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40 Annoying ‘Facts’ People Have To Finally Stop Believing In
Interview
One of the things that I loved the most when I was a kid was learning about the world. With a bright and eager gaze, I’d gobble down new and interesting facts about the world. Though, now that I’m a grown-up (at least theoretically, on paper; I’m still a six-year-old at heart), I’m sad to learn that some of the fun facts I was so amazed by are actually false. Oh, they’ll capture your attention all right. It’s just a pity there’s not a kernel of truth to them.
Our fact-loving team here at Bored Panda has collected a whole host of fun ‘facts’ that, unfortunately, are anything but. They’re lies! Open up your eyes, Neo-- errr I mean, dear Readers! Have a read through some of the most common bits of trivia that actually aren’t true and let us know which ones you really believed in (the one about seeing the Great Wall of China from space got me, I’ll admit).
While these false facts might seem completely innocent, it’s been shown that we tend to believe that which is repeated the most. That’s concerning for obvious reasons because it means that fake news and conspiracy theories can spread like wildfire if left unchecked and if you believe everything blindly. All it takes is constant re-pe-ti-tion.
I spoke about the illusory truth effect, propaganda, cognitive bias, good and bad news sources, and media literacy with Lee McIntyre. Lee is a published author and a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. He was kind enough to give Bored Panda some fantastic insights into how to separate the signal from the noise and how much constant repetition affects what we perceive to be the truth. You can read my full interview with him below.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
The "X" in "Xmas" has nothing to do with "taking the Christ out of Christmas." In fact, it literally means "Christ." In Greek, "the word Christos (Christ) begins with the letter 'X,' or chi." The abbreviation isn't a modern or secular invention; it's been around since 1021 as "XPmas," later further shortened to "Xmas."
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
This one. Upvote ten thousand times. It's an abbreviation. And I learned this as a kid (admittedly, in Catholic school).
Dodo 4 years ago
Wait, people didn't know this? What did they think Christina Aguilera was doing when she changed her name to Xtina? I've also seen Xtians used as an abbreviation for Christians.
Xottel 4 years ago
I always thought the 'X' means 'cross'. So it'd be Crossmas and Crosstina. Well at least I learned something
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Klas Klättermus 4 years ago (edited)
English is not my first language, but I always thought "Xmas" looked ridiculous
Miss Cris 4 years ago
This abreviation is only done in English, as far as I know. Our panda friends can tell us if it exists today in other languages.
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Gretchen Esquilin 4 years ago
Where has this fact been all my life???? My parents are in their mid-70s & STILL scold me for using "xmas" in my abbreviations b/c of the whole "being disrespectful to Christ" thing. How ironic since my dad can read & write in Greek yet has never brought this to light...hmm.....
RELATED:
#2
Sharks can get cancer. The myth that they cannot is perpetuated partly by people trying to sell shark cartilage as a cancer treatment, even though it's been proven to be ineffective. As one shark researcher put it, "Sharks get cancer. Even if they didn't get cancer, eating shark products won't cure cancer any more than me eating Michael Jordan would make me better at basketball." The marketing of shark cartilage as a cancer treatment both misleads patients and results in more sharks being killed by humans.
NsG 4 years ago
A myth perpetuated by someone trying to make more money of desperate people. There's a surprise. (/S)
Tiny Dynamine 4 years ago
Humans are the worst thing to develop on this planet.
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Thorfin Wolfsbane 4 years ago
Wait a second. *puts down fork*. Eating Michael Jordon WON’T make me better at basketball?
Serial pacifist 4 years ago
Darn. We just ordered some Michael Jordan sneaker dumplings for our son to start a basketball career, and the price on Wish was more than affordable.
Vicky Z 4 years ago
The problem is that you expect miracles from wish! Try a different website😅
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Monday 4 years ago
I mean, has anyone actually tested his theory? Can we say with absolute certainty that eating Michael Jordan won't make me better at basketball? I feel like this hasn't been tested.
Andre Soo 4 years ago
Just like that Ivermectin medicine that is thought to be a potential treatment for COVID-19. Just a hoax! And false claim.
Monday 4 years ago
I mean the Ivermectin hoax is more believable than eating sharks to cure cancer...at least Ivermectin is a medication, that's already a step in the right direction.
Load More Replies... Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
Whoever said this should be... hunted for cartilage. Them and all other animal-based "miracle cures" (rhino horns come to mind).
Rachknits 4 years ago
The real issue is eating shark fins. Thousands of sharks either get left to drown or get dumped after being caught and having their fins removed. Eating shark fin soup is a status symbol in some cultures and until this changes we're on route to fishing sharks to extinction, just for their fins (which are tasteless btw)
iblowsheep 4 years ago
hmmm. imagine that. alternative health folks making up s**t to sell product. that must be a joke.
#3
Charles Darwin said that humans come from monkeys. In reality, Darwin never stated the fact that humans come from monkeys directly. In his work On the Origin of Species, Darwin only said that monkeys, apes, and humans must have a common ancestor because of our great similarities compared to other species.
Iggy 4 years ago (edited)
He also did not come up with the term 'survival of the fittest'. That was coined by a contemporary of his, Herbert Spencer.
Carmen Sandiego 4 years ago
And fittest in this sense, mean most versatile, not strongest.
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iblowsheep 4 years ago
best "bumper sticker" analogy for evolution for me is still showing a picture of a mallard and asking if it's a bird or a duck.
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
This was NEVER taught to me in school, and it irked me from age 10 onward. No, he didn't say that. It was a great way to discredit Darwin, of course, and still is used, alas.
Marlowe Fitzpatrik 4 years ago
Astonishing, how many trolls in here have a real problem with Darwin's publications. Huh. Didnt know that many people on Bored Panda read Darwin.
Niall Mac Iomera 4 years ago
I had no idea people thought Darwin said that. I thought it was just crazy evangelical propaganda
"Repetition is important in making us believe things, whether they are true or not. There is a cognitive bias called the 'illusory truth effect' which is when we are repeatedly exposed to false information over and over and, over time, it begins to seem more plausible," Lee from Boston University told Bored Panda. He noted that scientists have known about this for decades, but the idea goes back to antiquity.
"Social psychologists have known since the 1960s that repetition works, for truth or falsity. In fact, this idea goes back to Plato who said that it didn't hurt to repeat a true thing. And of course, for falsehood, this was one of the main propaganda tactics in Nazi Germany, where Hitler's propaganda minister understood the 'repetition effect.'"
At the core of the illusory truth effect lies the idea that if you repeat a falsehood over and over and over again, people will eventually begin to believe it. Lee noted that researchers like Lisa Fazio continue to work on this.
#4
The fact that bees can fly doesn't violate the laws of aviation, and it isn't a scientific mystery. If bees flew like airplanes, then yeah, their flight would be impossible. But they don't fly like airplanes. They fly like bees. The opening narration of Bee Movie informs us that a bee shouldn't be able to fly, because "its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground." But like so much of Bee Movie, this is complete nonsense. The myth may have originated with entomologist August Magnan, who in the 1930s noted that "a bee's flight should be impossible." But Magnan didn't know that bees flap their wings back and forth instead of up and down, a motion that creates "mini-hurricanes" that help lift the bee upward.
Hugh Willie Mungous 4 years ago
The fact that they CAN fly should be enough to tell us that . . . . . they can fly. Our greatest scientists have shown us that observational science is key.
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
Which, really, is way cooler than the idea they defy physics. I mean, they make tiny wind currents, how cool is that?
Neil Bidle 4 years ago
Well exactly, this was a know problem that was investigated as soon as we had the high speed cameras to do so, and then the answer was discovered. Nobody said that bees broke the laws of physics, just that scientists were confused how they managed it with relatively small wings and and bodies that just aren't aerodynamic.
Nubis Knight 4 years ago
It's the same as saying "it's against physics that tons of Metall can fly". Learn your damn physics!
#5
NASA didn't spend millions developing a pen that could be used in space while the Soviets simply told their cosmonauts to use pencils. NASA's mechanical pencils of choice cost $128.89 each, and the public wasn't pleased when they found out where their tax dollars were going. In addition, the flammability of pencils and the tendency of their tips to break off and float away made the switch to pens imperative. The Fisher Pen Company invested $1 million to design the "AG-7 'Anti-Gravity' Space Pen," but "none of this investment came from NASA's coffers."
The agency was hesitant to purchase the product, but after extensive testing, they decided to buy 400 of them. A year later, the Soviets placed an order for 100 space pens. The two dueling agencies "received the same 40 percent discount for buying their pens in bulk. They both paid $2.39 per pen instead of $3.98." So while NASA was looking for an alternative writing utensil when the space pen came along, they neither overlooked the possibility of using pencils nor invested an absurd amount in the invention of the product.
Neil Bidle 4 years ago
It was never really meant to be believed, it was a dig at Americans who always seem to want to throw money at problems, whereas the Russians tend to find a low-tech solution that works. Russian tanks were the first to use angled armour to make then stronger and faster, while America tried to make stronger, thicker steel and put in huge engines to compensate...for example
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Xylle Flora 4 years ago
The graphite in pencils is electrically conductive, and could've messed with the systems in space.
Stephen Lyford 4 years ago
Not to mention that using a pencil means that graphite powder would be floating around in the air inside a small, closed space that is your ONLY chance of survival, with finite filtration capabilities.
Logic and Reason 4 years ago
Uh, graphite pencils send conductive shavings all over the spacecraft. This could potentially cause a fatal and explosive error that would kill everyone aboard. The Apollo 1 fire made NASA extremely conscious of this risk.
Wouldiwas Shookspeared 4 years ago
Why are you being downvoted? You’re right. All the space museums in America sell them for like ten bucks
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Lily Mae Kitty 4 years ago
Fischer also lied about the story he used for marketing; that an astronaut used a pen of his to fix a broken ignition switch. NASA never said otherwise but Buzz Aldrin mentions he used a regular pen for that in his book.
#6
The 25th frame affects human subconsciousness. In 1957, James Vicary did an experiment; he secretly flashed, at a third of a millisecond, the words stimulating people to eat popcorn and drink a certain beverage onto a movie screen. According to his words, right after the end of the movie, the sales of both drastically increased. But the American Association of Psychology disproved the effect of the 25th frame. In 1962, Vicary himself admitted the falsification of experimental results.
