Do you know the feeling when you are so confident about some specific fact that you try your hardest to prove it to others, despite them not believing you? And you don’t even stop to question that fact because you just simply believed it for so long? It may be because your friends or family members kept telling you or you read it online somewhere and it just stuck with you because it made sense. For example, I kept hearing that if you eat watermelon seeds, it means that a watermelon will grow in your stomach. Well, as you may know - it’s not true. Okay, this may not be the most reliable information that you could believe for many years, but has anybody ever told you that if you crack your knuckles it will give you arthritis? Well, that’s also not true! And also, for your knowledge, a piece of gum doesn’t take 7 years to digest…
So speaking of that, one Reddit user asked community members to share ‘facts’ that they believed for many years only to find out that they’re actually not true at all. So, folks, explore some of the best or funniest ones that may make you also question if all the facts you are so confident about are actually true.
More info: Reddit
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My parents always referred to a really good parking spot as a "glory hole." It was not until I started college and exclaimed to my friends that I had found the perfect glory hole in the Chipotle parking lot that I realized that my parents' usage of the term was very, very wrong.
When I was 7, I touched a bare electric line, received a shock, went crying to my mom.
She was preparing dinner at the time, making a salad. She gave me some lettuce, said it would make a shock go away. I didn't eat lettuce, but it was worth making the pain go away.
The pain subsided, as it would have regardless. So, I believed her about the lettuce.
Years later, mom overheard me telling a friend about lettuce being a cure for electric shocks, and confessed that she'd made it up.
I used to have a farm and some areas were sectioned off with an electric fence. My MIL came to visit and was so worried the kids would touch it. I told her they'd only do it once
When I was younger I had a pet bird and she flew away one day when I was cleaning her cage (her name was Cathy, lol). I was obviously devastated because she was my first pet and my best friend, so my dad said he was going to go out and find Cathy for me. Two hours later he comes home with a yellow budgie saying he found her in a tree down the block and caught her. I was so thankful and couldn’t believe he got her back for me. I literally only realised a couple years ago that there’s no way he could have caught her, and when I asked he confirmed that he just went to the pet shop and bought me a new yellow budgie. I lived with the belief that she was Cathy for 16 years.
I'm South American and it's "common knowledge" there that American movies need to show the flag at least once to get tax cuts. I've known this as a "fact" for maybe 15 years and after living in America for 5 I brought it up in a conversation, and all the Americans in the room had no idea what I was talking about. Googled and found out it's just a South American myth.
Yeah, don't believe everything you hear or read from non-American citizens about America the country (as a whole). Even though there are definitely acceptions, many things are blown out of proportion from the truth, and if you see or hear it from social media, don't believe any of it.
That Einstein failed math and I'm sure there are a ton of people out there tjat still believe that. What's funny is that hen he was shown a clipping from Ripley's Believe It or Not, which ia likely the origin of this myth, he responded, "I never failed in mathematics. Before I was 15 I had mastered differential and integral calculus"
This is a conversation between my friend and his GF in college:
GF: How do they know where to put gas stations?
Friend: I assume they do market research to see how much need there is for another gas station in the area.
GF: No, I mean how do they know there will be gas on the corner where they build the station?
Friend: They truck in the gasoline with tankers...
GF: Oh.
And this is why logistics should be taught at a young age. Make it clear that the default state is not "already there and waiting for you".
Bats are not blind. They have eyes and can see. Also they have an excellent night vision.
Is it just me or are those bats the cutest thing I've ever seen
That if you put a fallen baby bird back in it's nest the mother will abandon it because you touched it. Not true. If you ever find one and have the ability to, by all means put it back!
edit: I agree with the posts below, use good judgment when deciding to put it back in the nest. My main point was that the mother won't abandon it because you touched it.
We were taught this IN GIRL SCOUTS!!! There was a nest in one of the toilets and they said don't use it and don't touch it or the mother will abandon. I had nightmares about those abandoned babies getting peed on
My dad told me that the stripes on the sides of the road, the ones that make a sound when you ride on them, exist so that the blind people can drive without going off the road. We were kids and believed it for some time.
