The biggest scandals to ever hit the History Channel

Long ago, when the internet was young and facts still had meaning, there was a television network known as the History Channel. It featured shows about history. You know, past events that actually happened in real life? The channel specialized in documentaries about wide-ranging subjects, like World War II and the aftermath of World War II. It had adequate ratings and a solid audience of dads. But then something happened (extraterrestrial intervention?), and the History Channel began to pivot away from strictly historical programming. Instead, we were presented with a slew of reality shows about pawn shops, swamp people, and truckers driving on icy roads, plus a whole bunch of incoherent "documentary" series about how aliens built the pyramids (they didn't) and how Bigfoot was finally captured by scientists (he wasn't).

This baffling switch from history to nonsense has been a huge ratings boost for the channel, which has since rebranded from "The History Channel" to the sleeker, increasingly inaccurate name of "History." However, it has also landed the former History Channel in a whole lot of hot water. Here are some of the biggest scandals to hit the History Channel, and historical inaccuracy is just the beginning.

Ancient Aliens might hold the dubious crown of the History Channel's least historical show. It's well known for featuring men with wild haircuts spouting conspiracy theories about aliens and pyramids, but the show has also made its way onto Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch blog for showcasing so many white supremacist theories.

Yeah, Ancient Aliens might seem like a bit of silly, conspiratorial fun at first. But the idea that ancient African, Asian, and Native American architectural marvels could have only been built by some kind of mysterious, alien entity isn't a new one. Hatewatch reminds us that this concept was actually used as one of Andrew Jackson's justifications for the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Jackson insisted that Native Americans could not possibly have built all those big, cool, ancient mounds scattered throughout North America, and therefore they had murdered the magical super-race that came before them, and therefore the Trail of Tears was totally okay and scientifically sound.

In fact, quite a lot of white supremacist literature over the years has suggested that non-European civilizations didn't really build any wonders of the past, and that ancient Aryans are somehow secretly responsible. Switch out Aryans for aliens and you can see why some people find the show so distasteful. And, as Hyperallergic points out, we already know how the pyramids were built (ramps). Insisting on aliens at this point is more than a little willfully ignorant.

Swamp People rounds out the chaotic triumvirate of the History Channel's most inexplicable reality shows, alongside Ice Road Truckers and Pawn Stars. Instead of trucking or pawning, though, Swamp People follows the lives of alligator hunters living in Louisiana. Of course, alligators seem to be the least of the cast's worries. Sure, some of the alligator violence is exaggerated for dramatic effect, but according to TMZ, Swamp People stars R.J. Molinere and Jay Paul Molinere really were arrested for attacking a man with a beer bottle. TMZ also reported that Trapper Joe was arrested for burning his girlfriend with a lit cigarette and then punching her in the chest. Screenrant detailed a time that Roger Rivers Jr. got in trouble with the law for selling illegal meat.

The swamp people of Swamp People proved so troublesome, in fact, that the History Channel decided to just replace them. Starcasm reports that most of the cast was suddenly fired before season seven of the popular reality show, shocking fans and sending angry cast members into social media rants. The cast has denied rumors that they asked for more money, and they were vocally displeased with the network's abrupt, unexplained decision. Producers held firm, though, and remaining fans just had to deal with a whole new bunch of (hopefully less violent) swamp people.

If the History Channel isn't yelling about aliens or pawn shops, there's a very good chance they're following up on a debunked conspiracy theory about Hitler. The channel was jokingly known as the "Hitler Channel" in the '90s, after all, and they haven't forgotten their roots. According to Variety, the show Hunting Hitler upset plenty of people by trivializing Hitler and giving credence to weird conspiracy theories about his escape to Argentina. The program was framed like any other thrilling cold case reality show, without much reverence for the fact that Hitler is a little less whimsical than Bigfoot. Even more upsetting is the fact that the History Channel promised anonymity to one of their key sources, and then clearly broadcast his entire face (an unpixelated version of the shot above) to more than 180 countries.