Mark Johansen 4 years ago
A very similar one: Almost every textbook on evolution talks about "peppered moths". Some pepppered moths have white wings and some have black wings. Supposedly before the industrial revolution, most had white wings, because they perched on birch trees and their white wings blended in with the white bark of the trees, giving them good camouflage from predators. But with the industrial revolution London factories started pouring out soot, covering the trees with black gunk, so now the black moths had better camouflage. Thus the ratio of black to white changed, an example of evolution. Except ... (a) That isn't evolution, that's just natural selection. No one is even claiming that new genetic material was created. There were always white moths and black moths, all that was claimed to change was the ratio. But even more amusing, (b) The experiment was a fake. The experimenter admitted many years later that he had glued death moths to tree trunks in the desired ratios and then taken pics.
Sar-kei Scyence 4 years ago
Putting the fact that the experiment was faked to one side. Survival of the fittest is the start of evolution, the expressed genes give an advantage to survival and more mutations to one or several genes continue to provide advantages millennia after millennia and so forth.
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Mark Johansen 4 years ago
Yes. One experiment appeared to confirm the theory that you could influence people's behavior with "subliminal messages". Hundreds of experiments since then have failed to reproduce the results. I hadn't heard the part about the results being falsified before. But even if that wasn't true, it could have simply been a flawed experiment. People seem to really WANT to believe that it is possible for the government or big corporations or whomever to control their minds, and so they refuse to believe that this doesn't actually work.
Little king trash mouth 4 years ago
So is subliminal messaging actually possible? Asking for a friend, lol
earringnut 4 years ago
Superbliminal is the real issue. It's literally everywhere and is actually proven effective.
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JustAPanda 4 years ago
Yeah. We keep counting the number of frames in a movie instead of watching them
The fact remains that the illusory truth effect works in real life, even if we're aware of it. It's a very humbling experience for everyone. "I understand cognitive bias, yet last election season I kept seeing signs for the same candidate running for local office around my town. I thought, 'Wow, I guess everyone is voting for her.' It turns out I was just walking my dog in the neighborhood where she lived, and her friends and neighbors had up lots of signs! So I fooled myself."
I wanted to get Lee's take on how best to approach news stories and facts. On the one hand, we need to have open yet scientific minds. On the other hand, we simply don't have enough time to be skeptical about each and every tidbit of info. So we have to balance between the two extremes and focus on finding accurate sources of information.
"It would be exhausting to fact check every single news item we hear. In fact, insisting on this degree of skepticism is something that demagogues use to get us to be cynical, because when we doubt that it is possible to know the truth—even when it is staring us in the face—we are riper to their manipulation. So I'd say the best thing with news is to do a little investigation into finding a reliable source," Lee explained to me.
#7
Humans don't swallow eight spiders a year on average while they sleep. Arachnid experts speaking to Scientific American said that such a claim "flies in the face of both spider and human biology." Spiders "regard us much like they’d regard a big rock," since we're so comparatively huge that we're "really just part of the landscape" to them. Additionally, the vibrations of a sleeping human (snoring, breathing, and the beating of a heart) are terrifying to spiders. As far as humans go, even if the rare brave spider does wander across your face whilst you snore, you'd most likely feel it there and wake up before it crawled inside your mouth.
Rus Kus 4 years ago
Why this "fact" emerged in the first place? Such a horrid idea to spread around
Lila Launehase 4 years ago
I think I have read there was an experiment to test how fast false information travels.
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Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago (edited)
The last line is why I went from a kid who didn’t mind spiders to a person who has an extreme dislike of them. Happened on a camping trip where we were in sleeping bags outside on the ground. The spider crawled on my face and into my hair right before I woke up, so I was conscious of the feeling of those 8 legs crawling on me. Needless to say, it felt like a horror movie. I also don’t camp anymore, unless I’m inside an RV—-and even then only rarely.
Frank Ropen 4 years ago
"So how did this claim arise? In a 1993 PC Professional article, columnist Lisa Holst wrote about the ubiquitous lists of “facts” that were circulating via e-mail and how readily they were accepted as truthful by gullible recipients. To demonstrate her point, Holst offered her own made-up list of equally ridiculous “facts,” among which was the statistic cited above about the average person’s swallowing eight spiders per year, which she took from a collection of common misbeliefs printed in a 1954 book on insect folklore. In a delicious irony, Holst’s propagation of this false “fact” has spurred it into becoming one of the most widely-circulated bits of misinformation to be found on the Internet."
Theodore Theodora 4 years ago
I'm relieved to learn this! I had read this "fact" before and it grossed me out, even though I was like, "how did anyone ever determine this?!"
Mona Rediamond 4 years ago
Hallelu !! I believed this until today !!! I tried hard every night of my life to make sure my mouth was closed while sleeping ! Arachnophobe
Tiny Dynamine 4 years ago
I've always known this to be false because no-one has ever observed people sleeping every night for a year.
#8
Orson Welles' 1938 radio play War of the Worlds didn't cause mass hysteria in the United States. You may have heard that millions of Americans were tricked into thinking that aliens had invaded Earth, but in reality, "the supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast." Newspapers covered the story gratuitously, hoping to strike a blow against radio, the popularity of which had carved into their profits. But very few people actually tuned into the broadcast, and even fewer earnestly believed what they were hearing. Multiple anecdotes about the panicked reactions of the public (including suicide attempts and hospitals treating multiple listeners for shock) were later disproven.
May 4 years ago
This one, I didn't know. The futility of old technology fighting new technology is ever ongoing.
Nubis Knight 4 years ago
Yep, than it was "Video killed the Radio Star" now Streaming kills the cinemas.
Load More Replies... Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago
Though I understand it is the reason for breaks in programming where stations identify themselves and say things like “This is station WNBC in New York, and you are listening to ‘War of the Worlds’, presented by the Mercury Theatre”.
Joe Reaves 4 years ago
One agency (I forget who) did a survey the day after about how many people were taken in, and almost no one said they were. They redid it a while later and a lot more people said they were. So the original fake story came from the newspapers but then it spread because people like to be part of the story so when they hears how much hysteria it allegedly caused people told their own stories of how it affected them even though it hadn't.
Mark Johansen 4 years ago
Just an amusing little story ... but there's an important message. When someone says that X is evil and/or dangerous, check into their motivations. If they have reason to dislike X, whether it's financial, ideological, whatever, take their statements with a grain of salt. Better still, ask to see the evidence. Oh, and if their reply is, "The evidence is far too complicated for you to understand", 9 times out of 10 that means "we don't actually have any evidence, we're just making stuff up". Like I just saw a news spot on TV where, I won't even mention the subject because I don't want to get into the specific issue, person A challenged a certain idea, and person B's rebuttal was, "Do you have a degree in law? Are you a legal expert?" In other words, she had no rebuttal.
#9
Albert Einstein never flunked a math class as a child. When the adult Einstein was shown a newspaper article claiming he had, he replied, "Before I was 15, I had mastered differential and integral calculus." While Einstein achieved high grades throughout his childhood education, he "hated the strict protocols followed by teachers and rote learning demanded of students" at the schools he attended. The math class myth may have originated with the fact that Einstein did fail the entrance exam to Zurich Polytechnic the first time he took it, when he was still a year and a half from graduating high school and hadn't learned much French (the language in which the exam was administered). And, for the record, he did well on the math section, but struggled in language, botany, and zoology. He later graduated from high school and gained admittance to Zurich Polytechnic in 1896.
Chris M 4 years ago
He was, but in fairness, lots of people take calculus when they're 15 or 16 and do fine.
Load More Replies... Dave P 4 years ago
Also it came from that Germany used a 1-5 scale GPA where 1 was the highest and 5 the lowest. He had 1.1 which placed him in the top 100th of the 1% of students in math. However the British at the time used a 1-5 where 5 was the highest. British journalists not knowing how it worked, assumed he was bad.
HellVetios 4 years ago
Well, no. In Germany (and most european countries), it's 1 to 6, not to 5. He went to school in Switzerland, where 6 is the best and 1 the worst. That's where that comes from.
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Carol Emory 4 years ago
I can understand what he meant about the schools. I learned, I just hated doing homework. It seemed pointless to me. I understand it's importance for Math, English and Science, but why the rest. Just give us exams to pinpoint where we are. I was failing an American Political Issues class because I never did the homework. My father intervened and made a deal with the teacher that my final grade would be whatever I got on the final exam. When he handed me my exam back with a B+ on it, he said "I guess you were paying attention."
Katherine Boag 4 years ago
At least half of Einstein's work was done by his wife Mileva Maric and the credit taken by him when she got pregnant.
Grady'sRaider 4 years ago
IMHO Albert's first wife Mileva, also a physicist, contributed to his success.
"Look for an organization that does investigative journalism (and doesn't just repeat information from other sources), double sources its quotations, discloses conflicts of interest, etc. Once we've found that we can relax a bit and trust the reporting behind the stories. Do we still need to be on guard? Yes. Even The New York Times can make mistakes. Or individual reporters can have biases. But that doesn't mean 'all sources are equal.'"
Media literacy, according to Lee, is essential moving forward. "There are various sources for media literacy that can help. They teach this to KIDS in Finland! It's easy to learn. Is the story copyrighted? Is it dated? Is there a byline? Are other stories by the author solid? Is it published in a source that has been reliable in the past? Does it seem plausible— if not then you can do some research," he listed the questions we should be asking ourselves as we evaluate an article, the news source, and the journalist.
"Will we get fooled sometimes in doing this? Yes. But we're going to get fooled sometimes anyway. It's analogous to how scientists form their beliefs. They are skeptics, but they also—at some point when the evidence is sufficient—give their assent. Scientists deal with warrant, not 'proof.' They are what philosophers call 'fallibilists.' You give your belief to things that are well-sourced with evidence, while always holding out the possibility that if further evidence comes to light that contradicts your belief, you should give it up because you might be wrong."
#10
Ninjas never wore black. The darkest color they ever wore was blue (during nighttime). Mostly they wore the inconspicuous clothing of peasants, merchants, traveling priests, etc.
NsG 4 years ago
I heard a version that said it came from the theatre. The crew responsible for moving sets between scenes were all in black so the audience wouldn't pay attention to them. And then during one performance one of the "crew" acted out assassinating a principle actor and the myth was born. How true this version is I don't know either, but it is narratively satisfying
LAWLAWLAW 4 years ago
Yup I heard that too on QI, if you cant trust Stephen Fry who can you trust?
