Where are these false historical rumors coming from?

and why are some people so willing to believe them when they have no evidence, when in fact all evidence shows the opposite?





Japan was negotiating to surrender before the A-bomb , anyway





Abraham Lincoln was a racist and wanted to keep slavery





The colonist intentionally infected the native americans with chicken pocks (or some other disease) They didn't even know about infection is those days.





Christopher Columbus wanted to force the Indians into Christianity.





Roosevelt knew about the attack on Perl Harbor upto a day before





Reagan prevented the Iranian hostages from being released until he was sworn in as president.Where are these false historical rumors coming from?
That is quite an impressive list you have! You may want to add:





Slavery was not a cause of the American Civil War.





The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Americans was a war crime because innocent women and children died; the Japanese invasion and occupation of Burma, China, Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, Malaya, Philippines, Siam, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands was entirely legal and no innocent people died as a result.





As a result of the Holocaust (1933-1945), six million people died.





In 1964 Vietnamese patrol boats attacked the U.S.S. Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin, and this justified the U.S. bombing of Vietnam.





President Ronald Reagan told President Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, so Gorbachev did what he was told.Where are these false historical rumors coming from?
Why are people so afraid of the truth? Ammiasnus and Jack have the best answers, I think. Why do some people want to believe that we all lived in happy harmony in the past. There were US settlers and soldiers killing Native Americans, US soldiers raping the native women (heck, this still goes on, they even rape female US soldiers!) Mexicans used to kidnap Navajos (and other local tribes) to sell them as slaves to other Mexicans. The Spaniards came looking for gold and shoved Christianity down my ancestors throats!
Well, when I read an article, I can't ask the people who post where he get the source, but I think Roosevelt shall know about the attack before Japan launch it.He need it.


If he avoids it, USA will not join the war, but Roosevelt need this cause to let USA join the war.


ANd others, I think of course Japan must have negotiated for the pease,just can't accept the terms.
there is plenty of evidence to support those truths as others have given. so why are you so opposed to believing the truth and instead choose to believe the propaganda being taught in schools for decades?
The only one I have ever heard was the one about Roosevelt. And I suspect it may be true because of this situation with Japan before the attack on Pearl Harbor.





http://www.hawaiiclipper.com/
Sorry, but there is plenty of evidence for these things.





Japan had approached Russian in 1945, asking them to act as a go between with America to discuss peace terms.There are government archive documents from both countries confirming this.Or perhaps you consider official government documents as ';no evidence';?





Abraham Lincoln is on record as saying he didn't consider blacks as the moral or intellectual equals of whites.That sounds like racism to me.Perhaps you think publicly expressing such ideas is not racist?


As for the slaves, the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation specifically exempted slaves in the border states, so he certainly didn't want to end slavery in those states in 1863.Surely you accept this document as genuine evidence?





At least one officer in colonial America admits in a letter that he deliberately traded blankets that people who had died of smallpox had been using with Native Americans, noting that the ';pestilence'; as he calls it, might afflict them rather than other colonists as a result.





Colonizing policy of the Spanish in the New World was to force the indigenous population into Christianity (eventually achieved through the reducciones system).This is on record in state documents and official correspondence.





As for Pearl Harbour, Roosevelt was clearly looking for a pretext to get involved in WW2 fully; a Japanese attack produced that pretext. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was based on surprise, and any indication that the Americans knew what was coming would have led to a cancellation of the attack,thus depriving Roosevelt of his pretext for war.





Iran hostages you are correct about.It was the Iranian government that refused to release them until Reagan was inaugarated, in revenge for Carter's ill advised Operation Eagle Claw rescue attempt.





You should look at claims you don't believe in depth,particularly checking for primary source evidence, rather than just believing what your teachers tell you or what you read in a secondary source book.History is about doing research, looking at the evidence for different ideas (there are always other points of view), and then deciding for yourself.Ignoring what you don't like hearing and then, worse still, claiming no evidence for that point of view puts you on a par with the Iranian I've just seen on the news claiming the country and people ';are clearly united behind President Ahmedinajad';.
Rumours often have a kernel of truth somewhere in them, for example here are my ideas on why these rumours might have come about











1: Japan probably had some diplomats working at getting a conditional surrender when the Americans dropped the A-Bomb


2: Although anti-slavery Lincoln probably was racist in that he believed that the African was a lesser form of person. He probably would have favoured segregation as a result.


3: The Colonist did intentionally hand over infected blankets to the Natives. They understood that smallpox was very infectious.


4: Part of Columbus mission was to spread the Gospels, so yes he wanted to bring Christianity to the pagan people that he met


5: Possible some sign that it would happen. No one has satisfactorily explained why the American aircraft carriers were away from Pearl Harbour. Fleets tend to be made up of different types of ships not just one.


6: I have heard that it was the Iranians who refused to release the hostages to embarrass President Carter. Perhaps old Ronnie had a word with them.
Sorry, but most of these aren't false, they're true.





FACT: Through the Soviet Union (with whom the Japanese were still at peace) and Switzerland the Japanese were attempting to negotiate with the allies as early as the late winter of 1945. The sticking point was that the Japanese wanted assurances that the Emperor would be kept on his throne, and the Americans (since 1941) had insisted on Unconditional Surrender. The Americans eventually kept the Emperor anyway.





FACT: Abraham Lincoln (in the famous Lincoln/Douglas debates of 1858) argued for White Supremacy, and later as president said that if he could save the Union by NOT freeing the slaves he would do so. He was primarily interested in maintaining the union, and only freed the slaves (Emancipation Proclamation) as a political attempt to prevent Britain and France from recognizing the Confederacy.





