Truthful Historian

Cancelled Historical Events

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There are many historical events and facts that have been suppressed or distorted, even cancelled as part of “cancel culture”, over time for a variety of reasons, including political, cultural, and social motivations.

  • The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment: From 1932 to 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a study on the effects of untreated syphilis on African American men in Tuskegee, Alabama. The participants were not informed of the nature of the study and were not treated for their disease, even after penicillin became widely available in the 1940s. The study was not publicly exposed until 1972 and is considered a major ethical violation in medical research.
  • The Armenian Genocide: In 1915, the Ottoman Empire began a systematic campaign to eliminate the Armenian population, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million people. The Turkish government has long denied that a genocide took place, and many countries, including the United States, have refrained from officially recognizing the events as such.
  • The CIA’s involvement in overthrowing foreign governments: The United States has been involved in covert operations to overthrow foreign governments since the mid-20th century, including in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile. While some of these operations have been acknowledged by the U.S. government, others have been kept secret or denied.

These are just a few examples of historical events that have been suppressed or distorted over time. (Source: Quora)

Toppling Christoper Columbus – Public Pressure Surrounds the Statues

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Christopher Columbus is in trouble. Pressure to remove Columbus monuments most recently dates from 1992 during the preparations for the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage. This movement to remove monuments dedicated to the explorer accelerated in the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd.

According to many contemporary historians and writers, Columbus was the first of many to exploit and destroy civilizations that already existed and flourished in the Western Hemisphere. In current times, as of 2020 and before, a general consensus felt that Columbus was guilty of kidnapping, enslavement,
and brutality directed at the indigenous peoples of the New World.

In contrast, there are defenders of Columbus who also point to his positive qualities – his
seamanship, courage, perseverance, and diplomatic skills that enabled him to conceive and lead his first epochal voyage of discovery. These positive qualities are what have been memorialized in hundreds of monuments, place names and art works.

State and local governments, courts have decided, have the right to decide what civic monuments they want to display on public land. They can add or remove a monument as a function of their constitutional right to free speech. Any limitations on governmental speech are political. The government answers only to the voters when it decides whether it likes or doesn’t like a public monument installed on public land by a prior government.

The biased political power of those living during these times  today have made their stories and values heard to all who will listen. The struggle to cancel and erase important moments in history prevail. Contemporary power is now determining what is or continues to be memorialized in public monuments in the United States of America. The murder of George Floyd successfully energized the anti-Columbus monument movement and resulted in political decisions to remove monuments. It will take equally energized political movements to decide what replaces the missing Columbus monuments and what values we wish to those monuments to symbolize. Christopher Columbus, remember him? Or will you?

Lion Attacking a Dromedary

Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History Permanently Removed Its Popular ‘Lion Attacking a Dromedary’ Diorama

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Fascinating museum patrons since 1899, one of the most popular displays at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in Pittsburgh, PA, was called  “Arab Courier Attacked by Lions,” which depicted a courier riding a camel while fending off an attack from two now-extinct Barbary lions. The exhibit was removed in 2020 in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests. It was then returned in July 2021, but placed behind a curtain with signage warning, and shortly after, the diorama was removed permanently by the museum under a new policy on displays containing human remains. Not only that, but further reasons later stated that the diorama furthered cultural stereotypes, minimized violent acts, contained inaccuracies, reinforced colonist views, and also pitted humans against nature. It also came to light that the diorama’s creator was known to have robbed the graves of indigenous people to make his pieces.

Now the diorama is gone for good, as extinct as the Barbary lions inside it. SO if you ever had a curiosity, or wanted to witness a depiction of something that ACTUALLY COULD HAVE OCCURRED IN HISTORY, do not look to The Carnegie Museum of Natural History to teach you about those instances.

The museum issued a statement on those policies, “While scientific research is integral to the mission of the Museum, this policy acknowledges that human remains were once living, breathing human beings with familial and cultural ties. When possible, the Museum will use informed consent from the individual, their closest living relatives, or representatives of descendant communities as the baseline for permission to exhibit, access, and curate human remains. In cases where the descendant community of the individual is not known or cannot be established, the Museum will engage with ethical stakeholders … to determine how to move forward regarding research, access, and display,” the new policy reads.

Isn’t every individual referenced in history “living, breathing human beings with familial and cultural ties”? Not only is the diorama a work of art, made by a creator, with the mission in mind to depict a scene that we can view, contemplate, and draw our own conclusions from, it is also depicting a scene which has happened in history, and most likely many times. It is a showcase of the plight of the courier, the danger of the mission, and the danger of the wild. Well, look no more, as you might as well forget about it.