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Randolph Croft 4 years ago
'ninjas' were 'grey people' in society - they looked like the average person of any group they were infiltrating, but one or two steps lower, so they wouldn't attract attention. They also used 'make-shift' weapons, as opposed to stuff they specially made somewhere else and 'smuggled in'. Virtually, the first version of a modern spy and espionage agency. No '007' - just the basics. Makes for boring movies, but much more successful as they didn't get caught since they just looked like #5 Laundry Guy or #8 Stable Cleaner.
Miss Cris 4 years ago
They couldn't be Mr Smith as he dresses in black...
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Vermillion Ace #443 4 years ago
True ninjas blend in with the crowd, so they can catch their target off guard.
Rikke Visby Wickberg 4 years ago (edited)
I train in Katori Shinto Ryu, we are wearing blue. What has today to do with the 14th century?
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Brandi VanSteenwyk 4 years ago
The World's first "Undercover Crew" hiding among us while their skills stay honed and ready to pounce when necessary.
#11
Walt Disney did not create Mickey Mouse. His close friend and collaborator Ub Iwerks did, though he was "denied credit" for creating this major piece of pop culture history. Iwerks came up with the character in 1928, after Disney lost the rights to his "first hit character," Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. When Disney "kept on making up bigger and bigger whoppers to stretch the Mickey Mouse creation story," up to and including claiming he was the one who came up with him, Iwerks quit Walt Disney Studios, embittered by his friend's behavior. In 1940, a decade after he left, Iwerks returned. He and Disney rekindled their friendship and worked together until Disney's death in 1966.
Amina Hays 4 years ago
If my "friend" was telling all and sundry that they created such an iconic character and was reaping all the financial benefits from it, there's no way I'd reconcile. Proper friends don't do such shady disrespectful things.
Monday 4 years ago
I agree but the opposite argument can also be made. Proper friends forgive each other and a strong friendship can overcome anything. Disney did some shady crap but we can't judge Iwerks for valuing the friendship enough to overlook it.
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Michal Kafka 4 years ago
This one is not correct. Walt Disney did invent Mickey Mouse. Seek for the great book by Neal Gabler - Walt Disney. Walt Disney was in a train heading back home to California from New York where he just lost his rights to Oscar The Rabbit to his former bread giver. He was desperate and broke. He was doodling during the long journey in which he was accompanied by his wife. He came up with and appealing mouse. His wife loved it. Walt named him Mortimer. This part his wife didn't like and suggested to go with Mickey. So the famous Mouse was born. Walt Disney was responsible for the design, his wife for the name. Ub Iwerks was an artist, very skilled but without luck of employment. They met with Walt and Ub became his employee. They together brought Mickey to life. It was tedious process. Ub as a great artist became the only one who could draw Mickey right and Walt knew it. After first Cartoon they still didn't have an audience. Walt was stunned by a new technology - sound movie.
Michal Kafka 4 years ago
So he obtained the rights and have Mickey his own voice. Yes for many years he narrated Mickey before her could hire a professional voice actor. But even after that Walt personally supervised every single cartoon with Mickey. He just couldn't draw him right and was anxious about it. Ub became a little jelaous even though he was known as the quickest pencil in the Hollywood and was well paid. He left after Snow White, he wanted to be independent. But the great depression in the thirties got him hard... In the forties, when Walt again stabilized his studio, Ub Iwerks came silently back as one of many new employees. But Walt noticed him in the studios' canteen, sat next to him and offered him a job as his master engineer. They together invented multiplane camera (with a help of many great guys). They stayed friends long time... And Mortimer? Great care, modern redesign... Read the book it's excellent.
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Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago
So Disney was the Edison of cartoons. Someone else created them and he took all the credit for it.
Jacob Babashoff 4 years ago
Uhm...I think this might be BS. Walt Disney got the idea of a mouse from one of his old failed cartoon studios (I forget which one) where he often saw a mouse he named Mortimer. His wife didn't like the name and suggested Mickey. But Mortimer would show up on one of the cartoon shorts. Ub Iwerks was Walt's main animator on all the shorts and yes most of the stories are his. But why he left wasn't so much about getting credit as it was about the verbal abuse he would receive from Walt himself on projects. Even other animators and his wife told Walt he was too hard on him. His response; "Ub understands me". When Ub did return after his own failed cartoon studio, Walt immediately asked "how much you need to cover your losses?". Ub refused any money and said it was taken care of. But he had a lot of new ideas and he (Walt) had the capability to accomplish it. And finally, think Walt's attitude was more about losing the Alice Comedies.
BetweenTheCracks 4 years ago
This sort of thing happens a lot, unfortunately. You have "creator" types, who are usually introverted and living in their own worlds, and the "hustler" types, who are much better at getting a new idea or product noticed. However, hustler types also like to take credit for things they didn't create (*cough*Thomas Edison*cough*). See also Felix the Cat, McDonald's, and other innovations.
Henry Cheves 4 years ago
Same with Donald Duck, his nephews, and Daisy, but I don't know who created them. Uncle Scrooge was created by Carl Barks, though.
Frank Ropen 4 years ago
And still Disney is one the reasons why the copyright time period is constantly extended, to prevent Micky Mouse to become public domain.
#12
Yellowstone isn't overdue for an eruption. It's had three major explosions in its existence (2.08, 1.3, and 0.631 million years ago), and if you average out those numbers, that means an eruption every 725,000 years, meaning we'd still have a good 100,000 to go. But that number is based on such little data that it's "basically meaningless." A volcano doesn't operate like a fault line, and the accumulation of liquid magma and pressure necessary for an eruption "does not generally happen on a schedule." Because of that, it can't be overdue.
Neil Bidle 4 years ago
The eruption dates are also estimates, everything is, but there are other signs that Yellowstone will erupt soon. The thing is though, that in geological terms, 100,000 years is as "soon" as next week on the human scale if time. Same with astronomical "near misses" of "only" a few million miles.
Samantha Becker 4 years ago
The way humans are treating the planet, we might not be around for the next major geological event.
Load More Replies... yeciye 4 years ago
Sooo it isn’t overdue but still can erupt at any time? Close enough, I’m going to continue avoiding that area.
SkyTheImaginer 4 years ago
Won't it be an extinction level event when it does erupt? So it doesn't really help if your avoiding the area. At least I think so
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Rannveig Ess 4 years ago
There are 6 "super volcanoes" (called "caldera") - Yellowstone is just 1. The others are: Taupo Caldera in New Zealand; Valles Caldera in New Mexico; Toba caldera in North Sumatra, Indonesia; The Long Valley Caldera in California; Aira Caldera in southern Japan.
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
Also, of course, Yellowstone is over a geological "hot spot", and that means every tiny process of plate tectonics etc. could shift things, so... Maybe-kinda-sorta worry but like I do about asteroid strikes. If it does, I can't stop it, so... Oh well.
Vermillion Ace #443 4 years ago
Sensational nonsense then, kinda explains the boring documentaries they make for such events.
Theora Fifty-five Johnson 4 years ago
Yellowstone's 'readiness' is measured in geologic time - hundreds or thousands of years at a minimum. The Nat. Park Service monitors geologic activity. It's a massive volcano, would be a devastating event.
Earlier, I had a chat with Lee about why so many people fall for conspiracy theories. We spoke specifically about Flat-earthers—people who believe that Earth is flat and that the idea of it being a planet is a hoax perpetrated at the highest possible institutional levels. Though some Flat-Earthers try to ‘prove’ their ideas to the general public, they don’t stand up to rigorous scientific analysis.
“They are to be commended for actually trying to test their hypothesis, but of course they don’t understand at all how science actually works. Specifically, they are ignorant of gravitational pull. One of their main arguments was that if the Earth was spinning the water would fall off. Do they not understand that gravitational pull comes from the center, is based on mass, and works on water too?” Lee told Bored Panda earlier.
#13
Despite the fact that his name has become synonymous with "angry short man," Napoleon Bonaparte was actually of average height for the time period in which he lived.
His contemporaries described him as being 5'2", but the French measured height differently back in the day, so he was actually around 5'5". That made him just "an inch or so below the period’s average adult male height." The popular perception of the diminutive general probably came in part from the successful work of the British cartoonist James Gillray, whose mocking caricatures of a "tiny Napoleon" were so popular that Napoleon himself said that Gillray "did more than all the armies of Europe to bring me down.”
Carol Emory 4 years ago
He was also a masterful propaganda artist. He shoveled so much BS to the French. You think somebody would've caught on to the fact that a good portion of his troops never came home....
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Daria B 4 years ago
Slightly off-topic, but I find it interesting how every time I encounter this one particular debunk story, about a fraction of French history.... the measurements are expressed in units uncommon in France. And, as someone using metric system all my life, these numbers and apostrophes are hieroglyphs to me, and, for the record, I'm no expert of Egyptian culture and history. Sure, I can look up a converter, but this is not really a rant of mine, just something I find kind of funny.
Me 4 years ago
Probably because the verbiage is directed primarily at Americans whose pop culture always presents Napoleon as a very small angry man.
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Oathbreaker 4 years ago
I'd recommend watching the Oversimplified series on Youtube to anyone who hasn't. They just did one on Napoleon recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqllxbPWKNI
Sweetie Dahling 4 years ago
Thank you for the recommendation! I’ve been watching a lot of Crash Course & History Scope lately to brush up on my history knowledge, am always on the lookout for other channels
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Joe Reaves 4 years ago
He was also frequently surrounded by members of the elite old guard, who had a minimum height requirement.
Stannous Flouride 4 years ago
Napoleon was smart enough to listen to the advice of others. He surrounded himself with excellent tacticians who had advanced through the military because of their abilities, not their bloodlines and often took their advice. He also modernized the French army in a variety of ways that seem obvious today but at the time were radical.
#14
NASA confirms that The Great Wall of China "frequently billed as the only man-made object visible from space" can't actually be seen from the final frontier. Although the fact was debunked by Chinese astronaut, Yang Liwei, the textbooks were never changed, and will often still claim this as true.
Troux 4 years ago
I always thought this "fact" was insane. It's long, but only about 5-6 meters wide. If this was visible from space then every highway would be as well.
