Original subtitles

On this episode of "Expedition Files."

In 1968, the USS Scorpion disappears without a trace.

Accident or act of war?

Did a Soviet spy inside the U.S. Navy help destroy it?

For six decades, the truth has been submerged...

until now.

And Paul Revere famously saved America on his Midnight Ride,

during the Revolutionary War.

But does he deserve all the credit?

Remarkable research changes everything we think we know

about the birth of our nation.

The British are coming!

Then, a shocking claim.

John Wilkes Booth, the killer of Abraham Lincoln,

wasn't captured and killed at all,

but instead lived on to meet a far stranger end.

We dig into this mind-blowing theory.

In the corridors of time...

Are mysteries that defy explanation.

Now, I'm traveling through history itself...

on a search for the truth.

New evidence.

Shocking answers.

I'm Josh Gates.

And these...

are my "Expedition Files."

There are many things we know about America.

Truths held self-evident.

We have 50 states, we love freedom,

we sing the national anthem off key before every baseball game,

and our idea of a small soda

is still larger than any other nation on Earth.

But tonight isn't about what we know about America.

It's about what we don't.

So, prepare to look beneath the stars and stripes

to uncover three American mysteries.

We begin in Spain, of all places.

It's May of 1968, and the Cold War is running red hot,

as we dive into the enigmatic fate of one

of America's most valuable military assets.

We're on base at Naval Station Rota,

and behind me is the USS Scorpion,

a skipjack-class, nuclear-powered submarine

about to depart for its home in Norfolk, Virginia,

due to arrive in two weeks' time.

But this sub and all 99 men aboard will disappear.

No distress call, no survivors.

And what the Navy knows, well, that's classified.

But then, more than 50 years later, a whistleblower claiming

to have inside information will come forward to disclose

something that, if true, would be one of the most

well-kept secrets of the Cold War.

Is the fate of the Scorpion an accident or an attack?

Commissioned in 1960, the USS Scorpion is one

of the Navy's most advanced nuclear attack subs,

designed to be virtually undetectable by the enemy.

Powered by a nuclear reactor, it's built to run silently

and stay submerged for months.

At 252 feet long, about the length of a city block,

it can reach 33 knots underwater,

nearly 40 miles an hour.

Armed with classified weapons, including two nuclear warheads,

it's one of the deadliest and most stealthy assets

in the U.S. Navy.

Here at the Submarine Force Atlantic headquarters

in Norfolk, Virginia, radio men like Mike Hannon

monitor the Scorpion and every other U.S.

submarine operating in the Atlantic.

While here, beneath the waves, the Scorpion spends most

of her time training to hunt Soviet subs.

But there's a problem.

The Scorpion isn't exactly shipshape.

The sub has been racking up maintenance headaches.

There's a hydraulic leak they can't fix

and a persistently faulty trash disposal unit.

The crew starts calling it "Scrap Iron."

Despite this, in February of 1968,

the submarine gets cleared for duty

and begins patrols of the Mediterranean.

For three months, the Scorpion travels

throughout the Med, it doesn't find any threats.

And on May 17th, its mission is scheduled to come to an end.

Its last stop is the port of Rota, Spain, before it turns

west into the Atlantic and heads home.

On May 21st, the crew radios in from roughly 250 miles

southwest of the Azores Islands of Portugal.

They estimate they'll be back in Norfolk in six days' time.

May 27th, 1968,

the USS Scorpion is finally due home.

Families gather at the pier, eager to welcome their loved

ones, but something is terribly wrong, and Radioman Second

Class Mike Hannon suspects it.

It's Hannon's job to track messages from the subs at sea.

The Scorpion hasn't sent one in six days.

He's praying there's some logical explanation,

but there's no sign of the Scorpion.

The developing story out of Norfolk...

By 6 PM, the evening news is painting

an unsettling picture.

The nuclear submarine USS Scorpion

was scheduled to arrive in Norfolk

this morning, but Navy officials

say the vessel has yet to make contact.

That's right. Families worry as the status

of the crew of naval submarine Scorpion remains unknown.

It's been almost a week since the Navy has received

communication from the vessel.

The next day, word spreads across the country.

