Legends Lies & Cherished Myths of American History

<p>The truth and nothing but the truth--Richard Shenkman sheds light on America's most believed legends.</p><p>The story of Columbus discovering the world was round was invented by Washington Irving.</p><p>The pilgrims never lived in log cabins.</p><p>In Concord Massachusetts a third of all babies born in the twenty years before the Revolution were conceived out of wedlock.</p><p>Washington may have never told a lie but he loved to drink and dance and he fell in love with his best friend's wife.</p><p>Independence wasn't declared on July 4th.</p><p>There's no evidence that anyone died in a frontier shootout at high noon.</p><p>After World War II the U.S. government concluded that Japan would have surrendered within months even if we had not bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.</p>