Here in America, we think we know our stuff. But it turns out that there are a few things most people get wrong about US history. From the settling of the continent to the Chicago fire, pop culture and sensational news have warped our view of history and kept misleading myths alive.

If you’re a history buff who knows everything on this list, go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back. But for the rest of us, here are 10 things that most Americans get wrong about their own history.

It’s one of the biggest groupings in the world. As a single bloc, the European Union has a population bigger than the United States,[1] a land area that dwarfs India, and an economy that could give even global powerhouse Chinaa run for its yuan.

Yet for all its clout, the EU remains something most people are broadly ignorant about. If you’re from outside the continent and feel perplexed every time phrases like “Eurozone,” “European Economic Area,” and “What the heck is EFTA?” get thrown around, you’ve come to the right place.

If there’s one thing that movies and TV shows love, it’s a good true crimestory. If there’s another thing that movies and TV shows love, it’s getting the facts wrong about those true crime stories. Hollywood has skewed how we view famous events to the point where the myth is more well-known than the truth, which should be a crime itself.

Some of these words might make you beet red. But are the people who use them always misinformed, or is there more to the story?

Whether we like it or not, the English language is changing and will continue to change. Even though it developed from a language that had a great many rules—German grammar is a tedious thing—we’ve all but done away with many of them for the sake of convenience.

Sometimes, we add rules about how a word should behave—what it means, how to make it plural—only to have that word change entirely. But languages are defined by their speakers. So no matter how “wrong” the new change might seem, we just have to grin and bear it. Or argue to the ends of the Earth to stand on the side of correctness. That works, too.

This might seem a little vague, so we’ll look at some examples. Here are 10 controversial words that might not be as wrong as you think.

It’s a common thought—and even a common teaching—that this word is correct. There’s a historical reason for that. But the most correct plural is not really “octopi” or octopodes as some socially inclined grammarians, who don’t understand that etymologies are not good small talk, would tell you.

The most “correct” plural of “octopus” is actually “octopuses.”

This is because the word “octopus” is not Latin, so the correct plural isn’t “octopi.” The word isn’t Greek either, though, so it isn’t octopodes. The word “octopus” is actually a relatively recent Latinized Greek word[1] and was coined by Carl Linnaeus, the man we call the “father of taxonomy” (the fancy animal-naming system), in the 1700s.

Given that somewhat mixed origin, it’s far safer to use the standard English system of pluralization rather than turn to the Greek or Latin.

On the other hand, these plural forms aren’t entirely incorrect either, just more controversial. The word “octopus” could be thought of as an ancestor of the Latin word polypus, whose plural is polypi. So from a certain perspective, “octopi” could be correct.

And Linnaeus himself used the plural octopodes, even while clearly understanding polypi to be the plural formed from the original word. It seems no matter which plural form you take, somebody, somewhere, will think to correct you for it.

The word “ornery” is a different beast. Despite being quite difficult to spell, it isn’t a word that has accepted an unconventional spelling and the pronunciation differences are quite insignificant. Instead, this is a word that has taken on a different, regional definition that isn’t listed in most dictionaries.

When using this word, many people from the South or Midwest in the United States imagine that they’re describing a rowdy or mischievous child. It could be thought of as an endearing or affectionate term.

But this word can also cause a bit of a cultural clash. It’s often used negatively to refer to somebody who is disagreeable, stubborn, or easily upset. There are several examples spread out over the Internet’s existence of people discovering the word’s “true” meaning and then going on forums and other discussion sites to talk about their experiences, like here.[2]

Although major dictionaries don’t define this alternate use of the word, some sites, like Wiktionary, do. Wiktionary isn’t the most credible authority on any subject, though, so it may be a while before we see the popular regional variant of “ornery” officially recognized.

The legendary King Arthur—Britain’s great king who fought dragons and fairy queens alongside the magician Merlin—is so clouded in myth and fantasy that it’s hard to imagine that there is any real, historical fact in any of it.

But there is a little truth hidden in the myth. There was a real person who, it’s believed, sparked the legend of Arthur. Long before all the magic and myth was draped onto the simple truth of his life, there was a real man who inspired it all.

