Spread by Zack Synder\u2019s \u2018300\u2019 film, the story is told that in 480 BC, Sparta was celebrating a week-long festival of \u2018Carnea\u2019 as a tribute to Apollo Karneois, the Greek god of herds and flocks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In paying homage to this god, worshippers were forbidden to participate in any form of war; otherwise, they would have ruined their food source for the following year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This tradition was piously preserved, except in the year in question, news traveled that Xerxes I, King of Persia, was coming to avenge his father’s death after his failed attempt to invade Greece 10 years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the festival was much in season, Leonidas, King of Sparta, could only gather 300 guards to defend against the Persian army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A point often re-echoed is that other Greek city-states mustered up 4,000 soldiers to wade off this intrusion. But as compelling as this too may sound, it is, however, a myth. About 100,000 to 150,000 Greek soldiers joined the face-off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leonidas’s soldiers fought bravely and defended themselves for three days until they were betrayed by a countryman who snitched on them and revealed a backroad down the mountains \u2013 a strategic front for the Spartan army. It was at this point that Leonidas and his army were slain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not 300, as most accounts claim, but 1500 soldiers.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n As Professor Amahai Mazar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reported, this myth arose from a speech presented by Menachem Begin, former Israeli Prime Minister, when he visited Egypt in 1977.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Deiter Wildung<\/a>, former Director Berlin Museum, the myth was sold for a long time, perpetuated by Hollywood and the media, mainly because it was virtually difficult to stomach the fact that such magnificent pyramids were built without forced labor or oppression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So the myth traveled far on the back of sentiments that slaves were generally deployed for such projects<\/a> as building pyramids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, Deiter points out the pyramids were built out of loyalty to the pharaohs \u2013 a claim that recent archaeological findings have corroborated. However, Professor Mazar laid the issue to rest when he pointed out that Jews did not exist within the period<\/a> the pyramids were built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n King Tutankhamun’s tomb is said to be mystically deadly to persons who break into his tomb. So, when an Earl from England named George Herbert helped Howard Carter rob tombs in Egypt and died shortly after, newspapers waded into the story and puffed out the narrative that Herbert died from a curse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since then, the curse of the Pharaohs<\/a> became a mainstream flash story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But here\u2019s the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Earl had suffered from poor health for about two decades and died from pneumonia five months after he first stepped into the tombs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or perhaps, the curse waited five months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cleopatra hailed from the Ptolema<\/a>ic dynasty<\/a>, a Greek family that ruled Egypt after the reign of Alexander the Great.<\/a> She was the first to learn Egyptian, as her family had initially refused to learn the language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you studied history books, you probably would think of Cleopatra as an Egyptian<\/a>, mainly due to how she conducted herself publicly as the reincarnation of Isis, the Egyptian goddess equivalent of Venus and Aphrodite. But she is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The popular belief that Vikings wore horned helmets dates back to the early 19th<\/sup> century when Gustav Malmstr\u00f6mstems, a Swedish artist, included the imagery of burly men Viking warriors marching to war with horns in one of his best-selling works. This was further spread by Wagner’s operas in the mid-1800s, where Viking warriors were robed in horned helmets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, archeological evidence supports the contrary. According to the History Channel<\/a>, findings from death sites reveal that Viking Warriors strode to battle bare-headed, and in some cases, wore leather headgear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Napoleon earned the name “Le Petit Caporal,” meaning “Little Corporal,” out of his soldiers’ affection for him. But Napoleon wasn’t as short as we may think.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Going by pre-French Revolution units, Napoleon stretched as far as 5 feet 2 inches; by US measurements, he would be about 5 feet 6 inches tall. That’s four inches shy of the average male height in France, which stands at 5 feet 10 inches, according to World Data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.historydefined.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Scene_of_the_Battle_of_the_Thermopylae-679x1024.jpeg\")
Jewish Slaves Built the Egyptian Pyramids<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.historydefined.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/download-1024x835.jpeg\")
King Tutankhamun\u2019s Tomb is Cursed<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.historydefined.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/6599.jpeg\")
Cleopatra was an Egyptian<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.historydefined.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Retrato_femenino_26771127162-847x1024.jpeg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nVikings Wore Horned Helmets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.historydefined.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/6b-1024x574.jpeg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nNapoleon Bonaparte was Short<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n