the 17th century, as orange was the Dutch national color.
- Frangelico, a hazelnut liqueur marketed as being the invention of a medieval hermit, cannot definitively be said to have been first produced earlier than 1980.
- Many "traditional" British foods actually only date back to World War II, when rationing meant that people had to improvise new ways of cooking with only basic ingredients. Among the most enduring of these foods are carrot cake (with carrots replacing the expensive, rationed sugar), apple crumble (a cheap substitute for apple pies), and bubble and squeak (it provided both a way of using home-grown vegetables, and could make leftovers more palatable).
- Likewise, the "ploughman's lunch", supposedly the traditional midday meal of the hardy rustic English labourer, was invented by cheese companies in the 1960s.
- Lager was first made during the 1800s, and didn't displace ale as the most common beer style until the 20th century.
- Likewise, up until World War Two, Americans consumed more pork than beef.
- As well, chicken was less common than pork or beef until World War Two shortages in the US.
- Gummi bears weren't introduced in America until the 1980's.
- Many fruits and vegetables have only existed in their modern forms for a few centuries. The banana as we know it today was first grown in 1836; earlier bananas were tougher and starchier (essentially plaintains), full of seeds
 ◊ and unappetizing when eaten raw. The modern-day strawberry was cross-bred in the early 18th century from varieties that would be unrecognizable to grocery shoppers today.
- Chocolate chip cookies were not invented until the 1930's, and that was an accident.
- "The greatest thing since sliced bread" means "the greatest thing since 1928", not "since a time lost in the mists of antiquity".
Literature
- Stream-of-consciousness in writing was first used in 1888 in Édouard Dujardin's Les Lauriers sont coupés (although Anna Karenina (1873-77) contains some proto-examples).
- Report Tihs thought that stream-of-conciousness writing was a crappy writing technique invented in the 1950's-60's so this is a case of older then he thought. Which proves that younger then they think and older then you thought is subjective
- The Aesops in Aesops Fables were not made explicit and clear when the stories were first written, let alone when they were first told.
- The prose poem Desiderata has been widely attributed to being found in an old church and dated 1692, but was actually written by Max Ehrmann in 1927.
- The National Lampoon Deteriorata is obviously a parody, but is specifically a parody of a recording by Les Crane that reached #8 on the Billboard chart in 1971.
Music
- "The Star-Spangled Banner" did not officially become the US national anthem until 1931. It might not have become the national anthem at all but for a letter-writing campaign launched by Robert Ripley, of Ripley's Believe it or Not! fame. (However, it was being sung at baseball games as early as 1918, and it was used as a Standard Snippet even before then.)
- The piece of music to which it is set, though, is Older Than They Think, being the tune to a drinking song, already comparatively obscure in Key's time, "To Anachreon in Heaven".
- Although there are some Christmas carols known today that come from the Middle Ages, the overwhelming majority of most people's repertoire are modern songs. Even the genuinely old carols are really old melodies, and will usually have acquired a set of modern lyrics: the melody of "Good King Wenceslas" is from the 13th century (and was originally a spring carol), but the words are from the 19th.
- Some are even newer than that; for example, "Do You Hear What I Hear" was written in 1962. "The Christmas Song" (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) was written in 1944...by Mel Torme.
- Likewise "The Little Drummer Boy" was written in in 1941 and recorded in 1957.
- Also, secular Western music itself. Most music passed off as medieval is much younger. Some of the oldest tunes we know about can't be dated earlier than the 12th or 13th centuries; even ChildBallads usually can't be definitively traced back before the 16th or 17th centuries.
- The verse/chorus structure of modern musical lyrics is also a relative latecomer; it developed in Moorish Spain.
- Irish "traditional" song about the Potato Famine "The Fields of Athenry" seems ancient, but was only written in the 1970s by Pete St. John.
- Related: The traditional highland lament "Ashokan Farewell", featured heavily on the soundtrack of Ken Burns' documentary on the American Civil War, was written all the way back in the 1980s, in the highlands of New York.
- Similarly, The Scotsman dates back to, at most, the 1980s, although the joke it's based off of is older (this troper saw it in a 1940's book of anecdotes and icebreakers for speeches).
- Nearly everyone who hears Herman's Hermits' "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" assumes it to be a cover of an old British music hall tune. In fact, it was written in 1963, a mere two years before the Hermits recorded it. ("I'm Henry the VIII, I Am", on the other hand, was actually a cover of an old British music hall tune.)
- The song "Havah Nagilah" is often taken as an ancient Jewish folk song, and is often used in media as a leitmotif for Judaism. In fact, it was composed in 1918.
- The lyrics were written in 1918. The melody is considerably older.
- Similarly, "Katyusha", widely regarded as the quintessential Russian folk song, was actually written in 1938.
- The song "Edelweiss" from The Sound Of Music was written, in English, for that musical. It was later translated into German, and seems so natural in that language, many people have actually claimed to have heard it before the musical was written, and complimented Rodgers and Hammerstein on the faithfulness of their "adaptation". In fact, according to The Other Wiki, some folks even assume it to be the national anthem of Austria! In style it's close enough to Austria's actual anthem ("Land der Berge, Land am Strome") that it's a forgivable misconception.
- Furthermore, the "Edelweiss" popular at the time the movie was set in was a Nazi marching song.
- The beatmania IIDX songs "A," "AA," and "
Shonen Kid A," despite sounding classical, were composed specifically for IIDX. "Piano Concerto No. 1 'Anti-Ares'," also from IIDX, takes this trope further, with a full eight-minute version that can be found on the IIDX RED soundtrack, and a biography about its fictitious composer, Virkato Wakhmaninov, who allegedly lived from 1893 to 1974. The last paragraph of his biography mentions that Virkato performed the song on a "great keyboard and disc" (did this setup really exist in the early 20th century?) and that he spoke about an "arrangement for a keyboard of seven keys." Virkato is, in reality, an alias of Jun Wakita, one of Konami's in-house composers, and he composed this song in 2004.
- The pseudonym should have been a hint of the song's true age; it's a pun on the name of Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff.
- And "Piano Concerto No. 1 'Anti-Ares'" is itself a pastiche of Rachmaninov's piano concertos.
- The famous Adagio in G minor by Tommaso Albinoni (1674–1745) is practically an original composition by 20th-century "arranger" Remo Giazotto.
- The "Ave Maria" attributed to Baroque Italian composer Guilio Caccini (1551-1618) was actually written by Russian lutenist Vladimir Vavilov in 1972.
- This is not the same "Ave Maria" as the one you're probably thinking of right now, which was either the one created by Gounod in the 19th century using a 17th century melody by Bach or the one by Schubert which was used in Fantasia.
- Barrett's Privateers sounds like an old sea shanty, but it was actually written by Stan Rogers in the 1980s.
