Turn a blind eye
"To deliberately ignore something you know is happening."
The popular story is wonderfully specific: at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, Admiral Horatio Nelson, blind in one eye, was signalled by his superior to withdraw. He supposedly raised his telescope to his blind eye, said "I really do not see the signal," and pressed on to victory. It's a great anecdote, and it may contain a kernel of truth, but the phrase itself isn't recorded in general use until decades after Nelson's death, and the earliest detailed tellings of the story read more like embellished naval legend than contemporary reporting.
Myth vs. FactThe Nelson anecdote is widely repeated as the origin, but the timeline doesn't hold up well: general use of the idiom postdates the alleged event by a wide enough margin that historians treat the connection as unproven, flattering folklore rather than settled fact.
Sources: Robert Southey, The Life of Nelson (1813), the earliest well-known telling, written 12 years after the battle it describes.
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