All too often, inventors from the U.S. and European countries are incorrectly credited for creating the modern world. In fact, various nations around the world are truly responsible for many of the innovations that have shaped our lives today. To give one example, European armies are credited with developing the modern firearm in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is true that the European guns were hand-held combustion weapons that could quickly fire a bullet, just like today’s handguns. However, it is also true that 600 years earlier, Chinese armies had already been using firearms called “hand cannons,” which had many of the essential features of the European weapons that came later. Then there is the case of the airplane. The world remembers American inventors Wilbur and Orville Wright for creating modern flight, with their development of a steerable, motorized flying machine in 1903. Yet Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont had made the world’s first true steerable motorized flying machine in 1899. It is further worth noting that the Wright Brothers’ first flights in 1903 and 1904 lasted less than 5 minutes, while Santos-Dumont’s 1899 flight lasted nearly a half hour. But perhaps the most popular modern invention that historians wrongly thank Europe for is the camera, a device nearly everyone owns and uses today. Most history books name 19th century French photographer Louis Daguerre as the inventor of the camera. In fact, the true inventor of the camera was an Iraqi scientist born nearly 1,000 years before Daguerre. Ibn al-Haytham developed pinhole camera technology, the basis for modern photography, in the early 11th century. This is yet another prominent example of Western inventors dominating our historical awareness, so that we fail to notice how much the rest of the world has contributed to modern life.