Another that is annoying is mother theresa... who became a goddam saint.... she let kids and the poor suffer because she thought it brought them closer to god.... yet when she became ill, she got herself medical treatment! fckng hypocrite and if you say any critical truth about her, people become outraged and offended on her behalf... morons :/

I find it a scary thing to think of how history is taught in schools. And yes, the winner always writes the history and that is why it is so flawed. Children in US schools aren't really taught much about how we took land away from the Natives. Basically what is taught is THanksgiving and everyone being nicey nicey and them boom - Natives start attacking settlers. As far as slavery what is taught is that we had slavery, we had the Civil War, We had reconstruction and everything was then just peachy keen. Very little is said about Jim Crow and then nothing about how discrimination keeps happening. Also womens rights...... I could go on and on and I truly feel that is why we have the mess in our country - kids are taught fairy tales.

I have been reading Howard Zinn's, "A People's HIstory of the United States," and it has opened my eyes. Many of our most celebrated heroes were not very nice people and did some very nasty things to others. It amazes me, the difference between the history we learned in school and how it actually happened. For instance, I never knew that thousands of our citizens died during the early 1800's when they went on strike to complain of pay so low it did not buy them enough to eat or that Andrew Jackson was such an ass, and a dangerous one at that. I highly recommend this book to any one who is brave enough to learn our true history.

One of my favorite books is Lies My Teacher Told Me, written by a History professor. In the beginning of the book, he decried having to deprogram students and started them out with an writing assignment to describe their favorite historical figure, and then, in many cases, he would point out reasons why they might wish to reconsider. At the end of the book, he blamed the publishing industry for how it chose to release textbooks. If, for an example, you wrote a history book that was factually accurate, at the expense of so many innaccurate texts in circulation, you'd face an uphill battle in getting it published, out of supposed concern for disrupting standards. Yeah, it's a known problem with no solution on the horizon.

As a professional historian, I can say that there is truth in what you write, but scholarship continues to evolve. One of the problems is how to communicate the scholarship to broader audiences. Subaltern studies, gender studies, revisionist work is available but is frequently not read beyond specialists.

We are all raised with this idea that there are "good" and "bad" people, that the dichotomy is black and white, you can only fall into one category or the other. The truth is that no such dichotomy exists, we only pretend it does because it's metaphysically beneficial for society to do so.

I would challenge your assumption that heroes and villains exist at all, because what we believe someone to be is relative to what we want for ourselves.

The victor writes the history... None of us are truly totally good or evil as what is good or evil is subjective.
Right now in the UK there is a drive to drag Churchill down as a criminal against humanity as evil as Hitler. But without his input at a crucial time, those people who complain about him are likely to have never been born without him.
In the end, everything has a cost, and for heroes that is often their reputation.

I grew up reading and learning about the strong leaders of history. I felt I grew up in the wrong era as I wanted to be an Alexander the Great, a Caesar... A Hernan Cortez... I wanted adventure and to conquer something. I read up on these and others.. Life on the high seas in the 15th and 16th centuries. Now all the exploration and conquering had been done and I missed out.

It wasn't until years and years later that it really started coming out (Or perhaps I started paying attention to it) that these were figures who felt there was no value to the human lives they took. They all committed atrocities to further themselves. Alexander and Caesar literally slaughtered whole countries. Cortez and his men brought Small Pox to the new world that killed off up to 95% of the indigenous people.

The true story eventually comes out.

BTW... I am a direct descendent of William Van Ness, Aaron Burr's Second in his duel with Hamilton. My middle Name is Van Ness for this reason.

While you are viewing this from a national.com/ international point of view , things also work this way on the very personnel level . How many out there , have dated / married someone with a horrible story about their ex . , only to learn later that the half of the story you'd been given either left out some vital information , or was just a pile of lies from beginning to end ?

