Complex Numbers

The Man, The Myth, The Reality

Some things we think are real turn out to be myths. But sometimes it's the other way around. Cracked provides a few examples.

    5 Apocryphal People That Were Actually Real as Hell  

Hell, of course, is not real (except for the town in Michigan), but I suspect they mean that as an intensifer.

Of course, embellishments are natural, but the basis for what you might think are tall tales are often a flesh-and-blood fellow.

Those "embellishments" might be how myths and legends get started in the first place. Kind of like how that fish you caught that one time keeps getting larger and heavier every time you tell the tale, until everyone's convinced that you hooked Leviathan. Or, well, you're convinced they're convinced, anyway.

5. Johnny Appleseed

I knew this was a real guy; I only ever objected to his glorification. Though I suppose his legacy of spreading non-native species around is better than that of Charlie Kudzuseed or Frankie Freshwatercarpegg.

Johnny Appleseed is a tale that sounds patently insane. A man wandering the Wild West, tossing out apple seeds and leaving a trail of trees in his wake, sounds like a folk tale at best and a severely deranged man at worst.

Well, he was at base a missionary, so "deranged" isn't too far out there as a description.

4. John Henry

As far as American myths-based-in-fact go, this one's my all-time favorite.

Heck, John Henry versus the machine is practically writers’ struggle against advancing A.I. Well, if John Henry was a feeble, depressed man, and the steam machine made weird-looking, factually inaccurate railroads.

The thing people get most wrong about this one, though, isn't the human vs. machine thing, but the nature of his work: he didn't hammer spikes into ties (well, he may have done that, too, but that's irrelevant to the main story), but, as I understand it, he drove metal drill thingies into raw rock for placement of demolition charges. You know, to make cuts or tunnels in the Appalachians.

3. Paul Bunyan

Rarely has there been a better modern example of reality getting exaggerated into mythology.

Bunyan’s physical legend, it’s believed, comes from a French-Canadian man named Fabian Fournier. Remember, first, that in 1875, when Fournier lived, the average male height was right around five and a half feet tall. Given that knowledge, the six-foot-tall Fournier was practically Shaq with an axe. It’s thought that Fournier’s famous bulk combined with the name of another famous lumberjack, Bon Jean, which over time and error, morphed into Bunyan.

So, roughly contemporaneous with John Henry. I'm seeing a lot of Johns and (French) Jeans on this list. Where "Paul" came from is unclear, but I guess it played better with test audiences than "Fabian."

2. Davy Crockett

I didn't think there was doubt that Crockett was an actual person. Still, sometimes it's hard to separate the truth from the exaggeration.

1. Dracula

Hey, someone not from North America.

He is, however, based on a real, notably horrible man. Vlad the Impaler, born Vlad III Tepes, was a ruler of Wallachia, which is now Romania.

Pretty sure the the Dracula thing is widely known to be based on a real, if morally repugnant, individual. But how did he get all the attention, while Elizabeth Bathory,   arguably a far scarier individual, languishes in relative obscurity?

Probably a sexist thing. After all, you don't see any chicks on this list, do you? If I had time, I'd come up with some.