Fact check · first aired 1978
Every episode transcribed and checked against what we know today about history and archaeology. Each point shows the episode, the moment it is said, and the exact line from the English dub (or the original French, where no English upload exists).
Watch the episodes on the official Hello Maestro YouTube channel.
These are the major errors: things a viewer could come away believing that are meaningfully wrong. We also found 148 minor slips (a date, a name or a number slightly off, or a likely dubbing error) which are hidden unless you ask for them.
Outdated: matched what was known at the time, but newer research changed the picture. Common belief then: specialists already knew better, but textbooks and popular books of the day still said it. Wrong in its day: a careful writer could have got it right from ordinary references; often a slip in a number, a name or the dubbing. Plain simplifications for children are not counted; they are listed under each episode. How this was made.
The episode runs from the formation of Earth and the first cells, through early sea life, amphibians and a parade of dinosaurs, to the rise of mammals and primates. It then follows a line of apes and early humans (Proconsul, Ramapithecus, the australopithecines, Homo habilis) to Homo erectus mastering fire about 700,000 years ago.
"With the Cambrian period came various new forms of life, medusas, phallobites, ostracoderm, the very first fish."
Today"Phallobites" is a speech-recognition error for "trilobites". In 1978 armoured jawless ostracoderms from the Ordovician were the oldest well-known fish. Since 1999, fossils from Chengjiang in China (Myllokunmingia, Haikouichthys; Shu et al., Nature 1999) have pushed the first fish-like vertebrates back to the early Cambrian, about 518 million years ago. Those animals were soft-bodied and were not ostracoderms.
"The secondary period saw the triumph of the dinosaurs, whose descendants include crocodiles, as well as birds."
TodayBirds are descendants of dinosaurs. Crocodiles are not: they are cousins of the dinosaurs on a separate archosaur branch, and that branch is as old as the dinosaurs. This was established long before 1978.
"And here's the all-round champ, the largest beast ever to have walked the Earth. Brachiosaurus, 24 meters long, 12 high."
TodaySeveral titanosaurs found later were bigger than Brachiosaurus: Argentinosaurus (1993), Dreadnoughtus (2014), Patagotitan (2017). The famous mounted Berlin skeleton was moved to its own genus, Giraffatitan (Taylor 2009). Newer mass estimates for brachiosaurs also tend to be below 50 tonnes, often around 30–45 t.
"The fabled dragon, Pteranodon, the largest flying reptile with a wingspan of 8 meters."
TodayThe largest known flying reptiles are azhdarchids such as Quetzalcoatlus, with wingspans of about 10–11 m. Pteranodon's wingspan is now put at about 6–7 m at most.
Why it was believedFor decades Pteranodon was the textbook "biggest flier". Quetzalcoatlus was announced to specialists only in 1975 (Lawson, Science) and took years to reach popular books.
"The duck model, Anatosaurus."
TodayAnatosaurus is no longer a valid name. Its species were moved to Edmontosaurus (E. annectens) and other genera in later revisions (Brett-Surman 1979–1990). The duck-billed hadrosaur shown is real; only the name is out of date.
"The King Tyrannosaurus, 15 by 6 meters, 8 tons"
Today"15 by 6 meters" reflects the old upright, tail-dragging "kangaroo" pose. T. rex is now reconstructed with a horizontal back and tail, about 12–13 m long (the largest specimen, "Sue", found in 1990, is about 12.3 m) and about 4 m tall at the hips. The 8-tonne weight is still about right.
"Unlike the mastodons, these rodents could adapt to climatic conditions and natural upheavals. The old of the secondary period gradually faded away."
TodayThe episode suggests the dinosaurs faded out gradually because they could not cope with climate change. The end of the non-bird dinosaurs is now tied mainly to a sudden asteroid impact 66 million years ago. This was proposed by Alvarez et al. in 1980, the Chicxulub crater was identified in 1991, and a broad consensus was reached by 2010 (Schulte et al., Science). Deccan volcanism may also have played a part. (Two more notes: "mastodons" is probably a mistranslation of French mastodontes, meaning "giant beasts", since real mastodons lived much later. The early mammals were not rodents.)
"When food became scarce, they had to leave the forest for the first time and set out into the open country. Easier from an upright position. As he straightened up, Proconsul's pelvis became stronger"
TodayThis is the "savanna hypothesis", in which apes became upright by moving from forest into open grassland, with Proconsul on the direct line. Proconsul is now seen as an early four-legged tree-dwelling ape, not a forerunner of upright walking. Later fossils of the earliest hominins (Orrorin 2001, Sahelanthropus 2002, Ardipithecus fully published 2009) show that upright walking began in wooded settings, not open savanna.
"Thousands of years went by, and the great anthropomorphic apes evolved."
TodayThe step from Proconsul (about 20 million years ago) to the australopithecines (about 4–2 million years ago) took millions of years, not thousands. The error may come from the translation.
"Ramapithecus, 1 meter 30."
TodayIn 1978 Ramapithecus was widely presented as the earliest human ancestor. A more complete face of the related Sivapithecus, found in 1980 and published by Pilbeam in 1982, together with molecular dating, showed that it was an ancestor or relative of orangutans. It has since been merged into Sivapithecus.
"Obustus was hunted to extinction. Homo habilis now reigned alone."
Today"Obustus" is a mishearing of "Robustus". No evidence shows that Homo hunted Paranthropus robustus to extinction. Paranthropus lived alongside Homo (including H. erectus) until about 1.2 million years ago, so H. habilis never "reigned alone".
Why it was believedThe "killer ape" picture of early humans was everywhere in popular books (Raymond Dart; Robert Ardrey's African Genesis, 1961), even though specialists treated it only as speculation.
"700,000 years before our time, Pithecanthropus, or Ape Man, more correctly called Homo erectus"
TodayHomo erectus appeared much earlier, about 1.9–2 million years ago in Africa (for example the Drimolen skull DNH 134, published in 2020). It had reached Georgia (Dmanisi, excavated from 1991) and Java well over a million years ago. The date of 700,000 years suits only late Asian populations such as Peking Man.
The episode follows a Neanderthal-era tribe as it makes stone tools (the two-sided hand axe and the cleaver), learns to cook meat over fire, quarrels over hunting grounds with a neighbouring tribe, and marks the days with a notched lunar "calendar". As the ice age returns, the tribe moves south and buries its elder, Maestro. The narrator closes by saying Neanderthals vanished "without a trace" 25,000 years ago.
"The bifacial or two-sided cutting tool, useful for a variety of tasks. The hand axe, which would become the all-purpose tool."
TodayThe episode shows the hand axe being invented in the Neanderthal era. Two-sided (Acheulean) hand axes were in fact made by Homo erectus more than a million years earlier: about 1.5 million years ago at Olduvai, as was already known in 1978, and now about 1.76 million years ago at Kokiselei in Kenya (2011). Neanderthals mostly made Mousterian flake tools, though they also made some hand axes.
"25,000 years before our time, Neanderthal man ended his 100,000 years as master of Europe by disappearing without a trace."
TodayNeanderthals did not vanish without a trace. Most people living today whose ancestry is from outside Africa carry about 1–2% Neanderthal DNA, which shows the two groups interbred (Green et al., Science 2010, Neanderthal genome).
"25,000 years before our time, Neanderthal man ended his 100,000 years as master of Europe"
TodayImproved radiocarbon dating puts the disappearance of Neanderthals at about 40,000 years ago (Higham et al., Nature 2014). Even 1970s handbooks usually gave about 35,000 years. The Neanderthal line was also in Europe far longer than 100,000 years: the Sima de los Huesos fossils from about 430,000 years ago are early Neanderthals (Meyer et al., Nature 2016).
"Was he killed by the intense cold, genetic mutation? To this day, these questions remain unanswered."
TodayThere is still no single agreed cause. Current research points to a mix of factors: very small, inbred populations (shown by genomics, e.g. Prüfer et al. 2014), competition with incoming Homo sapiens, and absorption into sapiens groups through interbreeding. Sudden climate swings may also have played a part. "Unanswered" is still partly true, but the answer is now framed very differently.
The episode introduces Cro-Magnon (modern humans) in Europe, who live alongside Neanderthals for a time and then replace them. It shows tool trading, mammoth hunting, using every part of the animal, making paint for cave art, two tribes joining together, an initiation, and a calendar. It ends about 10,000 years ago, with the big game gone and a world population of about 10 million.
"When spatial ice receded over 35,000 years ago, there appeared for the first time Cro-Magnon, or Modern Man."
Today"Spatial ice" is a mishearing of "glacial ice". Homo sapiens first appeared in Africa about 300,000 years ago (Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, re-dated by Hublin et al., Nature 2017). Modern humans reached Europe by about 45,000–47,000 years ago (Bacho Kiro, Bulgaria, 2020), perhaps even 54,000 (Grotte Mandrin, France, 2022). Also, the ice was not retreating 35,000 years ago: the coldest part of the last ice age was still to come, peaking about 20,000 years ago.
"Tances is slim that he descended from Neanderthal Man since the two lived side-by-side for 5,000 years. Cousin or conqueror, Cro-Magnon Man did win out in the end."
Today"Tances" is a mishearing of "Chances". It is still true that modern humans did not evolve from Neanderthals. But the two groups interbred, so present-day Europeans do partly descend from Neanderthals, at about 1–2% of their DNA (Green et al. 2010). Some early European H. sapiens had a Neanderthal ancestor only a few generations back (Oase 1, Fu et al. 2015). The "cousin or conqueror" choice leaves out this third option. Current estimates of the overlap in Western Europe are shorter than 5,000 years, roughly 1,400–5,000 years (Higham et al. 2014; Djakovic et al. 2022).
