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Forget 'walking the plank.' Pirate portrayals—from Blackbeard to Captain Kidd—are more fantasy than fact.
How we think famous swashbucklers walked, talked, and dressed didn't come from the history books, so where did these pirate myths come from?
An illustration from 19th-century artist Howard Pyle depicts a man being forced to walk the plank. Although there is no record of this type of punishment, it remains popular in pirate mythology.
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