51 Favorite Facts You’ve Always Believed That Are Actually False

Reader's Digest ^ | no date given | DAVID MCCANDLESS

[Leaning Right]

Napoleon wasn't short? Bananas don't grow on trees? Here, the world's most contagious myths and misconceptions debunked.

[Leep]

51 Favorite Facts You’ve Always Believed That Are Actually False.

Ed McMan: Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about favorite Facts You’ve Always Believed That Are Actually False...in one list!

Johnny Carson: You are wrong paper pulp breath!

[fruser1]

I like this one:

“Vaccines cause autism: Groundless fears based on fraudulent research that’s been shown to have been manipulated.”

How many things in this category can you think of in 60 seconds?

[jonno]

Block them ads!
https://adblockplus.org/

Been using it for years...

[NorthMountain]

Your thoughts?

[Political Junkie Too]

Celebrities die in threes.

Everyone knows that's true. ;-)

Swallowing spiders...

Did it wriggle and jiggle and tickle inside her?

-PJ

[NorthMountain]

Your thoughts on #40?

[Leaning Right]

By Reader’s Digest, PURVEYOR of lies and false stories...

As I noted in an earlier post, I won't disagree with that assessment. As for me, I tend to live in the past, at a time when RD was, well, as American as apple pie. And I did not see anything in that list that was particularly harmful. That's why I posted it. As the saying goes, your mileage my vary.

[Sam Gamgee]

I apologize, you misunderstood. I was just asking a philosophical question as to what motivates people over all these decades to make things up like “salt will help water boil”. I wasn’t chastising you as the poster.

[Verginius Rufus]

Napoleon wasn’t French. He was Corsican, and Corsica belonged to Genoa until the year before he was born. His name was Italian—Buonaparte.

[TalonDJ]

The short version is the ratio between air resistance and mass. That ratio determines something’s terminal velocity. Pennies are not as dense as bullets and they are also flat. Hence they have a high surface area for their size/weight. So they fall slower than bullets. Some people claim bullets don’t kill coming back down but that is clearly false as people die to errant vertically fired bullets all the time.

[Leaning Right]

Thank you for your kind and rapid response. And I apologize if I too quickly took offense. Regards to you!

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

sugar=hyperactivity

Poor or rowdy behavior still occur in children with sugar free diets.

Well duh.

However sugar or fast release energy food do tend to make children wiggly.

bulls are color blind

Also false. They see color but it is not as intense as humans see color.

Everest is only the tallest mountain above sea level.

Highest point on earth = Tallest mountain. Talk about nit-picky.

Ben Franklin - Turkey...

He wanted it as our national bird. Once again, nit-picky.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Yes, but the comparison they used was to the average frenchman not the average Corsican.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Are cashews NUTS? Nope.

I guess "cashew nuts” are just people who like cashews?

[treetopsandroofs]

Thanks, ever since I saw they peddled the “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” lie, irrespective of politics and before the Clinton Machine moved next door, I’ve hated them.

[Sam Gamgee]

No problem. The weakness of communicating or miscommunicating in writing...

[FredZarguna]

It’s basically correct. There is one slight nit I would pick, which I will directly address to the poster.

[Fiddlstix]

[FredZarguna]

One very slight correction: An object falling in the atmosphere does not necessarily maintain its terminal velocity to impact with the ground unless the air is still. [Objects with very low terminal velocities display this characteristic all the time.]

[NorthMountain]

Feathers, for example.