As the New York Daily News reports, the grandson of a Nazi war criminal agreed to appear on the program with the understanding that his face would be pixelated to protect him from the kind of people who are jazzed about watching Hunting Hitler. They do blur his face out — except for one shot where it is clearly visible, an obvious editing error that could have had serious consequences for someone who really doesn't want to broadcast that his grandfather was a Nazi.

Everything about The Curse of Oak Island feels totally fake, or at the very least just stupid. Like oh, wow, look, it's a piece of wood. That probably has nothing to do with the fact that human beings have been building stuff for thousands of years and the island is covered with wood. But hey, no one can really say for sure where those bits of wood came from, so go ahead and call that proof of buried treasure. Knock yourself out. 

But here's a piece of so-called evidence that we know is fake: the Oak Island map that appeared during season 6. This particular map includes a drawing of the island and looks like it got torn out of a journal someone purchased at the Dollar Tree, but the notes are in French. That means it's authentic, right? According to the show, this map is somehow supposed to be connected to a much more mysterious and valuable "Templar document."

But according to Donald Ruh, who was once in possession of both of those documents, the two have nothing to do with each other. In fact, Ruh believes that the Oak Island Map is actually a fabrication, created by someone in the 1970s (which, granted, does predate the Dollar Tree). If the show's use of those two pieces of evidence is what amounts to "proof," we don't really think much of everything else that's happening on Oak Island.

It was already somewhat debatable whether a TV adaptation of the Bible really belonged on the History Channel in the first place. Nevertheless, the mini-series The Bible was a huge hit for the network in 2014 ... except for that one slip-up where the producers cast an actor who looked a whole lot like President Barack Obama to play the devil. Whoops. As described in the Guardian, the comparison went viral almost immediately after the 10-hour mini-series first premiered. You couldn't throw a stone emoji without hitting several hundred posts of Obama's face next to Moroccan actor Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni (who, to credit his devilish acting, definitely looks grumpier than the president). Producer Roma Downey claimed the resemblance was a total coincidence and that the controversy was complete nonsense and exactly what the devil would have wanted, but the damage was already done.

Time reported that when The Bible producers cut down their series for the feature-length film version, Son of God, they decided to nix Satan entirely, hoping audiences would focus their attention on Jesus instead.

History's Mountain Men is totally about history, because it features people pretending like they are living in the 17th century ... except for when they watch television while no one is looking.

One of the stars of Mountain Men is Eustace Conway, and his deal is teaching people how to be self-sufficient and also how to be super pretentious about their self-sufficiency. "Like Thoreau," says Conway's bio, "Eustace has gone to the woods to live deliberately, fronting only the essential facts of life, to see if he could not learn what it had to teach, and not when he came to die discover that he had not lived." Oh wow, dude, seriously? Yeah, he's that kind of guy.

When he's not being pretentious on Mountain Men, he's being pretentious on his 1,000-acre wildlife preserve in North Carolina, where he teaches people how to live in the wilderness for a mere $700 a week, or $65 an hour if you'd rather just spend an afternoon riding around in a horse-drawn carriage. According to The Wall Street Journal, the preserve was recently raided by health, construction, and fire officials who deemed many of Conway's buildings "[not] fit for public use." But you know, Daniel Boon's outbuildings also weren't fit for public use, and you didn't see health inspectors crawling all over his property. Modern safety standards are so unfair.

Pawn Stars is a wildly popular History Channel reality show, featuring the supposedly "real" day-to-day activities of the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas. Much like Ice Road Truckers, the show has been widely criticized for having a rather loose definition of reality, and the shop itself has previously gotten into trouble over some of its merchandise. According to ABC News, they may have once melted down $50,000 worth of stolen coins. But the most valuable treasures at the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, apparently, are the titular Pawn Stars themselves.