Sky Render 4 years ago
You can't see the Great Wall of China from space with the naked eye, but you CAN see the International Space Station from the Great Wall of China with the naked eye (as you can from any other point on the planet that it passes over). That, to me, is far more impressive!
AnRusz 4 years ago
Actually a lot of man-made objects are visible from Space. Space begins aprox at 100 km (62 miles) above the surface of Earth. From this altitude there are visible cities, some highways, railways, big buildings, even big ships and also the Great Wall of China. The myth (as I recall) was that the Great Wall was the only man-made object visible from the Moon, but that's just utter nonsense given the fact, that from that far away there is difficult to distinguish even the continents.
Sarah Grape 4 years ago
you can definitely see it from space. I believe this fact wholeheartedly. you just can't see it with the naked eye, so you need to bring a picture of it.
Neil Bidle 4 years ago
Also, there are a few human-made objects that *are* visible with the naked eye from space, but they're things like the Chernobyl lake, or a giant quarry.
Thomas E S Thomas 4 years ago
Highways and cities are quite visible from space, especially at night.
#15
There is no record of Queen Marie Antoinette of France ever having said the words "Let them eat cake." The myth goes that when told French peasants did not have enough bread to feed themselves, she replied callously, "Let them eat cake." History.com claimed that Lady Antonia Fraser, author of a bestselling biography of the French queen, believed that "the quote would have been highly uncharacteristic of Marie-Antoinette, an intelligent woman who donated generously to charitable causes and, despite her own undeniably lavish lifestyle, displayed sensitivity towards the poor population of France."
Kari Panda 4 years ago
I read recently that this quote was frequently pinned on people in order to disgrace someone back then. Not just her, so that makes it very unlikely that she ever said this.
Dave P 4 years ago
She was a great benefactor for the poor and advocated in court for greater freedoms for the peasants. When she was taken to be executed her last words were offering her forgiveness to them, and saying that she will always love them as her people. This was after weeks of abuse, and even seeing her best friend raped and beaten in front of her by guards.
Neil Bidle 4 years ago
Jealousy is a horrible thing, and people usually manage to make up an excuse to justify it.
Daria B 4 years ago
The thing with Marie Antoinette is that she was sent to France and into marriage at a very young age (she was 14, no?), and, like most young and lively people, she just wanted to enjoy life and have fun. That made her susceptible to manipulation and misunderstandings. Finally, she became mature and aware, but it was too late already.
Martha Meyer 4 years ago
This quote predates Marie Antionette's birth by about 70 or so years and was variously attributed to different unpopular people.
Mosheh Wolf 4 years ago (edited)
It was from a princess in a story that was so clueless that when she was told that the people didn't have bread to eat, she asked "if they're out of bread, then why don't they eat brioche instead?". The point was to show that she could not conceive that the common people didn't have the same access to food as her, and that running out of one thing just meant that they could, temporarily, eat something else.
Sue M. H. R. 4 years ago
I was taught in high school that the burnt ends of breads or other products that were left in the ovens were called "cake" and so when she said that, or the quote was attributed to her, it was not about the poor being able to afford to normal bread should just eat expensive bread but was instead that if the poor could not afford normal bread, they should eat the left-over burned remains, i.e., cake.
He pointed out that after visiting the Flat Earth International Conference in 2018, he debated some conspiracy theorists and they kept asking for unspecific proof that they’re wrong. “Most of them just said ‘proof’ and I said ‘proof of what?’ They couldn’t be specific. This shows that their beliefs weren’t really based on evidence in the first place,” he said.
Lee explained to Bored Panda that after spending an hour face-to-face with Flat-Earthers, he came to the conclusion that the vast majority of them truly believe that the Earth is flat in their heart of hearts.
“Some are stronger in that belief than others, but I didn’t catch one person who seemed like they were just trolling. At one session I heard many Flat Earthers talk about losing family members, getting kicked out of their churches, losing jobs… who would do that for fun? These are hardcore science deniers,” Lee said.
#16
Don’t touch baby birds. If there's one thing everyone knows about baby birds, it's that you're not supposed to pick them up. If you do, the mother bird will smell the residue of your stinky human hands on her baby, and leave the piteously crying chick there to die, right? Wrong, says Miyoko Chu, a biologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "Birds don't have a very strong sense of smell," she said, "so you won't leave a scent that will alarm the parent." In fact, contrary to what our parents may have told us, most bird parents are unlikely to abandon their chicks over a little human fiddling. "Usually, birds are quite devoted to their young and not easily deterred from taking care of them," Chu said.
Tristan J 4 years ago
It's still good advice not to pick up baby birds unless you know how to handle them safely. Perhaps the myth was created to help parents deter children from handling chicks and potentially causing harm.
Marcia Cash 4 years ago
Most birds can't smell. Only carrion feeders like vultures have good sense of smell.
Melanee Upton 4 years ago
I found a nest that had fallen down in a busy gazebo. I was not tall enough to put it back so I put the babies (semi feathered, fuzzy heads) back into the nest on the ground. 6hours later I came back with a ladder and placed the nest back. Mom came back quickly even with the high human traffic. A week later I watched the babies first flight. It's always worth try if you ask me. Its always a good idea to respect nature....but sometimes a little help is okay :)
#17
According to a survey from 2013, around 65 percent of Americans believe that we only use 10 percent of our brain. But this is just a myth, according to an interview with neurologist Barry Gordon in Scientific American. He explained that the majority of the brain is almost always active.
Thorfin Wolfsbane 4 years ago
Just because peoples brains are active doesn’t mean they are USING it, haha
Grady'sRaider 4 years ago
A theory developed in the 70's suggested the brain was plastic, meaning if one part failed or was injured, another part could take over. Current research and methods to exploit this are encouraging.
Beatrice Multhaupt 4 years ago
Even if I do use my hands 90% of the day, there,s a rather significant difference in the way I use them and the way Leonardo used them. As a species, we are nowhere near fulfilling our potential.
Anup Poojary 4 years ago
We need 100% usage of brain for various functionality in our body. Even a sleeping mind needs to have good amount of usage of the brain.
Hugh Willie Mungous 4 years ago
Furthermore . . . . . . we understand so little about the brain that it would be rash to make any such assertion.
Dave van Es 4 years ago
It is thought that humans use 10% of their brains capacity. Meaning that our brains are able to do a lot more than they currently do
#18
Different tongue parts. There are not different sections of the tongue for each taste: bitter, sour, salt, sweet and umami (savoury/meaty).
Yurie 4 years ago
I remember this in primary school, we sat there putting different flavors on different parts of our tongue, e.g. sugar, lemon slice etc. and I couldn't tell the difference, they all tasted as their respective flavors with no change in intensity no matter what part of the tongue. Good to know I'm not a freak
Walter Brameld 4 years ago (edited)
I remember that too. I also remember some of the other kids in the class, at the teacher's prompting, saying uncertainly that they _could_ tell the different parts of the tongue by taste.
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Chet Wesley 4 years ago
Anatomically, taste buds are larger at the back of the tongue and smallest at the tip. Bitterness tends to linger at the back while sweetness does the tip.
Susanna Parri 4 years ago
Luckily she already knows adults dont know everything...
Load More Replies... Radek Suski 4 years ago
I mean; this is something everyone should be able to realise alone by just testing it
“As hard as it might be to accept, there are people who believe this stuff and are willing even to put their lives on the line for it! One rocket guy crashed trying to prove Flat Earth. They aren’t pretending.”
Conspiracy theories are nothing new. They’ve been around far longer than most of us realize and they’re an indication that there’s chaos. “Conspiracy theories have been around since Nero in the Roman Empire. They pop up in times of turmoil or mass unrest when people try to make sense of the world, but can’t,” Lee said.
#19
The right side of the brain is responsible for creative skills. People think that personalities whose right side of the brain is more developed tend to have good creative skills. And those who have their left side of the brain dominating tend to have better analytical and logical skills. However, recent research has completely destroyed this myth. Scientists analyzed the work of 1,011 brains. The participants were between 7 and 29 years old. They didn't find any signs of left or right hemisphere domination.
Brandi VanSteenwyk 4 years ago
True but... As with just about every fact, there is an anomaly that will compel additional thought. Such as when one side of the brain doesn't exist due to accident, birth defect, genetics or other. The remaining side can and often does, "step up" and become adept at the functions normally controlled by the missing side. Fascinating (to me at least) fact.
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Vicky Z 4 years ago
It's not wrong that the one side is responsible for the logical part like speech and the other part for the emotions... This has been proved and you can see it in patients that had stroke! Depending which side was affected they lose their speech or can be emotionally unstable! What is not proven is the domination part...
Bob Belcher 4 years ago
Ok, 1: the myth came from scientists 2: 1,011 people is not a large enough sample size and 3: research is only proven if it is repeatable. So unless there's more studies on this with a bigger sample size, I don't think you can disprove this myth. I'm not saying this proposed myth is correct, I'm saying by the standards of scientific research it has not been properly disproven.
Sweetie Dahling 4 years ago
Hidden Brain (NPR podcast) did a great episode on this: One Head, Two Brains (May 3, 2021)
Nubis Knight 4 years ago
It's often combined with "left-handed people = doninant right hemisphere, right-handed people = dominant left hemisphere".
#20
The lines on a red Solo cup aren't there to measure the correct servings of liquor, wine, and beer. A representative from the manufacturers, the Dart Container Corporation, told that, "The lines on our Party Cups are designed for functional performance and are not measurement lines. If the lines do coincide with certain measurements, it is purely coincidental.”
Q B F T 4 years ago
As a European, I have never used one of these cups and only ever seen them in movies/TV. I've heard they're sold in some places in Europe for American-theme parties. But funny how something so ubiquitous for one place is completely absent in another despite our increasingly globalised world.
Nubis Knight 4 years ago
As onetime usable plastic cups are forbidden to sale in EU since last week, we won't see them anymore.
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WilvanderHeijden 4 years ago (edited)
That's why they advertise them as reusable, because you really can't tell people that the rubbish of their picknick in the parks will be there for the coming 1 million years.
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Jim Ellington 4 years ago
if you're going to pour wine into a solo cup why not just drink it out of the bottle?
