British newspaper the Daily Telegraph jumps on the bandwaggon with
The Lost Symbol and The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown: 50 factual errors
Dan Brown’s new novel The Lost Symbol opens with a bold word: FACT. "All rituals, science, artwork, and monuments in this novel are real", it says.
The Da Vinci Code, his previous bestseller, began in a similar fashion. "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate", Brown says before the prologue.
So is that true? We take a look at 50 of Brown's more contentious points in the two novels and a third, Angels and Demons, his previous work also starring Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon.
This represents our best attempt to find the facts behind Brown's stories. If you disagree with any of them, or if you have any more information, please add your thoughts in the comment box below.
Some are major, some are minor. They are divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into categories of "History", "Geography", "Science", "Symbols, Religion and Mythology", "Language" and "Miscellany".
There is a possible plot spoiler for Angels and Demons in the "Science" section.
History
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Angels and Demons (warning: contains plot spoiler)
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(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...-Code-author-Dan-Brown-50-factual-errors.html)
Also note the ton of comments and the links to further similar links there.
The Lost Symbol and The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown: 50 factual errors
Dan Brown’s new novel The Lost Symbol opens with a bold word: FACT. "All rituals, science, artwork, and monuments in this novel are real", it says.
The Da Vinci Code, his previous bestseller, began in a similar fashion. "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate", Brown says before the prologue.
So is that true? We take a look at 50 of Brown's more contentious points in the two novels and a third, Angels and Demons, his previous work also starring Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon.
This represents our best attempt to find the facts behind Brown's stories. If you disagree with any of them, or if you have any more information, please add your thoughts in the comment box below.
Some are major, some are minor. They are divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into categories of "History", "Geography", "Science", "Symbols, Religion and Mythology", "Language" and "Miscellany".
There is a possible plot spoiler for Angels and Demons in the "Science" section.
History
Angels and Demons
- Langdon is shown lecturing his students that the Christian tradition of communion, eating the body of their god, comes from the Aztecs. Communion has taken place since the first century; the Aztec civilisation arose during the 13th century. Europeans did not reach central America, where the Aztecs lived, until the late 15th century.
- A character says Nicolaus Copernicus was murdered by the church for contradicting Biblical teaching. In fact Copernicus died of a stroke in 1543; there is no evidence of any wrongdoing.
- Langdon's love interest, physicist Vittoria Vetra, says that Raphael's body "was relocated to the Pantheon in 1758", having previously been interred in Urbino. This is not true: Raphael was always buried in the Pantheon, as a notice now says by his tomb in response to the book.
- According to one character, the BBC journalist Gunther Glick, "the Rhodes Scholarships were funds set up centuries ago to recruit the world's brightest young minds into the Illuminati." The Rhodes Scholarships, international scholarships to the University of Oxford, were established in 1902 after the death of Cecil Rhodes.
- The Swiss Guard, traditional defenders of the Vatican, are said to be "rumored to have decapitated countless Muslims while defending the Christian crusaders in the fifteenth century" with their longswords. The Guard were founded in 1506. The seventh and final Crusade took place in 1270.
- Brown claims that that Galileo was a member of the Illuminati. Galileo died in 1642: the Illuminati, a society dedicated to free thinking and the Enlightenment, were formed in Bavaria in 1776.
- Langdon, exasperatedly telling a member of the Swiss Guard "Geez, you guys don't even read your own history", informs him that in 1668 the church kidnapped, tortured and executed four Illuminati scientists. As mentioned above, the Illuminati were not formed until 1776.
- Alexander Pope is said to have delivered a eulogy at the funeral of Sir Isaac Newton. This is not true; however, Pope did write a famous couplet about Newton, saying: "Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be! and all was light."
- The Priory of Sion is not "a European secret society founded in 1099" as Brown says in the foreword. Nor did they form the Knights Templar. The Priory was a hoax carried out by Frenchman Pierre Plantard in 1956, as he admitted under oath in 1993.
- Brown claims that 5 million women were burned at the stake as witches. While the number is in dispute, most reasonable estimates put the true number of people burned – men and women – at between 40,000 and 60,000.
