The claim
“Marie Antoinette said 'Let them eat cake'”
Myth
There's no evidence she ever said it. The phrase appears in Rousseau's Confessions from when she was nine.
What's really going on
The line was in print years before the Revolution, in Rousseau's Confessions (1765), when Marie Antoinette was a child who had never been to France.
The receipts
“Although the phrase is conventionally attributed to Marie Antoinette, there is no evidence that she ever uttered it, and it is now generally regarded as a journalistic cliché.”
“The phrase can actually be traced back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's Confessions in 1765, 24 years prior to the French Revolution, and when Antoinette was nine years old and had never been to France.”
More myths
Myth“Bulls charge because they hate the color red”Bulls are dichromatic, a kind of color blindness, so the red of the cape is irrelevant to them. Myth“Goldfish have a three-second memory”Goldfish remember things for months, not seconds. Disputed“The Great Wall of China is visible from space with the naked eye”Not the way the legend says. It's too narrow and blends into the land, and astronauts disagree about whether they've seen it.