Liezzzewies 4 years ago
All together now: 🎶Red solo cup, I lift you up. Let’s have a partay.. Proceed the partay.. 🎶
Ed Smith 4 years ago
They are used all year. They are made in most colors now and can be purchased in sleeves of mixed and single colors. Some popular color combinations are, St. Pat's green and gold cups, St. Valentines red and pink cups, Independence day red white and blue cups, Halloween orange and black cups, Thanksgiving orange and yellow cups, Xmas red and green and silver cups. I've seen pink and silver cups as well. We have a retail chain called Party City. They sell them in at least a dozen colors.
#21
Isaac Newton didn't discover gravity because an apple bonked him on the head. Rather, he witnessed an apple falling and wondered why objects always fall down instead of up or sideways, a thought that inspired his Law of Universal Gravitation. When he saw the apple drop, Newton was in the orchard of his childhood home, Woolsthorpe Manor. He had been studying at Cambridge University, but the school was temporarily closed due to an outbreak of the bubonic plague.
Mazer 4 years ago
Good thing he didn’t live in Kansas in the middle of a tornado season or things would’ve been flying sideways including cows
Vanessa Richardson 4 years ago
I’ve lived in Kansas for about 15 years now, and I’ve had fewer tornado scares here compared to when I lived in Alabama for 8yrs. Must be the Wizard of Oz thing😉
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Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago (edited)
School closed down because if a pandemic. Hmmm. Where have I heard that before? (/s)
El muerto 4 years ago
that's also not true, Newton had being studying gravity for a while...he made the story of the apple because it sounded cool, and more interesting than his struggles with understanding it...he was famous for embellishing the truth. didn't lie, just made it fun
Jon S. 4 years ago
I'm not an expert on newton by any means, but I was under the impression it was speculation by a few historians that he may have made it up, while mainstream biographers consider it as proven as much as any anecdote can be. He certainly told the story to multiple people in his life time and there are no contemporary suggestions that it never happened. The elements that can be verified, such that an apple tree grew at his home, have been. The core of the story is that he was already contemplating gravity and when he saw the apple drop he speculated that it might be the same force acting on the apple as the moon, a speculation that seemed unlikely at the time and would take him 20 more years to prove. The only known embellishments are the ones that grew up long after his death: that the apple hit him and inspired a eureka moment.
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Colin Matthews 4 years ago (edited)
Yes the idea of the apple falling is because his contemporaries were plagued by stupid questions about it, and in irritation, one said " maybe an apple fell on his head douchebag" or the equivalent
“Flat Earth is in some ways just a run-of-the-mill conspiracy theory. They’ve all grown in popularity because beliefs (even fringe beliefs) are reinforced by peer approval, and that is now readily available on the internet. Virtually all of the Flat Earthers I met were converted based on YouTube videos. Some then went to the conferences. After that, they were ‘down the rabbit hole.'”
So if such ludicrous conspiracy theories can worm their way into people’s minds, it’s no wonder that seemingly innocent ‘facts’ about science, history, and the natural world also find a spot in our hearts. No matter how ‘fun’ they might be, it’s still our duty to separate the wheat from the chaff, even if we still want to stay kids at heart.
#22
Lightning can and does strike the same place twice. The Empire State Building gets struck 25 times a year on average. And speaking of lightning striking once and coming back for more, one unlucky fellow by the name of Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning seven times. That's the most lightning strikes any one person's ever survived.
Night Owl 4 years ago (edited)
It can struck you even if you're inside (just not directly)
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all caps 4 years ago
And, sadly, what ended up killing Roy Sullivan was Roy Sullivan. He took his own life when he was 71.
T J R 4 years ago
It made me so sad when I read the story about him and that was his ending.
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Nevits Yibble 4 years ago
It's interesting that lightening actually CAN strike twice in the same place given it's only about the width of a pencil.
#23
The myth that a sleepwalker should be left alone stems from an ancient belief that the soul leaves the body during sleep, and if a sleepwalker is woken up they will be a body without a soul. Metaphysical reasoning aside, the presumption that sleepwalkers will exhibit wildly disturbing behavior when awakened is largely unfounded. Although some people may become aggressive, researchers have found that most of the time sleepwalkers are simply confused, disoriented, scared, or embarrassed. Waking a sleepwalker should be done as gently as possible to avoid such responses.
Anonymousplease 4 years ago
I used to have night terrors (completely different from nightmares). I would start crying or making noises in the night. My parents would have me go to the bathroom and get a drink and go back to bed. I am told that once I even had a full conversation.The thing is, I was asleep the whole time, so I never remembered. Once, I apparently was yelling at my brother a ton. When I came to breakfast in the morning, my family was looking at me weird and I had no idea why.
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
Ditto my hubby. He'll have a great convo in his sleep, and not know it. I've had to tape record it so he believes it. It's creepy at first, but once you know, it sorta rolls off you. And, yes, adults can get night terrors. It's not as typical, but it happens.
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SykesDaMan 4 years ago
Waking anybody in any circumstance should be done as gently as possible. The 'possible' may differ from situation to situation though! "Rise and shine sleepy head! The house is on fire and we need to evacuate"
Jerry T 4 years ago (edited)
My kid used to sleepwalk. We would guide her back to bed and often she would seem to wake up, but 5 to 10 minutes later she would come back to us, actually awake, crying because she had had a nightmare. While sleep walking she would have her eyes fully open, talk to us and even respond. Often times we would just tell her to go back to bed, and she would, before coming back to us awake.
Little king trash mouth 4 years ago
My six year old does this once in a while. At first I just kept getting annoyed because he'd burst into my room and drape himself over the chair next to my bed and when I would ask him what was wrong, he would just make agitated noises. After this happened a few times and I read up on it a bit I realized what was happening. I just gently guide him back to his room and tuck him back in. Usually I'll say something like "it's ok buddy. Go back to bed." Seems to work.
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Emmy 4 years ago
I’ve had night terrors every night since I was 4, I’m 32 now. To say I’m tired is an understatement. I get about 3-4 hours sleep a night, and each time I go to sleep, I talk, kick, punch, scream, shout, walk around, run, throw stuff, I’ve even picked my child up in my sleep (never hurt him, it’s always been gentle) but it’s not fun at all.
Ingrid 4 years ago
Try installing blackout blinds or even better shutters. Also position your bed away from windows
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k1ddkanuck 4 years ago
I sleep eat. Only in the past few years. I wake up occasionally, and realize I ate half my leftovers, and the rest of it is sitting on my coffee table or something. No memory of getting up and eating it, but I ate it. Weirdest thing.
Nubis Knight 4 years ago
Can confirm both: I'm glad my parents did pick up six year old me when I wandered down the street on my first sleepwalk. And I was just confused how I endet up sitting between my parents watching an "only for adults" TV-show (a crime movie, not what you may think...). Of course the garden door always Was locked afterwards so I never wandered out to the streets again.
Freya the Wanderer 4 years ago
Some years ago I sleepwalked and scared the crap out of my father and brother. I didn't know about the incident till weeks later.
#24
The Mexica people (known as "Aztecs" post-conquest) didn't believe that Hernando Cortés and the other conquistadors were gods. Francisco López de Gómara, Cortés's secretary and a man who had never been to Mexico, came up with that story in 1552. In de Gómara's version of history, Cortés was seen as "a god named Quetzalcoatl, who long ago had disappeared in the east." But there is no evidence that the myth of Quetzalcoatl existed before the Europeans' arrival, and the Mexica responded to the "technology gap" between them and Cortés's forces with "intelligence and savvy rather than wide-eyed talk of gods." The story both glorified the Europeans and alleviated their guilt by recasting them as returning gods rather than invading conquerors.
May 4 years ago
The part I didn't know is that Aztecs weren't called Aztecs, but Mexica. Never heard that before.
Iapetos 4 years ago
They called themselves Mexica, Aztec is a term THEY used for their ancestors from probably centuries ago.
Load More Replies... Dave P 4 years ago
Actually this has a lot of errors. 1) They were known as Aztecs by the people they subjugated and oppressed brutally, the people who sought the Spanish as allies to help them overthrow the Aztec's. 2) Quetzalcoatl is an ancient Mayan god the Aztec's took on. The oldest statues to this god date back to 300CE, over 1100 years before European https://www.britannica.com/topic/Quetzalcoatl 3) the Myth of that god, did not originate from de Gomara, but rather from the Tlatelolcan people who were one of the oppressed nations who allied with Cortez and acted as his translators. While we have no evidence in Aztec digs that this story existed before Europeans, given the source was the Tlatelolcan, we cannot dismiss it. However it is false the Aztec's thought him a god, that is the only true thing in this statement.
Mark Johansen 4 years ago
You often hear that "primitive people" would or did confuse technology with magic or the supernatural. At one point I tried to research this, and I was unable to find a single case where there was solid evidence it actually happened. It's one of those ideas where someone says, "I bet that X would happen", and then they leap from "it sounds plausible to me" to "it's a proven fact".
Mike Ieva 4 years ago
It's Hernan, not Hernando. The Aztec were the high society of the Mexicas. Quetzalcoatl is the Mexica adaptation of the Mayan god: cuculcan (similar to Zeus and Jupiter for the Greek and the Romans)
Daniel Gómez 4 years ago (edited)
Aztecs were nomadic people, and once they settled on Lake Texcoco became Mexicas. Historian here, with a historian Mexican wife, who happens to live in Mexico City, and have lived in the country for almost ten years. You're right about Cortes's name though.
Load More Replies... Beatrice Multhaupt 4 years ago
Yes and no. It seems that the first nations of South America had plenty of folklore concerning a technologically advanced race of humanoids who shared technology with them and promised to return. Weaving, pottery, domesticated plants and animals were all dubbed as ''gifts'', not as inventions. So they expected the same degree of generosity from Cortez, alas. Things get muddled with the use of the term ''gods'': to the first nations, this probably meant no more than ''vastly superior'', but never in an ethical sense.
#25
Benjamin Franklin didn't publicly or seriously advocate for the turkey to be the national bird of the United States. According to the Franklin Institute, Franklin "defended the honor of the turkey against the bald eagle" in a private letter to his daughter, but his pro-turkey leanings didn't go any further than that. In the letter, Franklin criticized the design of the bald eagle on the Great Seal of the United States, pointing out that it resembled a turkey. He then went straight for the bald eagle's jugular, writing that it is, "a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly…[he] is too lazy to fish for himself.” The noble turkey, in comparison, is "a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America. ... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage." Ultimately, Franklin kept his reservations about the honor of the eagle out of the public sphere.