- The song "New York, New York" popularized by Frank Sinatra (the one that starts "Start spreadin' the news ...") was written for the 1977 Martin Scorsese musical New York, New York.
- "Who Do You Think You are Kidding, Mister Hitler" was not composed during the War, but was written especially for the 1960s/70s TV Series Dad's Army by wartime entertainers Flanagan and Allen, who provided most of the incidental music for the series.
- The Hokey Pokey, a.k.a. the Hokey Cokey, sounds like something that dates back at least a century— but it only originated in the 1940s.
- "Since I Don't Have You" sounds like it could be a classic Depression-era Tin Pan Alley ballad, and many people assume that it is, but it was written by the members of The Skyliners, who recorded the original hit version in 1958.
- Bluegrass music is a prime example of this trope. Although it has roots in traditional Southern string band music, it only developed as a separate genre in the 1940s. To put it another way, bluegrass is only about a decade older than rock and roll. Many bluegrass standards are even younger than that. "Rocky Top" was written in 1967!
- "Greensleeves" cannot have been written by Henry VIII as urban myth commonly supposes, as it was written in a style which didn't arrive in England until after Henry VIII's death.
- Though the words and music do appear to have originated separately, it is unlikely Henry VIII had a hand in either.
- Greek song "Misirlou", popularly known from the Dick Dale guitar version, sounds ancient but is really from 1927.
- Specifically, 1927 is the first public performance of note. It is probable that it was an earlier composition. It is equally probably that it was not much earlier.
- Pachelbel's "Canon and Gigue in D major" was written prior to 1700. But it was first published in the 1920s, first recorded in 1940, and did not become popular until the late 1970s.
Mythical Creatures
- The perfect example would be the gremlin (not the car). They were only invented in the 1940s, or at oldest the very, very late 1920s (the first printed use of the word was in 1929), but many people seem to think that gremlins are far, far older that that, due to how "at home" they seem among the more traditional types like goblins and leprechauns.
- And no, Mogwai originally had nothing to do with gremlins.
- Originally, gremlins were mythical scapegoats airplane mechanics would lay blame on whenever a mysterious problem with no seeming cause showed up, so gremlins certainly did not pre-date aircraft. Probably the best example of the "original" gremlin is the Looney Tunes Wartime Cartoon "Gremlins from the Kremlin."
- The most consistent origin explanation to come out is that a light-hearted reference to Fremlin's Ales in a missive from an airfield commander got mis-typed, i.e. "the airmen and mechanics have conflicting explanations for the large number of crashes that have occurred of late, although I personally blame the Fremlins."
- Early gremlins were often depicted wearing top hats and spats, which might fit less well with more traditional mythical creatures (excepting Leprechauns)
- Sunlight killing vampires. 1922, Nosferatu. In earlier versions, it was at most annoying or somewhat painful (and remember that sunlight isn't too good for humans either), and the original Dracula could walk around in the daylight without issue (save being unable to shapeshift). It does make for fun special effects shots, though, which is why it seems to have been popularized by movies: we went from the trick dissolve of Nosferatu through melting like wax (Return of the Vampire, a 1944 Bela Lugosi film), crumbling to dust (the Hammer Horror version of Dracula, 1958) and wild FX explosions (a practical FX version in Fright Night and CGI versions in Blade and later films).
- A good chunk of so-called "traditional vampire lore" dates back to the modern era. Here are a few more: the vampire/vampire bat connection (most Eastern European peasants wouldn't know about this South American mammal), stakes being an instantly lethal weapon, and a "mother/father of all vampires" based off a Biblical figure like Lilith or Cain.
- It should be noted that, in some of the original legends in Eastern Europe, vampires were actually strongest at high noon when they cast the smallest possible shadow. My, how things have changed since those days.
- Actually, bats are quite common in Eastern Europe. Not the hematophagic(blood-sucking) ones though. These are exclusively neotropical.
- The vampire bat that troper was most likely thinking of was Diphylla ecaudata, a highly social bat which lives in places like Mexico and Brazil, that Eastern European peasants would most certainly not know about. They're not scary looking at all◊, unlike the bats in movies with glowing red eyes or whatever.
- Nearly everything about how vampires "should" look is an evolution of Bela Lugosi's look in the movie. Vampires were originally imagined as twisted monsters or mindless ghouls, not handsome and charming. Count Orlok from Nosferatu is closer to the original conceptions of how vampires looked and acted. (Note that the plot of Nosferatu was plagiarized from Dracula, and Orlok's appearance works just as well as Lugosi's charming count.)
- There have been charismatic vampires in fiction well before film, usually by conflating the vampire with the incubus/succubus myth: the titular vampire of Carmilla (1872) is quite a pretty young girl, and John Polidori's Lord Ruthven from his short story "The Vampyre" (1819) is a Byronic Hero (and a Take That characterization of Lord Byron).
- Indeed, if one were to do a vampire movie with scrupulously historical Dark Ages vampires, modern viewers would probably wonder why it keeps calling these zombies "vampires"...
- Something like Richard Matheson's I Am Legend? (The book, not the movie.) That book, despite being about vampires, is cited as being the inspiration for Night of the Living Dead — which set up most modern zombie tales.
- Partly this depends on the location; Balkan vampires actually are less different from these tropes than many people think. They at least lose their powers, and are often turned to stone or ash, by sunlight—something they probably borrow from Greek goblins. As for the Biblical figure being the first one, Serb/Croat vampires are called the Sons of Judas, and he's their leader. Romanian vampires have always been charming and seductive; some of them are obsessive-compulsive, some of them can change shape, and one of them, the vîrcolaci, can eat the moon and cause eclipses. Vampirism's also never The Virus, traditionally—it's either a curse caused by something unrelated to vampires, or a conscious choice. In fact, traditional vampires are mostly caused by suicide or un-avenged death, making them the Western equivalent of Japan's onryô.
- Many "traditional" werewolf tropes date back to the Hollywood era and no earlier.
- Serious books on traditional European werewolf lore have sometimes included the famous line "Even a man who is good in heart, and says his prayers by night, can become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms, and the autumn moon is bright." This was created from whole cloth for the movie The Wolf Man.
- While a Silver Bullet was reportedly used to kill one wolflike beast pre-Hollywood (the Beast of Gévaudan, 1764-67), silver was not used in conjunction with werewolves until the Universal Studios film The Wolf Man. It had, however, previously been considered as a weapon against vampires.
- The idea of zombies as slow, lumbering creatures that crave human flesh and can only be stopped by being beheaded comes from Night Of The Living Dead in the 60's, and from other movies. Medieval beliefs in revenants, and the original Caribbean conception of zombies, have none of that. The craving for brains is even more recent, dating from the 1985 film The Return of the Living Dead.
