A Book Talk Nov. 4 at Manassas Museum

Author Mary Miley Theobald will debunk many familiar tales from American history during a free book talk at The Manassas Museum, 9101 Prince William Street, Old Town Manassas, on Nov. 4 at 2 p.m.

Theobald collaborated with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation to write her new book, Death by Petticoat, a work that examines dozens of everyday expressions that have may or may not not have basis in truth. Find out if pregnant women secluded themselves indoors, uneven stairs were made to trip up burglars, people bathed once a year, women had tiny waists, and apprenticeships lasted seven years.

Many of the stories Theobald recounts from American history are repeated in everyday conversation and even in museums and classrooms across the country. Some are outright fabrications; others contain a kernel of truth that has been embellished over the years. Theobald has uncovered the truth behind many widely repeated myth-understandings including:

• Hat makers really were driven mad. They were poisoned by the mercury used in making hats from furs. Their symptoms included hallucinations, tremors and twitching, which looked like insanity to people of the 17th and 18th centuries—and the phrase “mad as a hatter” came about.

• The idea that portrait painters gave discounts if their subjects posed with onehand inside the vest (so they didn’t have to paint fingers, which lead to the saying that something “costs an arm and a leg”) is strictly myth. It isn’t likely that Napoleon, King George III, and George Washington were concerned about getting a discount from their portrait painters.