8 Pop Culture Legends That Are Actually True (2 of 5)

Scarlet Letters were actual punishment (and not just reserved for adultery)

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is pretty much mandatory reading in high school English. In the novel, Hester Prynne gives birth to an illegitimate daughter, and because she refuses to identify the father, the Puritan magistrates sentence her to wear a scarlet letter “A” (to signify adultry) embroidered on her dress for the rest of her life. This really did happen in 17th-century New England and to a whole cast of social deviants beyond adulterers. Drunkards, thieves, paupers, and blasphemers were similarly punished, forced to wear letters that identified them as such.

Ancient Greek and Brittonic Celt warriors may have worn horned-helmets

Arguably the most recognizable trope of the Norse area is the idea that mighty Viking warriors wore helmets adorned with prominent animal horns. However, it is completely false. Out of the thousands of Viking-era helmets scattered across Scandinavia, not a single one has horns. Richard Wagner’s epic opera, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring Cycle), which premiered in 1876, is largely responsible for cementing the horned Viking helmet in popular culture. However, it isn’t the case that no civilization wore helmets with horns. According to 1st-century BCE Roman historian Diodorus Siculus, Celts wore helmets with horns attached to them. Furthermore, Homer’s Iliad makes reference to Greeks adorning them. But the best possible evidence comes in the form of the so-called “Waterloo Helmet,” a horned helmet dated to the first or second century BCE that was discovered along the River Thames in England. However, it might have just been used for ceremony purposes rather than on the battlefield. Nobody knows for sure.