Angels and Demons
- Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers is described as "A flawless tribute to water [which] glorified the four major rivers of the Old World - The Nile, Ganges, Danube, and Rio Plata." The Rio de la Plata is in the New World, between Argentina and Uruguay.
- According to the book, St Peter's Basilica is in the Vatican Museums. In fact it is outside the museums.
- St Peter's is described as having 140 statues: the actual number is 13, of Christ and the 12 apostles.
- Sant'Agnese in Agone, a basilica church in Rome, is described as being on the east side of the Piazza Navona. It is actually on the west side.
- The Pantheon is said to be to the north of the Piazza della Rotunda. It is to the south.
- Brown says that "The Church of Santa Maria del Popolo stood ... on the southeast corner of the piazza" and describes a character "[ascending] the main portico to the church's sole wooden door." The church he mentions is on the northeast corner of the square. It does not have a portico.
- In the first chapter of the book, Langdon is driven to the Louvre from the Paris Ritz. They pass the Opera House and cross Place Vendôme. The Ritz is on the Place Vendôme, and the Opera House is in almost the opposite direction from there to the Louvre.
- At the Louvre, Sophie Neveu helps Langdon escape the police by threatening to destroy the painting opposite the Mona Lisa – Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks. The Virgin of the Rocks hangs in a different gallery: the painting opposite the Mona Lisa is Caliari's "The Wedding Feast at Cana."
- Still in Paris, in the book's epilogue Brown describes walking north from Sacré-Coeur across the Seine. Sacré-Coeur is north of the river: you would need to walk south.
- Albino monk Silas lives for some years before the book in a Spanish 'village' called Oviedo. Oviedo is a medium-sized city of some 200,000 people, around the same size as Southampton.
- A British police officer tells someone over the phone: "This is the London police." There is no such body. The Metropolitan Police have responsibility for policing the capital; the City of London Police exist, but only in the financial district, the so-called Square Mile.
- Langdon and Neveu take a Tube train from Temple Station to King's College, London. The nearest Tube stop to King's College is in fact Temple Station – any Tube journey would take them further away.
- Rosslyn Chapel, near Edinburgh, is said to lie "precisely on the north-south meridian that runs through Glastonbury". This is untrue: the chapel's longitude is 3:07:13 west, while Glastonbury Tor is 2:42:05 west.
- Langdon drives north to get from the National Cathedral to Kalorama Heights. Kalomara Heights is two miles south-east of the Cathedral.
- Brown claims the Washington Monument is the highest point in the city. This is false: the tower of the National Cathedral is the highest point. The Monument is the tallest building - 555 feet - but the Cathedral, which is just over 300 feet tall, is built on Mount St Albans, a 400 foot tall hill.
Angels and Demons (warning: contains plot spoiler)
- The physicist Vittoria Vetra says in a description of antimatter that "everything has an opposite. Protons have electrons." The antiparticle of a proton is an antiproton. Both protons and electrons are matter, not antimatter.
- It is also suggested that antimatter could form a limitless future source of energy. This is impossible, as the antimatter – which does not occur naturally – takes ten billion times as much energy to create as it would produce through annihilation.
- Still on antimatter, a major plot point involves the creation of an antimatter bomb, using a gramme of antimatter created in the CERN particle accelerator. Creating a gramme of antimatter at CERN would take, at current speed of production, two billion years.
- Brown has Langdon say that Harvard astronomer Edwin Hubble proposed the theory of the Big Bang. Hubble was never associated with Harvard.
- Also, Hubble never proposed the theory of the Big Bang – he demonstrated the existence of galaxies beyond our own. He was the first to notice "redshift", which backed up the theory by showing that the universe was expanding, but the Big Bang was proposed by Georges Lemaître in 1927.
- While Langdon is being flown in an experimental space plane from America to Europe, the pilot tells him that at 60,000 feet, his weight is 30 per cent less than on the ground. In fact his weight would go down by around 0.56 per cent, depending on his latitude.