A nuclear-powered submarine is missing.

And with Soviet tensions at an all-time high, the Navy

is looking to avoid a panic.

The government tries to keep a lid on things,

quietly sending search vessels out,

framed as routine operations.

But behind the scenes, there's much more urgency

as the Atlantic Fleet surges into action.

Dozens of ships and aircraft search

for the missing submarine.

They scour the Scorpion's projected path

from the Azores all the way to Norfolk.

Weeks pass, and the Navy offers no explanation to the families

who are desperate for answers.

But the operation presses on.

And then, five months in, using cutting-edge sonar

and underwater camera systems, the Navy pulls off

the seemingly impossible.

They find the Scorpion.

The wreck of the submarine sits 9,800 feet below the surface

of the Atlantic, approximately 400 miles southwest

of the Azores.

The submarine is badly damaged, its hull shattered.

What could have caused this catastrophe?

And was the Scorpion's nickname of "Scrap Iron"

an omen of her destruction?

The Navy's official inquiry is contentious,

with various theories hotly debated.

Some experts blame structural failure or a hydrogen explosion

during a battery charge.

Others believe one of the sub's own torpedoes accidentally

detonated, imploding the ship.

The investigation suspected some form of explosion,

but lacked the evidence to prove its cause,

ultimately determining that the reason the USS Scorpion

sunk, quote, "Cannot be definitely ascertained."

For the next 50 years, the loss of the Scorpion

will remain one of the Cold War's biggest mysteries.

But now, former Navy radio operator Mike Hannon has come

forward with a stunning claim, that the Navy knew far more

than it ever told the public.

He believes the destruction of the Scorpion and the deaths

of her crew was no accident.

At the time the Scorpion was sunk,

I was a service clerk

responsible for all incoming and outgoing messages.

One of those messages was what's known in the Navy

as a "check report."

Check report is a very simple message sent

encrypted by a submarine when it is on patrol.

The Scorpion was on a 24-hour check report

until we want to hear from them every 24 hours.

The message simply would say,

"Check 24. Submarine Scorpion."

So when no check report arrived, Hannon knew something

was wrong, very wrong.

Any news on Scorpion?

When the daily check reports stopped,

Navy command pulled data

from the U.S. Sound Surveillance System,

a vast network of underwater hydrophones

designed to detect and track submarines across

the world's oceans.

Mike Hannon viewed a visualization of that data

and believes he saw something that changes everything.

They showed me the tape, and you could clearly see

it squiggling up and down the line.

And you could see, boom, here, a couple seconds later,

boom, there. Two distinct torpedo hits.

And the Scorpion was sunk.

After the two explosions, they could determine

that a Russian submarine in that immediate area

sped up, surfaced,

and left.

Hannon believes the hydrophone recording

is a smoking gun, proving the Scorpion was sunk

in a Soviet submarine attack.

But there is one big problem.

The tape Mike claims he saw of the hydrophone recording,

in the 60 years since,

no one else has ever reported seeing it.

And even if we do take Mike at his word,

there's another question.

How were the Soviets able to locate a stealth submarine?

Mike believes he has the answer.

His co-worker was a Russian spy.

A bombshell claim from former Navy radioman Mike Hannon,

suggests the USS Scorpion submarine wasn't lost

to an accident, but instead was destroyed in a calculated

Soviet torpedo strike.

But if the Scorpion was

a virtually undetectable stealth sub,

how could the Soviets have found it?

The answer wouldn't surface until nearly two decades later,

with revelations about John Walker Jr.,

a chief warrant officer in the Norfolk Communications Office,

alongside radioman Mike Hannon when the Scorpion vanished.

In the 1980s, he was officially outed as a spy and sentenced

to life in prison in one of the most damaging security

breaches in naval history. Walker had been passing

the U.S. Navy's most closely guarded secrets to the Soviets,

including top secret submarine patrol schedules.

If the Soviets had access to the Scorpion's navigation plan,

they would have known exactly where she was headed

and could have been waiting to strike.

We had a row of teletype machines

where messages were coming in.

And I had noticed that Walker would go back there

and just go down the line, looking at the messages

on each of the machines.

I said, "Why all of a sudden is Walker interested in all

of these damn messages?"

