As you get older, you begin to realize how much history that preceded your memory must be wildly incorrect as you (to borrow a phrase from someone else) receive passionately confident but absurdly incorrect lectures about events from those too young to remember them regarding history that you personally lived through.

If people in some cases not even one generation removed from what occurred often get it so wrong, I can’t even imagine how much we misapprise and misrepresent something that happened 500 or a thousand years ago.

I think about this now any time I read about any “historical” event.