Although most history now is of the revisionist kind, the public still dwells in the past, comfortable with its standard accounting. Little attention is paid to the correction of received fictions. History, as they say, gets to be written by the victors, even when it clashes with truth.
Many of us believe, for example, that Cuba's fate was sealed during the Spanish-American War when Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders seized Santiago's San Juan Hill in a daring cavalry charge. In reality the rout never happened, cavalry were never deployed during the campaign, and the battle was virtually over by the time Roosevelt arrived on the scene.
Winston Churchill's famous wartime radio speeches, we now know, were made by a professional voice actor.
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