The episode covers the start of farming and the Neolithic, megaliths at Carnac, early towns, and Mohenjo-daro on the Indus. It shows a Mesopotamian flood leading to shared canal-building and the first writing, then pyramid-building and Ramses II in Egypt. It ends with the Exodus and Old Testament episodes (Jericho, Samson, David and Goliath, Solomon) and the idea of one God.
"5,000 years before Christ, Mesopotamia, where major cities flourished, Jarmo in Iraq, Jericho in Palestine, and in Turkey, Shatal Hayyuk. These highly evolved peoples already knew how to alloy metals."
Today"Shatal Hayyuk" is a mishearing of Çatalhöyük. Jericho and Çatalhöyük are not in Mesopotamia. All three were farming villages or towns, not "major cities", and all are older than 5000 BC: Jericho goes back to about 9000 BC, and Jarmo and Çatalhöyük to about 7000 BC. True cities came with Uruk, around 3500 BC. These sites worked native copper, but bronze-making (alloying) came later.
"Roadways are completely paved."
TodayThe streets of Mohenjo-daro were mostly beaten earth. Its famous feature was covered brick drains running beside them. The city's grid layout, brick houses and wheeled carts are correctly described.
"along the river Nile, 2,700 years before our time" / "Thirteen hundred years before our time ruled Ramses II"
TodayThese should be 2700 BC (the pyramid age) and about 1279–1213 BC (Ramses II). "Before our time" (meaning before today) is almost certainly a dub slip for "before our era" (BC). As spoken, it would put the pyramids about 700 BC.
"A thousand blocks of stone, some weighing two tons."
TodayThe Great Pyramid alone has about 2.3 million blocks averaging about 2.5 tonnes, and some granite beams weigh 50–80 tonnes. "A thousand" is probably a translation slip for "thousands".
"A daily prison for more than a hundred thousand men."
TodayThe figure of 100,000 workers comes from Herodotus. Excavations of the Giza workers' town and cemeteries (Lehner and Hawass, from the 1990s) and the Wadi al-Jarf papyri (found in 2013, including the diary of the official Merer) show a workforce of perhaps 20,000–30,000. Many were rotating teams of labourers who were housed, fed and given medical care. They were not slaves or prisoners.
"In later centuries came invasions by the Hyksos, war with the Hittites"
TodayThe Hyksos ruled in about 1650–1550 BC, before Ramses II, not after him. The great war with the Hittites (the Battle of Kadesh, 1274 BC) happened during Ramses II's own reign.
"Ten centuries later, in A.D. 30, Cleopatra would choose suicide over surrender to Augustus"
TodayCleopatra died in 30 BC, not AD 30. This is probably a dub slip.
"Pharaoh had no choice but to let the Israelites go, for they had a rendezvous with destiny."
TodayHere the Exodus is told as history and placed under Ramses II. In 1978 many scholars in the Albright tradition still thought a historical Exodus was likely. Decades of fieldwork in Sinai and Canaan have found no trace of it, and most historians now treat it as a founding tradition, not an event that can be documented (for example Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed, 2001).
"Jericho Seven times the walls will tumble down"
TodayJericho had no walled town for Joshua to conquer in the 13th century BC. Its Bronze Age walls were destroyed around 1550 BC, and the site was then almost empty.
Why it was believedIn the 1930s John Garstang claimed to have found Joshua's collapsed walls, and Bible-history books kept repeating this. Kathleen Kenyon's excavations (1952–58) had already disproved it for specialists.
"For the first time, men heard these words, Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not covet. And men heard for the first time about one God."
TodayLaws against killing are much older: the Code of Ur-Nammu (about 2100 BC) and Hammurabi's laws (about 1750 BC) come centuries earlier. The pharaoh Akhenaten's worship of a single god, the Aten (about 1350 BC), also comes before any likely date for Moses. Many scholars think strict Israelite monotheism took shape only in the 7th–6th centuries BC.
Why it was believedWestern school and Sunday-school tradition taught the Ten Commandments and Mosaic monotheism as humanity's moral "first".
The episode moves through the 2nd and 1st millennia BC: the Indo-European migrations, Hammurabi's laws, Abraham, the Achaeans, Ramses II at Kadesh, the Dorians, the Phoenician alphabet, Assyria and the fall of Nineveh. It then follows Persia from Zarathustra and Cyrus the Great to Darius I at Persepolis and the Persian Wars, and ends with Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia and his death in Babylon.
"the Indo-Europeans for lack of a better idea of where they came from."
TodayAncient-DNA studies have largely settled the question for Europe. Indo-European languages were most likely carried by Yamnaya-related herders from the Pontic–Caspian steppe from about 3000 BC (Haak et al. and Allentoft et al., Nature 2015). Lazaridis et al. (Science 2022) also point to a possible earlier homeland south of the Caucasus. In 1978 the homeland question was still wide open.
"the sun god Seamus handed down the civilized world's first legal code to Hammurabi"
Today"Seamus" is a mishearing of Shamash. Earlier law codes exist: the Code of Ur-Nammu (about 2100 BC), the Laws of Lipit-Ishtar (about 1930 BC) and the Laws of Eshnunna. Hammurabi's is the best-preserved and most famous, not the first.
Why it was believedHammurabi's stele was found in 1901 and became the textbook "first law code". The Ur-Nammu tablets were published only in 1952, and popular books took decades to catch up.
"Abraham. The Israelite left Ur and headed towards Canaan."
Today"Frowned by Abraham" just before is a mishearing of "drowned. Abraham…". Abraham is a figure of religious tradition with no historical or archaeological evidence. After Thomas Thompson (1974) and John Van Seters (1975), and the archaeology that followed, most historians treat the patriarch stories as later legends, not history. The episode presents the journey as a dated historical event.
"In 100 BC, the Dorians invaded, armed with invincible iron."
Today"100 BC" is a mishearing or slip for about 1100 BC. A "Dorian invasion" bringing iron weapons is no longer accepted. The collapse of Mycenaean Greece around 1200–1100 BC is now explained by several causes (drought, earthquakes, internal unrest, trade breakdown, the "Sea Peoples"), and iron spread gradually through trade. There is little archaeological sign of a Dorian invasion (Chadwick 1976 and later work; Cline, 1177 B.C., 2014).
"612 bc the medes and the babylonians are now allies led by nebuchadnezzar daily siege to the city of minata"
TodayIn 612 BC the Babylonians who besieged Nineveh ("minata") were led by King Nabopolassar, with the Median king Cyaxares. His son Nebuchadnezzar II became king only in 605 BC.
"Young Persian Prince Cyrus was educated at Zarathustra's school."
TodayThere is no evidence for this; it is an invention. Zoroaster's dates are very uncertain, and many specialists (already Mary Boyce in 1975) place him centuries before Cyrus, perhaps 1500–1000 BC.
"when he decided to take the throne from his dull-witted cousin as he ages the need"
Today"As he ages the need" is a mishearing of Astyages. Astyages, the Median king whom Cyrus overthrew in about 550 BC, was his grandfather (according to Herodotus), not his cousin.
"For the first time in history, conquered cities were not looted, their inhabitants left unharmed, and a conqueror showed clemency."
TodaySince Amélie Kuhrt's analysis of the Cyrus Cylinder (1983), historians read it as standard Mesopotamian royal propaganda in an old style, not a new humanitarian charter. The Nabonidus Chronicle also records Cyrus massacring people at Opis. Cyrus was relatively tolerant, but he was not the "first" merciful conqueror.
"It was the birth of the world's first empire."
TodayEarlier empires include Sargon of Akkad's (about 2300 BC), New Kingdom Egypt and Assyria, which this same episode shows. Cyrus' Persia was the largest empire up to its time, not the first.
"Smiridus, the magus, an imposter, usurped the Persian throne. And seven of the royal princes decided to eliminate him. This horse, Winnied first, would have to carry out the task."
Today"Smiridus" is Smerdis/Gaumata, and "Winnied first" means "whinnied first". The story of Darius winning the throne because his horse neighed first is a legend told by Herodotus. Many historians also suspect that Darius made up the "impostor" story in his Behistun inscription to justify seizing the throne from the real Bardiya.
Why it was believedPopular histories of Persia retold Herodotus' colourful stories and the Behistun account at face value.
"There were great battles, Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis. No one was winning, so a truce was called."
TodayThe Greeks clearly defeated the Persian invasions at Marathon (490 BC), Salamis (480) and Plataea/Mycale (479). Fighting went on for decades before the peace of about 449 BC (the Peace of Callias), but "no one was winning" misstates the outcome.
"from Lebanon, teak from India, gold from Sardis, lapis lazuli from Sagdiana, … At Persopolis, Darius the Great built himself the Palace of Marvel"
TodayThis list of materials and craftsmen comes from Darius' foundation charter for his palace at Susa (inscription DSf, found in 1929), not Persepolis. A few items are also garbled: Egypt supplied silver and ebony, and the stone columns came from Elam ("Korea" is a mishearing).
The episode starts in Minoan Crete, shown as a rich and peaceful society, then moves to 5th-century BC Athens under Pericles: democracy, theatre (Sophocles' Antigone), the Delphic oracle, slavery, the rebuilding of the Acropolis and Spartan education. It ends with a long list of Athenian thinkers, the Peloponnesian War, the death of Socrates, Aristotle tutoring Alexander, and the claim that Greek thought then "slept" for 2,000 years.