If you dont wait for one hour after eating to swim you will get such incredibly debilitating cramps that you will lose all motor function and sink and drown.
Edit... I also remember as a child having an empty inbox lol. Holy c**p!!! This hit a nerve eh?
I believe this myth started with the boy scouts of America in their 1911 manual, science started to debunk it from the 50s onwards.
Not me, but I met multiple people from France who didn't believe in yellow school buses. Apparently, everybody in France believe they only exist in American movies, not in real life.
Well, if you ask a lot of Western Europeans, Americans eat 5 lbs of French fries per day with a quart of ketchup, are incapable of using the roundabouts that are everywhere, and use cars because we’re too lazy to walk or ride a bike or use nonexistent public transportation for a 50 mile work commute.
Read a post like this on another site and my husband and I still laugh at this answer. For all of this woman's life, she thought we were called human *beans.* She was 25 before she learned it was *beings.*
To this day we will randomly tell each other, "You are a wonderful human BEAN."
Just found this out five seconds ago. Your eyeballs grow. I thought your eyeballs stayed the same size your entire life and that's why babies appear to have such large eyes in proportion to the rest of their body.
Well. I was today years old when I learned that. The hill was pulled out from under me before I could die on it.
That cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis
The man who debunked this myth literally cracked his knuckles on one hand daily for sixty years from the day he heard the myth to test it. He never got arthritis in either hand!
That if a person was sentenced to prison for 150 years their body stayed in the cell even after death until the time was served.
I thought truffles (chocolate) were made from truffles (mushrooms). It wasn’t until college when I mentioned it and got a lot of comments like, you know what chocolate turtles are made of, right? And Irish cream? 😔
When I was younger, my brother (4 years older) and I played Mario Party 7 ALL the time. It was a big deal. There was one week a year though, where we celebrated Bowser and the Koopa Kids, and we had to play the Bowser game board every day that week and do Bowser/evil themed things and put up decorations all over the house to celebrate him. This was called Bowser Week.
Sometimes I'd ask him when Bowser Week is this year, because I thought the dates changed every year like how the date for Easter varies each year, so only my brother knew when it was. One day I asked him when it was so I could prepare and he said "What?" And I said "What day does Bowser Week start this year?" and he started laughing and told me it wasn't real and I was ABSOLUTELY crushed and confused.
I still don't quite understand. I'm 18.
That Morgan freeman married his adopted daughter, I found out much later that it was Woody Allen. So if he came up in conversation I’d mention it and many times nobody in the conversation googled it. Sorry Morgan for the years of misguided slander.
She wasn’t his adopted daughter, she was adopted by Mia and Andre Previn. She and Woody were never married. Still gross because she was raised around him as a parental figure 🤮
That the hymen covers the vagina and has to be broken the first time you have sex. I was so scared I would literally be ripped open the first time I did it and was pleasantly surprised when that was not the case.
Adam Conover said it best when he said "the hymen is not a freshness seal."
Blood is blue inside your body and turns red when exposed to oxygen.
Edit: I am sorry to say I taught this to my grade school students at one time. I remember learning it in junior high science... and I guess I never took a class that specifically discussed the color of blood, and I taught it my first year of teaching.
I've always felt awful about that but now I will take consolation from the fact that by posting this I've corrected this misconception in more people than I spread it to.
They do it in charts/diagrams to show oxygenated blood leaving the heart and deoxygenated blood going to the lungs
That “prosecuted” did not mean the same thing as “electrocuted”.
When I was little I would see signs that said “No Dumping. Violators will be prosecuted.” and think that punishment was very harsh for littering.
In the early 2000s my dad told me Bobby Flay, who I loved, died. I believed it until I saw him on tv maybe 3-4 years ago. I called my dad and told him, I couldn’t believe it. I thought he must have faked his death. Turns out my dad lied to me because apparently he wanted to watch something other than Bobby Flay in tv that day.