- That one pretty much stopped there, too. Zombies eating brains is a classic Dead Unicorn Trope.
- Shinigami are not part of classic Japanese mythology. They date to only the mid-19th century via European images of the Grim Reaper and translations from The Brothers Grimm, especially the tale Godfather Death. Not that you'd think that after watching Yu Yu Hakusho, Death Note or Bleach.
- Actually, you probably should. With how extreme the variation is between different fictional shinigami, with the only similarity at all between any of them being the whole "death" thing, it's pretty obvious that there isn't any mythology behind them.
- Because, as you know, mythology always receives deeply reverent attention to minute details in anime.
- Actually, shinigami are mentioned twice in the 17th century play "Double Suicide at Amijima" by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Japan's Shakespeare. The most famous quote in the play even mentions them ("To the ears of one possessed by the God of Death, reasoning and objections are so many idle complaints.") Yes, with those kanji. They're actually probably an Expy, via syncretism, of the Chinese traditional religion's death messengers, since Korean Shamanism has a similar figure, Saja.
- The character of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was actually created in 1939 as a holiday marketing gimmick for Montgomery Ward department stores. The song itself was written in 1949.
- And the other eight are traced straight to A Visit From St. Nicholas.
- Although the depiction of Santa Claus wearing a red and white outfit began with Thomas Nast's famous 1863 cartoon for Harper's Weekly, other colours were common until a Coca-Cola ad campaign in the 1930s when red became only colour associated with him and the other colours were forgotten (green and blue Santa, anyone?).
- On the other hand, the idea that all of Santa's outfit (or even the entire character) were the product of the Coca-Cola Company has been thoroughly debunked.
- St. Nicholas himself was an Orthodox priest, so probably would indeed have worn red. The similarity between his costume and modern-day Santa's probably begins and ends there though.
- Actually, he lived before the schism between Orthodoxy and Catholicism and is venerated as a saint by both churches. He is formally known as St. Nicholas of Myra, for he was Bishop there. In Catholic iconography he sometimes depicted as wearing a red Bishop's cloak. He is also said to have been tall and given his simple lifestyle, likely was rather thin.
- Corresponding to that, depictions of Santa were frequently thin and tall until Thomas Nast's cartoon.
- According to The Other Wiki, in Britain (or England at any rate) prior to the 20th century, Santa traditionally wore green — see Dickens' A Christmas Carol for example.
- Paul Bunyan stories were disseminated by the Red River Logging Company as part of an advertising campaign in the early 20th century (1906).
- If most people were asked to describe a genie, they'd describe an immortal being that lived in a lamp or bottle and granted three wishes. You'd be hard-pressed to find a genie fitting this description in The Arabian Nights. While some were trapped in jars, most were free to do as they wished. Aladdin's lamp only summoned the genie — it didn't actually contain it. The number of wishes was arbitrary. Although they were long-lived, genies weren't immortal, nor impervious to injury, and could be killed by rather mundane methods. (Not that killing one would be easy, but a blow that would be fatal to a human would also likely be fatal to a genie.)
- It may even be easy to kill a genie since one of the genies in Arabian Nights claims his son was killed from being hit in the head with a date pit that a merchant was throwing away casually (although it's possible that the genie was lying just so he'd have an excuse to kill the merchant).
- Genies also did not have the ability to instantly grant any wish. Rather, they had to complete the wish using powerful- but limited — magics, their own strength, and the nearly unending coffers of money they had accrued over their long lives. Wishing to live forever would more likely have the genie sending you after some rare and exotic herb than the instant gratification that you see in all modern versions.
- Something very similiar has happened to witches in the 20th century, writers making them omnipotent goddesses.
- The depiction of Valkyries as fat ladies began with Richard Wagner's Die Walküre, since corsets impeded achieving a powerful voice. As for the Vikings' horned/winged helmets, they were made up in the 19th century.
- There have been numerous finds of horned helmets, though most of them predate the Vikings and they were probably never intended for wearing in actual combat.
- Carl Emil Doepler’s costume designs for the Valkyries in the 1876 Bayreuth production of Wagner’s Ring were based on the then most recent archaeological evidence, which was partly influenced by the horned helmets of much later mediaeval warriors. Cosima Wagner famously loathed the winged helmets, which she said looked less like ancient Germans than "Red Indian chiefs."
- The "archaeological evidence" were not helmets as one thought, the horns were found seperate and actually were intended for drinking.
- The hippogriff is not a traditional mythological beast the way the somewhat similar griffin is. The word hippogriff first appeared in Ludovico Ariosto's poem Orlando Furioso (written in 1516). Because griffins were believed to prey on horses, the offspring of a horse and griffin was intended as representation of something impossibly unlikely.
- The modern concept of the psychic dates back to at least Nostradamus, right? Um, no, actually; the word "psychic" and the study of the phenomenon is a late-19th century invention. In fact, associating psychic activity with science is itself a modern invention — even during the Renaissance, things like telekinesis and fortune-telling were attributed to either divine or demonic forces, and not to a heightened mental awareness.
- The association with science is pretty much dead in the real world, although the media apparently hasn't caught on yet (or else they're keeping it around due to the Rule Of Cool). It's mostly associated with "New Age" equivalents of the original versions now.
- Tiamat wasn't a dragon in the original Babylonian mythology; while she apparently did give birth to dragons and sea serpents (among other creatures), her description in a surviving version of the Babylonian creation myth is rather vague, and many alleged depictions of her are under contention. This also manages to simultaneously be Older Than They Think, as most people who realize this blame it on Dungeons And Dragons, when it's a misconception with much older roots, and crops up in sources that are very obviously not influenced by the Dungeons And Dragons version.
- Bahamut wasn't a dragon in the original mythology. It wasn't even anything close — although exactly what it was varies according to the source you check, none of them are anything similar to "dragon." Unlike Tiamat, above, the blame for this one can be laid solely at the feet of Dungeons And Dragons — they just took a name they thought sounded cool and attached it to their dragon god.
- In 4E, it is written, "of course, in these more enlightened times, we know Bahamut is not really a dragon," and that 'Platinum Dragon' is merely an honorific title. They don't say what Bahamut, in fact, is.
- "Bahamut" is likely derived from "Behemoth", a creature described in the book of Job, and thought by many scholars (though there is no definitive proof, and there are other theories) to be a hippopotamus.
- When talking about Egyptian Myths, citing Anubis as the god of the dead would likely get you Gannon Banned with a reminder that Osiris had always had the job. Sorry, but that's not the case; Anubis was the god of death before Osiris, only being replaced in the fifth dynasty after the latter god's cult grew enough to overthrow the former's place (though myths surrounding the takeover have Anubis step aside "out of respect" for Osiris, so there wasn't as much bad blood). Furthermore, another jackal-headed god by name of Khenti-Amentiu was discovered to be even older than either god. Guess who Egyptologists consider Khenti having the strongest connection to? I guess Osiris isn't the top dog that everyone thinks he is.