"But wasn't it McAdam who invented tar for road paving 3,000 years later?"
TodayJohn Loudon McAdam's "macadam" roads (1820s) used compacted layers of crushed stone without tar. Tar-bound "tarmac" was patented by Edgar Purnell Hooley in 1902.
"but no bloodthirsty gods no conquering army no war just happiness prosperity and pleasure"
TodayThe picture of peaceful Minoans goes back to Arthur Evans. Evidence found from 1979 onward has overturned it: a probable human sacrifice at the Anemospilia temple (Sakellarakis, 1979), children's bones with cut marks at Knossos (Warren, 1980), and a steadily growing record of weapons, warrior graves and fortifications (e.g. Molloy 2012). Minoan Crete was not free of war or violent ritual.
"500 years before our time, Athens was a young democracy."
TodayThis should be about 500 BC (Cleisthenes' reforms, 508/507 BC). "Before our time" is a recurring dub slip for "before our era". As spoken, it means around AD 1500.
"the great king Darius I was building magnificent palaces in Persopolis, while somewhere in the Far East lived Buddha and Confucius."
TodayConfucius (551–479 BC) does fit. The Buddha was usually dated 563–483 BC in 1978, but since the Göttingen symposium led by Heinz Bechert (1988, published 1991–92), most scholars place his death around 400 BC, after Darius' time. (Also, India is not the "Far East".)
"In 450 BC, Pericles spoke these words. A real democratic state must, without exception, serve the greater number. For each and all, equality before the law."
TodayThese ideas come from Pericles' Funeral Oration as recorded by Thucydides (2.37). He gave it in winter 431/430 BC, at the start of the Peloponnesian War, not in 450 BC.
"Greek philosophy, science and art laid dormant for 2,000 years, only to awaken later like sleeping beauty and continue where they'd left off."
TodayGreek science reached new heights after Alexander, in the Hellenistic world: Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus and the Library of Alexandria. Rome absorbed Greek learning, Byzantium preserved it, and Islamic scholars translated and extended it (8th–13th centuries) before it reached the Latin West in the 12th century and the Renaissance.
Why it was believedThe older "Dark Ages then Renaissance" story taught in Western schools ignored the Hellenistic, Byzantine and Islamic continuations that specialists knew well.
The episode follows Julius Caesar from Vercingetorix's surrender to his rule in Rome. It shows grain handouts and "bread and games", building projects, roads, baths and urban renewal, and the Julian calendar. Daily life in Rome appears through patrons and clients, slave markets, night-time traffic and trade along the Tiber. It ends with the birth of Jesus.
No major errors in this episode. 3 minor slips hidden.
"Caesar had two semicircular theaters built side by side. His signal, the two enormous buildings, were swung around to form one huge circus. His invention would open up a whole new world in the realm of public entertainment."
TodayPliny the Elder (Natural History 36.116–120) credits the rotating twin wooden theatres to Gaius Scribonius Curio, who built them for his father's funeral games in about 52 BC. Curio was Caesar's ally, but the invention was his, not Caesar's.
"The glory of Rome, we are going to build roads. … The roads will lead from this column. From this hub, they'll run like spokes over the world."
TodayRoman road-building started centuries before Caesar, with the Via Appia in 312 BC. The "golden milestone" (Milliarium Aureum) in the Forum, the symbolic point all roads led to, was set up by Augustus in 20 BC.
"Decades later, a child was conceived, whose birth would mark the year one of our modern era."
TodayJesus was probably born around 6–4 BC, since Herod the Great, who appears in the Gospel nativity story, died in about 4 BC. The AD count was worked out by Dionysius Exiguus in AD 525, and he was a few years off. There is also no "year zero": 1 BC is followed by AD 1.
Why it was believedPopular culture assumed the calendar was based on Jesus' exact birth year, even though scholars had known about Dionysius' error for centuries.
The episode moves from the late Roman Empire and Constantine's Constantinople to Justinian and Theodora (the Nika riots, Hagia Sophia, Belisarius, the law code). It then covers the long wars between Byzantium and Sassanid Persia under Khosrow I and II and Heraclius, the life of Muhammad, the Hijra of 622, and the rapid Arab conquests up to the Battle of Poitiers in 732.
"When Justinian died a few years later in 567, his people were worn out."
TodayJustinian died in November 565. ("567" could be a speech-recognition error.)
"During the 2nd century before our time, the Parthians, an Iranian tribe, won their liberation from the successors of Alexander the Great."
TodayParthia broke away from the Seleucids in the mid-3rd century BC (the Arsacid era begins in 247 BC). Parthia grew into a major empire in the 2nd century BC under Mithridates I. ("Before our time" is again a slip for BC.)
"and even proclaimed holy war against Byzantium in the year 610."
TodayKhosrow II started the last great Byzantine–Sassanid war in 602–603, using the murder of his ally Emperor Maurice as his reason. 610 is the year Heraclius took the Byzantine throne.
"Victory had sapped Byzantium's life force, although some matters, like the sex of angels, still aroused heated debate."
TodayNo historical source records Byzantine theologians debating the sex of angels, in the 630s or at any other time. The phrase is a later Western saying about pointless "Byzantine" quarrels, usually tied to the siege of 1453. The real debates of Heraclius' time were about the nature and will of Christ (Monoenergism and Monothelitism).
Why it was believed"Discussing the sex of angels" was a common French and European proverb, often repeated as fact.
"Before long, there was a sixth commandment. Holy war."
TodayMainstream Sunni and Shia Islam has five pillars (faith, prayer, almsgiving, fasting, pilgrimage). Jihad is an important religious duty, but it is not counted as a sixth pillar. Only some minority traditions, such as the early Kharijites, treated it that way.
Why it was believedOlder Western popular histories of Islam often described jihad as a "sixth pillar", and this framing was widespread in European textbooks.
"In 711, they conquered North Africa. And in 715, they reached as far as Narbonne."
TodayThe conquest of North Africa was largely complete by about 705–709. 711 is the year Tariq crossed into Spain. Narbonne fell in about 719–720, not 715, so the episode puts it before the conquest of Spain was complete.
The episode covers the barbarian invasions and the fall of the Western Roman Empire, then Clovis and the Franks (baptism, Salic law fines, the vase of Soissons) and Charles Martel at Poitiers. It shows serfdom and military service under Charlemagne, his envoys (missi dominici), the stirrup, his push for schooling and his reforms of writing, measures and money. It ends with the break-up of the empire after the Treaty of Verdun and the Viking raid on Nantes in 843.
"496, meet Clovis, the only Catholic king in the West"
TodayThe traditional date of 496 for Clovis' baptism comes from a reading of Gregory of Tours. Many historians now prefer about 508, or at least a date after 500, based on letters by Avitus of Vienne and others (e.g. Danuta Shanzer 1998; Ian Wood). The date is still debated.
"Quaché, the Arabs came face to face with Charles Martel. Martel had just saved Europe from Islam."
Today"Quaché" is a mishearing of "In 732". Many historians now see Poitiers/Tours (732 or 733) as defeating a large raid, not as the turning point that "saved Europe". Arab expansion was also slowed by internal conflict (including the Berber revolt of 740), and Arab forces held Narbonne until 759.
Why it was believedGibbon's famous passage and French national history made Poitiers a defining battle of civilisation. Specialists began questioning this from the mid-20th century.
"The stirrup, my latest invention. … At last, equipped with stirrups, your cavalry will be invincible."
TodayThe stirrup was invented in Asia (paired stirrups in China by the 4th century AD) and reached Europe through steppe peoples such as the Avars. Lynn White Jr.'s thesis (1962) that stirrups gave the Franks unstoppable shock cavalry, and with it feudalism, has been widely rejected (Bachrach 1970 and later). Stirrups are rare in Carolingian finds, and Frankish armies did not depend on them.
Why it was believedWhite's Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962) was hugely influential, and its "great stirrup controversy" took years to reach general books.
"As of this very moment, it will be compulsory for all clerks and for all children to go to school and learn to read."
TodayCharlemagne's Admonitio generalis (789) ordered monasteries and cathedrals to keep schools for boys, mainly to train clergy. There was no compulsory schooling for all children. That came in France only with the Ferry laws of 1881–82.
Why it was believedThe French school myth of Charlemagne as the "inventor of school" (as in the song "Sacré Charlemagne") was a staple of French schoolbooks.
"From then on, writing characters would be those we know today. numerals would be Arabic."
TodayThe writing part is roughly right: Carolingian minuscule is the ancestor of our lowercase letters. The numerals part is wrong. Charlemagne's world used Roman numerals. Hindu-Arabic numerals first appear in Latin Europe in the late 10th century (the Codex Vigilanus, 976, and Gerbert of Aurillac) and spread mainly after Fibonacci's Liber Abaci (1202).
"One pound would equal 20 sous, one sous, 12 deniers. In France, this was the rule till 1789, and the same system exists in England today."
TodayThe Carolingian system of £1 = 20 shillings and 1 shilling = 12 pence is correctly described. But Britain switched to decimal currency on 15 February 1971, so it no longer "existed in England today" even when the episode was made in 1978. France replaced the livre with the decimal franc in 1795, a few years after 1789.
"Charlemagne died in the year 814 at the age of 72."