I think there's a good possibility

that Walker could have been involved.

And there's no doubt in my mind that a Soviet submarine

fired two torpedoes and sank the Scorpion,

no doubt whatsoever.

And I will take those feelings to my grave with me.

Soviet spy John Walker Jr. died in prison in 2014

without ever being directly linked to the fate

of the Scorpion.

Many experts are also skeptical of Mike's theory,

noting that the wreck shows no clear sign

of an external torpedo attack

and that the sub likely imploded due to an unknown

catastrophic event, which means that for Mike and the families

of those aboard, there's no emotional closure to the case.

It was painful then and for all the years since.

I knew 10 of those guys...

closely.

The scar that that's left on me,

seldom does a night go by

that I don't have that whole situation go through my head

and wake-- wake me up.

If you had seen those families

on that pier, their anticipation,

and their dads are coming home

or significant others are coming home,

it-- it broke my heart.

I know that I've said information that's still

top secret, but I'm not going to die with the people of America

not knowing what happened with that submarine

and its 99 dedicated sailors.

Over a decade ago, a submarine veterans group

petitioned the government to reopen the case to determine

the true cause of the Scorpion's sinking.

So far, the Navy has declined.

Today, the USS Scorpion still lies at a depth of nearly

10,000 feet on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean,

as does her nuclear reactor.

The Navy monitors the area for signs of radioactivity,

but the sub itself remains off limits, a silent steel tomb

for 99 sailors who made

the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

From a submarine lost at sea,

to the loss of an American president.

It's April 26, 1865.

The Civil War is at an end,

and Abraham Lincoln has just been murdered.

And inside this blazing barn is the man who shot him.

Throw down your arms and come out!

History records that in a few minutes, gunfire will ring out,

and John Wilkes Booth will die.

But soon, a conspiracy theory will emerge,

one of the strangest theories you could possibly imagine,

that John Wilkes Booth doesn't perish tonight,

that he escapes, slips into a new identity,

only to end up as--

well, I don't want to spoil it for you.

Just get ready for a wild ride as we use high-tech analysis

to unravel the mind-blowing mystery

surrounding America's most infamous assassin.

Our strange story really begins 12 days before the barn.

After four long years of bloodshed,

the Civil War is finally over.

President Abraham Lincoln is taking a rare night out

to celebrate, enjoying the play "Our American Cousin"

at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.

But just as the performance reaches its climax,

a single gunshot rings out.

Lincoln has been murdered in cold blood.

The killer leaps from Lincoln's box onto the stage.

He lands on both feet, hard. His leg is now broken.

Sic semper tyrannis!

The South will be avenged!

Many in the audience wonder

if this is all part of the play.

That's because the man who just jumped on stage is one

of the most famous actors in America, John Wilkes Booth.

Before anyone can react, he flees the stage.

He shot the president!

Stop that man!

Booth rides off into the darkness and vanishes.

Sparking one of the most frantic manhunts in American history.

According to some reports, he alters his appearance,

shaving off his trademark mustache

to avoid being recognized.

As word of Lincoln's assassination spreads,

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton locks down Washington,

sealing bridges and dispatching teams of soldiers,

detectives, and bounty hunters to track Booth's escape.

A staggering $50,000 bounty, over a million dollars today,

is placed on Booth's head.

After 12 days of desperate searching, finally,

there's a break.

A tip leads Union soldiers to a farm two miles

from Port Royal, Virginia.

Two men are said to be hiding there,

one matching the description of John Wilkes Booth.

The soldiers are under clear orders to take Booth alive

so he can expose any possible Confederate conspiracy.

So the soldiers set the barn ablaze,

hoping to force Booth out.

Which brings us back here to the besieged barn.

According to the account of the Union soldiers,

they first demand the two men inside surrender.

- Eventually, one man emerges. - You, come out!

It's David Herold, one of Booth's accomplices.

But the other man refuses to come outside.

Sargent Boston Corbett then confronts Booth

through the doors of the barn.

Come out, Booth! You're surrounded!

Fearing the suspect is about to fire,

he has no choice but to bring him down.

The soldiers say they drag him, barely alive,

onto the farmhouse porch.