Hugh Willie Mungous 4 years ago
Benjamin may have had his faults . . . . . but he was certainly no turkey!
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
Of course, Franklin overlooked that bald eagles do in fact fish for themselves. Seen it. And it's freaking impressive.
k1ddkanuck 4 years ago
He was nonetheless correct. Bald eagles are some of the stupidest, ill tempered, detestable birds on the planet.
#26
It takes seven years for your body to digest a piece of gum. Actually, gum will pass right through you and leave your body within a matter of hours or days. According to Healthline, the ingredients in gum can't be digested at all, so your body will move it along and pass it as a bowel movement.
Brendan 4 years ago
When she was young, my friend was told that, if you swallow gum, it will wrap around your heart and kill you. As you can imagine, she avoided gum at all costs.
Monday 4 years ago
My aunt has had stomach problems all of her adult life and when I was a kid my mom told me it was from swallowing gum to discourage me from doing it....Evidently parents will tell you just about anything.
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Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago
Just like being told swallowing a watermelon or apple seed will grow the plant in your stomach. Ah, the little white lies of our parents.
Anup Poojary 4 years ago
Chewing gums don't react the way other foods react to the stomach acid in our body. That's why most of the time it just passes as is.
ThoughtsAreNotFacts 4 years ago
Heard this and also that if a watermelon seed was swallowed a whole melon would grow in your stomach
#27
Shaving thickens hair. No - shaving hair doesn't change its thickness, color, or rate of growth. Shaving facial or body hair gives the hair a blunt tip. The tip might feel coarse or "stubbly" for a time as it grows out. During this phase, the hair might be more noticeable and perhaps appear darker or thicker - but it's not.
Amy Dodds 4 years ago (edited)
I learned the hard way. Ladies, never use your dad's/ granddad's rotating shaver on your face 'to see what happens'.
Martin Forbes 4 years ago
If shaving thickened the hair then within a matter of few years each hair follicle would be massive and impossible to eventually shave off. I never understood why some people believed in this myth.
Anup Poojary 4 years ago
Tried explaining this fact to many. No one believes it as this is one of the deep-rooted myth.
Gretchen Esquilin 4 years ago
Also, please note that different hairstyles do NOT make your hair grow faster! Nothing outside of your DNA will do that! Genetics control the speed & length of your hair. There's nothing you can do to change that. Sorry folks!
Jim Ellington 4 years ago
Shaving most certainly changes a hair's rate of growth. Hairs grow to a certain length and then fall out. If you shave a hair, it will grow constantly.
Nadine Bamberger 4 years ago
Otherwise we wouldn't still be looking for a cure for baldness lol.
ThoughtsAreNotFacts 4 years ago
I'm perplexed. So shaving doesn't make hair grow back thicker... Just appears to in every notable way. Thus I am qualifying "thickness" as a concept at 5a
Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago
It’s because most men start shaving when still in their teens, and their facial and body hair is relatively sparse. Then as they mature, they grow more facial and body hair. So it only seems like it’s the shaving, rather than hormones and maturation, thickening hair.
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#28
Cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis. This was probably told to you by people who can't stand the sound of bones popping, cracking your knuckles or other body parts will not give your arthritis. Dr. Robert Klapper, an orthopedic surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and co-director of their Joint Replacement Program, explained on the hospital's site that there is no harm to cracking your knuckles. "The noise of cracking or popping in our joints is actually nitrogen bubbles bursting in our synovial fluid," he wrote. "It does not lead to arthritis."
tomandjerry56 4 years ago
Okay wow this is life changing. I have been cracking my knuckles since i was ten and ever since i heard it could cause arthritis i have tried to quit because i don’t want arthritis at such an early age
Bob Belcher 4 years ago
I'm 36, I've been cracking my knuckles, toes, wrist, back, neck and just about everything else since elementary school. I'm fine.
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Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago (edited)
Never heard the arthritis thing, but I did hear that it will make your knuckles larger. Guess either would be a deterrent. Worked too—-I never cracked my knuckles, for fear of having them get huge.
Anup Poojary 4 years ago
Ever tried explaining this fact to anyone who still believes that it causes problems? They will just ignore it most of the time. "What all blabberish non-sense this guy is talking about nitrogen and all" - that's the reaction I get to see 😂
#29
The biblical forbidden fruit is an apple. In the Old Testament, it is said that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was an apple. It is likely that the theory about Adam and Eve eating an apple appeared because of the translation of the Bible into Latin, which was done in the 4th century. The Latin word "malum" can be translated as "apple" or "evil." So the forbidden fruit could be anything from pomegranates to figs to something abstract.
Xottel 4 years ago
"Something abstract"... They tasted the "forbidden fruit" when Eve got seduced by the "snake". Afterwards they were ashamed (of their nudity?). I get a rough idea what happened.
Jon S. 4 years ago
I've never liked this interpretation because Adam and Eve were explicitly ordered to have lots of sex by god.
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Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
Artists needed a fruit in their artwork. Apples were easy. That's my theory on this one.
Miss Cris 4 years ago (edited)
There are grenades in some art creations. They needed a fruit and ecah one picked a fruit they know and it was aesthetic in their standards and with the rest of the painture. And you can eat an apple wiuout peeling it, it'd be more interesting to draw Eve peeling the grenade (or a watermelon) than simply bitting an apple.
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Amanita Virosa 4 years ago
I think they were donuts. Donuts are evil as they call your name... Amanita come eat me.
Luther von Wolfen 4 years ago
European artists used visual symbols in their paintings to convey concepts to the mostly illiterate public. Apples were common in Europe, so they were used to represent " the fruit if the tree of the knowledge of good and evil". There's a lot of visual symbolism in old paintings. It's pretty impressive, actually.
Zophra 4 years ago
Not to conservative evangelical Christians. I was taught this was fact- and the Creation Museum in Kentucky and "answers in Genesis" etc. websites also present it as fact. Sigh.
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Moneythink 4 years ago
Why should they trust a liar, anyway? "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.". They didn't.
#30
Bats are blind. No, bats are not blind. Bats have small eyes with very sensitive vision, which helps them see in conditions we might consider pitch black. They don't have the sharp and colorful vision humans have, but they don't need that
Vanta Black 4 years ago
Wait... people still believe this one? Is it because Bruce Wayne didn't see his parents' murders coming?
Beatrice Multhaupt 4 years ago
Please include a disambiguation regarding tiny-eyed insectivorous bats and large-eyed fructivores. Although the Americas are not home to any species of fruit bats, we should be aware of how vastly they differ from our insectivorous species, which would indeed be helpless without the guidance of ultrasound.
#31
"Irregardless" is a real word. The fine folks at Merriam-Webster wrote a whole article defending its existence. They point out that other major dictionaries include it as well, and that the word meets its criteria for inclusion because lots of people use it, it's been around for a long time, and it has a "specific and identifiable meaning ('regardless')." The fact that it's considered awkward or unnecessary doesn't matter, since it is "not a dictionary's job to assess whether a word is necessary before defining it."
NsG 4 years ago
That is how most words are made up. If I were to invent a word: "praplecakes" and it enters collective use and earns a place in the dictionary, it is a real word. So, it's a real word, defined as "a nonsense word illustrating the ineffectiveness of dictionaries to establish the necessariness of a word before defining it". You're welcome.
Neil Bidle 4 years ago
I will now use praplecakes as much as possible and encourage others to do the same, then perhaps we will stop the trend of adding further praplecakes to the dictionary.
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Scagsy 4 years ago (edited)
English lexicographer Susie Dent (of Countdown fame) explained how words make it into the dictionary. If you think about it, every word that we use today was made up by someone at some point. They didn't magically appear but were conceived and then adapted over time. Susie pretty much says the same as OP but she adds that the dictionary isn't there to tell people which words they can use, it is there to reflect and define the words in common use at any given time. So, if enough people say 'There going on a date' over a long enough period of time, the definition of the word 'there' may be changed to reflect it's new and common usage. What a terrifying prospect, eh?
Nikki Sevven 4 years ago
Don't care. The presence of the "-less" suffix discounts the need for the prefix "ir-." Using both makes "irregardless" a double negative and utterly senseless. (Note that this is not the case with "inflammable," because the "in-" prefix here does NOT indicate a negative. The word originally stems from the Latin "inflammare.")
Uber Mensch 4 years ago
Rather like "flammable" and "INflammable": same meaning, but with a couple of extra letters tacked on to complicate things.
SerumSeven 4 years ago
I recently had praplecakes with a side of flotchbottom. I didn't realize they'd gotten popular.
Connie Martin 4 years ago
BS. The word is nonsensical, as are many people. That doesn't mean I have to accept either
#32
Eating rice doesn't make birds explode. Birdseed expands more than uncooked rice when soaked (40% versus 33%), so if bursting birds were a problem, we'd already know about it. Besides, lots of birds eat uncooked rice "all the time with no ill effects," because their stomachs aren't hot enough for the grains to absorb much liquid. So don't worry about our avian friends too much the next time you find yourself at a wedding with a handful of grain.
sofacushionfort 4 years ago
Modern wedding etiquette prefers that the guests throw money, anyway.
Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago
Funny, that’s what the local squire used to do when he got married a couple hundred years ago, only he was the one throwing the money at his guests and any one else who happened to be outside the church at the time.
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IlovemydogShilo 4 years ago
A friend of mine got married a few years back and we just threw bird seed. It has the same effect as rice but there is more chance of it being eaten quickly by the birds afterwards and doesn't leave a mess that has to be cleaned up like confetti.
Rikke Visby Wickberg 4 years ago
Place uncooked rice in a pot of water. Let it be over night. How much does it expand? On another note, don't throw birdseed outside the church. Some of it will grow in the cracks of the pavement outside the church. We use an outdoor vacuum cleaner to clean the seed up. The tradition is to throw the rice at the couple when they leave the party, not the church, to ensure that they will be fruitful in the activities they are about to engage in during the night.
Jim Ellington 4 years ago
Eating popcorn makes birds explode, though, if you microwave them for long enough.
Marie 4 years ago
I thought the origin of this was from a big city (New York?) that had a lot of weddings one weekend and dead pigeons were found with exploded bellies in the park (central park?), so the city made it illegal to use rice. But it might have also been a myth based on the biological habit of pigeons to reproduce based on food consumption. More food, more laid eggs.