Today814 is correct. His birth is now usually placed in 747 or 748, not 742 (Werner 1973; Matthias Becher 1992), which makes him about 66 at death. Biographies around 1978 still usually gave 742.
The episode shows daily life in a Scandinavian village around 790 (thralls, free farmers, the jarl, feasts, duels, funerals) and the building of longships. It then runs through a fast timeline of Viking raids and settlements, from Lindisfarne (793) through Paris, Russia, Iceland, Greenland and Normandy, to the Normans in Sicily and the Battle of Hastings (1066).
No major errors in this episode. 5 minor slips hidden.
"Torgzil, the Norwegian chief, decided to make it his own. In 839, he was proclaimed King of Ulster."
TodayThe Irish annals record a Viking leader called Turgéis (Turgesius), who was captured and drowned in 845. The tale that he made himself king, or ruler of a big part of Ireland, comes from the 12th-century propaganda text Cogadh Gáedel re Gallaib. No reliable source makes him "King of Ulster" in 839. ("Torgzil" is the transcript's spelling of Turgesius.)
Why it was believedVictorian and early-20th-century popular histories of Ireland retold the Cogadh story as if it were fact. Specialists such as Donnchadh Ó Corráin (1972) had already shown it was unreliable.
"...the noble Hastings was killed in battle. His last wish was to have a pious burial. All his treasures will go to the church."
TodayThe story that Hastein faked his own death to get inside Luna (which he thought was Rome) comes from Dudo of Saint-Quentin, writing around 1015, more than 150 years later. Historians treat it as a legend. The same trick is told about several other leaders.
Why it was believedThe anecdote is vivid. It was retold in popular Viking histories as an example of Viking cunning.
"Rurik founded Kiev, the first Russian state."
TodayThe Russian Primary Chronicle links Rurik with Novgorod (c. 862), not Kiev. Kiev already existed. It came under Varangian rule through Askold and Dir and then Oleg (c. 882). Oleg made it the capital of the Rus' state.
"874, Fair-haired Harold succeeded in unifying the Norwegians"
TodayThe idea that Harald Fairhair united all of Norway around 870–872 comes from Icelandic sagas written about 300 years later. Since Claus Krag's work (1980s–1990s), historians have treated the story much more cautiously. Most now date his key victory at Hafrsfjord to the 880s or later and think his real power covered only part of the western coast. Some doubt the full saga account altogether.
"1061, with his father, he snatched Sicily away from the Arabs."
TodayRobert Guiscard invaded Sicily with his younger brother Roger (later Count Roger I), not his father Tancred, who never left Normandy. The invasion began in 1061, but the conquest was only finished in 1091. This may be a dub or translation slip.
The episode follows a runaway serf into a growing medieval town, from the late 11th century to the 13th. Along the way come the First and Third Crusades (Richard the Lionheart, Saladin), the rise of universities and the multi-generation building of a Gothic cathedral. It ends with the fall of Acre in 1291.
No major errors in this episode. 8 minor slips hidden.
"According to my figures, with flying buttresses it ought to work." (narration sets the scene in "the late 11th century")
TodayFlying buttresses first appear around the 1160s–1180s (for example Notre-Dame de Paris), after Gothic building began at Saint-Denis in the 1140s. In the late 11th century they would be about 80 years too early.
"All three, William II of England, Henry IV of Germany, and Philip I of France, had been excommunicated by the irascible Pope Urban II."
TodayHenry IV and Philip I were excommunicated. William II (Rufus) was not. At the Council of Bari in 1098, Anselm talked Urban II out of excommunicating him.
"People sleep without a stitch on, but surprisingly take their baths fully dressed."
TodaySleeping naked is well attested. Bathing fully dressed is not: medieval pictures of bathhouses ("stews") routinely show bathers naked.
"All of an animal's strength lies in the shoulder and neck. Anything it wears in that area must not choke the beast."
TodayThe episode follows the classic thesis of Lefebvre des Noëttes (1931): ancient "throat-and-girth" harness choked horses, and the rigid collar made a medieval traction revolution possible. Jean Spruytte's practical experiments with replica harness (1977; English edition 1983) and later work showed that ancient harness was not nearly that inefficient. Historians now see the collar as an improvement, not a revolution.
"The solution is a stiff shoulder collar. This will certainly be one of the century's great finds."
TodayThe rigid horse collar is shown being invented after the First Crusade (12th century). It was already in use in Europe by the 9th–10th century, and it came from China, where it existed centuries earlier.
"Theology, canon law, dialectics, the arts and medicine are taught by masters such as Albert the Great of Germany, Thomas Aquinas from Italy, Abelard from Paris and Roger Bacon the Englishman."
TodayThese men did not teach at the same time. Abelard died in 1142, before universities formally existed. Albert, Aquinas and Bacon were 13th-century figures. Yet the scene comes before the Third Crusade (1189–92). Abelard was also from Brittany, not Paris (he taught there). The claim that the university was "open to everyone free of charge" is also wrong: students paid masters' fees, and only men, mostly clerics, could attend.
"The emperor Barbarossa is dead. He had just laid siege to Korea, capital of Armenia, when he decided to go swimming."
Today"Korea" is almost certainly Konya (Iconium), which Barbarossa captured in May 1190. It was the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, not of Armenia. He drowned weeks later in the Saleph river in Armenian Cilicia. He also died in June 1190, a year before Richard reached Acre.
"One of them made the mistake of attacking the Catholic city of Constantinople and looting it."
TodayConstantinople (sacked by the Fourth Crusade in 1204) was the centre of Orthodox Christianity. Rome and Constantinople had split in 1054. It was Christian, but not Catholic.
The episode opens with Temüjin's rise to become Genghis Khan and a quick list of Mongol conquests, then moves to Kublai Khan's request to the Pope and the Polos' second journey east from Acre (1271). It follows them across Persia, Central Asia and the Gobi to Kublai's court, Marco's years of service and the return voyage escorting a princess to Persia. It ends with Marco's tales of Cathay, his capture by the Genoese in 1298 and his influence on Columbus.
No major errors in this episode. 5 minor slips hidden.
"He claimed Khan in 1200."
TodayTemüjin was proclaimed Genghis Khan at the kurultai of 1206. (An earlier election as khan of his own Mongol following is usually placed around 1189, not 1200.) "1200" may be a mishearing of "1206".
"In 1209, Tibet."
TodayThe 1209 campaign was against Western Xia (the Tangut state in north-west China), which submitted that year. Tibet first submitted to the Mongols around 1240–47, under Genghis's successors.
"And if the Pope consents to send me six wise men of the Christian faith, knowledgeable in the seven arts..." (and the haggling scene that follows)
TodayIn Polo's text Kublai asks for a hundred learned Christians versed in the seven arts. Only two friars, Nicholas of Vicenza and William of Tripoli, were sent, and they turned back early, as the episode shows. The French "cent" (hundred) may have become "six" somewhere along the way, but the haggling joke uses six.
"Seems to me he might try and use a couple of those catapults I was talking about." (the Polos helping the general besiege "Chang Fu")
TodayThis is Marco Polo's own claim that the Polos built siege engines for the siege of Saianfu (Xiangyang). That siege ended in 1273, about two years before the Polos reached Kublai's court (c. 1275). Persian and Chinese sources (Rashid al-Din, the Yuan Shi) credit two engineers from the Ilkhanate, Ismail and Ala al-Din, with the counterweight trebuchets. "Chang Fu" is probably a mishearing of Saianfu.
Why it was believedPolo's book tells the story at length, and popular retellings repeated it. Specialists had flagged the date problem since Henry Yule's edition (1871).
"and 13 ships to take them safely home."
TodayPolo says Kublai fitted out fourteen four-masted ships for the voyage. Minor slip.
The episode covers 14th- and 15th-century Europe: famine, the Black Death and the persecution of Jews, the battles of the Hundred Years' War, and the Great Schism of the papacy. It also covers the reformers Wycliffe, John Ball and Jan Hus, and Joan of Arc. It ends in 1453 with Gutenberg, the fall of Constantinople and the coming Renaissance.
No major errors in this episode. 9 minor slips hidden.
"1343 Pisa, 1347 Prague, Pavia, Warsaw, Vienna, Erfurt, Heidelberg, Cologne, Bologna, 1088, Paris, 1120, ..."
TodayThe University of Warsaw was founded in 1816. The 14th-century Polish university was Kraków (1364), which is probably what was meant. Paris has no 1120 foundation either: it grew up around 1150–1200 and got its charter in 1200/1215. (Prague was 1348; Bologna's 1088 is only a traditional date.)
"Harvests were abundant, but Europe's population soon tripled, then quadrupled, until her population reached 100 million."
TodayBetween about 1000 and 1300, Europe's population roughly doubled, from about 35–40 million to about 70–80 million (J.C. Russell 1958; McEvedy & Jones 1978). It neither quadrupled nor reached 100 million.
"...the Black Plague, brought in by a Genoese ship from the Crimea in 1348."
TodayThe Genoese galleys from Caffa (Crimea) brought plague to Messina in Sicily in October 1347. It reached Marseille and other ports in late 1347 and spread across Europe in 1348.
"In three years, Europe lost 25 million people, one quarter of her population."
TodayThe classic figure was "a quarter to a third". Research since the 1990s has pushed estimates up: Ole Benedictow (2004, revised 2021) argues for about 50–60% mortality, and most historians now say at least a third and probably 40–50% or more. The starting total of about 100 million is also too high: most estimates for Europe around 1340 are 70–80 million.