My one earlobe is a little smaller than the other. My dad told me he bit it off accidentally when I was a baby, and I believed it for about 15 years.
You know when you fidget/bounce your leg when you’re anxious or bored? My mom always told me that was called “ponting”. For years I told people it was called ponting, and was always surprised no one else ever called it that...until I googled it one day and found out the word doesn’t exist. My mom either made it up or was using a fake term herself.
I think it’s a good word, though.
That's how new words are coined. Someone makes one up and it catches on.
Fun fact, the word pont is an actual word! It's means a flat-bottomed ferry worked on cables or ropes.
I also means bridge in French (and a couple other european languages).
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Reminds me of my first grade self--when you think you're about to sneeze but you don't, it's called a zip-ta-quink, according to my mom. I told my teacher this (i was her favorite student) and she said, "oh! That's adorable! Did you invent that word?" And i was so upset when i found out it wasn't real. I still use it, though.
My mom made up lots of words. Once in a while I will say something, and the person I'm talking to doesn't know the word, and then I realize this might be one of her words again, and I have sit and to think hard about whether I have actually heard other people than my parents say this word. I love this about her though.
We call ponting "stodging" also a made-up word, but not made up by me.
New word in my vocabulary! Though I think it has something to do with things that float in water? No prob! Lots of words have multiple meanings.
Even though I don't follow sport, especially cricket, the Australian in me immediately thought of Ricky Ponting!
Looked for the actual word. As close as it gets is 'Leg bouncing, leg tapping, leg jiggling or leg shaking'
Guts let’s use this word so often that it becomes mainstream! 😁
My mom told me that the paws of dogs never grow and they are born with the size they'll have.
A few years later after I embarrassed myself with that fact in front of my friends a few times I asked her again and apparently I got it wrong.
The paws are an indicator for the size the dog will reach later but obviously they do grow. Imagine how ridiculous it would look, a pup with huge paws.
They are pretty big, though. Imagine if human children grew feet proportioned like that!
That driving with the overhead light in your car on is illegal.
Not illegal in the UK but can make seeing outside at night difficult so could lead to problems.
That a penny could kill someone if dropped off the Empire State Building.
That chewing gum took 7 years to digest.
I used to hold this belief when I was 7 years old! After accidentally swallowing my gum, I immediately panicked, convinced it would stay stuck in my digestive system for a full seven years. Fearful of telling my parents, I decided to keep it a secret until I eventually discovered the misconception.
I was in the UK army (16 yrs old, when they still did junior leaders )
And was told during a driving theory lesson that we should never try to steal army diesel because they could test your fuel at any time and if they found you stealing they could send you to prison, they could tell because under a microscope the diesel would have tiny arrows in it.
Years later I'd left the army and (having never really doubted it, but tbh never really thinking about ) I was telling someone at work when it suddenly dawned on me how ridiculous that was.
I'd just accepted it was a fact for well over 20 years
Edit: thank you for all the responses, I didn't think my embarrassing story would get so much attention. In case you were wondering, yes, I've got a drawer full of left handed screw drivers and I've got a grinder and 50 sparks being delivered later XD
The arrows thing is of course ridiculous, but (in the UK at least, and I believe the EU and/or some other European countries as well) some diesel fuel is actually chemically marked (and coloured) to be used only for agricultural use at a much lower rate of taxation. It's illegal to use this in other vehicles and t can be tested for.
I believed that thunder was the sound of clouds hitting each other. My roommates told me otherwise just a few days before college graduation when there was some thunder on a cloudless day.
Mom swears she doesn't know where I got that idea.
I came across a comment on BP where someone thought thunder was the noise of angels bowling. I really enjoy that perspective – picturing a bowling alley in the sky, with a laid-back game on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.
