15 Interesting Things Most Filipinos Don’t Know About Jose Rizal

They say that swords and bolos are the sharpest weapons for battle but Jose Rizal sharpened his pencil and inked his quill for Filipinos to have equal rights. Every Filipinos know him as the Philippine National Hero. The novelist who died because of nationalism. But there are things that most Filipinos don’t know about him especially during his exile in Dapitan.

It wasn’t easy living in a historical place. Indeed, one would feel proud that he’s living in a place like that but I didn’t feel that way before. It wasn’t that easy. Back in grade school and in high school, I would spend a lot of time reviewing history subjects for quiz bees especially when it comes to the autobiography of Jose Rizal. When I was in my sixth grade, I spent a whole summer attending summer classes about Rizal for an upcoming quiz bee later that school year. During leisure times in high school when I would climb theIlihan Hill which used to be a watch hill in the ancient times, I would stumble to some tourists and suddenly I would be a tour guide on the hill. When I went to college way far away from my hometown, I thought everybody knows Jose Rizal’s whole story but unfortunately, they didn’t. The usual answer is that, “Rizal is a hero, he wrote books and went against the Spaniards, they caught him, got prisoned and was shot.” Most of them didn’t even know the things that happened to him and didn’t even know Dapitan, the place where he was exiled. College history about Rizal got me more interested about him and I thought that all those years that I used to review about him was worth it. After all, it’s kind of nice to say “I’m from Dapitan, Rizal used to be my neighbor” whenever asked where I came from.

Now enough about the introduction. Here are several things that most Filipinos don’t know about Rizal and the rumors connected to him and most especially about his four years stay inDapitan.

1. Jose Rizal was born with a big head. [must be the reason why he was so intelligent... he must've big brain as well...anyways, I think many Pinoys know about this]

2. Most Filipinos think that Rizal died because he was TOTALLY against the Spaniards and that he wanted FULL freedom from them but the truth is that Rizal only appealed for equal rights. Filipinos be treated as equal human. Rizal questioned their way of governing and how they abuse Filipinos [who were used to be called indios].