In his pockets, the soldiers find

Booth's diary.

Paralyzed from the gunshot, he apparently

can't lift his arms.

With his final breath, he stares down at his hands

and whispers two words.

Useless.

Dawn is breaking, and John Wilkes Booth is dead.

After 12 days on the run,

the man who killed Abraham Lincoln has met his end.

In the aftermath of Booth's death, the body is brought

aboard the Union ironclad ship, the USS Montauk,

where a surgeon performs an autopsy.

Fearing his remains might be stolen or desecrated,

Booth's body is then placed at a D.C. penitentiary

before ultimately being interred in a family plot

at Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore.

Meanwhile, four people, including David Herold

from the barn fire, are found guilty of conspiracy

to assassinate Lincoln

and are hanged on July 7th, 1865.

It would seem this tragic case has come to a close,

but there are those that believe there's much more to the story.

Enter Texas attorney Finis Bates, who publishes a book

in 1907 called "The Escape and Suicide

of John Wilkes Booth."

In its pages Bates recounts the purportedly true

jaw-dropping story

of a man he befriended named John St. Helen.

In 1878, St. Helen falls gravely ill.

And, believing he's about to die,

makes an outrageous confession.

Our name is not John St. Helen.

My real name is John Wilkes Booth.

He says he is the assassin of Abraham Lincoln.

According to Bates' tell-all book, John Wilkes Booth

didn't die in that barn at all.

He escaped justice and spent the rest of his life hiding

behind a false identity.

Now, that might sound like a crazy claim, but I promise

we're just getting warmed up, because John Wilkes Booth

then allegedly becomes an actual mummy in a traveling sideshow.

Seriously.

In 1878, a man on his deathbed,

named John St. Helen confesses an astonishing secret.

He claims to be Abraham Lincoln's killer,

John Wilkes Booth, and says he faked his death,

escaping capture.

The man explains that, after assassinating Lincoln,

he escaped through Southern Maryland,

hidden in the back of a wagon,

and slipped back into Virginia.

However, at one point, in order to avoid capture,

St. Helen abandoned the wagon and fled into the woods.

But, in doing so, he lost his diary.

St. Helen says he sent a messenger,

a Confederate soldier known only as Ruddy,

back for the diary.

Ruddy collected it, but then panicked upon seeing

the Union troops and fled to a nearby barn,

where he apparently ended up alongside

fellow Confederate conspirator David Herold.

St. Helen says it was his messenger who was shot

and killed in the barn that night.

But, because the man resembled him and carried his diary,

it led Union troops to mistakenly identify

the messenger as Booth.

St. Helen said in the years that followed,

he assumed various aliases, constantly on the move

to avoid capture.

I need to show you something.

After telling this extraordinary tale

to Finis Bates, St. Helen presents an original photograph

of John Wilkes Booth as proof,

implying that only the real Booth

would possess such a picture.

But that's far from the end of this twisted tale.

Following his dramatic deathbed confession that

he is John Wilkes Booth, St. Helen recovers

and promptly disappears.

Bates keeps the photograph,

but it would be another 25 years,

in 1903, before he sees St. Helen again,

only this time, the man is definitely dead.

Bates says he came across a newspaper article

from Enid, Oklahoma, describing how a local mortuary

had the preserved body of a drifter.

The newspaper also reported the deceased man had been

living under the name David E. George,

but before he died, claimed to be John Wilkes Booth.

One look at the photo of David E. George

and Bates was certain it was the same man he'd met

years earlier in Texas, John St. Helen.

A few years later, Bates actually buys the corpse,

just as he's preparing to publish a book,

detailing the wild tale of Booth's escape and secret life.

With the mummified body in tow and a sensational story

to promote, Bates is ready to take his show on the road.

For the next 70 years, the so-called Booth Mummy

takes to the stage, touring America with multiple circus

productions, often with the less than subtle billing,

"See the Man Who Murdered Lincoln."

The attraction even makes it to the World's Fair.

The mummy is a hit, but is there any shred of truth

to its origin?

Author Jane Singer has studied the legend closely.

What's remarkable to me is how many people genuinely believed

that John Wilkes Booth did not die in that barn.

