(1) Photo Credits: Irina Mir, dribbble 

Are you a good lie detector? It’s time to put your abilities to the test with the classic icebreaker game, Two Truths and a Lie. Get out your trench coat and magnifying glass, and let’s get cracking on this case! 

How to Play

The following three articles will include an outrageous new historical finding, one fascinating Egyptian myth, and a dive into Disney’s past. Two of them are crazy real stories, while the other is completely bogus! Are you ready to sniff out the lie?

To Remain Among the Living

What does it take to remain in the world of the living? Sounds like a ludicrous question, and yet one Egyptian myth holds the key! Set and Osiris were two brothers in a battle for the throne of Egypt, one with dominion over chaos, the other with powers unforeseen. Set, in a bid for the throne of Egypt, had killed Osiris by scattering him into several tiny pieces for the second time (it was a long story). When Isis, the goddess of magic and the wife of Osiris, was trying to resurrect him by putting his body together, she failed in her quest due to one small mishap—his genitals had been eaten! One missing piece of the puzzle had been eaten by a fish, and so even though Isis reconstructed him with magic, Osiris could not be reborn without every single piece. He became the ruler of the underworld, bound to rest far from the living without his soul.

Disney’s Dark Decades

After Walt’s death in 1966, a period called Disney’s Dark age began. The employees in the Walt Disney company didn’t know what to do after he died. They tried to continue the company in a way that he would’ve wanted it to be run. However, this strategy was unsuccessful!

From 1968-1987, Disney’s Dark age was in full swing. For a little under two decades, every movie they made failed at the box office. Movies like the Fox and the Hound, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Black Cauldron, Robin Hood, Popeye, Pete’s Dragon, and  many more. It wasn’t until The Little Mermaid in 1989 did Disney rekindle the movie magic. 

 How many of these movies have you watched? Probably one or two at most! Give them a try, you might just like them, even if they aren’t the classics you remember.

Was the Lost City of Atlantis Real?

At first thought, Atlantis being real seems impossible! However, scientists and historians believe that this might just be the case. It’s old news that Pompeii was destroyed in 79 AD with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Tales of the legendary city under the sea started springing up not many years after that. 

The first possible mention of Atlantis in written text comes in 107 AD; in the Roman politician and historian Tacitus’ Annals, he describes the sinking of a Roman city on the coast of the Tyrrheian sea during his predecessor Trajan’s rule as emperor. Pompeii is also on the coast of the Tyrrheian sea, and in 79 AD, it was a part of the Roman Empire during Trajan’s rule. 

Similarly, Roman historian Suetonius’s book Faits de Romain (111 AD), suggests that a Roman city sank from Italy’s land mass around 76-81 AD. Suetonius nicknames it the lost sunken city. As far as we know, this could only have been Pompeii. No other lost Roman cities have been found. 

Soon after this book was published, many references to Suetonius’ lost sunken city appeared, each myth crazier than the next. They all had different elements of gods and goddesses mixed up into the story we have today. 

 In recent years, volcanologists and geologists, using seismographs, have found that the Adria micro tectonic plate (Italy has two major tectonic plates, the African and Eurasian and one micro one) sits just under Mount Vesuvius. They now suspect that not only did a volcano erupt, but a disastrous earthquake took place as well—likely pushing a portion of Pompeii into the sea.

Recently, a group of oceanographers found some interesting readings using sonar in the Tyrrhenian sea. The sonar indicated that there was a large and immobile land mass, trapped a hundred feet under the water. Could this possibly be remnants of Pompeii that were pushed into the sea?

Pompeii may not be exactly Atlantis, but if one thing’s for sure, the legend was definitely based off of Pompeii!

Which is the Lie?~

One of those articles was a lie, but which one? You’ll have to guess and see! Hopefully, this article has taught you that just because it seems plausible, it doesn’t mean it’s true! So go do some research and find out, the Two Truths and the Lie!

References 

(only check after you’ve finalized your guess)

1. “UX Case Mascot.” Dribbble, https://dribbble.com/shots/6895075-UX-Case-mascot. 
2. “Http://Www.rebeatmag.com/the-12-Best-Films-of-Disneys-Dark-Age/.” Rebeatmag.com, http://www.rebeatmag.com/the-12-best-films-of-disneys-dark-age/. 
3. “Disney Renaissance.” Disney Wiki, https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Disney_Renaissance. 
4. TEDEducation. “The Egyptian Myth of the Death of Osiris – Alex Gendler.” YouTube, YouTube, 16 July 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5dXz1Tq_Yg. 

written by Kayly Nguyen and Guinevere Schillinger

edited by Sarasi Rout and Tryphena Pilli