Proverbs and Superstitions
- "The greatest thing since sliced bread" implies that sliced bread is an old, old concept. Pre-sliced loaves have been around only since 1928: See the astounding announcement from Modern Mechanics!
- Abe Simpson recalls, in his childhood, his father talking about America as if it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, adding that "Sliced bread had been invented the previous winter." Given that article's publishing date and Abe's record in World War Two, the comment was probably much more accurate than the writers intended.
- The phrase itself came about as soon as the 1930s; when it was originally used, it meant the "greatest new thing in a series of wondrous new technological developments". It would be like saying how something is the "greatest thing since the iPod" or "greatest thing since HDTV" today. The fact that the phrase stuck around longer than its cultural context is just one of those happenstances of history.
- That's a relief! I'd always interpreted the saying that way, and the first description of the meaning made me think I got it wrong.
- Then again, it was the Depression, and sliced bread was an affordable luxury, which at that time would look like something totally cool.
- The myth that England will not fall until the ravens leave the tower came from the 1800s at the latest, since the earliest reference to ravens being there at all isn't until 1885. It didn't become popular until WWII (when, apparently, the ravens did leave).
- The same happens with the idea that Gibraltar will stay British while there are Barbary macaques there. In reality nobody gave a damn about the monkeys until WW 2 (to the point nobody knows for sure when did the first monkey arrive there to begin with), when the population had coincidentally dwindled to 7 and was about to die off, requiring the introduction of several new animals from North Africa. Nowadays, the Barbary macaque is near extinct in North Africa but a pest in the Rock.
- The idea that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day is an invention of the early 20th century, although the separate ideas that Friday and the number 13 were unlucky are older than that.
- Though the Knights Templar in France were rounded up as heretics on Friday, October 13, 1307, there is no evidence linking this to the superstition.
- In many Spanish-speaking countries, the superstition is actually Tuesday the 13th, with the popular explanation that Tuesday (martes) is named after the Roman god of war, violence and bloodshed. The Jason movies are sometimes retitled accordingly (until the recent reboot, that is).
- The reaon for the superstition lies in the number of friday 13ths: At least for the last 400 years, the 13th fell more often on a friday than any other weekday, due to februaries, probably.
- "The Curse of the Bambino", referring to the 1920 trade of Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees having a detrimental effect to the former team, was first referenced in 1990.
- It is actually a little bit older than that — This Troper lives in New England, and remembers this curse when he was in Boston in the Hospital during the late 70s-early 80s.
- Robert F. Kennedy supposedly attributed the curse (which is one if you think about it) "May you live in interesting times" to the ancient Chinese. There is no such record of such a saying in China.
- The proverb of the camel's nose is an invention of the mid-19th century Victorians, not Arabs.
Settings
- In patriotic poetry, all sorts of nations are often depicted as being "thousands of years" old, despite the fact that few modern-day countries are much more than 1000 years old and many far younger (a large percentage only came into being after World War II); that said, many do claim descent (with differing degrees of justification) from previous nations or tribes.
- The Irish pub owes its existence to early 19th-century licensing laws. Although inns existed in cities and large towns, most social drinking took place as "hostings" in a person's home, with music, dance, song and storytelling. This is borne out by the fact that the Irish language lacks a proper terms for pub beyond teach óil ("house of drink") or tábhairne (tavern).
- Area 51 wasn't publicly associated with aliens until 1989. To elaborate, the Roswell crash it is most closely associated with happened in 1947, but the first account of it being anything but a crashed balloon with some press release confusion came out in the 1980, and the story didn't include the base until almost a decade later.
- Duh, cuz they COVERED IT UP so well!!!
- Some TV shows set in the mid-20th century (like Quantum Leap) have had a problem recognizing that the World Trade Center towers were only built in the 1970s.
- And the reverse is likely true now...
- This also comes up in Red Alert 2, which, at the absolute latest, could take place in the 60s — Einstein died in the 50s in the real world, and although he could have lived longer in the game timeline, anything much past that goes into the realm of absurd longevity; he'd be 100 years old by '79, and 94 in '73, when the towers were finished.
- Of course, Red Alert 2 is an alternate timeline, so the towers could have been built earlier there.
- Red Alert 2 takes place in an alternate 1970's, and itself is the chronicle of an alternate Cold War, only much, much worse than ours. Considering that in the Red Alert universe technology advanced at a such a rapid pace that they had a higher level of technology in their version of the 1950's than we do now, it is quite possible Einstein lived a long time due to the miraculous medical advances. He never even died of natural causes, instead being assassinated by enemy time-travelers.
- Considering that the series features mind controlled Squid and war bears, the fact that Einstein lived a few more decades doesn't seem all that strange.
- The Campanile in St. Mark's Square in Venice dates from 1912. The city fathers didn't have much choice in the matter — the original, dating from 1514, collapsed in 1902.
- Las Vegas was founded in 1905. It didn't have legal gambling before 1931, and didn't become a major resort until after World War II.
- Chicago was only incorporated in 1833, by which time places like New York and Philadelphia were already two centuries old (amazingly it would grow from a one horse town to the second city in the US in just fifty years).
- How many bridges were there on the Thames tideway when Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) was alive and busy rebuilding London after the Great Fire of 1666 (and the river was tidal as far inland as Staines)? Just four: London Bridge (originally Roman) Kingston Bridge (originally Saxon, 21 miles upstream) Chertsey Bridge (12 miles further upstream, late medieval) and Staines Bridge (4 miles further upstream, Roman again). Apart from those, the only way across was by boat or by taking one’s chances trying to ford at low tide. Then, in 1729, Putney Bridge was opened, followed by Westminster Bridge (1750), Walton Bridge (1750), Hampton Court Bridge (1753), Kew Bridge (1759), Blackfriars Bridge (1769), Battersea Bridge (1771), Richmond Bridge (1777), Vauxhall Bridge (1816), Waterloo Bridge (1817), Southwark Bridge (1819), Hammersmith Bridge (1827), Hungerford (railway) Bridge (1845), Richmond Railway Bridge (1846), Barnes Railway Bridge (1849), Staines Railway Bridge (1856), Chelsea Bridge (1857), Grosvenor (railway) Bridge, Battersea (1858), Lambeth Bridge (1862), Battersea Railway Bridge (1863), Kingston Railway Bridge (1863), Blackfriars Railway Bridge (1864), Cannon Street Railway Bridge (1866), Kew Railway Bridge (1869), Albert Bridge (1873), Wandsworth Bridge (1873), Fulham Railway Bridge (1889), Teddington Lock Footbridge (1889), Tower Bridge (1894), Richmond Lock Footbridge (1894), Chiswick Bridge (1933), Twickenham Bridge (1933), the M3 motorway bridge (1971), Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, Dartford (1991) and the Millennium (foot) Bridge (2002). Note that these are the years when a bridge first came into use on these sites - the current London Bridge dates back to 1973.