Was there a government conspiracy to suppress

the fact that Booth really didn't die on April 26, 1865?

A lot of people believed there was.

Enough people probably believed and were suspicious

of the government because toward the end of the Civil War,

before Abraham Lincoln was killed,

it was a very hard-handed regime.

In order to win this war, Abraham Lincoln first had

to suspend the right of habeas corpus.

Can't have a trial. If you're a traitor,

you get hauled off to jail.

And then we have General William Tecumseh Sherman

marching from Memphis to the sea and literally

destroying much of the Confederacy.

And so, to believe that that government was not trustworthy,

I don't think was such a far reach for a lot of people.

And let's be real, it would have been a terrible look

for the Union if Lincoln's killer had just slipped away.

But Singer isn't buying the conspiracy.

Why? Because the soldiers at Garrett Farms swore up and down

they knew exactly who they had.

And other experts also corroborated

it was John Wilkes Booth.

When we are looking at Finis Bates' theory,

that John Wilkes Booth escaped

not just the burning barn, but death,

it doesn't add up, because there were credible

witnesses called to come to the Montauk

and identify the body.

Dr. John Frederick May was a renowned Washington, D.C.

physician who had removed a fibroid tumor from Booth's

neck about three months before the assassination, and it left

quite a vivid scar.

And May allegedly said, "That's the scar.

That's the person I operated on."

Unmistakable, in his opinion.

Charles Dawson, who was a clerk at the National Hotel

where Booth stayed, when he first saw the body

of John Wilkes Booth, he said, "Oh my goodness,

"on the right hand between

"the thumb and finger was a tattoo with the initials JWB

tattooed in India ink." And young Dawson said,

"That's the tattoo I repeatedly

when Booth signed the guest register."

These were ordinary folks.

It would be highly unlikely that the official autopsy

of record would be part of some overreaching conspiracy.

And what of John St. Helen, the mummified man who insisted

he was the real Booth?

A forensic team recently used facial recognition technology

to render a definitive answer to his conspiratorial claim.

In 2020, the Smithsonian Institution

created a Civil War sleuth facial recognition software.

They compared the face of John Wilkes Booth to the face

of John St. Helen's.

During the testing of the photographs,

there were data points that weren't matching.

It was clear that John Wilkes Booth in photograph,

John St. Helen in photograph,

couldn't possibly be the same person.

So after 147 years, we can finally scientifically

declare that John St. Helen is not John Wilkes Booth.

More than likely, Finis Bates spun the fanciful tale

for pure profit, using the story and the mummy

to promote book sales.

But conspiracies don't die quietly.

As recently as 2010, Booth's descendants lobbied

to have his remains exhumed and his DNA tested.

The request was denied.

Regardless, I think it's safe to say if you happen to pass

a carnival with a sign hawking a John Wilkes Booth mummy,

that's one sideshow you can happily avoid.

I'm at a pub in Boston, Massachusetts,

on April 18, 1775.

And even though the beer is flowing, the mood is

anything but celebratory.

These colonists, still technically British citizens,

have been under the thumb of the crown

for years, and they have reached their breaking point.

A revolution is brewing.

And militia commander Joseph Warren here

has received word that the British are planning

to strike back tomorrow morning.

They need to take action now.

And what happens next will become the stuff of legend,

because the commander dispatches this man,

Paul Revere, to set out on a dangerous mission.

The story goes that, after leaving the tavern,

Revere spots two lanterns hanging in a church,

signaling the British are attacking by sea.

And so he begins his famous Midnight Ride.

His words echoing through history.

The British are coming!

British are coming!

The British are coming!

Revere's heroic ride will be remembered as saving America,

one man alone protecting the birth of a new nation.

But 250 years later, evidence will reveal

that almost everything we think we know about Paul Revere's

fateful night is in need of a rewrite.

In 1775, the year of his famed ride, Paul Revere

is a silversmith living in Boston,

struggling to make ends meet.

Britain has imposed taxes on the colonies,

causing a recession, and spawning

the "Taxation Without Representation" movement.

The most onerous tax is known as the Stamp Act,

requiring the colonies to purchase special paper

for all printed materials.