"The Archbishop of Canterbury lost no time in excommunicating him."
TodayWycliffe was never excommunicated in his lifetime. Archbishop Courtenay's Blackfriars synod (1382) condemned his teachings, and he was pushed out of Oxford. He died in 1384 as parish priest of Lutterworth, still in good standing. He was condemned as a heretic only after his death (Constance, 1415), and his body was dug up and burned in 1428.
"It was John Ball, a priest, who took Wycliffe's place... John Ball ended up in prison."
TodayBall had preached his radical message since the 1360s on his own account. Chroniclers later linked him to Wycliffe, but he was not his successor. He had been jailed before the Peasants' Revolt (rebels freed him in 1381), and after the revolt he was hanged, drawn and quartered in July 1381.
"His right to the throne was attacked most viciously by Isabella of Bavaria, his own mother."
TodayIsabeau did co-sign the Treaty of Troyes (1420), which disinherited the Dauphin, while her husband Charles VI was mentally ill. Her image as a vicious, scheming mother who called her son a bastard has been re-examined, by Rachel Gibbons (1996) and Tracy Adams (2010) among others. Much of it is now seen as later propaganda and legend.
"It seems that a young shepherdess rode on horseback to the Dauphin's castle at Chinon."
TodayJoan was a farmer's daughter. At her trial she said she mostly did housework and only occasionally watched the animals. "Shepherdess" is a legend, pushed by her contemporaries for its biblical echo. (The story that she recognised the hidden Dauphin is in the 1456 testimonies, though the decoy on the throne is a later embellishment.)
Why it was believed"Joan the shepherdess" was a fixture of French schoolbooks and popular culture from the 15th century to the 20th.
"In the same year, in Constantinople, Justinian's ramparts gave way to the Turks."
TodayThe land walls breached in 1453 were the Theodosian Walls, built under Theodosius II in the 5th century, not walls of Justinian.
The episode presents Renaissance Florence through the life of Leonardo da Vinci, from his apprenticeship with Verrocchio through Milan, Florence and Rome to his death in France in 1519. Along the way come Lorenzo de' Medici, the Pazzi conspiracy, Savonarola, Michelangelo, Raphael and Copernicus, plus Leonardo's inventions and his reasoning about fossils.
"Pythagoras' work was brought back to life, man the measure of all things."
Today"Man is the measure of all things" is the saying of Protagoras, not Pythagoras. This may be a Whisper mishearing or a dub slip.
"Struck by his pupil's beauty, Verrocchio makes a decision. His David will have young Leonardo's face."
TodayThis is a guess, not a fact. No document says Leonardo was the model for Verrocchio's bronze David, and its date (c. 1466–76) is itself uncertain.
Why it was believedThe idea spread in 20th-century art writing and popular biographies because it is appealing. It has never been confirmed.
"Overwhelmed by his pupil's talent, Verrocchio renounced painting and from then on did nothing but sculpture."
TodayThis is Giorgio Vasari's anecdote (1550) about the angel Leonardo painted in the Baptism of Christ. Verrocchio's workshop went on producing paintings (for example the Pistoia altarpiece, with Lorenzo di Credi), so historians treat the story as a legend.
Why it was believedVasari's Lives was the standard source for centuries, and this story was repeated in almost every popular life of Leonardo.
"In the year 1492, Lorenzo the Magnificent passed away without the blessing of Savonarola"
TodayThe story that Savonarola refused Lorenzo absolution comes from Savonarola's later supporters. Poliziano was at the deathbed, and his letter says Savonarola gave Lorenzo his blessing. Historians regard the refusal as a pro-Savonarola legend.
Why it was believedIt is a dramatic story, and it appears in many 19th- and 20th-century popular histories.
"In 1510, Copernicus decided to wait not nine years as Pythagoras recommended, but four times nine years"
TodayIn his preface, Copernicus does say he held his book back for "four times nine years", but the nine-year rule is the poet Horace's advice (Ars Poetica). He mentions the Pythagoreans separately, for their habit of keeping teachings secret.
"The parachute, and then the bicycle, propelled by a cogged wheel and chain. It would take us four more centuries to produce another one like it."
TodayThe bicycle sketch in the Codex Atlanticus came to light after the codex was restored in the 1960s and was published as Leonardo's in 1974. Since Hans-Erhard Lessing's study (1997), most historians think it is a modern addition or forgery and not Leonardo's work. (The parachute drawing is real.)
"And so da Vinci went to France, without his adopted son."
TodaySalaì went to France with Leonardo in 1516, alongside Francesco Melzi. French royal accounts record payments to him there before he returned to Milan around 1518. (He was Leonardo's assistant, not a legally adopted son.)
"...he died in 1519. Cortes had reached Mexico, Magellan was halfway around the world, Charles V had just been crowned emperor."
TodayLeonardo died on 2 May 1519. Magellan only left Spain in August–September 1519. Charles was elected emperor in June 1519 and crowned only in 1520 (Aachen) and 1530 (by the Pope). Only the Cortés part fits.
The episode covers Spain from the fall of Granada and Columbus's first voyage (1492) through the empire of Charles V. It includes the expulsion of Jews and Muslims, the Inquisition, Magellan's voyage, the conquest of Mexico and Peru, and the Reformation. It ends with Philip II, Lepanto, the Armada and Cervantes.
"In 1487, Malaga fell. In that same year, Bartomeu Deas rounded the Cape of Good Hope."
TodayBartolomeu Dias sailed in August 1487 but rounded the Cape in early 1488.
"there would be more conquerors. John Cabot, Americo Vespucci, Pedro Cabral, and Vasco da Gama."
TodayVasco da Gama sailed to India, never to the Americas. Cabot and Vespucci were explorers, not conquerors.
"Prince Charles of Ghent, too Flemish to suit his father, would nonetheless succeed."
TodayFerdinand of Aragon was Charles's grandfather. His father, Philip the Handsome, died in 1506. This may be a mishearing or a dub slip.
"The 237 he started with, now there's no doubt, the world is round."
TodayEducated Europeans had known the Earth was a sphere since antiquity. Columbus's critics objected to how small he thought the Earth was, not to its shape. Magellan's voyage showed how big the world is and that the oceans connect; it did not settle an argument about whether the Earth is round. The flat-earth myth was traced and debunked in Jeffrey Burton Russell's Inventing the Flat Earth (1991).
Why it was believed19th-century writers such as Washington Irving (1828) and the "science versus religion" polemicists invented and spread the idea that medieval people thought the world was flat. Schoolbooks repeated it well into the 20th century.
"In that year, there were 12 million Indians in the land. A few years later, Cortes had butchered half of them."
TodayCentral Mexico's population did collapse, but mainly from epidemics: smallpox in 1520 and the great cocoliztli epidemics of 1545 and 1576. Recent ancient-DNA work (Vågene et al., 2018) points to Salmonella Paratyphi C as one cause. War, massacres and forced labour were real and brutal, but Cortés did not personally kill half the population within a few years. Estimates for 1519 range from about 5 to 25 million or more.
Why it was believedThe "Black Legend" of Spanish cruelty goes back to Las Casas. It shaped popular French and English histories, even though demographers such as Borah and Cook (1960s) and Crosby (The Columbian Exchange, 1972) had shown disease was the main killer.
"1537, Jacques Cartier discovers and explores Canada. The banner of Francis I waves over Mount Royal."
TodayCartier's first voyage was in 1534 (when he planted a cross at Gaspé). He reached Hochelaga and named Mount Royal in 1535. Nothing like this happened in 1537.
"In 1543, the Frenchman Ambroise Paré invented the ligation of arteries."
TodayTying off arteries was known in antiquity (Celsus, Galen). Paré revived it for amputations on the battlefield, first around 1552, and described it in print in 1564. 1543 is wrong, and so is "invented".
"The Diet of Augsburg recognized the Protestant religion in late 1554."
TodayThe Peace of Augsburg dates from 25 September 1555.
"One young soldier lost a hand in battle, not his writing hand." / "the one-armed warrior Cervantes"
TodayCervantes did not lose his hand at Lepanto. A gunshot wound left his left hand permanently crippled and useless, which is why he was nicknamed "el manco de Lepanto" (the maimed one of Lepanto).
Why it was believed"Manco" is often translated as "one-armed" or "one-handed", so many popular works say he lost the hand.
The episode moves quickly from Henry VIII's executions to Elizabeth I's accession and her rivalry with Philip II's Spain. Most of it follows Francis Drake's voyage around the world (1577–80) in detail. It ends with Cádiz, the Armada, Shakespeare, Elizabeth's death and the Mayflower.
"Enemy warships are just outside the port as thick as flies. / ...Let me finish my game."
TodayThe story that Drake insisted on finishing his game of bowls when the Armada was sighted is first recorded decades later, in a 1624 pamphlet, and was expanded in the 18th century. Historians treat it as a legend. (Low tide may in fact have kept the fleet in harbour.)
Why it was believedIt became one of the best-loved stories in English patriotic schoolbooks.
"The defeat of the Armada tolled the death knell for Spain's great aspirations." / "Glorious Spain had finally bowed to Elizabeth's England."
TodaySpain remained Europe's leading power for decades after 1588. It rebuilt its navy in the 1590s, protected its treasure fleets, sent more armadas (1596, 1597), and saw England's own counter-armada fail in 1589. The war ended in 1604 without a clear winner.