Octavia Hansen 4 years ago
Logic would dictate that if birds did explode from rice and water, there would be a season with a lot of dead birds . . .
#33
Walt Disney's body is cryogenically frozen. His biography states that after he died from lung cancer complications in 1966, his body was cremated in Glendale, California. Mental Floss reported that the rumor likely got started because the president of the Cryonics Society of California told the Los Angeles Times that Walt Disney Studios had inquired about the process.
Although Walt was not cryogenically frozen, people remembered the association of Walt Disney with cryonics, and the rumor persisted.
grey galah 4 years ago
That's true, but apparently some of Disney's ideas are cryogenically frozen, which you can see in the movies
Freya the Wanderer 4 years ago
Creativity at Disney is definitely frozen when all they're doing is live-action (actually mostly CGI crap) remakes of the classic animated films. Also, they've abandoned traditional 2D animation, which is where they truly shine. Bring back the ink and paint!
Load More Replies... Jim Ellington 4 years ago
Lies! You can see his cryogenically frozen head sing in the Haunted Mansion.
Chloe *Leah* Pheonix 4 years ago
Fun fact to add to this. Disney's movie Frozen was based on the story The Snow Queen. Why they didnt name it that? Because of this myth. That way when people look up "Disney Frozen" they dont see this myth and instead see the delightful movie.
BingeFest1 4 years ago (edited)
Reminds me of that one iCarly episode where Dingo Studios was ripping off their webshow
#34
Caffeine dehydrates you. Not really. The diuretic effect of caffeine is offset by the amount of water in a caffeinated drink. Drinking caffeine-containing beverages as part of a normal lifestyle doesn't cause fluid loss in excess of the volume ingested. While caffeinated drinks may have a mild diuretic effect — meaning that they may cause the need to urinate — they don't appear to increase the risk of dehydration.
Mazer 4 years ago
Diuretics are substances that cause your body to make more urine than usual. Caffeine may do so by increasing blood flow to your kidneys, which spurs them to release more water through urine (4Trusted Source). By encouraging urination, compounds with diuretic properties like caffeine may affect your hydration status. I had a friend who is riding a motorcycle through the desert southwest in the summertime and she drank tea all day. At one point in time mid afternoon after drinking copious amounts of tea, She found herself getting super hot she pulled over to the side of the road underneath an overpass and proceeded to pass out from heat exhaustion and the impacts of dehydration. She was revived, taken to the hospital and put on an IV drip to help rebalance her system. Moral of the story for every caffeinated drink you in just in a hot arid environment add two drinks or more of water.
Monday 4 years ago
The issue in the example is all of that could have happened if she was drinking water instead of tea. No matter what you drink if you're riding a motorcycle through a desert in summer you're going to have a bad time.
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Butternut DerpFarts 4 years ago
And caffeine does not make you sober up from drinking. Nothing sobers you up except not drinking. You will puke and fall asleep to wake up feeling like you wish you were dead every time. Don’t want to be drunk? Don’t drink.
Jim Ellington 4 years ago
The way I make my coffee it sure as hell is a diuretic. But then again I make my coffee really strong and add spironolactone, furosemide, and bumetanide.
Me 4 years ago
The opposite here. I make 3 pitchers of tea from one small tea bag. Little diuretic effects if any. It's basically colored water.
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Bill Anderson 4 years ago
Interestingly, as a retired RN, when you are recording someone's fluid intake a cup of tea or coffee counts as zero, because of the caffeine content
Nadine Bamberger 4 years ago
I was taught that caffeine blocks an anti -diuretic hormone and thus makes you urinate more, dehydrate more easily.
Ben Smith 4 years ago
This is absolutely false. Caffeine is one of the most studied and widely used performance enhancing drugs there is.
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#35
Paul Revere didn't yell "The British are coming!" on his midnight ride through colonial Massachusetts. First of all, Revere's mission was a stealth operation that needed to be conducted "as discreetly as possible," and there is nothing less discrete than a man on horseback screaming about imminent doom. Then there's the fact that at the time, the American colonists still thought of themselves as British, so Revere's supposed warning would be nonsensical at best. What he may have said is that "the Regulars" (British soldiers) were en route, but either way, he didn't yell about it.
TiaCalenture 4 years ago
In 1777, Sybil Ludington rode nearly 40 miles overnight at only 16 yrs old, raising 400 men and even fighting off a highwayman with her fathers musket to alert Americans that the British were coming. It was double the length of Paul Revere, and George Washington even thanked her personally for her service.
Bunzilla 4 years ago
I was going to make a comment about her, yes. 16-year-old girl! In a storm! She really needs to be remembered more than Paul Revere.
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Kathryn Baylis 4 years ago
Because apparently, according to a contemporary portrait, he did.
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Faith Hurst 4 years ago
You can blame one writer and The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere for most of the misinformation. I actually had a parent tell their kid I was wrong when I taught about this particular subject.
Nancy Collins 4 years ago
Also, Revere got arrested early on and didn't even complete his famous midnight ride. William Dawes and Samuel Prescott probably did more to spread the word that the Regulars were on their way to Lexington.
Luther von Wolfen 4 years ago
If Revere rode at all, he was one of many riders going around alerting people.
Christine Marie 4 years ago
While visiting Boston and the surrounding areas, I learned that Revere did not ride alone that night. He set out with two other men, Samuel Prescott and William Dawes. Prescott was the only one to complete the ride and the other two found themselves detained by British troops. Revere gets all the unwarranted credit in this story.
#36
Twinkies definitely don't last forever. In fact, their shelf life used to be only 26 days, though it's currently around 45. Though the snack cakes have a reputation for being unnatural, they're made of "mostly flour and sugar" and their rate of decay "is absolutely typical of all processed foods." The NPR Science desk kept one for 18 months to observe its supposed invincibility, and they wrote of their findings, "The subject shows no signs of disintegrating — or of still being edible: It's now hard as a rock." So if you were planning on including Twinkies in the pantry of your doomsday bunker, you should probably take your business elsewhere.
Mazer 4 years ago
There’s a guy on YouTube who eats really old MREs. One of them was from World War I. I can’t believe he still alive!!!
Kenny Kulbiski 4 years ago
During the Vietnam war my ship would issue WW2 rations during GQ or long drills. We'd try them out of curiosity. They were edible but....... They also included four unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes which went up in flames after a couple of drags.
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Francesca Annoni 4 years ago
Now I understand the twinkle in "wall-e"..700 years after the starship departure!
Gin Marie 4 years ago
I sent my mom an MRE from Bragg about November 91, then called her over Christmas-----which dinner was served to us grunts by generals and full birds in their fanciest dress blues, as is Army tradition----and asked her what she thought of it. "Oh, we're saving it." "For what?!" "Christmas." When she died twelve years later, a month before I was activated for Iraq, my brother found it in her things.
Beans 4 years ago (edited)
That e Mcdonalds stuff doesn't decay is a myth too. Anything dry enough or cooked enough will not have visible mould or decay even after a while because of preservation and lack of gems. I make home-made McDonald style hamburgers with my own beef mince and it tastes exactly the same and it is 100% beef made fresh. McDonald's burger may look like it's not decaying but not all decay is mould and slime. Same with twinkies
Load More Replies... #37
Wolves howl at the moon. There is no direct connection between a full moon and wolves howling. Howling is a way of communication between wolves, and they lift their heads to make the sound spread better. Wolves can howl in complete darkness as well. However, due to the fact that moonlit nights are usually windless, it's simply easier to hear the howling. Moreover, it's impossible to see a howling wolf when the moonlight is not there.
Marnie 4 years ago
Moonlit nights are usually windless? I had never heard of that, or observed it.
Jay Tesst 4 years ago
It's a weather thing. If you have a moonlit night, it means there are hardly any clouds, which means depending on your climate and location you are right in the middle of a high- or low-pressure area. The wind is caused by pressure areas equalizing between high and low pressure. And so if you are right in the middle, there is no wind to blow.
Load More Replies... Mazer 4 years ago
Although there is a guy who used to own a coyote and every time they sang “Old Macdonald had a Farm, the coyote would howl. A photographer heard about this and took advantage of the situation by photographing the coyote howling with a full moon behind it. I have his photograph and I love that story
Jim Ellington 4 years ago
I once saw a howling wolf with a spotlight when no moon was out. Check and mate.
Eglė Bukauskaitė 4 years ago
That one day when i was howling at the moon to tech my new puppy to howl. She never understood am i doing this 😂
#38
Toads cause warts. No, there are no amphibians that give you warts. This myth has been around for a long time and is probably related to the fact that many frogs and toads have warty looking bumps on their skin. These are glands and do not secrete anything that can cause you to have warts!
Heather W 4 years ago
But they will pee on you. If I wanted to hold one I'd get a friend to pick it up first. After it peed on him, then I would hold it. Sadly, he picked it up every time...
Fluffy Griffin 4 years ago
If you catch them head first and leave their bottom pointing away, then they won't pee on you.
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WhoAreYouToSayPandasAreBored 4 years ago
We should keep this one going though. You should not touch toads/frogs as it can be harmful to them. They absorb through their skin an whatever is on your hands lotion, dyes, perfume, etc. can be harmful. Let's face it, people will pick them up if they only think it can only harm the species, but if you let them think it can harm them too, then they will think again.
Stannous Flouride 4 years ago
Their peeing is a defense strategy that is common to many animals.
Radek Suski 4 years ago
LOL. I was always thinking that is some kind of witches related fable.
#39
Twenty women accused of being witches were executed during the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, but none of them were burned at the stake. That isn't to say they didn't have a rough time. Nineteen of the victims were hung on Gallows Hill, and the twentieth, an elderly man named Giles Corey, was pressed to death with stones after he refused to plead either guilty or innocent. In addition to those executed, "more accused sorcerers died in jail while awaiting trial." This misconception probably originated with the fact that burning witches at the stake was a "disturbingly common practice" during European witch trials.
grigsound 4 years ago
"Twenty women"... "Nineteen of the victims were hung on Gallows Hill, and the twentieth, an elderly man named Giles Corey"... Huh!? Wait, what!?
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
And that's how misinformation starts. No editing.
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Sarah Lewis 4 years ago
None of the witches in Salem were burned, however in England and Scotland burning was a common punishment for witchcraft and heresy.