Huffington Post reported in 2012 that the former talent agents of the Pawn Stars stars were suing their ex-clients for switching agencies, demanding $5 million in lost commissions. The agency, Venture IAB Inc., claimed that History Channel executives had intentionally seduced the stars away from their original representation, convincing them to hire Venture rival Michael Camacho of UTA as their agent instead and losing Venture millions they would have made on that sweet, sweet pawn shop TV drama. It's unclear what happened with the lawsuit, which usually means it was either dismissed or settled out of court.

Counting Cars is totally about history because its star has a core value system from 1969.

The fact that Danny Koker is living in a hippy-hating, muscle car-loving, masculine stereotype with its roots in a gentler time, when no one cared about things like being able to breathe or actually see the horizon is not too surprising. He's a car guy, and he likes combustion engines, loud noises, and high speed, and really none of those things are compatible with a world in which people can breathe or see the horizon.

"Prius, I've got no use for," he told the Canadian Morning Show in 2013. "If it gets 4 miles to the gallon and has 800 horsepower, I'm thrilled. We've got more oil than we can shake a stick at. The politicians are playing a game. Let's burn this stuff and have a good time."

So okay, we get it Danny. Clean air isn't exactly good for your bottom line. But most people can't spend 40 bucks a day on a 5-mile round-trip commute, either, so you might want to rethink your opinion about fuel economy just a little.

Reality television is part exploitation, part making fun of people who deserve it, and part totally, utterly, and completely fake. But there are lines that even reality television producers try not to cross, and the producers of American Jungle definitely crossed one or two of them. It's one thing to exploit swamp people or weird mountain men who maybe want to be exploited, and it's quite another to exploit native people who do not want to be exploited.

The 2013 show American Jungle was short-lived, so you might not even remember it. Basically, it was a show about native Hawaiians from rival clans fighting each other over hunting rights. Just reading that synopsis probably gave you a bad taste in your mouth, but for some reason it never occurred to anyone at the network that pushing a false narrative about native people and simultaneously misrepresenting their history was a terrible idea. The Hawaiian government was certainly not amused, claiming the show might have been entirely faked and that it was culturally insensitive regardless. According to CBS, the show depicted illegal activities, too, such as hunting at night and hunting feral cattle without a permit. We're not sure how much any of this had to do with the show's swift cancellation, but it didn't get past its first eight episodes.

Sons of Liberty is what American history would look like if the Founding Fathers were all moonlighting as characters on Riverdale. If you believe that the Founding Fathers were hot, mostly-young men who were super-athletic and totally rocked those tricorn hats, you might also be tempted to think you can get an American history education by devoting a few hours to this miniseries. But you would be totally wrong.

History (real history, lowercase "h") remembers the Sam Adams of 1765 as a middle-aged dude with a paunch, but in Sons of Liberty he's, um, not. In fact, he's not only swoonworthy, he's also surprisingly nimble for a 43-year-old dude. And that's not the show's only inaccuracy — the Journal of the American Revolution listed 22 missteps just in the first episode.

Now, this is historical fiction, and almost every piece of historical fiction ever written contains inaccuracies — sometimes it's just sloppy research, and sometimes it's done deliberately so events will be more entertaining, or because the storyline needs to move along more quickly than actual history does. It's called creative license, but the problem with using it in History (the channel, uppercase "h") dramas is that just about everyone who watches is going to assume that the things unfolding on the screen come directly from history. So when you tune into Sons of Liberty, it's worth keeping this in mind: Fiction is fiction, whether it's on HBO or History.

Reality television stars exist in that messed-up void between fame and "dude, no one knows who you are." Some of them are really bad at walking that line. You see, truly famous people can mess up spectacularly, crawl off to their mansions to lick their wounds, and then have a near-complete career rebound. Reality TV stars don't usually recover from their spectacular screw-ups because at the end of the day, no one really cares that much about what happens to them.