Why it was believedEnglish and Protestant national myth made 1588 into a turning point. Garrett Mattingly (1959) had already corrected this, and Parker and Martin (1988) did so in more detail, but popular histories lagged behind.
"At Elizabeth's death in 1603, James II, son of the beheaded Mary Stuart, acceded to the throne."
TodayIt was James I of England (James VI of Scotland). James II reigned from 1685 to 1688.
"On September 6, 1620, 78 men and 24 women left Plymouth on board the Mayflower. They were to become the first white Americans."
TodayThe English had settled permanently at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and the Spanish at St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. Spanish and French colonists had been in the Americas since 1492. (The total of 102 passengers is right; the split into men and women seems to count boys and girls with them.)
Why it was believedAmerican and British popular history long treated the Pilgrims as the founders of America.
"Heaven. All that gold... Overboard! The gold overboard!"
TodayWhen the Golden Hind ran onto a reef off Sulawesi in January 1580, the crew threw overboard about three tons of cloves, eight guns and some provisions, not the treasure. (This is a dramatised scene, but it shows a fact wrongly.)
The episode traces the Netherlands from Burgundian rule and the Reformation through the Dutch Revolt against Philip II. It covers William of Orange, the Sea Beggars, the Act of Abjuration and the rise of Amsterdam, the East India Company and the Bank of Amsterdam. It ends with the Dutch Golden Age of painting, science and religious tolerance, plus the tulip craze.
No major errors in this episode. 6 minor slips hidden.
"the Low Countries, Burgundian possession that Charles V was to acquire in 1519 from Habsburg's Austria."
TodayCharles inherited the Burgundian Netherlands from his father Philip the Handsome in 1506 and began ruling them himself in 1515. What he inherited in 1519, from his grandfather Maximilian, were the Austrian Habsburg lands, and he was elected emperor that year.
"the city of Liège underwent violent pillaging in 1458."
TodayCharles the Bold sacked and burned Liège in 1468, after Louis XI had encouraged its revolt and then abandoned it. Charles only became duke in 1467. (A mishearing of "sixty-eight" is possible but unlikely.)
"To quell the beggar's revolt he sent the inquisition, the duke of Alva's bloody dictatorship, special tribunals"
TodayThe Spanish Inquisition was never set up in the Netherlands. Charles V had already established a local heresy inquisition there in the 1520s, and fear that the Spanish version would come was one of the causes of the revolt. Alba's Council of Troubles (1567) and the executions of Egmont and Horn (1568) are accurate.
Why it was believed19th-century Protestant histories, especially Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856), merged these into a "Spanish Inquisition" story.
"Hugo Gracia's father of human rights was born there, as well as Descartes, who dared to question Aristotle"
TodayHugo Grotius is called the father of international law (and of natural law), not of human rights. Descartes was born in France, at La Haye in Touraine, though he lived in the Dutch Republic for about 20 years.
"Spinoza, a refugee from the Spanish Inquisition, who chose the Netherlands as his new home."
TodaySpinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632. His family were Portuguese Jews whose parents' generation had fled the Portuguese Inquisition. He was not a refugee himself.
"In 1634 in Antwerp, the Viceroy Tulip was sold for four bulls, eight pigs, twelve sheep, a bed, and quite a few other items."
TodayThis famous list comes from a 1637 Dutch pamphlet, later popularised by Charles Mackay (1841). It was an imaginary illustration of what one Viceroy bulb's price could buy, not a real sale, and Antwerp (in the Spanish Netherlands) had nothing to do with it. Anne Goldgar's archival study Tulipmania (2007) and Peter Garber's work (1989, 2000) showed the mania was smaller than the legend: it was mostly limited to well-off merchants and craftsmen, few people were ruined, and the wider economy was barely affected. The "black tulip" being auctioned comes from Alexandre Dumas's 1850 novel; no black tulip existed then.
The episode opens in 1680 with Louis XIV at his height after the Treaty of Nijmegen, building Versailles and moving the court there, mixed with comic scenes of quack medicine. It then covers the French classical writers and artists, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the wars against William of Orange's coalitions and the famines. It ends with Louis's death in 1715 and the spread of French style across Europe.
"For the time being, the Sun King was still living in the Louvre, close to his subjects, whom he didn't trust." / "1682... moving. The Louvre to Versailles just recently finished."
TodayLouis had largely left Paris and the Louvre by the late 1660s. From 1666 to 1682 the court was based mainly at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and it moved from there to Versailles in May 1682.
"in 1683 sobieski king of poland france's ally defeated the turks at vienne"
TodayJan Sobieski had been elected with French backing in 1674 and was pro-French at first. By 1683, though, he had signed an alliance with Emperor Leopold I (March 1683), and France had tried to keep him out of the war. At Vienna he fought as the Emperor's ally against France's informal partner, the Ottomans.
"the Marquise de Maintenon... Her passions were the church and politics. And so, to everyone's surprise, Louis became a religious fanatic. He revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685."
TodayHistorians no longer think Madame de Maintenon drove the revocation. Pressure on the Huguenots had been building since the 1660s, with the dragonnades starting in 1681, before her secret marriage to Louis (about 1683). The revocation came from the king, his ministers (Louvois, Le Tellier) and the clergy. Her letters show only limited involvement.
Why it was believedHuguenot exiles and later writers such as Saint-Simon and 19th-century historians blamed the pious "secret wife", and the story stayed in popular histories.
"Then a series of brutal winters. The people were in a wretched state... In a few months, 10% of the population had died."
TodayThe great famine of 1693–94 was one of the worst in French history, but the national death toll is now put at about 1.3 million excess deaths out of roughly 20–22 million people, about 6–7%. That estimate comes from Marcel Lachiver's Les années de misère (1991). Earlier figures leaned on local parish studies, such as Pierre Goubert's on the Beauvaisis (1960), where losses of 10% or more were common. The famine also lasted more than a year, not a few months. The 1709 "Great Winter" killed about another 600,000.
"England... had wangled the right to explore and settle Canada, and much of America."
TodayAt the Peace of Utrecht (1713) Britain gained Newfoundland, Acadia (Nova Scotia) and the Hudson Bay region. Canada proper (the St Lawrence valley and Quebec) and Louisiana stayed French until the Seven Years' War (Treaty of Paris, 1763).
The episode follows the young Peter the Great from the Voronezh shipyards and the taking of Azov to his Grand Embassy to western Europe, the crushing of the Streltsy and his ban on beards. It covers the Great Northern War against Charles XII and the building of St Petersburg. It ends with the rise of Prussia under Frederick I and the "soldier king" Frederick William I, with his forced army recruiting.
No major errors in this episode. 3 minor slips hidden.
"voronezh on the don 700 kilometers from moscow"
TodayVoronezh is about 470 km from Moscow in a straight line and a little over 500 km by road.
"at that time russia was one of the most backward countries not one scientist thinker or philosopher not one geometrist an illiterate church..."
TodayMuscovy was poorer and less literate than western Europe, but it was not an intellectual desert. Western influences were already strong in the later 1600s through the Foreign Quarter of Moscow, Kievan scholars such as Simeon Polotsky, reformers such as Vasily Golitsyn and Ordin-Nashchokin, and the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy (1687). Historians such as Lindsey Hughes stress that Peter sped up changes that had already begun.
Why it was believedPeter's own propaganda, and the 18th–19th-century "Westerniser" story, cast him as single-handedly dragging a dark Russia into Europe.
"May 1697, Peter I leaves Russia for the West"
TodayThe Grand Embassy left Moscow in March 1697. Peter travelled with it incognito.
The episode surveys the 18th-century Enlightenment through a troupe of French actors touring Europe. It covers the philosophes (Montesquieu, Diderot, Buffon, Rousseau, Voltaire) and the "enlightened despots" Frederick II, Catherine the Great and Maria Theresa, then Britain's early Industrial Revolution and the science of the 1780s. It ends in 1776–1789 with Turgot's failed tax reform and the summoning of the Estates General.
"The wealthy landowners were heavily taxed."
TodayCatherine II favoured the landed nobility. Nobles were exempt from the poll tax, and her Charter to the Nobility (1785) confirmed their freedom from personal taxes and service. The tax burden fell mainly on peasants and townspeople.
"since the year 1765 joseph the oldest of 16 of the empress's children was heir to the throne one of his daughters the austrian marie antoinette was to come to a tragic end on the throne of France."
TodayMarie Antoinette was Joseph II's younger sister, a daughter of Maria Theresa. Joseph had no surviving children. He was Maria Theresa's eldest son but her fourth child, and in 1765 he became Emperor and co-regent; he had been heir since birth. "His daughters" is probably a dub slip for "her daughters".
"To fight against the miserable condition of the proletariat, the first trade unions were formed as far back as 1776. There were the first strikes."
TodayNeither unions nor strikes began in 1776. British journeymen's "combinations" are recorded from the late 1600s and early 1700s (for example, the London tailors in 1720, which prompted an Act against them in 1721), and strikes go back much further. Sidney and Beatrice Webb's History of Trade Unionism (1894) already traced unions to the early 18th century.
"the Swiss Euler creates integral calculus."
TodayIntegral calculus was created by Newton and Leibniz in the later 17th century. Euler greatly extended and systematised it, for example in his Institutiones calculi integralis (1768–70). This may be a translation slip for "develops".
