As we all know, it is folly to believe all that you read, especially on the internet.
This is a world of fake news, and there probably have been many eras of that.
Propaganda is what marketing used to be called before it took on sinister overtones during World War II. Although maybe that is a truth I have grown comfortable knowing, some actual falsehood I remember from school and that I have been very used to carrying around with me ever since.
It is hard to know. It is time-consuming to know which original sources one can and should trust. To the victor the spoils, and the printing presses.
How much in the hotel and hospitality industry might require a second look, or would that be mere churlishness, perhaps spoiling an epic tale of how a cocktail was invented because the ingredients drawer was almost empty or the identity of the first person to turn back the corner of the first piece of toilet paper as an ingenious way of showing new guests the room has been cleaned.
How much of my writing needs to be double-checked?
A saying I have always kept close to mind is "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing."
We all should be careful of being too energetic to share that little bit of knowledge we know, at least before checking and double-checking it.
I have read with interest two pieces of news this week — the first that has been unraveled as a piece of fakery, the second that has long been considered fake but has been shown this week to be “absolutely” true.
The “fake” news concerns the invention of the toaster, that crumb-filled thing in the corner of your home.
Time and again across the internet, the toaster has been credited to Scottish inventor Alan McMasters. This fictitious news has been used by those pushing Scottish pride, and in terms of inventors, Scotland has much to be immensely proud of.
But as the BBC showed intricately this week, the whole “invention” was fictitious, including a fake photo of McMasters doctored by a friend of a Wikipedia editor who decided to poke fun at the fragility of knowledge and the internet.
It took a 15-year-old, scrolling through the internet after school, who had doubts as to the authenticity of the photo of McMasters. With hindsight, looking at the photo, it is hard to believe so many people could be taken in.
Hindsight allows that.
McMasters is in fact an aeronautical engineer from London who currently is 30 years of age.
The fake news that now turns out to be true concerns Sponsian, or Sponsianus, a self-styled emperor of Transylvania who dared flip his nose up at mighty Rome in approximately 240 AD.
A coin was found in the early 18th century bearing his name and image, but the coin was regarded as a fake.
I found a very compelling book published in 1834 by J.Y. Akerman titled “A descriptive catalogue of rare and unedited Roman coins from the earliest period of the Roman coinage, to the extinction of the empire under Constantinus Paleologos.”
In it, there is a brief mention of Sponsianus, which stated “this usurper is not mentioned by any historian; but it is presumed that he assumed the purple as the two former personages. … There are several medallions of Sponsianus, in the Imperial Cabinet in Vienna.”
Purple of course is the sacred color of emperors.
With so much forgotten from the so-called Dark Ages, that is evidence that at least permits another scholarly look, and it appears this week someone has done just that with an analysis using our current powerful microscopes showing the coins are genuine.
Of course, someone lost to history could have made a spoof back then just as they have done recently with the toaster.
History is written in the margins, the shadows and in the full glare of the spotlight, but so can falsehoods.
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