Have you ever known something to be true just to have the floor ripped out from under you when you find out that what you knew wasn’t? Here are 33 things that you thought you knew were true that aren’t… Prepare to be surprised!
1. Drinking Alcohol kills brain cells. FALSE. recent research has shown that the quantity of alcohol you could possibly take in, without killing yourself, does not introduce enough alcohol into your bloodstream to kill brain cells.
2. The inventor of the light bulb was Thomas Edison… False. Thomas Edison in no way invented the light-bulb. Electric lighting existed before him, incandescent light bulbs existed before him, and when other inventors got wind of Edison’s tinkerings, they roundly sued him for patent infringement.
3. You use 10% of your brain… FALSE!
Certainly there is no truth to the idea that we only use 10 percent of our neural matter. Modern brain scans show activity coursing through the entire organ, even when we’re resting.
4. The Great Wall of China can be seen from Space… FALSE!
It is not visible with the naked eye, It’s the same color as the landscape around it according to Chris Hadfield who has spent 5.5 months in space.
5. Twinkies last forever… False. While the Twinkie is indeed a highly processed food — its three dozen or so ingredients include polysorbate 60, sodium stearoyl lactylate and others that could only come from a lab — it isn’t any more so than thousands of other food products out there.
6. Nobody ever said, “Beam me up Scotty” in the original Star Trek TV series. Also, nobody says, “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.”… TRUE! Have you noticed how incorrect quotes often just sound right—sometimes, more right than actual quotations? There’s a reason for that. Our brains really like fluency, or the experience of cognitive ease (as opposed to cognitive strain) in taking in and retrieving information.
7. Vitamin C will stop you from getting a cold… FALSE. In a survey of scientific studies spanning more than two decades and including more than 11,000 people, those who took 200mg of vitamin C daily had almost as many colds as those who took no supplements. The vitamin also failed to have a substantial effect on the length and severity of a person’s cold.
8. The word “Crap” derived from the inventor of the toilet, Thomas Crapper… FALSE. In the late-19th century, a London plumbing impresario named Thomas Crappermanufactured one of the first widely successful lines of flush toilets. Crapper did not invent the toilet, but he did develop the ballcock, an improved tank-filling mechanism still used in toilets today.
9. Goldfish’s short term memory is about 3 seconds long… FALSE!
Goldfish have a much longer memory than the rumor suggests. Studies have shown fish to have memories spanning many years even…
10. Sugar makes children hyperactive…FALSE. Many studies have been performed and none of these studies, not even studies looking specifically at children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, could detect any differences in behavior between the children who had sugar and those who did not.
11. Coca-Cola invented the popular version of Santa Clause for an advertising campaign. FALSE. His origins date back much further. The colors are widely thought to derive from the original Saint Nicholas, who was the Bishop of Myra in the 4th Century. Red and white were the hues of traditional bishop robes
12. Sherlock Holmes never says “Elementary, my dear Watson” in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories…TRUE. While he does say “Elementary” he never once finishes it with “my dear Watson.”
13. The distinction between “less” and “fewer” has been a feature of the English language… FALSE. Since the reign of Alfred the Great, a time when Old English was spoken, less has been used in the same way that fewer is currently used. This long history of usage accounts for supermarkets posting the words “10 Items or Less” over the express lanes, when “10 Items or Fewer” is the grammatically correct option.
14. Most people believed Christopher Columbus would fall off the edge of the Earth because they ‘knew’ the world was flat… FALSE!
(The idea that Flat Earth theory dominated the middle ages is a 19th-century invention.)
15. Water spirals down the plughole in opposite directions in the northern and southern hemispheres..FALSE. Compared to the rotations that one usually sees (tires on a travelling automobile, a compact disc playing music, or a draining sink), the rotation of the Earth is very small: only one rotation per day. The water in a sink might make a rotation in a few seconds and so have a rotation rate ten thousand times higher than that of the Earth. It should not be surprising, therefore, to learn that the Coriolis force is orders of magnitude smaller than any of the forces involved in these everyday spinning things. The Coriolis force is so small, that it plays no role in determining the direction of rotation of a draining sink anymore than it does the direction of a spinning CD.
16. You are always within 6 feet of a rat… FALSE!
It may derive from the former Ministry of Agriculture, suggests rodent expert Prof Rob Smith from the University of Huddersfield. They circulated many public health announcements to promote hygiene in homes.
17. If you dropped a coin from the top of the Eiffel Tower it can most certainly kill someone… FALSE. Terminal Velocity would be reached not being near fast enough to kill anyone.
18. Chameleons change color as a disguise to match their environment… FALSE!
(They change color to communicate with other chameleons. )
19. Schizophrenia is when you have multiple personalities… FALSE!
(Dissociative identity disorder, the widely accepted current term for “multiple personality disorder”, is a completely different, unrelated illness)
20. If you are more emotional and creative you are “right brained” and if you are logical and analytical you are “left brained”..FALSE. In a new two-year study published in the journal Plos One, University of Utah neuroscientists scanned the brains of more than 1,000 people, ages 7 to 29, while they were lying quietly or reading, measuring their functional lateralization – the specific mental processes taking place on each side of the brain. They broke the brain into 7,000 regions, and while they did uncover patterns for why a brain connection might be strongly left or right-lateralized, they found no evidence that the study participants had a stronger left or right-sided brain network
21. You lose most of your body heat through your head… FALSE!
(Your head loses heat at the same rate as any other part of your body)
22. If you cut an earthworm in half, both halves regrow their body, resulting in two complete worms… FALSE!
(Only the half with the head might survive)
23. There’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t decide to cheerfully, gleefully, even recklessly split infinitives…TRUE! There’s no real justification for their objection, which is based on comparisons with the structure of Latin. People have been splitting infinitives for centuries, especially in spoken English
24. Climate change is a fraud perpetrated by a global conspiracy of lavishly funded scientists…FALSE. Here is the data. Scientists have compiled their reports to prove that global warming is happening due to us and it’s impact on our future. Tale a look here.
25. Elephants travel to a secret “elephant’s graveyard” when they’re close to death….FALSE. Elephants typically go to sources of water and food to try to survive which is where the misconception came from.
26. Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of War of the Worlds resulted in nationwide panic by Americans believing there was a real alien invasion taking place…FALSE. How did the story of panicked listeners begin? Blame America’s newspapers. Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news.
27. Your hair and fingernails keep growing even after you die.. FALSE. It is not that the fingernails are growing, but that the skin around them retracts as it becomes dehydrated, making them appear longer. When preparing a body, funeral directors will sometimes moisturise the fingertips to counteract this.
28. Ostriches stick their heads in the ground when frightened.. FALSE. There is one interesting ostrich behaviour that comes close to burying their head in the sand. When ostriches feed, they sometimes lay their head flat on the ground to swallow sand and pebbles. The hard grit helps them to grind their food in their crop. From a distance, the ostrich looks like it’s burying its head in the sand.
29. You taste different flavors with different parts of your tongue.. FALSE. Receptors for different tastes are not confined to certain parts of the tongue.
30. Napoleon Bonaparte was a short man… FALSE!
(He was actually above average in height for his time)
31. Eating turkey makes you sleepy.. FALSE. It’s just you over eating and your body trying to process the shame you just put on yourself.
32. Lightning never strikes the same place twice… FALSE!
(It actually happens a lot. The Empire State Building gets struck over 100 times a year!)
33. Vaccines cause Autism… FALSE. There are actually many studies that have proven without a doubt that there is no link to Autism.
How many of these did you already know? Let us know in the comment below.