The episode opens with the Mayflower Pilgrims and a sketch of Native American origins and life, then the first Thanksgiving. It then runs through European colonisation (Columbus, Virginia, Quebec, New Amsterdam, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Georgia), land deals with Native peoples and the War of Independence. It ends with westward expansion, the Gold Rush, slavery and the start of the Civil War.
"they decided to leave for Virginia, that new land in America, where the London Company, under the guidance of John Robinson, installed its first settlers."
TodayJohn Robinson was the Pilgrims' pastor in Leiden, and he stayed behind. The Virginia (London) Company was led by men such as Sir Edwin Sandys. It had planted Jamestown in 1607, and the Pilgrims had a patent from it.
"30 or 40,000 years before our time, the forefathers of the native people came by way of Siberia in a long migration"
TodayPeople did come from Siberia via Beringia, but the evidence now points to about 15,000–25,000 years ago, not 30,000–40,000. Key evidence includes Monte Verde in Chile (about 14,500 years, accepted from 1997), ancient-DNA studies from the 2010s, and the White Sands footprints in New Mexico (dated about 21,000–23,000 years in 2021 and confirmed in 2023).
"There were one million living there when the Europeans arrived."
TodayAbout one million for North America north of Mexico was the old Mooney/Kroeber estimate (1910s–1930s). Henry Dobyns (1966, 1983), Russell Thornton (1987), Douglas Ubelaker and others have raised it, and most estimates now run from about 2 to 7 million, some higher. Disease epidemics that went ahead of the colonists had already cut many populations sharply, including the Wampanoag around Plymouth in 1616–19.
"and buffalo, 60 million buffalo."
TodayThe figures of 60 million or more come from the naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton (1909). Studies of how many bison the grasslands could feed, notably Dan Flores (1991) and Andrew Isenberg (2000), suggest the Great Plains held about 25–30 million, fewer during droughts.
"there was to be no easy understanding between these two divergent cultures with 10,000 years between them."
TodayNative societies were not "10,000 years behind". The Wampanoag were farmers (maize, beans, squash), had political alliances and a sophisticated economy of their own, and helped the colony survive. Ranking cultures as stages on one ladder of progress has been rejected by anthropologists since Franz Boas (early 20th century).
Why it was believed19th-century "stages of civilisation" thinking long survived in popular histories and textbooks.
"To tell the truth, there were explorers before the Mayflower who came to the shores of America. The Vikings with Eric the Red in the 10th century."
TodayEric the Red settled Greenland (from 985/986). It was his son Leif Erikson who reached North America, around 1000. Tree-ring dating of wood at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland (Kuitems et al., Nature, 2021), places Norse activity there in exactly 1021 AD.
"The first state was to be Virginia, discovered in 1585 by Sir Walter Raleigh."
TodayRaleigh never went to North America. He sponsored the Roanoke voyages: the 1584 scouting trip under Amadas and Barlowe, and the 1585 colony under Grenville and Lane, on what is now the North Carolina coast. The name "Virginia" was given in 1584–85 in honour of Elizabeth. Native peoples (the Algonquian Roanoke and Secotan) already lived there.
Why it was believedPopular history credited Raleigh as Virginia's "founder" because he held the royal patent.
"In 1626, a Dutch sailor, Peter Minuit, buys Manhattan Island from the Indians for $24."
TodayMinuit was the director (governor) of New Netherland, not a sailor. The only contemporary source says the price was trade goods worth 60 guilders. The "$24" is a 19th-century conversion (1840s), worth about $1,000 or more today. The Lenape probably understood the deal as sharing the use of the land, not selling it outright.
Why it was believedThe $24 figure became a staple of American schoolbooks and folklore.
"In 1664, an English regiment led by the commander, the Duke of York, approached the city."
TodayThe Duke of York (later James II) owned the grant but stayed in England. The fleet was led by Colonel Richard Nicolls.
"In 1663, the Carolinas were founded, land of cotton and landed aristocrats."
TodayColonial Carolina's plantations grew rice, indigo and naval stores. Cotton only took over after Eli Whitney's cotton gin (1793), more than a century later.
"you want our land but what for very curious idea and why not also you buy our water and our rivers clouds in the sky... because they are for everyone"
TodayThis echoes the famous "Chief Seattle speech" ("How can you buy or sell the sky?"). That version was largely written by screenwriter Ted Perry in 1971, as shown by Rudolf Kaiser (1987) and others. It also suggests Native peoples had no idea of land rights. Modern ethnohistory shows that Native nations had clear territorial and use rights, though these differed from English private property, and that land deals were often misunderstood or forced.
"new york philadelphia boston already added up to 200 000 souls"
TodayIn 1760 the three cities together had roughly 55,000–60,000 people (Philadelphia about 23,000, New York about 18,000, Boston about 15,000).
"colonists were made to pay taxes and income tax"
TodayThe disputed taxes were customs duties and stamp duties (Sugar Act 1764, Stamp Act 1765, Townshend duties 1767, Tea Act 1773). No income tax was imposed; Britain itself only introduced one in 1799. (The transcript is garbled here, so this may be a mishearing.)
"June 11, 1776, a committee is appointed to draw up a declaration of the rights of man."
TodayThe Committee of Five (Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Livingston, Sherman, all listed correctly) drafted the Declaration of Independence. The "Declaration of the Rights of Man" is the French document of 1789. This is probably a translation slip.
"On October the 17th, 1775, the English troops are defeated at Saratoga"
TodayBurgoyne surrendered at Saratoga on 17 October 1777. That victory brought France into the war in 1778.
"In spite of the law in 1808 forbidding slave trading, the import slave trade is as brisk as ever."
TodayAfter the 1808 ban, imports of enslaved Africans fell to a small fraction, probably tens of thousands over 50 years (Curtin 1969 estimated about 54,000). What boomed was the domestic slave trade, which moved about a million enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South. That trade was brutal, and Virginia and Maryland were its main sources.
Why it was believedW.E.B. Du Bois's 1896 study and abolitionist sources suggested large illegal imports, and older textbooks repeated this.
"They come here on our land to hunt our buffalo." (Native people near the Mayflower landing)
TodayThere were no bison in coastal New England. The Wampanoag who met the Pilgrims farmed, fished and hunted deer. The buffalo-centred way of life belongs to the Great Plains, and the horse culture that went with it came later, after Spanish horses spread in the 1600s–1700s. The scene merges very different Native nations into one stereotype.
The episode runs from the Estates General of 1789 through the Tennis Court Oath, the fall of the Bastille, the night of 4 August and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It continues with the flight to Varennes, war, the fall of the monarchy, Valmy and the king's trial. It ends with the Terror, Thermidor, the Directory and Bonaparte's rise to command of the Army of Italy.
"today is June the 20th, and we all met at the Jeu de Pomme... Not leave, except by force of bayonets. That's the answer given by Mirabeau to the king's forces."
TodayThe Tennis Court Oath was on 20 June 1789, but Mirabeau's famous retort to the master of ceremonies, Dreux-Brézé, came three days later, on 23 June, after the king's royal session. The deputies had also named themselves the National Assembly earlier, on 17 June.
"it was a split 360 votes for his death 360 votes against it then it was philip of orleans turn to vote... And it was with that one vote, his cousins, the Duke of Orleans, that Louis XVI was condemned to death."
TodayThe vote was not a tie broken by Orléans. Of 721 deputies voting on 16–17 January 1793, 361 voted for death without conditions and 26 more for death with a debate on delay (387 in all), against 334 for other penalties. The majority needed was 361, so the unconditional death vote had "a majority of one", but the overall vote for death was clear. A separate vote on a reprieve was defeated 380 to 310.
Why it was believedThe "majority of one vote" became a royalist legend, and Philippe Égalité's vote against his own cousin made him the obvious villain of it.
The episode opens with a timeline of the steam engine, Britain's rise after Waterloo and the Rainhill locomotive trials of 1829, set against child labour and early factory laws. It follows resistance to the railways in Britain and France, then the hungry 1840s and the revolutions of 1848 across Europe and their defeat. It ends with a quick run through 1856–1876 (Neanderthal, Darwin, Italian and German unification, the Paris Commune, the dynamo, the telephone) and the worldwide spread of railways.
"He stipulates that all vehicles must be preceded by a horse for a man carrying a large red flag." (in a scene set around 1829)
TodayThe "Red Flag Act" (requiring a man on foot to walk ahead with a red flag) was the Locomotive Act of 1865, decades after the steam carriages of Gordon and Gurney shown here. Road-carriage builders of the 1830s were hit by heavy turnpike tolls instead.
"in 1833 that Lord Ashley could get the bill passed forbidding the employment of children under nine and restricting work hours to 13 for children from 9 to 13, only in the cotton industry."
TodayThe 1833 Factory Act covered most textile mills, not just cotton (the cotton-only law was 1819). It limited children aged 9–13 to 9 hours a day (48 a week), and those aged 13–18 to 12. It was also the government's bill (Althorp's Act), passed after Ashley's own ten-hours bill had been set aside.
"Same year in France, there was the interdiction to employ children under 8 years of age."
TodayThe French child-labour law was passed on 22 March 1841, a year before the British Mines Act. Minor slip.
"the Belgians revolted and proclaimed their independence on October 1st, 1830."
TodayThe Provisional Government proclaimed Belgian independence on 4 October 1830. Possibly a dub slip.