FACT: People have known about infection for ages before America was even discovered. The first known use of Biological warfare occurred in the 15th century when Genoese invaded catapulted victims of the Plague over the walls of the city of Sevastopol during a siege.





The Americans DID give Native Americans blankets infected with Small Pox as a means of eliminating them.





FACT: Christopher Columbus DID enforce Church dogmas about converting the natives. He was actually a rather ruthless administrator.





The statements about FDR and Reagan are without foundation.





Hope this helps.
As some previous posters have mentioned many have a kernel of truth that is then twisted to support someone else's purpose. The trickey thing about history is that the truth can usually only be found through a variety of sources, and then the sources must be interpreted without the biases of the researcher or hindsight influencing the interpretation of how people thought then. The other problem is that people like to see things in black and white, even though most things happen in a realm of gray. For example, the idea that colonists used biological warfare in an attempt to exterminate Native Americans. In reality there is one documented instance of Native Americans being given small pox blankets (not a wide-spread campaign), incidentally they were ineffective, because small pox could not be spread in the manner that was attempted. The Columbus thing is based off of reports sent back to the highly religious government in Europe that they were working to convert Natives to keep government support coming. In reality Columbus' main goal was to make money, with everything else coming second. The Roosevelt situation came about, because the US had cracked the Japanese code and been intercepting messages, however the sheer volume of information in addition to the ambiguity around which the Japanese discussed their plans about Pearl Harbor most likely made it next to impossible to pinpoint Pearl Harbor as the place, much less the date, time, and means of attack.
They are usually over-simplified extractions from a kernel of truth. Too many people only want simple, one-line answers, it seems, and so these things are easy to pass on to the voluntarily dimwitted.





Lincoln said in one of his campaign speeches that he wasn't looking to end slavery. His primary goal was to preserve the union. There's a difference in that from what the sentence you provided above says. Actually, Lincoln wanted to relocate former slaves to a colony in South or Central America. There's an archived NY Times article I saw from 1862 about a group of free black men meeting in New York City to protest this plan.





Intelligence under Roosevelt had obtained a map of Pearl Harbor from the Japanese, yes, along with thousands of other pieces of intelligence. It was known to be a target, so security was set up to prevent a sabotage operation, not an airstrike. But of course they had no way of knowing WHICH of those thousands of pieces of info was going to be the one that came into reality. The same thing happened with the intelligence memos warning of possible attacks in the US before 9/11. They were a few of many pieces of other warnings received at the same time, and the other ones didn't happen. After the fact people somehow figure the right one was supposed to have magically been culled out and the event prevented. It's kind of wierd--and it's kind of sad that there's no thinking going on.
1 - they were instead talking about to fight on. Even after the first A bomb Japanese high command were ready to fight on. It is the second bomb which made them capitulate





2 - pass





3 - True. But it was the British during the siege of Fort Pitt. Though historians wonder if it was truly effective as smallpox was already present in the area. People knew about plagues and that touching clothing of infected people could lead to you getting it.





4 - No idea. Though the thought of having them become Christians would not have been strange to a man of that time





5 - False. U.S. code breakers had already deciphered and translated most of the message hours before the Japanese embassy finished translating it but missed out on the declaration of war part, General Marshall was worried enough by that message that he sent a telegram warning the Pacific bases. That doesn't mean that Roosevelt knew about it days before. What the US knew was that the Japanese were getting ready for something.





6 - first I heard that one
Where are these false historical rumors coming from?


and why are some people so willing to believe them when they have no evidence, when in fact all evidence shows the opposite?





Japan was negotiating to surrender before the A-bomb , anyway





They wanted to negiotiate a surrender, but would not be heard, because of the agreement to accept only unconditional surrender...





Abraham Lincoln was a racist and wanted to keep slavery





He became famous because he was the first to run on a platform of ending slavery.








The colonist intentionally infected the native americans with chicken pocks (or some other disease) They didn't even know about infection is those days.


they did give the Indians blankets from smallpox victims. They may not have understood disease, but they knew the Indians were even more susceptible to it than they were...





Christopher Columbus wanted to force the Indians into Christianity.


True- When the Spanish colonised the Carribbean, they brought Priests to start converting the Indians.





Roosevelt knew about the attack on Perl Harbor upto a day before


He knew war was likely...he did not know of the attack though, or he would have made sure it was repulsed instead of almost costing the loss of the Pacific!





Reagan prevented the Iranian hostages from being released until he was sworn in as president.





Right...how exactlycould he use the power he does not yet have? The Iranians turned them loose when he was inaugurated knowing they would have to fight to keep them if they did not.
Oh, me, oh my!!! LOL





Just some idiot/s trying to change history, or make it the way they want people to think they have heard/read it, because that is so much easier than really reading, taking good notes, listening/paying attention to teachers or doing research!!!





And, just think!!! These idiots are going to be in charge of our country one day--with only a cell phone and 'text' plan!!! You don't have to comprehend, spell or read big words %26amp; sentences!!! lol, cuz, k, omg, 4get, thnx, luv u, yea,me 2,na, huh, plz mmasbtg, etc.......!!!





Can you imagine a cellphone/text conversation between presidents, heads-of-state or military chiefs in a few years? ';u mad' '4get it' 'tnt k' (Oh, man, they got the tower, and I have no service!!! What will they hit next? Get my other cellphone--with other ???carrier. Get them batteries all charged before the electricity goes. Bring up the maps that ??? texted me.). Yeah, right, k?





Lord, help us all!!!