Technology
- CPR and mouth-to-mouth have only been around in any recognizable form since the late 1940s, and didn't become standard medical techniques for another decade. (Witness an episode of Quantum Leap where a crowd stands dumbfounded as Sam performs mouth-to-mouth on a nearly drowned boy, circa 1954. In Back To The Future Part II, Marty tells a crowd in 1955 that he knows CPR and gets the reply "What's CPR?".) Contrast the actually made-in-The Sixties Star Trek The Original Series' Mighty Whitey episode, which features whatever-they-did-before-CPR.
- Similarly, the Heimlich maneuver was first described circa 1974. It was likewise used anachronistically by Sam in an episode of Quantum Leap, on Dr. Heimlich himself.
- The wrench or spanner was only invented in 1835, which means that those Wrench Wenches you see in Steam Punk settings of various kinds are usually anachronistic right from the get-go. (It shouldn't be hard to see why — a wrench is a basically useless tool unless you have a lot of metal fittings in everything you use and those metal fittings are mass-produced at relatively standard sizes and screw threads.)
- Meaning that while anachronistic in terms of real world history, it makes sense for steampunk, as that does have metal fittings in everything.
- Mechanised production of screw threads, along with the facility to produce screw threads accurate enough to be standardised, first became possible in 1770 with Jesse Ramsden’s screw originating machine. The machine itself was swiftly superseded, as it was used to produce the lead screws for the first proper engineering and screw-cutting lathes, which were then used to manufacture ever more accurate and versatile lathes and machine tools. This lead to a boom in precision engineering, and laid some of the groundwork for the Industrial Revolution. It’s certainly true that almost every screw thread in existence today is descended, literally, from the ones produced by Ramsden’s machine.
- The first practical chastity belt wasn't invented until the late 1500s. And they were never very common even then.
- Adhesive tape. Though technically invented in 1928, up until the 1960s it was common to see packages tied with string, as featured in "My Favourite Things" from The Sound Of Music.
- Iron Maidens (torture device resembling a coffin full of spikes) were not invented until the late 18th Century, and have most likely never been used on anyone ever.
- The hot air balloon was invented in 1783.
- Actually a Brazilian Priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrated the theory in 1709, but it never got much further than the proof-of-concept because he died before he'd completed his designs for a scaled up version.
- The piano was invented in 1709 and didn't become popular till the mid 19th century; people preferred the softer sound of the Harpsichord.
- Matches lit by striking were invented in 1827.
- Which may also make it Older Than They Think, depending on what They Think.
- Though if they are dating matches as "older than lighters," matches are indeed newer than they think, by at least a few years.
- The first Ferrari road car was built in 1947, when Enzo Ferrari was nearly fifty and the motor car was over fifty.
- Similarly the first Lamborghini arrived in 1962. Mazda cars also date from the early 'sixties. And lets not forget the Lexus brand was launched in 1989.
- Women's clothes did not have attached pockets until the late 18th century. Early women's "pockets" were separate garments tied to the waist beneath the skirt, accessed via a slit in the skirt. The narrow skirts of the Regency drove these bulky pockets out of fashion. (Men's coats and waistcoats developed sewn-in pockets centuries earlier.)
- Television is both this and Older Than They Think — the so-called "Baird" (Nipkow) system, although the first system used, was recognised even at the time as having no long-term viability. Television as we know it today was the combined effort of several people over at least four decades, but the final piece of the jigsaw is said (by Britain's Royal Television Society amongst others) to have been invented by RCA's Vladimir Zworykin in the mid-1930s.
- Baird cottoned on pretty quickly afterwards though, and managed to get colour television working in 1944, which had 600 line definition and triple-interlacing, more than 3 decades ahead of its actual implementation.
- The naval battleship that we're all familiar with (armoured steel hull and deck, gun turrets with heavy guns) first appeared in 1906 with the launch of the HMS Dreadnaught (although things like the 1899 Royal Sovereign class had all three as well just less well done). The term "battleship" came into use about ten years before that. And by the start of World War II, battleships had become vulnerable to the increasing use of torpedoes, and few, if any were built after that point. Instead, naval development moved towards smaller, faster (and often wooden hulled) vessels that could deliver torpedoes, and countermeasures to those vessels. The most lasting class of vessel that arose from this was a smaller steel ship with smaller guns, suitable for picking off torpedo boats. It was named the "torpedo boat destroyer", usually shortened to "destroyer".
Terms and Phrases
- The American Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892, did not contain any references to "the United States of America" until 1923, nor did it mention God prior to 1954, when it was added to differentiate America from the atheistic commies.
- And ironically enough, the "God" bit was added by a man named Red (Red Skelton).
- Not only that, but the writer of the original pledge was a socialist named Francis Bellamy, and despite being a Baptist minister he wrote a version without "under God."
- Because, ironically, separation of Church and State was more widely accepted and less controversial in the late 19th century, when it was thought of as providing peace between the Catholics and Protestants, than in the (much more secular) 1950s when other options, like Atheism, became more culturally visible.
- The tradition of placing one's hand over the heart while reciting the pledge came about during World War II. The original standard practice was to hold your hand over your heart only for the line "I pledge allegiance," and then to point at the flag with four fingers, arm outstretched, palm down, for the remainder of the pledge. Crop out the flag in a picture of one of your political adversaries showing his patriotism, and you've got a front page picture that looks very much like Charles Limburgh doing a Nazi salute (This actually happened).
- The hand gesture in question is called the Roman Salute, because it is assumed to have originated in the ancient Roman Republic (however, the earliest recorded use of it is from the 18th century, so this may qualify as Newer Than They Think in itself). Either way, it was around as a generic gesture of respect a long time before the Nazis — and at least a few decades before the founding of the United States, for that matter. Then, after the Nazi use of the gesture became famous, everyone else stopped using it (to avoid Unfortunate Implications). So that's why it's considered a "Nazi salute" today, in much the same way that the swastika is considered a "Nazi symbol" even though it has been around for thousands of years. And Now You Know.
- Its associations with saluting may come from the fact it's used as a gesture of blessing in the Catholic Church (and possibly the Orthodox Church, too). And they probably did get it from Rome (by way of Byzantium, in the second case)—we know the Romans used the gesture, just not how.
- "Flying saucer" wasn't coined as a term until 1947, when an Air Force pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted a formation of UFO's and coined the term in an interview. Interestingly, the term was used to describe the objects' movement, rather than shape (he described the shape as crescent-like). That's right, the image of the circular flying saucer is really a result of Memetic Mutation.
