5. Wonder Woman's Creator Invented The Lie Detector
William Marston is a fascinating dude, but sadly this particular "fact" about his unusual life isn't strictly true, despite having a fun sort of parallel to Wonder Woman's lasso, imbued with the power to get people to tell the truth. Amongst other things, Marston was an early pioneer in the field of lie detectors, and put forward a design for a machine that could tell if you were fibbing by measuring your blood pressure. The famous polygraph test - the kind you see in films hooked up to people and drawing little lines on a rolling sheet of paper - actually measures heart rate, breathing and skin conductivity in addition to blood pressure. One out of four ain't bad! So Marston had an interested in lie detectors, even if he didn't invent them. That wasn't the only hobby he carried over into his creation of Wonder Woman, though, and the lasso especially. An early proponent of sexual liberation, psychologist Marston was super into bondage and lived in a polyamorous relationship with his wife and another woman, who stayed together after his death. Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne both served as inspiration for Diana Prince, and believed the world would be much better off as a female-lead utopia. This isn't the only WW-based urban legend, either. There's also the apocryphal tale that DC have to publish at least four Wonder Woman comics a year, lest the rights to the character revert to Marston's estate, which is absolute gubbins and wouldn't hold up to any lie detector test (or light S&M play).
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
