A cherry tree.
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He invented the tale of the Cherry Tree. The myth was that when he was a little boy, George chopped down a cherry tree. When his father asked about it, George replied, "I cannot tell a lie," and admitted his act. This was used to demonstrate the perceived image of Washington as scrupulously honest.
The George Washington myth was a story that Parson Locke Weems made up portraying how honest George Washington was. The story involved George chopping down his father's cherry tree as a young boy, his father asks him if he chopped the cherry tree down and George tells him that he "cannot tell a lie."
There is a myth that he threw a silver dollar (not a half dollar) across the Rappahannock river. Sometimes the myth refers to the Potomac instead. However neither has any apparent basis in fact.
In a nutshell: The myth is that human beings of different color vary greatly from human beings of a different color. This has been believed since the beginning of history and was so obvious that it was never questioned. Science finally disproved the myth and it's now a fact that we're pretty much all the same. The reality is that thousands of years passed in which the myth was firmly believed as a fact. The world was run and structured by people who firmly believed the myth was true. Today's society is still, if not dominated, at least based on that same system which was built by the myth.
It is actually a myth.