To the victor goes the spoils. To curry favor with who ever is in power is the bottom line. We see it play out every figging day with trump!
If you have a parent that questions what you are learning in school it really helps. My Dad told me about Tesla and his contribution to so much we take for granted today. Yeah, Edison my ass!
The down side was I loathed school mostly because I did not trust what I was being told and in the 60's google was not yet available.

I don't understand why we feel the need to trash one and glorify the other when in reality we didn't met the actual person. We don't know their troubles to accomplish what they did. Why can't we take the good from both stories?

I find it interesting that very flawed people can do wonderful things. Albert Einstein seems to have been a poor husband to his first wife. Woody Allen, at the very least, seems to have been awful to Mia Farrow. Michael Jackson. Bill Clinton. Is it specifically men? I don't know, but it makes me wonder--were I in the position of power that these men were in, would I act better than they did? I hope so.

"To the victor goes the spoils" "King of the Hill" "Survival of the Fittest" These are terms that denote life in society today. Elections, sports and a list of so many other things that are a part of our daily existence. Where would we be without them? I often wonder how much chaos would ensue if the truth could be known?

Unfortunately your last line is the truth. The winner always decides the story. This is why some in power are tyrants. If they are winners to most people they look good in the end.

Even this article is likely slanted in his favor, as from what I have heard, he did just as much, if not more, to instigate world war II . . . . [independent.co.uk]

The information is there. You just have to dive into it. Which means read, read, read!

I don't believe I've ever had a "hero"?

If I had a paper to write about someone I admired it was usually about someone I knew really well. Who had managed through some interesting times.

Those are the people I have admiration for.

Not showboats. Just not the way I'm programmed.

Understand that we are all humans, be inspired by the good parts and observe the bad parts to improve should be the learn from history.

Repeat the good parts avoiding the bad ones, so accept that heroes are humans and achieve a state of mind where you do not need heroes, but you seek for examples of good deeds to follow and bad ones to avoid.

History is ONLY written by the Winners and those who backed them, BUT never by the Losers.
I often ponder over who/what will write the History Humankind after we are all dead and gone.

Most idols have feet of clay. The public persona is rarely reality. As much as I admired JFK and intellect, he was a S.O.B. who took advantage of and used women. Jimmy Carter gave a Central American right-wing dictator, who was abusing his people, millions of dollars to suppress them under the guise of fighting communism. Eisenhower forced out a democratically elected president of Guatemala and replaced him with a right-wing military dictatorship. So, it would seem the more one knows about our heros, the less they seem to deserve that status.

Tesla has always been one of my favorites and I have read and watch many things about him!

That Dude named Adolf Hitler took the Young, Defeated Country of Germany, the Scapegoat of WWI and turned it into a Military Juggernaut in less than a Decade. He had a Social Program were you give 6 months of your Youth to the Mother Land and in exchange you were treated to all kinds of Positive Perks during those 6 months... Please do Not Accuse me of Pro Nazi... I am just noticing History. Even "Bad Guys" loved Someone Real Good!!! There was that American pro football hero named OJ Simpson. That baseball hero nicknamed "Charlie Hustle" Pete Rose... I can continue... just right now we are hearing of the "annoying" antonio brown accused of Rape. It will never end!!!

Edison is the first one to come to mind when I read the first sentence.

I believe that in quite a few cases the truth wasn't even recorded, what got recorded was course of events altered as per the whims of those with control and authority. Also back it up with the human mentality of winner being a proclaimed hero, we get a 'history' where blame rests with the vanquished.

Personally, I feel that most so called 'villains' are creations of perspectives.

NIXON WAS INNOCENT!!
Well, maybe not but I remember the great writer Alister Cooke explaining that to the historian it is not what actually happened that is important but what is believed to have happened at the time. This was in the context of the Boston tea party. It matters little that it may well have been just a drunken mob and the British soldiers were merely defending themselves. It was the spin of the event that helped fire up the revolution.
Hypothetically, if subsequent papers were to reveal that Nixon was the victim of an elitist plot, it would matter naught. The taint on the republican party that led to the election of Jimmy Carter would still be the historical significance of the event and the use of "gate" to describe political scandals.