He lived in Britain shortly after the fall of Rome—and he was absolutely nothing like the stories you’ve heard.

To the victor go the spoils . . . and the privilege of writing their own history, most frequently in glowing terms. But, alas, this has all too often resulted in misconceptions, myths, and outright lies being taught and believed by future generations.

History seldom lets truth get in the way of a good story. The official versions of the entries below might have become widely believed because they were more popular, but they don’t represent what actually happened.

“The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that it is difficult to tell whether they are genuine.”—Abraham Lincoln.

Darn right. It’s not just an Internet problem, either. You can often see the same mistakes in these old-fashioned information storage devices called books and newspapers. We think we know what these quotes mean and where they came from. But, in fact, most of us have it all wrong.

In 2014, police officers in Tenerife, Spain, were alerted to the presence of a gorilla outside Loro Park zoo. The police sent a veterinarian over who thwarted the attempted zoo escape with a tranquilizer shot.

The story spun in a different direction when the vet realized that the supposed gorilla was actually a human in a gorilla costume. Apparently, the zoo had been holding a gorilla escape drill. One of its workers had dressed in a gorilla costume and pretended to be an escaping gorilla.

This would have been a hilarious case of mistaken identity except that the zoo later debunked the story. While they did agree that one of their staff members was shot by a veterinarian during a gorilla escape drill, they clarified that he was neither in a gorilla costume nor pretending to be a gorilla and had only been shot by mistake.

Nevertheless, here are 10 actual cases of mistaken identity.

In 2006, Apple Inc., the maker of the iPhone, was involved in a legal battlewith Apple Corps, a record label owned by the Beatles. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) decided to air a special on the lawsuit, so they invited Guy Kewney, a technology writer and Internet expert for an on-air interview. The day that Guy Kewney arrived at the BBC London studio for the interview happened to be the same day that another man, Guy Goma, arrived at the same London office for a job interview.

Most of us like to think we’re pretty well-informed. We watch the news, we read in-depth reports, heck, we even understand weird acronyms like OECD, ICC, and IMF.

But even the most observant among us can forget the stuff we’re reading comes through a filter. Our papers, magazines, and news sites all love a good narrative, and that means casting world leaders as characters in an ongoing story called “try to make the news as simple as possible.” Go looking on any reputable site, and you’re liable to still find articles pedaling bunkum like this:

You’ve probably heard of Angela Merkel. The chancellor of Germany since 2005, Merkel is both the EU’s most powerful politician and something of a beacon for liberals. Papers like the Guardian and Washington Post have dubbed her the “leader of the free world.” On the flip side, right-wing sites like Breitbart have dismissively called her the “liberal hero.”

This perception is bolstered by the only two policies of hers most English speakers can name: supporting the EU and throwing open the doors for Syrian refugees. But, as our German readers will already know, this isn’t the full Merkel story. The world’s most powerful woman is actually way closer to a conservative like Britain’s Theresa May than anyone a Democrat might vote for.[1]

Merkel is head of an avowedly Christian party, which translates into policy. At various times, she has approved a burka ban, voted against legalizing gay marriage, and (ironically) authored a manifesto that said mass immigration would “threaten [Germany’s] inner peace.” She’s arguably even more conservative on fiscal policy. And, having just nearly lost an election by trying to pick up left-wing voters, she’s probably about to tack further right.

As leader of America’s cooler, colder northern sibling, Justin Trudeau is the global poster boy for male progressives. He’s telegenic, an outspoken feminist, and has declared Canada open to the world’s refugees. Never mind that he had to embarrassingly backtrack on the refugee thing, he’s still about as “woke” as they come, right?

Well, it’s true that Trudeau is no President Trump. But it’s also true that he’s nowhere near as progressive as endless fawning articles make out. For all his soaring rhetoric on gender and equality, the prime minister has done almost nothing to boost his own progressive causes.[2]

Earlier this year, Oxfam released a scorecard for Canada’s gender progress under Trudeau. They surmised that nothing had changed. The government had taken virtually no steps to create meaningful change, while actively exacerbating issues among First Nations women. The only real gain was in leadership, with Trudeau appointing more women to high office than his predecessor.