Joseph Frontiera had a comfy little stint as a reality TV star/background character on the History series "Counting Cars," but then he blew it — or at least, that's what a lawsuit filed against him by his former employers at Count's Kustoms says. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Frontiera was accused of embezzling around $75,000 from the shop and using the money to buy plane tickets and make a down payment on a Range Rover. How did he do this? His accusers think he made rubber stamp copies of the company bosses' signatures so the company's checking account could become his own personal checking account.

This scandal was big news for a while, but the resolution hasn't been as widely reported. Court records show that in April 2019, Count's Kustoms won the case against Frontiera, who was ordered to pay $41,000 in restitution and costs.

Who doesn't love a good Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory? Most people, actually, but that didn't stop History from airing a long series called "The Men Who Killed Kennedy." Originally created by ITV in 1988, History Channel re-aired it in 2003 and filmed several new episodes series aired as part of History's 40th anniversary, um, celebration(?) of that moment that ended America's innocence and spawned a whole generation of nutjobs who sit around in their parents' basements trying to find sinister messages in famous people's tweets.

According to the L.A. Times, the only people who really paid attention to the series were the relatives of Lyndon B. Johnson because an episode called "The Guilty Men" basically concluded that it was Johnson himself who plotted to kill Kennedy so he could become president himself. Johnson's family wanted to be able to rebut the episode, and History Channel tried to appease them by saying they'd hire some experts to review the episode that they already knew was fabricated crap, you know, just in case it contained even more crap that they didn't already know about. And then, if they found more crap, they promised to air another program that would publicly debunk the theory they already knew was total crap.

Well, their experts must have found something implausible in "The Guilty Men," because History did issue an apology during a one-hour special entitled "The Guilty Men: A Historical Review," which concluded that the original episode should have never been broadcast.

The Knights Templar had a cool name, even though no one has any idea what the heck a "Templar" is but whatever. They were mysterious, they were powerful, and they looked awesome in chain mail. Well, we can't really confirm that last bit but of course they did.

The Knights were originally supposed to protect pilgrims crossing into the Holy Land, but here's the deal: They acquired the blessing of the Pope, who exempted them from taxes and other rules that applied to non-Templar people, and they eventually became really, really rich. So rich that they set up a bunch of banks so pilgrims could withdraw money once they were in the holy land and not have to worry about getting robbed en route. Yes, you read that correctly, they were bankers.

Not so according to History's "Knightfall," though. In "Knightfall," the Knights Templar are an elite fighting force who look great in chain mail and have a lot of affairs and get sweaty but still somehow manage to stay sexy underneath all the blood. According to Salon, the show kind of has to embellish the Knights because they probably weren't really an elite fighting force so much as a powerful financial institution, and King Philip IV of France probably took them down because he owed them money. You might get a few guys on Wall Street to tune in for that show, but History's viewers probably prefer the fiction.

History doesn't exactly shy away from the morbid or the tasteless, so it should have surprised no one when they publicly announced they'd be making a documentary that would end spectacularly with the exhumation of a corpse. Can't ... wait?

John Dillinger, in case you need a refresher, was a gangster who gained infamy in the 1930s for robbing banks and also for being handsome. The punchline of Dillinger's story is that he was taken down by the FBI and then buried under 3 feet of concrete, and ever since there are people who say it wasn't really John Dillinger who got shot by the FBI that night, hence all the concrete.

According to the Chicago Tribune, this rumor has persisted for so long that Dillinger's relatives decided to have him exhumed in order to finally answer the question, and History was all, "Cool, let's get that on video." As it turns out, though, it's not actually that easy to get permission to dig up a corpse, and Dillinger's family had to abandon the idea after a judge dismissed their case against the cemetery, which had denied permission for the exhumation. Before that decision, though, History decided to back out of the project. They didn't say why, but it might have had something to do with the fact that digging up corpses is morbid and morally bankrupt. Then again, that hasn't stopped History before.