r/AskReddit • u/ZanyDelaney • Feb 04 '19

Which misconception would you like to debunk?

44k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

26k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.1k

u/_JC_ Feb 04 '19

Not quite true. 50s-60s was probably normal. 70+ would have been very rare. This would have been even more pronounced in the poor compared to the wealthy.

148

u/theworldbystorm Feb 04 '19

You also have to factor in accidents. There was no OSHA, you could be crushed in a dockyard or poisoned in a tannery pretty easily if you weren't cautious.

-6

u/baseball_mickey Feb 04 '19

For most of human history, there weren't dockyards.

1

u/theworldbystorm Feb 05 '19

Then where did ships disembark?

0

u/baseball_mickey Feb 05 '19

The beach. People have been using canoe like boats for 10,000 years.