Today in things that weren't:

Like the 21st century, it was an era that
was simultaneously inventive and dumb. 

Disabused! That's what I've been. Of a fact I thought was a fact but is actually not, and now the world is slightly less interesting. What fact?  you might ask. Well, let me tell you. I read this book a couple of years ago called How Shakespeare Changed Everything by Stephen Marche both because I'm pretentious and because I find the early modern period of European history fascinating. It's sort of the transition between the Middle Ages and the now times. Like, they had the printing press and double entry accounting, but still bled people with leaches and believed in unicorns. 

Above: Schieffelin, looking
exactly like you'd expect a 19th
century eco-terrorist to look. 

But this isn't about that exactly, this is about a 19th century pharmaceutical company owner called Eugene Schieffelin. But unlike contemporary pharma bros, Schieffelin was into things like nature and the environment and Shakespeare instead of profiting off of human misery--although, it was the 19th century and profiting off of human mystery was like all rich people did back then, so it was probably more of a yes and. Doesn't matter, the point is that he was a member of something called the American Acclimatization Society who decided, in classic old tyme disregard for environmental concerns, to bring European bird species to the US. Sort of like feathered colonialism. But not just any birds, but birds referenced in Shakespeare's plays. The work of an obsessed fan, right? It would be like learning to speak elvish because you're just super into Tolkien. And also in this scenario, speaking elvish has dire ecological consequences.

It turns out that research requires
 more than access to google.

Ok, bad example, but it's still an interesting story, right? Yes, but then a YouTuber I watched this evening said it was nonsense. So which is it? Desperate to know one way or there other, I did my own research (research being defined a brief internet search until one finds the website or article that aligns with whatever point one is trying to make) and yeah. Whomp whomp. While Schiefflin did bring starlings to North America, he wasn't the only one to do so, and it probably had nothing to do with Shakespeare.  

A nature writer in the 1940's who didn't bother to verify the story, just repeated it as fact, resulting in the wide acceptance of the story today. And thus a story about how one nerd's obsession with Shakespeare being directly responsible for the introduction of an entire species to a region it has no business being is now just a story about the reckless but successful introduction of an entire species to a region it has no business being. But this time without the fandom. 

Above: perhaps nature's most basic bird,
now stripped of the one thing that made it interesting.