The tax's true purpose is to raise money for the occupying

British troops, essentially picking

the colonists' pockets to pay for their very own oppressors.

In response, some colonists, including Revere,

form a clandestine militia known as the "Sons of Liberty"

to battle the British.

One of their most successful protests

is the Boston Tea Party,

where they sneak onto British ships and dump

all their highly profitable tea leaves into the harbor.

No better way to rile up a Brit than to mess with their tea.

But the Boston Tea Party is only the beginning.

What follows will ignite a revolution and bring

Paul Revere and what he did,

or notably didn't do, into the spotlight.

It's 1775, a year and a half since the Boston Tea Party,

and the American resistance to British rule

is gaining momentum.

Intelligence gathered by the colonial rebel group

known as the "Sons of Liberty"

reveals that the British have 700 soldiers

at the ready for a raid on the colonists.

In anticipation, the militia has been assembling

stockpiles of weapons, gunpowder and supplies.

One of the largest is in Concord, a small town

on the outskirts of Boston.

The colonists know it's only a matter of time

before the Redcoats make their attack,

so they activate an early warning system.

If the colonists spot any aggressive movement of British

troops, a man will light a signal

in the North Church's bell tower.

If the British are marching out of Boston over land,

he'll light a single lantern.

If, instead, the British cross

the Charles River by boat, he will light two.

Or, as you might remember it from your childhood,

"One if by land, two if by sea."

On April 18th, the colonists' fears are realized.

A spy spots British troops crossing the Charles River.

Two lanterns it is.

Now, unless you took honors American history

in high school, here's the version of Revere's story

you likely remember.

Revere sees the lanterns,

and so begins his ride to spread the alarm.

Hyah!

Alone, galloping from town to town,

Revere reportedly shouts that famous phrase,

The British are coming! The British are coming!

The British are coming!

After an hour, it's said that he makes it to Lexington,

and after another, he supposedly makes it

to his destination, Concord, around 2 AM.

Revere has reportedly arrived just in time,

single-handedly giving the rebel militia time to arm

themselves and muster into formations.

Just three hours later, those 700 British soldiers

will march into Lexington,

confronting the colonial militia.

Gunshots ring out, and with that,

the American Revolution officially begins.

If it wasn't for Revere's warning,

it all could have gone very differently.

We all remember this story, but it may surprise you

to learn that, for most of us, what we know comes

from a single source, the 1861 poem titled

"Paul Revere's Ride,"

written an astonishing 86 years after the event

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

"In the hour of darkness and peril and need,

"the people will waken and listen to hear

"the hurrying hoofbeats of that steed

and the midnight message of Paul Revere."

It's 14 stirring stanzas,

really selling Revere's solo glory.

Oh, but there is one small problem with the poem,

it's wrong.

It was written to be rousing, not historical.

Historian Sami Jarroush explains.

Longfellow's poem is...

a lovely poem.

It tells a heroic story

of someone who rose above the odds

and-- and proclaimed resistance out loud.

But we have had to uncover numerous primary sources

to truly piece together what took place during

the actual Midnight Ride.

That includes Paul Revere's diaries, Paul Revere's letters

that he had sent, uh, with his own description

of the Midnight Ride.

In 1942, historian Esther Forbes dives into those primary

sources and publishes a new biography of Revere.

And some serious cracks emerge

in Longfellow's version of Revere's story.

The first issue is here

at the very beginning of our story.

Esther Forbes discovers a paper trail confirming

Commander Warren dispatches not just Paul Revere,

but fellow militiaman William Dawes.

Warren wants two men on separate routes

so that if one is captured,

the other can still complete the mission.

Because as leaders of the Sons of Liberty, the fear was

that they would be forced to give up all this information

and it would be a lot harder to take on the British Army

because all of the secrets would have been given up.

Forbes' biography wins the Pulitzer Prize.

But to the general public, the story of Revere's ride

continues to be shrouded in myth.

And it turns out the full true story isn't just that Revere

didn't ride alone.

- Buckle up, because what comes... - The British are coming!

...next will upend the most famous

parts of Revere's legendary story.

Paul Revere isn't the only Revolutionary War hero

to take a legendary ride.

