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PRINT THE LEGEND
A Gary Hartzel Presentation 

There’s a wonderful line in a 1962 western movie called “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” where a frontier newspaper publisher says “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

That has happened a lot over time. 
For example, was Julius Caesar born by Caesarian section?  No 
Were Brutus and Cassius the most important conspirators in Caesar’s assassination?  No
Did Nero fiddle while Rome burned?  No
Was Cleopatra Egyptian?  No
Did Europeans believe the Earth was flat in Columbus’s time?  No 
Were George Washington’s false teeth made of wood?  No
Did Einstein fail math in school?  No  
Did President William Howard Taft, who weighed 350 pounds, get stuck in the White House bathtub?  No

There have been lots of legends through the centuries that today’s common culture thinks of as facts.  In truth, they were stories that grew out of misinterpretations of events, story fragments that were ignored in later telling, crafted from someone’s admiration for or enmity toward a certain person or people, some were just wishful thinking: “it should have happened that way.”

But when the legend is more colorful, more exciting, or more useful than the fact, the legend can stick in the mind, be accepted as fact and treated as fact.  “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Spend a little time with Gary Hartzell on January 17^th and have some fun investigating a few things that you didn’t even know that you didn’t know.

Tuesday, January 17

1:00 PM to 2:00 PM

Joslyn Community Center
1601 North Valley Drive, Manhattan Beach

For more information about this activity, please call the Older Adults Program at (310) 802-5430. No reservation required.