- The words "schadenfreude" and "angst" have only become part of the English lexicon in last 20 years or so, before then they were purely German words writers sometimes borrow.
- The affirmative "OK" dates to 1839, from the Boston Morning Post. It's an abbreviation for "oll korrect".
- The greeting "hello" is an Americanism, dating to 1840. It did not become popular until the invention of the telephone.
- "Hullo", on the other hand, is derived from German and has been around in English much, much longer. Not that anyone really says it anymore. Or, if anyone was to say it, they'd be accused of "mispronouncing" the word — or, worse yet, speaking "improperly".
- It only really began to be used as a greeting when the phone was invented. before that, it was more commonly an expression of mild surprise.
- The illusionist's meaning of "prestige" did not exist before the 1995 novel. Even in the novel, the first two parts were referred to as "set up" and "performance"; the more auspicious "pledge" and "turn" were coined by Nolan, three years ago.
- That's not to say that the term doesn't make sense—both the middle french root of the word "prestige" and the latin root before it meant "conjurer's trick."
- The NATO phonetic alphabet (the one that begins "alpha, bravo" ) was standardized in 1956. Thus any depicted use in World War Two settings is a case of Did Not Do The Research. The Other Wiki has comparative tables of the various national systems is use before 1956.
- Both the notion that women and children should be saved first and that the Captain must sink with his ship unless everybody else is safe stem from (quite horrible) naval incidents in the 19th century. And only the second one did ever have some back-up in maritime law, while the first one was more like a social convention.
- While Russia's rulers have been sending people for exile or punishment in Siberia for centuries, the term gulag began as the acronymized name of the office that organised Stalin's labour camps (Glavnoye Upravlyeniye Ispravityel'no-Trudovih Lagyeryey i koloniy = The Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies). This was established in 1930.
Games
- Mahjong (a.k.a. Mah-Jong, Mahjongg etc.) is commonly supposed to be centuries if not millennia old, and even to have been invented by
Confucius Kongzi, but no evidence of it predating the 1880s can be found. The solitaire game Shanghai (often miscalled "Mahjong" because it's played with the same tiles — like calling Freecell "Bridge"), which likewise has spurious antiquity claimed for it, was invented by Activision in the 1970s.
Other
- The phrase "In God We Trust" first appeared on US Paper currency in 1957. It was mandatorily included on all US coins two years prior to this.
- The idea that houses built on Indian burial grounds will be haunted first appeared in the novel The Amityville Horror (1977).
- Well, the Navajo have always thought building where someone died or was buried is a bad idea, and before contact the only burial grounds they could build on would be Indian ones...
- The standard pirate accent was invented by Robert Newton for the 1950 movie Treasure Island.
- The association of English rural accents with seafaring arguably goes back to Lord Nelson, whose contemporaries noted his heavy Norfolk accent, but Treasure Island did popularise it, as well as the phrase, "ARRRRHHHH!".
- Treasure Island also popularized the concept of buried treasure; only one real pirate, William ("Captain") Kidd, is recorded as actually doing so, and it's debatable whether or not he was actually a pirate at all.
- Captain Morgan (yes, he was a real person) was also said to have buried treasure and is generally accepted to be the trope originator, though this is also known to be patently false. Furthermore, he was never a pirate (his actions were actually sanctioned by the British crown as guerrilla warfare against the Spanish, basically, making him a privateer) and the treasure he supposedly "buried" wasn't looted as so much as it was embezzled as it was originally intended to go towards the payroll of other privateers.
- The "tradition" of the diamond engagement ring is sometimes thought to have been the result of a 1940s de Beers ad campaign, but this is not the case. The tradition actually began decades earlier, in the immediate post-World War I era; an expensive ring was intended as insurance that the man actually meant to marry the woman, and wasn't proposing just to get sex (Serious Business at a time when single women had literally no access to birth control and unmarried mothers were thought of as worse than street whores). De Beers merely piggybacked onto a trend that was almost universal by the time their first ads ran. They did however create the idea that an engagement ring should cost two months' salary.
- As well, most of the ideas surrounding the ring were at the very least played up and at the worst invented whole-cloth by De Beers' advertisers over the succeeding decades. See the idea that the size of the rock matters, the idea that selling or trading in an old engagement ring is bad luck, etc. Most egregious is De Beers completely making up the "rule of thumb" that a ring should cost the man two months' salary (in an effort to make it impossible to have one standard-sized ring that was "good enough").
- Not to mention the idea that you should be buried with your diamond jewelry, in order to
prop up the artificial scarcitysymbolize eternal something-something. Not kidding, here.
- Before that time a common engagement gift — not necessarily a ring — was acrostic jewellery: where the initials of the set gems spelled out words or names. REGARDS rings (Ruby, Emerald, Garnet, Amethyst, Ruby, Diamond, Sapphire) are acrostic jewellery, for example, although many rarer and unusual stones are required to fill other letters. Actual wedding bands, however, have reportedly been around since the Medieval period.
- Wedding bands have existed for centuries, but of course weren't as common back when the masses could barely afford shoes and food, never mind gold rings. Rather than being symbols of eternal blah-blah-blah, they also symbolised exchange of wealth in return for marriage. One English account gives "with this ring I thee wed" followed by the words 'This gold and silver I give thee', at which point the groom was supposed to hand a leather purse filled with gold and silver coins to the bride. The unromantic Germans record the phrase "I give you this ring as a sign of the marriage which has been promised between us, provided your father gives with you a marriage portion of 1,000 Reichsthalers." In the 1920s, only 15% of marriages were two-ring affairs, men's wedding bands being slow to catch on.
- In Russia, since the XV century, iron wedding bands were often used for one of the sides. And in Judaism (Orthodox, at least), a rabbi will not agree to oversee a wedding with a gemmed band present — since it symbolizes the exchange of wealth, there should be no possibility of the value being unclear. As a variation of this trope, the use of rings to symbolize the exchange actually came from Rome — hence the groom's specifying that the wedding is according to the law of Moses.
- The "traditions" of Kwanzaa have no African root, were completely invented by a Ron Karenga, the founder of a radical black nationalist movement, at 1966, and explicitly started as an alternative to Christmas. The "seven principles of Kawaida", which also have no African root, were added by Karenga 11 years later.
- Some sociologists claim that the theory of evolution was used to justify the slave trade; in reality, Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, after most of the western world had already abandoned slavery. (The concept of biological evolution actually dates back to the 18th century, but most scientists did not accept it until after On the Origin of Species was published.) This argument is made even sillier by the fact that Darwin himself was strongly abolitionist, as noted in his autobiography, having many aggressive arguments with the captain of the Beagle over his support of slavery.
