4. President Woodrow Wilson Liked 'Birth Of A Nation'
D.W. Griffith's infamous 1915 propaganda piece Birth of a Nation was, scarily, the first film ever to be screened at the White House, with President Woodrow Wilson being in attendance. It gets more frightening when journalists began to report that Wilson loved the film, declaring its depiction of the Ku Klux Klan as doing away with the crazed black slaves as "all terrible true". However, this thankfully was not what Wilson said, and in fact he never spoke to any journalists about what he thought of the film, which even at the time of release was dismissed by many quarters as patently racist and inaccurate. In the end, the genesis of the quote actually comes from the wife of the author of the book on which Griffith's film was based, Thomas Dixon. She claimed that Wilson had written to her husband exalting the film with such words, yet conveniently ended up claiming that the letter had been lost. In all likelihood, this was someone trying to stir up notable support for their crass agenda, and thankfully, Wilson's reputation was not tainted as a result.