- Venus is described as being visible in the east shortly after sunset. This is impossible: Venus is closer to the Sun than the Earth is, and so - like the Sun - is in the west in the evenings. This is corrected in some later editions of the book.
- Venus is also said to trace "a perfect pentagram across the ecliptic sky every four years". Venus completes five cycles in eight years. Again, this was corrected in some later editions of the book.
Angels and Demons
- In CERN in Switzerland, Langdon points out a marble column that is labelled 'Ionic'. He says: "That column isn't Ionic. Ionic columns are uniform in width. That one's tapered. It's a Doric - the Greek counterpart." Both Ionic and Doric columns are Greek in origin.
- A cardinal claims that he was the Devil's Advocate for the election of the recently deceased pope. Papal elections do not have Devil's Advocates: the term describes someone who examines the candidates for sainthood in an attempt to find arguments against.
- The number of cards in a Tarot deck is given as 22. In fact there are 78, although there are 22 Major Arcana cards.
- Langdon notes that the Louvre's famous glass pyramid contains exactly 666 panes of glass, the "number of the beast", as demanded by President Francois Mitterrand. This is not true: according to the Louvre's own figures, it contains 673 panes.
- The Egyptian goddess Isis is described as the wife of Amun. In Egyptian mythology, Isis was the wife of Osiris, while Amun's wife was Mut.
- Brown says that the Dead Sea Scrolls contain Gospels that were left out of the New Testament. This is unlikely: most were written before the time of Christ and refer to various books in the Old Testament. Most scholars deny that there is any link to the early Christian movement.
- Opus Dei, the Catholic organisation, is described as a monastic order. This is not true: there are no monks in Opus Dei.
Angels and Demons
- A guard tells a subordinate to sweep a chapel for bugs, saying: "Spazzare di cappella." Spazzare does mean sweep, but not for electronic devices: bonificare, to reclaim, would be preferable. Also, it doesn't need the di. Finally, cappella is an Italian slang term for the tip of the penis, so most Italians would name the chapel in order to avoid misunderstandings.
- Vittoria asks someone "Hanno conosciuto l'uomo?", meaning "Did you know the man?" By saying "l'uomo" without specifying which man (for example, by saying "quell'uomo", "that man"), it means "have you known manhood?", or to put it another way, "have you had sex?"
- Leigh Teabing, a British symbologist and old friend of Langdon's, refers to the sport of "soccer". It would be very rare for a Briton to use this term to describe football.
Angels and Demons
- Vittoria struggles to get a dial tone on her mobile phone while in an underground laboratory. This is unsurprising: mobile phones do not have dial tones.
- The BBC switchboard operator is said to extinguish a cigarette before answering a call. Smoking has been banned in all BBC offices for decades.
- A BBC journalist, told he is going to hell, insists he'll "be taking the Pulitzer with him". Pulitzers are only awarded to work that has "appeared in a US newspaper published at least once a week" - i.e. not the BBC.
- Langdon says the Swiss Guard's outfits were "designed by Michelangelo himself." This is an urban myth: Michelangelo had nothing to do with them. The current uniforms were designed by Commandant Jules Repond between 1910 and 1921.
- It is also claimed that the Swiss Guard have a minimum height requirement of five foot six inches. In fact the height requirement is 174cm, or a little over five foot eight.
- We learn that "when Carlo turned sixteen, he was obliged by Italian law to serve two years of reserve military training." Under Italian law, conscription to the army (which was abolished in February 2004) took place at 18 and lasted for 10-12 months, depending on the nature of service.
- "SmartCar. A hundred kilometers to the liter", says Neveu. This translates to 239 miles per gallon. SmartCars are rated in Europe at around 60 miles per gallon, or 21 kilometers to the litre. It is possible that Brown meant 100km per gallon, which is approximately correct, if an odd mix of imperial and metric measurements.
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...-Code-author-Dan-Brown-50-factual-errors.html)
Also note the ton of comments and the links to further similar links there.
![[pissed]](/images/smilies/pissed.gif "Pissed [pissed]")
