Beyond The Border
Cover of the book 50 Hidden Truths History Wants You to Forget

50 Hidden Truths
History wants you to forget

You were taught the version that fits on one page. This book is the other fifty: true stories that were left out, cut short or told wrong, each one put back on the map.

Get the book

211 pages. PDF, instant download. Reads on any phone, tablet or computer.   Read a free sample chapter

Every truth gets four pages

1What you were toldThe version everyone knows, in two lines.
2What happenedThe real story, plainly told.
3On the mapWhere, how far, how many. Drawn the way the films draw it.
4The proofThe sources, the numbers, and where historians still disagree.

Look inside: Truth No. 2

Sample page: He won every battle. He lost the war. Sample page: what happened Sample page: Hannibal's route on the map and the battle of Cannae in three steps Sample page: the proof, every figure with its source

Hannibal won every battle and still lost the war. Open the full sample (PDF)

A taste of the fifty

All fifty truths

Part 1: Wars That Did Not Go The Way You Were Told
  1. 1 Napoleon lost most of his army in Russia before the snow fell
  2. 2 Hannibal won every battle and still lost the war
  3. 3 In most wars before 1900, disease killed more soldiers than the enemy did
  4. 4 The shortest war in history lasted about 38 minutes (Zanzibar, 1896)
  5. 5 A civil war in China probably killed more people than the First World War
  6. 6 One war probably killed most of the adult men of a whole country (Paraguay)
  7. 7 Finland held off the Soviet Union for 105 days (Winter War, 1939 to 1940)
  8. 8 Australia sent soldiers with machine guns against emus, and the emus won
  9. 9 The United States drew up a plan for war with Britain (War Plan Red, 1930)
  10. 10 Churchill ordered a plan to attack the Soviet Union in 1945 (Unthinkable)
Part 2: Borders And Countries The Map Hides
  1. 11 Portugal and Spain were one crown for sixty years
  2. 12 Persia was never made a colony
  3. 13 An African army beat a European empire and kept its country (Adwa, 1896)
  4. 14 Siam stayed free by being the gap between two empires
  5. 15 The rules for dividing Africa were set in Berlin with no African present
  6. 16 Two diplomats split the Middle East in secret with a straight line (1916)
  7. 17 India was split in five weeks by a man who had never been there (1947)
  8. 18 Poland disappeared from the map for 123 years
  9. 19 There is a piece of land no country wants (Bir Tawil)
  10. 20 Texas, Hawaii and Vermont were once countries. California lasted 25 days
  11. 21 Russia sold Alaska partly for fear that Britain would simply take it (1867)
  12. 22 The Roman Empire did not fall in 476. It lasted until 1453
Part 3: What Empires Would Rather You Forgot
  1. 23 A king owned the Congo as private property, and millions died (1885-1908)
  2. 24 Britain went to war to keep selling opium to China (1839)
  3. 25 Ireland exported food all through its famine (1845 to 1852)
  4. 26 Haiti paid for its own freedom, and the debts lasted until 1947
  5. 27 The first genocide of the twentieth century happened in Namibia (1904-1908)
  6. 28 Britain built concentration camps in South Africa (1900 to 1902)
  7. 29 Up to three million died of famine in Bengal in the Second World War (1943)
  8. 30 Ukraine's famine of 1932 to 1933 was man-made
  9. 31 A prosperous Black district in Tulsa was burned to the ground in two days
  10. 32 The US locked up 120,000 people for their ancestry. Most were its citizens
  11. 33 Japan ran a secret unit that experimented on living prisoners
  12. 34 America hired Nazi scientists after the war (Operation Paperclip)
  13. 35 For forty years US doctors studied syphilis in men they chose not to treat
  14. 36 Fewer than one in twenty enslaved Africans was taken to North America
Part 4: Things Everybody Knows That Never Happened
  1. 37 Vikings did not wear horned helmets
  2. 38 Educated medieval people knew the Earth was round
  3. 39 Napoleon was not short
  4. 40 Nobody was burned at Salem
  5. 41 Marie Antoinette never said "let them eat cake"
  6. 42 Columbus never saw the mainland USA, and the Norse came 471 years earlier
  7. 43 The Spanish flu did not start in Spain
  8. 44 The Library of Alexandria did not burn down in one great fire
Part 5: Facts That Break Your Sense Of Time And Scale
  1. 45 Cleopatra lived closer to the Moon landing than to the Great Pyramid
  2. 46 Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire
  3. 47 An African king, perhaps the richest man ever, shook the price of gold
  4. 48 For a century Europeans denied that Africans built Great Zimbabwe
  5. 49 The Mongols built the largest contiguous land empire in about 70 years
  6. 50 One Soviet officer doubted his screen and may have stopped a nuclear war

More pages

Sample page: Europe came to conquer. Ethiopia won. Sample page: the map plate and numbers for the battle of Adwa Sample page: Cleopatra and the Great Pyramid Sample page: Tulsa, 1921, on the map
Illustration from the book: Mago pours out the gold rings taken at Cannae

The promise

  • Every one true. No conspiracy theories. "Hidden" means overlooked, left out of school, or commonly told wrong.
  • Every one sourced. Every figure names where it comes from. Where the writers disagree, you get both sides.
  • Every one on the map. Hand-tinted maps, campaign routes and battle diagrams in the channel's antique style.

Questions

What do I get?

One PDF: 211 pages, fifty truths at four pages each, with 200 illustrations and 50 map plates. It opens on any phone, tablet or computer.

How do I pay, and is it safe?

Checkout runs on Gumroad, a payment company that takes cards and PayPal, handles the tax for your country, and emails your download link straight away.

Is this conspiracy stuff?

No. "Hidden" means overlooked, left out of the schoolbook, or commonly told wrong. Every figure names its source, and where historians disagree you get both sides.

Are the pictures real paintings?

No. The illustrations and map plates were made for this book in the style of an antique atlas. They are not period artworks or photographs.

Can I read some first?

Yes. The full Hannibal chapter is free.

50 Hidden Truths

The book of the Beyond The Border channel.

Get the book