Stannous Flouride 4 years ago
Jonas Grinevičius, the author of this piece, is Lithuanian. One question you should ask yourself before criticizing his English grammar or syntax is how fluent you are in Lithuanian.
Grady'sRaider 4 years ago
I once read the european churches killed millions of women who practiced herbal medicine, accusing them of witchcraft. One of great grandmothers cured her husband of gangrene using a mixture of red ants boiled in oil. In my biochemistry class many decades later, I learned sulfa drugs were first synthesized from the stingers of red ants.
F. H. 4 years ago
You might have read that, but that's a myth. Overall, the death toll of the great witch hunts is around 50.000, men and women. While more women than men were tortured and executed, it had nothing to do with them being healers or midwifes. The truth is, that in the 17th century, when the majority of the witch trials took place, midwifes still had an important status and even were a part of the court system. They weren't threatened in their status by doctors as it is often claimed, as almost nobody could afford one and they wanted to have nothing to do with childbirth. Doctors didn't even preform surgery at that time! The victims of the witch hunts were mainly outsiders or wealthy people - either suspect anyway or envied by their neighbouts. The true reason why those hunts were mainly aimed at women is simply because Heinrich "Institoris" Kramer, the author of the influential Malleus Maleficarum, hated women.
Load More Replies... Nikki Sevven 4 years ago
It should be "none of them WAS burned at the stake." "None" is short for either "no one" or "not one." In either case, the singular verb is called for. Also, clothing is "hung," while people are "hanged."
Victor Botha 4 years ago
Thank you for the hanged hung explanation. I get so annoyed when hung is used incorrectly.
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Anna Solan 4 years ago
And Giles Cory was a bit of a bada$$... His last words were "more weight!"
Joshua Selbitschka 4 years ago
IIRC, He was offered a choice to deny the allegations, which would send him to a kangaroo court and likely lose his land(which he did not want to lose. His family was still on it), or confirm(same result). By doing neither, he died in agony, but his family still got to keep their land and possessions which would've been seized otherwise.
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Zephyr Anthem 4 years ago
They weren't hung on top of Gallows Hill but at the base. Check Gallows Hill Project ;)
Rannveig Ess 4 years ago
Two dogs were also killed as witches. One was shot after a girl accused it of "bewitching" her.
#40
Black holes. Not really “holes,” but rather hugely dense objects with massive gravitational pull.
David de Fortier 4 years ago
What always confused me is they say nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, yet the gravity of black holes are so strong that not even light can escape them.. doesnt that mean black holes gravity is pulling in stuff towards itself at higher rates than the speed of light?
Steven McDonald 4 years ago
All the black hole does is change the trajectory of the light. Its still traveling at light speed, until it enters the blackhole after which things get complicated but basically it travels to the center of the blackhole and then stays there. At no point does anything travel faster than light
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Walter Brameld 4 years ago
Black holes are supremely weird objects. The time dilation at the event horizon is infinite. This means that from an outsider's perspective nothing ever actually crosses it. The time at which an infalling object reaches the event horizon is forever in our future. Yet from the object's point of view there is no delay at all; it just falls right in. Then it gets even weirder once it's inside. The singularity is not a point in space but rather a future point in time. It's like a little universe in there which is collapsing everywhere instead of expanding like the real universe.
Grady'sRaider 4 years ago
Relativity has the speed of an electron at c, the speed of light. In it's orbit the electron's speed has to be effected by earth spin, planetary orbit, galactic orbit, and galactic drift; c + these vectors. A British researcher found electron charge and spin don't occur at the same time. So you have gravity, huge masses of matter, the charge flicking on and off in sync. Motion becomes the underlying cause of gravity, brownian motion, precession, etc. Time is relegated to the status of measuring stick. IMHO
Load More Replies... Yoinks! 4 years ago
...which means they are NOT "portals to other dimensions," and if your spaceship enters one, it's just going to smash into and be crushed by the object in the center.
Ellen Ranks 4 years ago
That is not necessarily true. There might be wormholes.
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Chaos&Roses 4 years ago
This. This gets me everytime. People who think a black hole is a doorway, a vortex to another dimension are idiots.
Frank Ropen 4 years ago
If you imagine space as blanket and gravity as dents and folds in it then black holes come very close to holes in the blanket.
Chris M 4 years ago
A hole of infinite depth, with no bottom, from which nothing can return.
Load More Replies... Neil Bidle 4 years ago
Plug holes aren't really holes either, but it's the name and is a reasonable description.
LAWLAWLAW 4 years ago
Just to point out, some types of radiation do come out of black "holes"
Load More Replies... #41
Bagpipes are Scottish. They were prevalent in the Middle East centuries before Western Europe.
Donnie Mc0 4 years ago
i work in a Scottish museum, and yes people are disappointed when we tell them of the origins of the instrument. And dont even get me started on Tartan or clan names......
Hugh Walter 4 years ago
Presumably the 'Scotii' or Picts got them from the Syrian legion which garrisoned Hadrien's Wall toward the end of the Western Empire? But I believe the Scottish variant has more notes and/or more tubes, enabling more complicated compositions? Can't beat them for picking-up a body of men after a long, hot parade!
#42
Alcohol warms up the body. Not only does alcohol not raise the body temperature, but it can also drastically increase the loss of body warmth. The thing is that a nip or 2 actually causes your blood vessels to dilate, moving warm blood closer to the surface of your skin, making you feel warmer temporarily.
Hugh Willie Mungous 4 years ago
Indeed the notion that alcohol warms the body is a very dangerous misconception altogether.
Butternut DerpFarts 4 years ago
And I’m pretty sure brandy only wakes someone up if they are already awake I never tasted any ever but I would guess the string flavor makes a conscious person jump with surprise. And if you give a sick person brandy it’s makes then sicker, not better.
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Bunzilla 4 years ago
It's pretty strange though, as it seems like in maritime disasters, if you have to swim through pretty cold water... it might actually raise your chances? There are at least two accounts of this happening. The first was Charles Joughin, who got hammered on Whiskey and swam around for 2-3 hours after the Titanic sunk while most others froze to death. In WWII, John Capes, a stoker for a navy submarine, survived his submarine being sunk by a mine in the Mediterranean Sea. He drank a fair bit of rum, then used a flotation device to lift him over 100' to the surface, then swam for shore. During December. Nobody believed him because it was just so extraordinary. It wasn't until 12 years after his death that he was vindicated. At the very least, they're both very interesting accounts to read about!
Butternut DerpFarts 4 years ago
And I’m pretty sure giving a sick person Brandy will only make them sicker.
#43
This morbid fact of hair and fingernails continue to grow after death is not true, but the truth is much more horrifying. BBC reported that "nerve cells die within three to seven minutes" after death, proving that they stop growing. However, the skin around the hair and fingernails retracts after death, due to dehydration, making them appear longer. Funeral directors will apparently heavily moisturize the fingernails to prevent this sight.
May 4 years ago
To become a saint you have to have performed 3 miracles. One of the 3 miracles one of our Norwegian saints performed was that his nails and hair grew after death... Oh dear..
Scagsy 4 years ago
A very wise man once said 'Two out of three ain't bad'.
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What do you think ?
Daniel Atkins 4 years ago
How about farmers started daylight savings time. Ben Franklin was one of the first to advocate for dst. Farmers get up when needed doesn’t matter what the clock says. The last time they extended it the people behind it were mainly outdoor entertainment businesses. So no farmers did not do this because they think city people are lazy.
Chaos&Roses 4 years ago
Queensland, Australia. Doesn't have dst because they didn't want the cows to get up that early, and Noone wanted thier curtains to fade. Really embarrassed to say I moved from New South Wales to up here with all the idiots. Us Aussies have always seen Qld as the break away state full of idiots. If this was USA, Qld would be the swamps of Florida
Load More Replies... Chaos&Roses 4 years ago
Weird how in a world of information people still believe in alot of these. Anyone with a sound education knows the bullshit in these myths. But in the last 20 years or so most people get thier education and info on clickbait or Facebook. I've seen the crap propaganda on FB to understand now why so many people are brainless parrots with no ability to sort through false and real fact, or even how to find or research anything that isn't a FB post.
littlesaresare 4 years ago (edited)
One that drives me insane, because for some reason people online get so rabid about it, is the 'correction' that a tortoise is a tortoise not a turtle. Tortoises ARE turtles. They are literally a family of turtle. You may as well scream that "It's a German shepherd not a dog!", "It's a rat not a rodent!" "It's a lion not a cat!" etc. And if you try to explain the biology or taxonomy of it, the most common 'rebuttal' is "Well it's called a tortoise not a land turtle." And? You call a lion a lion not a maned cat but it's still a f*****g cat. /end rant
Surya Amriza 4 years ago
There should be a Ministry or Department of Mythbuster in every country.
Daniel Atkins 4 years ago
How about farmers started daylight savings time. Ben Franklin was one of the first to advocate for dst. Farmers get up when needed doesn’t matter what the clock says. The last time they extended it the people behind it were mainly outdoor entertainment businesses. So no farmers did not do this because they think city people are lazy.
Chaos&Roses 4 years ago
Queensland, Australia. Doesn't have dst because they didn't want the cows to get up that early, and Noone wanted thier curtains to fade. Really embarrassed to say I moved from New South Wales to up here with all the idiots. Us Aussies have always seen Qld as the break away state full of idiots. If this was USA, Qld would be the swamps of Florida
Load More Replies... Chaos&Roses 4 years ago
Weird how in a world of information people still believe in alot of these. Anyone with a sound education knows the bullshit in these myths. But in the last 20 years or so most people get thier education and info on clickbait or Facebook. I've seen the crap propaganda on FB to understand now why so many people are brainless parrots with no ability to sort through false and real fact, or even how to find or research anything that isn't a FB post.
littlesaresare 4 years ago (edited)
One that drives me insane, because for some reason people online get so rabid about it, is the 'correction' that a tortoise is a tortoise not a turtle. Tortoises ARE turtles. They are literally a family of turtle. You may as well scream that "It's a German shepherd not a dog!", "It's a rat not a rodent!" "It's a lion not a cat!" etc. And if you try to explain the biology or taxonomy of it, the most common 'rebuttal' is "Well it's called a tortoise not a land turtle." And? You call a lion a lion not a maned cat but it's still a f*****g cat. /end rant
Surya Amriza 4 years ago
There should be a Ministry or Department of Mythbuster in every country.
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