Despite this, Trudeau is still seen abroad as a weird combination of handsome Jesus and progressive Superman. Maybe other world leaders should give his PR team a call.

If you ask most people to name one fact about Saudi Arabia, they’ll probably reply with, “Women can’t drive there.” The theocratic Islamic petro-kingdom is widely assumed to be so religiously conservative that basic rights are nonexistent. Everyone has heard of the feared religious police, the way dress codes are subject to law, and the general restrictions on what Saudi women can do.

What they might not have heard is that their information is kind of out-of-date. After King Salman appointed his son, Mohammed bin Salman, as crown prince in June 2017, the Kingdom suddenly hit the reverse gear on many of its craziest policies.[3]

With Mohammed bin Salman effectively running the country, women have been given the right to drive, to go to music concerts (themselves a big deal), and to visit sports stadiums. The religious police have been stripped of their power. Islamist clerics have been jailed. While it may be a cynical gamble to shore up the crown prince’s popular support, it does at least mean Saudi Arabia is slowly becoming a less terrible place.

The barrel-chested, frequently shirtless strongman of Russia, Vladimir Putinoccupies a special place in the Western imagination. He’s the boogeyman, a Machiavellian prince pulling the strings behind the world’s stage. He may be an evil genius, but he’s a genius nonetheless.

This reputation doesn’t survive much contact with reality. Look at most of chess master Putin’s most recent moves, and he looks less like a cunning fox and more like a drunken dog.[4]

Putin’s most recent geopolitical gambles have all had decidedly mixed results. Annexing Crimea resulted in a slew of sanctions against Russia, plus an extremely expensive water shortage in Crimea itself. Intervention in Syria has kept Assad in power but led to terrorist attacks against Russia and the assassination of a Russian diplomat. And meddling in the US election has resulted in a president who stuffs his cabinet with Russia hawks.

As a direct result of his actions, Putin’s Russia is now isolated on the world stage. Following the invasion of Ukraine, his Eurasian Union has become a pipe dream. He’s not a total bungler, but neither is Putin the geopolitical Hannibal Lecter of popular imagination.

Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma (aka Myanmar) spent so long as the female Nelson Mandela that her new image can seem like a betrayal. After decades of speaking out in favor of democracy and against repression, Aung San Suu Kyi shocked the world this year by refusing to condemn the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims by the Burmese army. With around 800,000 of the minority now refugees, Aung San Suu Kyi’s reputation has plunged from “saint” to “ogre.”

There’s just one issue: Aung San Suu Kyi was never a saint. Nor is she an ogre. The truth is way more nuanced than that.[5]

Despite the perception abroad, Burma has not become a democracy. The military still controls the border and the interior ministry and remains in control of defense. If this more open path doesn’t pan out, the generals could still stop the experiment and return the country to a dictatorship. Her whole life, Aung San Suu Kyi has dreamed of guiding Burma to true democracy. By speaking out against the military now, she could imperil the whole process.

It has been said that people are disappointed with Aung San Suu Kyi because they built her up to be a saint, not a politician. But the lady is as concerned with public attitudes as, say, Paul Ryan. And she needs to be. While the violence against the Rohingya is deplorable, Aung San Suu Kyi isn’t a miracle worker. She’s a politician in an extremely difficult position, and her actions sadly reflect that.

Elizabeth II is the most famous queen on Earth not to have had Freddie Mercury in them at some point (unless we’re missing some particularly juicy palace gossip). There are thousands of articles out there listing the weird powers she still holds over Britain and parts of the Commonwealth. Even well-read non-Brits might assume she still has the ability to do some important, queenly stuff.

We’ll set the record straight here. On paper, the queen has a lot of powers. In reality? She probably has less power over the UK than the guy who fetches Theresa May’s tea.[6]

In UK law, a whole bunch of the queen’s powers have been devolved to Parliament and the judiciary. While they may technically lie with the queen, her actually using them would trigger a constitutional crisis, one probably followed by the swift dissolution of the monarchy. The last monarch who refused to sign a bill into law was King George IV in 1829. He was quickly forced into a humiliating public climbdown.

Interestingly, there is one true power the queen has over her subjects: She is immune from prosecution. That means if she wants to neck a crate of beer and get in a fistfight at a soccer match, there’s nothing the police can do to stop her.

