Everything Wrong With "history of the entire world, i guess"

Everyone knows the YouTube video, "history of the entire world, i guess" by Bill Wurtz. Whether you've seen it or not, you've definitely heard of it. If somehow not, go watch it.

While humorous, entertaining, and for the most part accurate, the video does unfortunately contain some inaccuracies. Since many of the topics mentioned in the video are popular on JetPunk, I thought it would be appropriate to touch on these inaccuracies and share them on the site. For this blog, I watched the entire video really carefully and gathered all the inaccuracies I could find.

Most likely I missed some stuff, but here's a list of everything from the video that I know is wrong, or at least, not entirely true. See the section below for details on what I did not include on the list.

The following list is of components of the video that were not deemed inaccurate:

1. Humour: Any statement that was made that is not entirely correct but was stated just to be humorous, and it's really clear what Wurtz meant, was not labelled as false. For example, "Meanwhile, in the middle of nowhere," would not be labelled as false as Wurtz knows that the Caucasus and Black Sea area are not "nowhere," but that this line is often used humorously. However, lines like "Now you can eat sunlight." are deemed as false as there is no true indication that Wurtz is aware of the actual process of photosynthesis.

2. Corrections: If he corrects himself later, it is not mentioned on this list.

3. Dates: Dates can be disputed and thus, dates are not verified for the sake of this list.

4. Repetitions: If Wurtz repeats the same incorrect statement, it is only counted as false once.

5. What he didn't say: This blog only examines the false statements that were made in the video. Anything that wasn't said that should have been said was left out for the purpose of this blog (except for one which I put in for humour).

1. 0:01 "You're on a rock floating in space." The Earth is, in fact, slowly falling towards the sun. It is therefore not floating.

2. 0:08 "I can't even get from here to there without buying a boat." Aircraft will do just fine for trans-continental travel. This can even be seen in the video where there is a plane instead of a boat. This could just be Wurtz acknowledging without saying that both will work. Also, you can easily ride on a boat without buying one.

3. 0:10 "I miss you." Wurtz has never met the majority of the people watching the video, and can therefore not miss them.

4. 0:18 "Like I said, it didn't happen." He never actually said this earlier. It is also unclear what "it" means in this case.

5. 0:36 "I wanna be something…" The universe, as far as we know, does not have consciousness and thus does not have desires either. Especially not before it existed! It cannot, therefore, want to be something.

6. 0:48 [Random sequence of images] From what we know and have hypothesized, those images have nothing to do with the beginning of the universe.

7. 0:58 "Time™" Time is not trademarked.

8. 1:05 "Great news…" Protons and neutrons are not the only hadrons (particles composed of quarks) there are. There are many other types of baryons (three-quark particles) and there are also mesons, composed of one quark and one antiquark (antimatter quark).

9. 1:14 "about 10 minutes later" It only took about three minutes for the universe to cool down enough for the first nuclei to form, according to the Institute of Physics.

10. 1:15 "Great news…" Most protons are actually not bound to any neutrons. About 90% of atoms in the universe are just one proton and one electron.

11. 1:32 "New sh*t just got made." The diagram implies that beryllium and boron existed before the first star was formed. This was likely not the case.

12. 1:52 "Like this ball of flaming rocks, for example." The Earth was molten at this stage, not on fire.

13. 2:38 "Now you can eat sunlight." Photosynthesis does not involve the eating of sunlight. Energy from the sun is merely used to split water molecules into hydrogen ions and oxygen gas, so that the hydrogen ions can enter the Calvin Cycle with carbon dioxide and create glucose.

14. 3:04 "The sun is a deadly laser!" Unfortunately, this iconic line isn't entirely true. Lasers can only contain beams of similar wavelengths, while sunlight is a variety of different wavelengths. But it is deadly, especially without ozone, so the line is partly true.

15. 3:45 "Just kidding! Here are the survivors." More than three genera survived the Permian Extinction.

16. 3:47 "Keep your eye on this one because it's about to become the dinosaurs." I could find no source to suggest that dinosaurs evolved from Proterosuchus.

17. 5:35 "Because it's in the middle of the east." Direction is relative. There is no "east" when in comes to a specific geographical location. It's only called the Middle East because it's from Europe's perspective.

18. 6:00 "We could make a religion out of this." Hinduism emerged naturally as a result of many cultural traditions. It was not founded just as a result of the writing of hymns and mantras.

19. 6:05 "inventing the alphabet i guess" The Phoenicians did not invent the alphabet.

20. 6:14 [The Ten Commandments list] The Ten Commandments are up to interpretation for their order and what they mean. This is not necessarily the Ten Commandments.

[20.5 6:39 He did not say, "We could make a religion out of this."]

21. 7:05 "But what about this part?" Sri Lanka was never part of India.

22. 7:06 "No one conquers the Tamil Kings!" The Tamil Kings conquered each other.

23. 7:36 "'Hi!' said the Parthians, taking over the entire place." The Parthians did not take over the entirety of the Achaemenid Empire.

24. 7:55 "They just made a brand new road to the world." The Silk Road did not reach the entire world.

25. 13:51 "Guess where all the sugar's made? In Brazil!" Brazil may be the top sugar producer globally, but sugar is still widely produced in other parts of the world.

26. 14:02 "More specifically, Ohio." Ohio is not the entire world. While Wurtz probably knows this, a better term than "more specifically" could be used here to deliver the point.

27. 14:23 "louis the 14th" He means Louis XVI (the sixteenth).

28. 16:24 "So they start World War One." World War I was not started because Europe wanted another war.

So, I probably indeed missed a whole bunch. The title of this blog is therefore misleading as I doubt this is everything. However, I'm still pleased with the amount I was able to catch! It has been my observation that Wurtz knows much more about history than prehistory, but of course, I could have missed a whole bunch from the history part of the video.

And with that, I will conclude this blog. Let me know if there are any important details that I missed or if you have counter-arguments to my claims in this blog!