"Rapid passing from one climate to another will surely have a fatal effect on the lungs. Pregnant women will have miscarriages. Or soldiers will become effeminate." (attributed to Arago), and the later warnings about retinal inflammation and "hysterics in our women"
TodayArago really did oppose the Versailles left-bank line (1838), partly over sudden temperature changes in tunnels, and he argued about the military use of railways. The miscarriage claim and similar medical warnings (like the supposed 1835 Bavarian doctors' report on "brain damage") are mostly later anecdotes and cannot be traced to real speeches or reports. Real Victorian medical worries did exist (for example "railway spine" in the 1860s), but they were narrower.
Why it was believedLists of comic "anti-railway prophecies" were repeated in popular histories of the railway without sources.
"The flag was red, but only as far as the Champs-Élysées and the flag tricolour has gone around the world"
TodayLamartine (25 February 1848) said the red flag had only gone round the Champ-de-Mars, not the Champs-Élysées. Likely a translation slip.
"Countries of the German Empire, Baton, Hess, Nassau, Württemberg, Sachs, Hamburg, revolted."
TodayThere was no German Empire in 1848. The Holy Roman Empire ended in 1806, and the second Empire began in 1871. These were states of the German Confederation. The list itself (Baden, Hesse, Nassau, Württemberg, Saxony, Hamburg) is fine. Likely a dub slip.
"The 18th of March, uprisings in Milan, Venice, Palermo, Modena."
TodayMilan's Five Days began on 18 March and Venice rose on 17–22 March, but Palermo rose on 12 January 1848. It was the first revolution of the year, before even Paris.
"In August, with the help of the Russian army, they crush the Hungarian government."
TodayRussian intervention and the Hungarian surrender at Világos came in August 1849, not in 1848 as the sequence implies. In 1848 Hungary was still winning.
"1856, a skull is found at Neanderthal in Westphalia."
TodayThe Neander Valley (Feldhofer Cave) is near Düsseldorf in the then Prussian Rhine Province, not Westphalia. The mix-up may come from the name of the society that published the find (Natural History Society of the Prussian Rhineland and Westphalia).
"1864, in the Dordogne, on an inner wall of a grotto, paintings were discovered. ... man and mammoth had coexisted."
TodayWhat Lartet and Christy found in 1864 at La Madeleine (Dordogne) was a mammoth engraved on a piece of mammoth ivory, a portable object, not a cave wall. Cave wall art was found later: Altamira (1879, accepted in 1902), and in the Dordogne La Mouthe (1895) and Font-de-Gaume and Combarelles (1901).
"To the defeat, there was the commune of Paris and more victims in one week [than] during the entire French Revolution."
TodayOlder figures put the dead of the "Bloody Week" (May 1871) at about 20,000–35,000. Robert Tombs ("How Bloody was la Semaine sanglante of 1871?", Historical Journal, 2012) revised this to about 6,000–7,500 dead, perhaps up to 10,000. Even with the old figures, the comparison only works against the Terror in Paris (about 2,600–2,800 executions). Deaths in the Revolution as a whole, counting the Terror in the provinces and the Vendée war, ran far higher, so that comparison was never right.
The episode opens with early motor cars and the first motoring contests (Paris–Rouen 1894, Paris–Bordeaux–Paris 1895), then surveys the world around 1900: population, colonial empires, science, art, women's progress and working-class life. It follows the alliances and nationalism that led to the First World War, the war itself and the Russian Revolution, ending with a quote from Rosa Luxemburg.
No major errors in this episode. 2 minor slips hidden.
"1900, in France, the elections gave the majority rule to the Republicans."
TodayFrance held no general election in 1900; the legislative elections were in 1898 and 1902. Republicans had held a majority since 1877–79. The 1902 election was won by the left-republican Bloc des gauches.
"The Entente Cordiale was answered by the Triple Entente."
TodayThe Triple Entente (Britain, France and Russia, 1907) grew out of the Franco-Russian alliance (1894) and the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale (1904). It was the answer to the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy (1882), not to the Entente Cordiale. This is probably a dub or translation slip.
The episode opens with the history of flight from Leonardo to Blériot and First World War aircraft, then follows a family through the 1920s: aviators, barnstormers, jazz, cinema, new home appliances and the rise of fascism. It moves through the 1929 crash, Hitler's rise, the Spanish Civil War and Munich to the Second World War, Hiroshima and Yalta.
"1920, Adrian Boland is the first woman pilot to cross the English Channel."
TodayThe American Harriet Quimby flew across the Channel on 16 April 1912, eight years before Adrienne Bolland. Bolland's real firsts were other ones, above all her crossing of the Andes in 1921 as the first woman to do so.
Why it was believedFrench aviation histories credited Bolland, and Quimby's flight got little notice because the Titanic sank the day before.
"In 1932, with the powerful support of German capital and the military, the Nazis won 37% of the vote."
TodayThe 37% (July 1932) is right. But Henry Ashby Turner's German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (1985) and later research showed that big business gave the Nazis little money before 1933 and mostly backed conservative parties. The party ran mainly on members' dues and small donations. The army leadership was split and wary until Hitler was in office.
"In 1933, Hitler comes to power with a vote of 89%."
TodayHitler was appointed chancellor by President Hindenburg on 30 January 1933 after the Nazis had won only 33% in November 1932. Even in the March 1933 election, held under terror, they got 43.9%. The roughly 90% figures come from later plebiscites: November 1933 (about 92% for the single list) and August 1934 (about 89–90% approving his role as Führer).
"War dead? More than 50 million."
Today"Over 50 million" was the standard figure in the 1970s. Most estimates are now about 70–85 million. The rise came mainly from higher Soviet losses: about 20 million under the Soviet line, but around 26–27 million after figures released from 1990 (Krivosheev 1993, among others). Revised figures for China (about 15–20 million) also raised the total.
"10 million civilians, women, children, old people exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps"
TodayAbout 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, but roughly half of them were shot or died in ghettos rather than in camps. Non-Jewish victims (Soviet POWs, Poles, Roma, disabled people and others) bring Nazi killings of civilians and prisoners to perhaps 11–17 million in all, but not all in camps. Auschwitz's toll, long given as 4 million, was revised to about 1.1 million by the Auschwitz Museum (Franciszek Piper, 1990–91).
Why it was believedThe Soviet figure of 4 million for Auschwitz and figures like Wiesenthal's "11 million" circulated widely, and all Nazi mass killing was often summed up as "the camps".
The final episode jumps from the space age into a 1979 warning about the future: population growth, consumerism, pollution, garbage and urban sprawl. It imagines rival nations fighting over resources and waste until a nuclear war leaves only a space colony of survivors. They live on solar energy and wait for the Earth to become habitable again. The narrator admits the vision is deliberately pessimistic.
"Three billion souls were dying of hunger in affluent countries."
TodayThe line is garbled (probably "while in the affluent countries..."), but 3 billion hungry people out of about 4.2 billion is far too many. The FAO's Fourth World Food Survey (1977) estimated about 450 million seriously undernourished people in the 1970s, roughly one in nine.
Why it was believedThe slogan that "two-thirds of humanity goes hungry", from John Boyd Orr and Josué de Castro around 1950, was repeated for decades after nutrition specialists had rejected it.
"And the Rhine each day spills out 60 million tons of waste into the North Sea. That's equal to one ton per person in the area."
TodayThe Rhine's total flow is only about 200 million tonnes of water a day, so 60 million tonnes of waste a day is impossible. Its dissolved load (salts and other substances, much of it from industry and mines) was a few tens of millions of tonnes a year in the 1970s. Its notorious chloride load was about 30,000–40,000 tonnes a day. "Each day" is probably a slip for "each year", which also fits "one ton per person".
"industry spews into our seas two million three hundred thousand metric tons of lead one million six hundred thousand metric tons of manganese six million five hundred thousand tons of phosphorus"
TodayNo time period is given, presumably per year. The lead figure is far too high. Later global inventories (Nriagu & Pacyna, Nature 1988) put human lead inputs to all waters at roughly 0.1–0.2 million tonnes a year, and total world lead mining in the 1970s was only about 3.5 million tonnes. Lead pollution then fell steeply once leaded petrol was phased out (1970s–2000s).
"the volume of garbage multiplies by 10 each decade"
TodayWaste was rising quickly in the 1960s and 1970s, but by a few percent a year, not tenfold per decade. US municipal waste, for example, grew from about 88 to 121 million tons between 1960 and 1970.
"T30, one continuous city from Marseille to Genoa, from Paris to Le Havre... From Tokyo to Kyoto, one city of 100 million inhabitants. No more forests, no more trees, all cut down."
Today(Prediction, probably "in 2030".) With four years to go, nothing like this exists. Urban sprawl grew, but the Riviera, the Seine valley, the Rhine and southern England are not single cities. Japan's Tokyo–Osaka belt holds about 80 million people and is shrinking. Forest cover in Europe grew after 1990, though tropical deforestation went on.
"Year 2010, 7 billion inhabitants. Year 2040, 14 billion. Year 2070, 28 billion."
Today(Prediction.) The 2010 figure came true: the world passed 7 billion around 2011. After that the projection failed. Fertility fell fast in most of the world, and growth slowed from about 2.1% a year in the late 1960s to under 1%. The UN's World Population Prospects 2024 expects about 9.2 billion around 2040 and a peak of about 10.3 billion in the 2080s, not 14 and 28 billion.
"Decades now, more than 60 nations on this planet have the atomic bomb."
Today(Prediction.) Nuclear weapons spread far less widely. In 2026 nine states have them (US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea). South Africa built and then gave up its bombs, and the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty held most countries back.