Ever since November 2016, a trend has grown in the media for calling new populist politicians “the next Donald Trump.” The latest figure to be graced with this title is Andrej Babis, the newly elected Czech leader. But while such tags may make foreign news easier for readers to digest, it also severely distorts their view of things. Babis is less “the next Trump” and more “a guy who would totally agree with Trump on immigration and Islam but disagree on pretty much everything else.”[7]

Like Trump, Babis is an outsider populist billionaire. Unlike Trump, he’s an experienced member of government (as finance minister), a supporter of the European Union (if not the Euro), and largely lacking in the nationalism that propelled Trump to the presidency. (He advocates a close relationship with Germany, for example.) His ANO party—which means “yes” in Czech—is part of the centrist coalition in the European parliament. When The Washington Post suggested he shared Trump’s fondness for Putin, Babis wrote to them directly, reaffirming his support for NATO.

Babis is also shadier than Trump. While the US president is being investigated for collusion with Russia, Babis is already known to have stolen millions of dollars from a small business fund.

As the region that gave us Che Guevara, it’s perhaps no surprise that South America has a reputation for being a left-wing nirvana. Of the 26 countries that allow gay marriage, four are in the region—the biggest grouping outside of Europe. In the early 2000s, a “pink tide” swamped the southern continent, resulting in eight left-wing governments. Anti-US tirades became a fact of life. Even today, the region is seen as largely anti-US and anti-capitalist.

That image may now be out-of-date. Over a decade after the pink tide, and South America has gone from being a land of rabble-rousing leftists to a place of center-right technocrats.[8]

Both Argentina and Brazil currently have center-right leaders, while Chile’s center-right Sebastian Pinera seems likely to win December’s election. Colombia and Paraguay are led by right-wingers, Peru is lead by a centrist, and Ecuador in 2017 came within a gnat’s hair of electing its first center-right leader in years. Of the remaining leftist governments, only Uruguay is functioning well. Venezuela is about to implode, and Bolivia’s president is trying to remove term limits and become the next Maduro. The leftist dream may not be dead down south, but it is on life support.

President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia is the guy who ended a 52-year civil war. After over five decades locked in a brutal conflict with left-wing insurgents FARC, Santos managed to negotiate a truce that saw one of the largest terrorist groups on Earth voluntarily disarm. He’s since negotiated a cease-fire with smaller rebel group ELN. For his efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

At this point, you may be thinking that Santos sounds like the biggest dove in the Americas. While that’s kinda true, it’s also kinda false. For all he’s embraced peace in the last few years, President Santos started his career as a possible war criminal.

From 2006 to 2009, Santos served as defense minister under President Alvaro Uribe, a period when the war with FARC was at its height. It’s also the period when Colombian soldiers started abducting and killing innocent civilians and dressing them up as guerillas to boost their kill count. Over 2,000 people were killed this way on Santos’s watch.[9] Human rights groups say the knowledge went all the way to the top.

It’s important to note that Santos denies the charges. But it’s also important to note that the ICC wants to indict his former boss for the killings. If Uribe knew about them, there’s no way Santos couldn’t have.

In November 2017, the iron grip of Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe loosened and then shattered in two dramatic weeks. The sudden end of the long-serving authoritarian’s reign should have given pause for thought to dictators everywhere. Perhaps none more so than North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

Although portrayed in the West as faintly comical, Kim is a ruthless operator. The casual cruelty of his purges has given the impression that he’s strong-willed enough to be around forever. But, as Mugabe’s downfall shows, nothing can last forever. And there’s already evidence that Kim’s grasp on power is a lot weaker than most of us think.[10]

Thae Yong Ho is one of the highest-ranking North Korean defectors in history, fleeing the regime in 2016. In January 2017, he gave an interesting speech predicting Kim’s days were numbered. According to Thae, criticism of the regime has been growing as technology makes it easier for North Koreans to see what life is like outside their hermit kingdom. At the same time, Kim’s bloody purges are seeing him lose popularity among the elite.

Far from being unshakeable, Kim may be clinging on for dear life. Here’s to hoping a North Korean spring finally kicks this pudgy despot out of power.