- They're probably thinking of the Polygenesis theory. (Which Darwin also opposed)
- College sports example: Georgia Tech is considered an "old-school" member of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) even though they didn't join the league (founded 1953) until 1979.
- Similarly, Michigan State, which didn't join the Big Ten (established 1896) until 1950, seems to be treated as if it were always there. (Originally the tenth member was the University of Chicago, which doesn't even play in Division I anymore.)
- Similar to that: Many football fans think the big Texas schools (Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor) have always been a part of the Big 12 conference. Technically true, but there's only been a "Big 12" since 1994, when the Texas schools came in from the defunct Southwestern Conference (SWC) to expand the actually-as-old-as-they-think Big 8.
- Religious example: Wicca was often thought of as a modern survival of ancient matriarchal religions. It was created (or at least popularized) by Gerald Gardner in 1954, and cannot be provably traced back further.
- Mind you, this is largely the result of Gardner claiming the religion to be ancient, rather than just being a popular misconception.
- Of course, given the almost complete lack of evidence as to how it was practiced other than bits of Roman propaganda, it pretty much entirely consists of what modern people think it should have been like.
- It would have been remarkably blood-free for the time if it was similar to the modern version. Even the Jews still practiced animal sacrifice back then.
- Then again, the large majority of Wiccans in modern times do not view their religion as a literal ancient religion. Most recognise Gardner's historical inaccuracies and calmly move on.
- In fact, Wicca is often viewed as a self-consciously modern interpretation of traditional pagan concepts and principals, often contrasted with the reconstructionist forms of neopaganism, such as Germanic Heathenry, which explicitly attempt to emulate ancient practices as closely as possible. Even among revionist forms of neopaganism, it is acknowledged as being far more eclectic and varied than more historically-inspired forms such as neo-druidry. It's practically a byword for "eclectic pagan", the concept of a God-Goddess duality being the only universally consistent aspect.
- The idea that Wiccans think their religion is authentically ancient is a common strawman position.
- Likewise, the European "witchcraze" took place in the early-modern period, particularly during the Reformation, not (as it is so commonly assumed), during the Dark Ages (although there were occasional witch trials during that time).
- Part of that is the fact that too many people think the Dark Ages ended in roughly 1800. (Nowadays historians deny that there ever was a time such as the Dark Ages, but traditionally they ran from the fall of Rome in AD 476 to the crowning of Charlemagne in AD 800.)
- The technical definition of "history" is, "the study of what people wrote down back then". As such, the term "Dark Age" refers to a time when 1) most people were too illiterate to write, and 2) a lot of what was wrote (during that time and before it) was lost. As such, the "Dark Ages" shrink as more of those lost scribblings come to light.
- While there are several three-faced or triplicate goddesses in more than one mythology, the idea that they'd split into aspects of Maiden, Mother and Crone is no older than the 19th century.
- January 1 didn't become New Year's Day in most of Europe until the 16th century, and not until 1700 in Russia, 1721 in Tuscany and 1752 in Britain, Ireland and the British Empire (except in Scotland, who changed over in 1600). And of course, it still isn't in China.
- The idea of a saintly and innocent princess largely was the result of 19th century writers trying to make everything nice for the children. Older Fairy Tales would have their heroines be at least a bit more active.
- Travel writer Bill Bryson noted that Australia's trans-continental Indian Pacific train has an air of 'cultivated venerability' since it was actually begun in 1970. Some classic British and American routes had been discontinued by then.
- Compulsory wearing of seat belts in cars? 1970 in Victoria, Australia. 1983 in the UK, and another year before the first of the United States (New York) took it up. (Back To The Future made a Values Dissonance joke about this.) It's still not illegal in New Hampshire...
- Philippines is very bad with seat belts, not passing a law mandating the use of seatbelts until 1999, and to this day, most people there still don't care for them. When this troper, a Filipino-American, went down to the Philippines for the first time he remembers (in 1994), he was shocked to discover that his relatives didn't wear seatbelts, even in the front seats. And this is in a country whose traffic is basically Bullet Hell in traffic form compared to American traffic.
- Switzerland gave women the vote in federal elections... in 1973! Liechtenstein waited until 1984. Switzerland, while being host to many official agencies of the United Nations, was itself not a full member until late 2002.
- One Swiss Canton didn't allow women to vote in local elections until 1991.
- It's traditional for Robin Hood's Merry Men to include a Saraceen or Moorish member, right? Actually, this character type was first used in Robin Of Sherwood in 1984.
- While we are at it:
- Allen-a-Dale? No older than the Victorian era.
- Friar Tuck? Introduced in Tudor times.
- Maid Marian? Actually, we have older tales of her than of him, but she wasn't associated with Robin Hood until Tudor times. May festivities often had plays, and at the point they would feature either her or Robin Hood — until someone went for a crossover.
- Minutes and seconds as we know them were first used near the end of the tenth century. (The names are a clue: minute fraction of an hour, and second minute fraction; "thirds" and "fourths" were once used in calculations, although not measured for obvious reasons.) Before that, the only culture not to use fractions of an hour was the Babylonians, who would divide days by sixtieths, into units of twenty-four minutes, twenty-four seconds, six fifteenths of a second, etc. Seconds could not be measured until the sixteenth century, and nothing resembling our concept of counting time by seconds shows up until late in the seventeenth.
- The notion of sitting quietly in your seat during classical music dates from the mid-19th century. The Other Wiki says that sneezes and coughs should be held until a loud section of music is reached (!), but talking and eating during performance was once commonplace.
- Haydn's "Surprise" and "Joke" Symphonies were written, because of his annoyance at this, to startle or confuse his audiences.
- The stereotypical "shouting military guy" persona is based almost entirely on George C. Scott's performance in the 1970 film Patton.
- To add an additional layer of irony, the actual General G.S. Patton hated giving speeches, having a weak, high pitched, grandmotherly voice.
- And spent tons of time practicing his posture and facial expressions to try and make up for this and seem impressive when speaking.
- In American politics, the consistent use of red to represent the Republican Party and blue for the Democratic Party (and the corresponding terms "Red State" and "Blue State") only goes back to the protracted 2000 election. While the use of red and blue for the two sides in a an electoral contest dates back to at least the time of color television, until 2000, there was no uniform standard for the parties' colors.
- The first movie sequels to have the same name as the first with a number added was French Connection II (1975). Adding "Part II", "Part 3" is much older (e.g. Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part Two or Little Women, Part Second; FC2 was the first to add just a number.
- Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, Hermes Trismegistus was thought to be a prophet of remotest antiquity, predating even Zarathustra and Abraham. But it turns out that most of the works attributed to him are probably no older than the second century.
- The name of the film of the play The Madness of George III was changed to The Madness of King George, so that an international audience could have some idea that it's a Gorgeous Period Dress movie. The star, Nigel Hawthorne, liked to joke that it was changed so Americans wouldn't think it was a sequel.
