J.K. Rowling’s New Pottermore Article Has Some U.S. History Fails

The new Pottermore article about the U.S. answer to the Ministry of Magic contains a couple historical fact fails, which shockingly turns out to be frustrating, to put it mildly.

Not every American fan is particularly pleased that J.K. Rowling decided to turn her attention to the United States for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. (Remember how J.K. Rowling borrowed from Native American myth to construct the Ilvermorny houses? Yeah, we do, too.) Pottermore now has a new article about the Magical Congress of the United States (MACUSA) from Rowling.

It may not frustrate you as much as Ilvermorny’s history does, unless history matters. Let’s break it down.

Midway through the article, Rowling details MACUSA’s discussions about whether or not to join the American Revolution. First, apparently the arguments don’t start until 1777, two years after the war started in Lexington and Concord. Apparently American wizards and witches don’t care all that much. Compared to this next bit, though, that appears relatively minor.

Rowling then writes that MACUSA moved to Baltimore, but when the Congress arrived, MACUSA went to Washington. Just let that sink in.

MACUSA apparently went to Washington in 1776 or 1777.

The idea of Washington, D.C. did not even really exist until 1790. In fact, Lin-Manuel Miranda even wrote a song about the compromise that led to its creation! “The Room Where It Happens” is literally about Washington D.C. getting built in the South in return for the financial system being centered in New York.

In short, all she had to do was listen to Hamilton. (“The Room Where It Happens” also happens to be a great song, like the rest of that musical.)

What’s funny is that she actually gets the Continental Congress moving to Baltimore correct. Arguably, that fact’s more obscure than the basic history of Washington D.C.

Image via Warner Bros Pictures

But Wait, There’s More

Then, she moves to the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries (with nary a mention of the Civil War, which seems like it may be important). She says that wizards and witches infiltrated the construction of the Woolworth Building in New York after leaving Washington in 1892.

Now, you can argue that maybe MACUSA moved around, because they would have had to. The Woolworth Building didn’t start construction until 1910. Even if you say that they knew about it when F.W. Woolworth started talking about the building, that doesn’t much absolve them. He didn’t start talking about it until 1908.

You can also have plenty of fun picking apart Rappaport’s Law, which forbids fraternization (which gets the British spelling in this article, too) between wizards and No-Majs. According to the article on Ilvermorny, MACUSA didn’t repeal it until 1965. To borrow from one of the editors here at Culturess, “Muggle-wizards segregation is an incredibly terrible and pointedly bad British national’s attempt at an American civil rights analogy.”

Yours truly has nothing but side-eye for the entire idea and seconds the above quote.

Also, Rowling writes that people pronounce MACUSA as, and we quote, “Mah – cooz – ah”. Maybe not as terrible as No-Maj, but it strikes me that Americans would likely default to “mack – you – sa” or even just “mack – you – ess – eh,” at least with modern accents. Apparently MACUSA has also always had this name, despite the United States not being named that until 1776. A pair of minor quibbles, but we’ll argue about them nevertheless.

Next: The New Books Roundup: Harry Potter and the Notorious RBG

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them hits theaters on November 18, and Pottermore remains up.