The first episode portrayed the 16th century scientist Giordano Bruno being burned at the stake by Catholic priests for teaching that the Earth orbits the Sun. The problem? Bruno wasn’t a scientist and he wasn’t persecuted for his heliocentric views. Of course Bruno’s persecution was tragic, but the church killed him for promoting the occult worship of Egyptian deities and other quirky theological beliefs.

Historical negationism,[1][2] also called denialism, is falsification[3][4] or distortion of the historical record. It should not be conflated with historical revisionism, a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic reinterpretations of history.