Carnival of Bad History

Liberty and Power is hosting the Carnival of Bad History for August. We are honored to perform this task. Fortunately, we have a lot a good material to work with this month. Here are the submissions:

Prejudice is the ultimate"quagmire" faced by historians as they write their accounts. Abu Sahajj explores Jane Tompkins' approach to this issue.

What does Ayn Rand have to do with booksignings at Colonial Williamsburg? Edward Cline has the answer.

Joe Kissell calls attention to the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, a document written in code of over two hundred pages from the thirteenth century. It drawings of women, and doodles leading Kissell to wonder if it is a lost student notebook. Is it real or is it fake and, if so, why do we care?

Another internet urban legend bites the dust. This time it is a bogus ceremony for folding old glory. Millard Fillmore's bathtub has the lowdown here and here.

At Frog in the Well, Jonathan Dresner considers it absurd to weave together modern concepts of international law and distant historical events to justify (or challenge) the current legal status of Taiwan.

Sergey Romanov has several posts on Holocaust-related issues. He asks what the Soviets knew about Auschwitz and discusses recent attacks on Holocaust survivors and shows how the Babiy Yar and other controversies (here , here and here) illustrates how Holocaust revisionism is really another name for Holocaust denial.

Chuck Russell finds that making submissions to Carnival is a great way to get noticed by search engines. I'll have to remember this.

Morgen Jahanke notes that the success of the Da Vinci Code has spurred sales of books on similar themes.

In a tongue-in-check open letter to Capital One, Jeffrey Cohen rises to the defense of the Vikings and other"barbarians" in that company's commercials.

Finally, Mark H. Delfs tells us how K-Y Jelly got its name.