In 1777, as British soldiers burned Danbury, Connecticut,

16-year-old Sybil Ludington, the daughter

of a local militia commander, reportedly rode alone

through 40 miles of stormy woods.

It's said that she warned neighbors,

evaded British patrols,

and by dawn had mobilized 400 men.

But her ride, twice the distance

of Paul Revere's, went unrecognized at the time.

The first written account of it surfaced in 1880,

with a statue then erected in her honor

and markers placed along her reported route.

Today, some scholars question whether the ride really was

as epic as recorded, but her inspiring story persists,

a teenage girl braving the night to help

save a fledgling nation.

Ride on, Sybil.

Paul Revere's renowned solo ride is not as we remember it.

In Longfellow's immortal poem, a pair of lanterns was hung

in the Old North Church and lit to indicate

where the British were coming from.

One if by land, and two if by sea.

Once Revere sees the signal, he begins his ride.

Well, it turns out Revere didn't start his ride

because he saw the lanterns.

He started because he'd been ordered to by Joseph Warren

back in the tavern.

The signal in the church wasn't for Revere.

It was for the rest of the community.

Revere didn't need a signal.

He already had his mission from Warren.

He already knew where he had to ride to, where he had to go.

In reality, Revere came up with the signal idea.

He went to the sexton of the church, and he said,

"Here's what you're gonna do.

"If the British are coming by land,

"put one lantern in the belfry.

If they're coming by water, put two."

So the signal was

more for other people to be aware of where the British

would be coming from.

And there's more myth-busting to come.

Remember the most legendary moment of the ride?

Revere's dramatic cry, "The British are coming!"

Well, it turns out he probably never said it,

at least not like that.

The British are coming!

"The British are coming! The British are coming!"

It never happened.

If you're riding past midnight and you're yelling out loud

that the British are coming, you're waking everybody up.

Not a good move if you're trying to stay

as discreet as possible.

What Revere actually ends up doing on his Midnight Ride

is he rides to people's homes

and he knocks on their doors and lets them know,

"Hey-- "

The Regulars are coming out.

"The Regulars are coming out".

What the regulars refers to is the British Regular Army,

a.k.a. British soldiers.

So where did the famous phrase,

"The British are coming," originate?

It's not from the Longfellow poem that's the source

of other errors.

It's actually from an 1879 school textbook

that misattributes the phrase to Revere.

When you read history and when you study history,

we're only understanding history from a certain point of view.

There's no all-encompassing source.

You have to think about what's missing.

To put the final nail in poor old Longfellow's poem,

historians point out one more major flaw.

Revere never actually made it to Concord.

The poem gets that part wrong, too.

It was another rider who reached the final destination.

Digging into the historical record, it's clear Revere

and Dawes actually met a third rider at John Hancock's house

in Lexington.

That's right, it wasn't one rider who saved America or two,

but three.

The third rider is a doctor named Samuel Prescott.

Together, the three men set out from Lexington to Concord

to warn of the oncoming British.

But halfway there, the trio is spotted

by a patrol of British soldiers.

Prescott leaps to safety and rides on.

Dawes escapes the Redcoats, but is thrown from

his horse and injured.

And Revere, far from triumphantly making it

to Concord, he's actually captured by the British.

The British patrol that captures Revere,

press him for information.

But Revere stands his ground.

Doesn't give them any information.

What he tells them, though, is that...

"eh, you're about to be surrounded

"by a bunch of Americans

who are ready to take up arms against you."

The British don't initially believe Revere, so they keep

him captured, but they run into other British soldiers

who basically confirm what Revere has told them.

And so they recognize that that's the bigger threat

that they have to deal with and not on this one guy.

So they end up letting Revere go.

Revere ends up riding back...

...to Lexington and helping John Hancock

and his family escape.

So ends the true saga of Paul Revere's Midnight Ride.

It turns out he didn't ride alone, he was never warned

by lamps, he never reached Concord, and probably

never shouted, "The British are coming."

But whatever license Longfellow's poem may have

taken, Paul Revere was every bit a hero.

He was part of a trio of daring riders who, along with tens

of thousands of brave militiamen,

battled against oppression to forge these United States.

I'm Josh Gates, and I'll see you on the next expedition.