BabbleFest

Just when the 9-11 twoofers have me convinced that the US has cornered the market on complete and utter ignorance and stupidity, I come across this survey involving 3,000 residents of England, raising the hope that maybe other countries have as many drooling imbeciles per capita as we do:

23% of those British surveyed believe Winston Churchill is a myth, a fictional character who never really lived.

I am not making this up.

47% think King Richard the Lionheart is a mythical character. 23% think nurse Florence Nightingale is made up, and 3% believe Charles Dickens, one of England’s most celebrated writers of fiction, is himself a fictional character. Also on the list of people believed to be myths are the Duke of Wellington and Mahatma Gandhi.

On the other hand, 58% know that Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective, was a real person. Which would come as a surprise to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer who created Holmes.