Legend has it that the monkey statue at the harbor of Hartlepool England is a tribute to the sole survivor of a French shipwreck during the Napoleonic wars. The locals, having never seen, and thinking it was, a Frenchman hanged it as an enemy combatant. But there are any number of other version of the legend running all the way up to the Scottish coast. And you better be careful about which version you favor because deviations from the local story are not well received.
—David Foss