- The Spanish Inquisition was only founded in 1478 and it was actually one of the last European inquisitions to be created.
- Wow! I didn't expect that!
- Similarly, a lot of history books will tell you that Spain was the first country to toss its Jewish population out, while praising the comparatively free treatment they received in Northern Europe, especially England. This troper guffawed heartily when he discovered that England was apparently the first country to kick the Jews out, under Edward I in 1290.
- We sure were. Let them back in in the mid 1650s though. Cromwell thought Jews had to be spread to all corners of the world for when the end of the world came (a common belief at the time was such time was near). Why did he think that? Ask an eschatologist.
- Actually, it was part of an arrangement made with leaders of the Dutch Jewish community, intended to circumvent protectionist economic policies to allow increased trade with the Netherlands. It was also encouraged by the religous radicals who held significant public influence at the time, and to whom Cromwell had a degree of sympathy.
- In fact, Spain adopted the Inquisition and the "convert or go" policy after suffering two centuries of Pamphlet Backdraft from other European countries because of its kind treatment of Jews and Muslims ("kind" meaning "let them live in separate ghettoes" here). It continued to be treated the same way after the expulsion because real Christians were supposed to slay them, not let them go to other country; Luther used the purported mixed-blood with infidels of Spaniards and Italians (recruited extensively by his enemy, Emperor Charles V) as a ralling cry in Germany, for example. It only was in the second half of the 17th century at the earliest, when Jewish communities began to grow in size and power in England and the Netherlands, that the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (but not the Muslims, by the way) began to be counted as an example of Imperial Spain's barbarity, and eventually became the uber-example it is considered today.
- Of course considering that Jews only gained full legal status in Spain in the early 20th century, this is somewhat justified.
- And it's also worth remembering that quite a few of the Spanish princedoms were actually Muslim and ruled by Muslims until the 14th century. That probably helped matters. The reason the Spanish Inquisition was so horrific was because, after it happened, there was nowhere else to go.
- But also further ironically, it's been established to have been vastly less bloody than its more colorful histories suggest. Apparently many were written by the English, who rather preferred to concentrate on the supposed evil of Spain. Not that Spanish history is particularly pacifistic in any measure, but there is a certain amount of displacement where English authors ignored their own mistreatment of the politically marginalized. Coverrups of purges, pograms, and inquisitions thus turn out to be older than modernity as well. IN fact, we have evidence of such willful coverrupts dating back to ancient Egypt, where some Pharoahs' monuments and inscriptions were altered or destroyed to erase their memory.
- As for the Spanish Inquisition itself, it is said to have sentenced to death some two thousands of people. Rather a small amount, considering its reputation and several centuries of activity.
- The NHL has a group of 6 teams (Montreal, Toronto, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, New York Rangers) called the "original six". However, only the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs (although they were called St. Pats at the time) existed in 1917, when the NHL was founded. Those two teams, along with the Ottawa Senators and the Quebec Bulldogs, were the charter members of the NHL. The Senators are not considered an old team, however, as they died in 1934, and the name was only reused in 1992. Boston entered in 1924; the three others joined in 1926. After that expansion, however, there was a total 11 teams in the league. The great depression thinned the heard, and by 1942, only the "original six" were left.
- The name 'Kevin' is pretty old by itself, but it only became remotely popular outside Ireland in the mid- 20th century and later (as recently as 1933 it was outside the top 1000 names in the US). So Captain Darling's first name is possibly the most anachronistic thing in Blackadder Goes Forth.
- No sooner than Courtly Love had been invented than people began to lamented its decay from the Good Old Ways of King Arthur's time.
- Despite the mythology and conspiracy theories that claim it to be nearly a thousand years old, if not more, Freemasonry as we know it only dates back to the early 1700s.
- To be clear, freemasons existed much longer, but prior to the 1700s, the organization really was just a trade union for, y'know, actual masons. To be fair, the term "mason" did used to indicate a master craftsman, structural engineer and architect - someone who could not only handle a chisel, but also design and oversee construction of magnificent stone buildings that wouldn't fall down, even after centuries had passed. Add a few sacred measurements and a little Newtonian celestial mechanics and isn't hard to see how they would end up attracting intelligensia and talking about "the Architect of the Universe".
- They also practiced secret rites. This was when a man showed up claiming to know masonry, they put him through the rites to verify that he had been instructed by proper masons.
- The names of the hermetic decans and their rulers that appear in GURPS Cabal are very complete and professional looking. A bit of internet searching suggests they were made up just for the game.
- The names of the decans are lifted from the grimoire Testament of Solomon, where they were the names of various demons. Their association with astrological decans, on the other hand, appears to be invented entirely by Cabal's author.
- The name Art Deco for the 1920s and 1930s design movement was popularised in the 1960s. In the 1930s people usually called it the Moderne style.
- The Canadian flag dates from 1965. Yes, flags change often, and there have been more recent changes; it's just that it usually takes a big political upheaval like in South Africa or Russia for this to happen. And the Canadian flag is so familiar it's a surprise to learn how recent it is compared to others (for example the Australian flag is a 1901 design, give or take minor details).
- The Russian nesting doll, the matryoshka, was invented in 1890. (The painting styles were based on much older paintings.)
- I and J became separate letters in the 16th century.
- So did U and V around the same time.
- Although the dog has been domesticated for tens of thousands of years, only 14 of the hundreds of current breeds are thought to be "ancient breeds" or what we call Older Than Feudalism. The whole idea of registered, pedigreed, "purebred" dogs is an innovation of the 19th century.
- Which ones? You've got me interested in that one.
- One of the oldest is, surprisingly, the shih tzu. Genetically it is almost identical to a breed that lived amongst man ten thousand years ago. It is also one of the closest living domestic relatives to the wolf, after the husky - at least from a genetic point of view. As far as "newer than you think" goes, German Shepherds were first developed in 1899.
- There are fourteen breeds recognized today (as in, they have active parent clubs and AKC approval) which have been held to a similar conformation standard for thousands of years. These include the Saluki, the Tibetan Terrier, the Samoyed, The Shiba Inu, the Basenji, the Siberian Husky, the Alaskan Malamute, the Pekingese, the Lhasa Apso, and the Chow Chow. That said, there are a number of breeds (the Canaan dog, the Phoenician hound, and MANY unregistered but consistent local dog variants) which are just as old. Also, NO dog is more or less closely related to wolves. That's like saying a particular human - or race of humans - is more closely related to Homo heidelbergensis than others.
- Dogs didn't evolve naturally. They were bred. It works much, much faster. As such, the longer a breed of dog was intentionally bred to change it, the further it will be from its ancestors. Also, that idea is even false with natural evolution. For example, the modern coelacanth is closely related to an ancestor from the Cretaceous period.
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