Pirates have been in the news over the past few years. Not the romanticized pirates of the Caribbean, but real life pirates in places like Somalia desperate, violent men who have garnered ransoms of millions of dollars by taking hostages from ships.

If I were to ask you to name a famous pirate from history, who would it be? My guess is that many of you would come up with the name Blackbeard. Blackbeard was a notorious English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of the American colonies during the early 18th century.

There was an article in the magazine American History Illustrated, however, that punched a few holes in the reputation of this well-known buccaneer.

As pirates go, Blackbeard (the alias for Edward Teach) was actually nothing special, according to…