That he great wall of China is the only man made object visible from space
My growth slowed pretty early on, and i was obviously upset about that. My mom noticed, and told me that "you grow a little bit with each hiccup," probably to give me hope. From that day, whenever I would start hiccuping I would try to do everything in my power to KEEP hiccuping, just so I could grow a little taller. I believed that until i was 15.
I need someone to draw me a diaphragm so I can understand this one.
If you pee in a pool it would show red because they put a special chemical in it....
It's possible, I believe there is such a chemical treatment, but think it through. Let's say someone pees in your treated public pool, and a giant purple cloud billows in the water around them. All your paying customers scramble out of the pool and leave, telling tales on facebook of their horrible experience. You now have to drain, sanitize and refill your pool, as well as try to repair your reputation online. All this while trying to survive with no customers. Who in their right mind would use such a chemical?
That the Arctic was named because there are Polar Bears there (from the Greek word for bear: arktos).
And that the Antarctic was named because there are No Polar Bears there.
My dad used to say Jenna Fischer (Pam from the office) was Carrie Fisher’s daughter (Princess Leia from Star Wars) so I thought it was true and shared that info with a few friends. Stupid me didn’t think to look it up, and when I finally did, I told my dad the truth. Of course he doesn’t remember ever telling me this...
Note: this post originally had 46 images. It’s been shortened to the top 35 images based on user votes.
When I was little, I told my father I wanted a pet bunny. He told me to go catch one. When I asked how he told me to put salt on its tail and I believed. A friend of mine had pet rabbits and gave me one. When my father got home from work I showed him my bunny and told him how I caught it with salt. He just smiled.
So your dad wanted you to a-salt a helpless bunny?
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Parents made up or recycled lots of old wives tales. Mostly to get kids to stop doing something that's annoying. When "because I said so" isn't working anymore.
And all of this is a great example of how we are all a bit susceptible to misinformation. If you hear it, clear it before you smear it.
Most of the information from advertisements is misinformation. Not necessarily false, just deliberately misleading.
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My dad was obsessed with Paris and visited there a couple of times. He loved to tell the story of the Nazis occupying Paris in 1940 and walking into the Louvre, one of the world's biggest, greatest museums, only to find it empty, except for the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a huge ancient Greek statue. Ok, maybe it's true, why would he lie? Years later I'm in Paris and I go to the Louvre (dont miss it if you're ever there) and at the foot of the stairs by the Winged Victory is a photo of that same statue, crated up and being slid down a ramp to be hidden in the countryside, so the Nazis couldn't loot it. When I saw Dad again I said, "Pop, WTH?" He said "I just figured it was too heavy to move!" He just made it up. Meanwhile it had been brought from a Greek island to Paris decades before trucks existed
When I was little, I told my father I wanted a pet bunny. He told me to go catch one. When I asked how he told me to put salt on its tail and I believed. A friend of mine had pet rabbits and gave me one. When my father got home from work I showed him my bunny and told him how I caught it with salt. He just smiled.
So your dad wanted you to a-salt a helpless bunny?
Load More Replies... Parents made up or recycled lots of old wives tales. Mostly to get kids to stop doing something that's annoying. When "because I said so" isn't working anymore.
And all of this is a great example of how we are all a bit susceptible to misinformation. If you hear it, clear it before you smear it.
Most of the information from advertisements is misinformation. Not necessarily false, just deliberately misleading.
Load More Replies... My dad was obsessed with Paris and visited there a couple of times. He loved to tell the story of the Nazis occupying Paris in 1940 and walking into the Louvre, one of the world's biggest, greatest museums, only to find it empty, except for the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a huge ancient Greek statue. Ok, maybe it's true, why would he lie? Years later I'm in Paris and I go to the Louvre (dont miss it if you're ever there) and at the foot of the stairs by the Winged Victory is a photo of that same statue, crated up and being slid down a ramp to be hidden in the countryside, so the Nazis couldn't loot it. When I saw Dad again I said, "Pop, WTH?" He said "I just figured it was too heavy to move!" He just made it up. Meanwhile it had been brought from a Greek island to Paris decades before trucks existed
