Things everybody knows that are actually wrong

[dead0man]

You know the dye some people put in their pools that turns the water red when you pee?
It doesn't exist.

Cow tipping?
never happened

Nobody has ever had a kidney stolen and then been left in a hotel bathtub.

The Cowboys are a consistently good football team.
Nope, they haven't won a playoff game since 1996.



I'm sure there are more....

[Plant City Rebel]

Let's see,

Snipe Hunting
and the "Brown" Note

[Mint]

"Everyone thought the world was flat until Columbus discovered America." Unbelievable something Washington Irving pulled out of his ass several hundred years ago is still taken as 100% truth by so many people who should know better.

[dead0man]

"Everyone thought the world was flat until Columbus discovered America." Unbelievable something Washington Irving pulled out of his ass several hundred years ago is still taken as 100% truth by so many people who should know better.

GREAT ONE!  The best part is Columbus was wrong!  He thought the Earth was much smaller than it was and the educated of the day told him it would take forever to get to China going west.

[A18]

"Everyone thought the world was flat until Columbus discovered America." Unbelievable something Washington Irving pulled out of his ass several hundred years ago is still taken as 100% truth by so many people who should know better.

That's an especially egregious example. Almost as bad is the appalling prominence of that mythical "Chief Seattle" speech (or rather, the numerous variants of it).

Then there's the cartoonish portrayal of the Galileo affair, which has only a slight basis in truth.

BTW, has anyone else ever heard of the infamous bathtub hoax? I find the whole concept both hilarious and frightening.

[Gustaf]

The Great Wall of China is visible from the Moon and was built more than 500 years ago.

[Mint]

"Injury and violence have now replaced illness as the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 13-24..." In reality the youth violent crime rate (and almost everything outside of drug use) is much lower on average compared to the 1970s and 1980s. But try telling that to the mass media.

[Hash]

Segolene Royal has a brain and/or is mentally stable.

[dead0man]

That Europeans regularly gave Native North Americans blankets purposefully infected with small pox.
Didn't happen.

[minionofmidas]

Segolene Royal has a brain and/or is mentally stable.

This.

Oh, and: Segolene Royal is even dumber than Nicolas Sarkozy.

[JSojourner]

"Everyone thought the world was flat until Columbus discovered America." Unbelievable something Washington Irving pulled out of his ass several hundred years ago is still taken as 100% truth by so many people who should know better.

That's an especially egregious example. Almost as bad is the appalling prominence of that mythical "Chief Seattle" speech (or rather, the numerous variants of it).

Then there's the cartoonish portrayal of the Galileo affair, which has only a slight basis in truth.

BTW, has anyone else ever heard of the infamous bathtub hoax? I find the whole concept both hilarious and frightening.

The bathtub hoax?  I offer you this blog...  (One of the best...)

http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/

[Associate Justice PiT]

     That Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake."

[The Mikado]

The Great Wall of China is visible from the Moon and was built more than 500 years ago.

Wait...I knew the part about the Moon was false, but isn't it close to 2500 years old?  I thought it was raised in the Sui Dynasty.

     That Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake."

But it's such a great line!  I feel that way about a lot of lines people didn't actually say.  Churchill never described the Royal Navy as "Rum, sodomy, and the lash," but can you think of a better description of the RN than that?  It's such a brilliant quote, even if he didn't say it.

[k-onmmunist]

That Britain did nothing to alleviate the Irish Famine.

Completely and UTTERLY wrong. We spent millions on grain and corn for Ireland.

[Purple State]

Barack Obama is a secret Muslim...

[Boris]

everyone seems to think the line is "Luke, I am you father," when the actual line is "No, I am your father."

[The Mikado]

everyone seems to think the line is "Luke, I am you father," when the actual line is "No, I am your father."

No...that's not true.  That's impossible!

[A18]

"You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can not fool all the people all the time."

The evidence that Lincoln actually uttered those words is extremely shaky.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

That snuff films exist. Yes there are video recordings of people being killed, but no law enforcement agency in the world has ever made a credible claim to having discovered an instance of a criminal organization murdering people and filming it on camera for the sole purpose of selling the videos for commercial means.

Another criminal myth is that drug smugglers use the corpses of babies to smuggle drugs. Even the FBI and DEA admit there's not a single case on record of this occurring.

[JSojourner]

The Satanist child sacrifice myth is one that won't die.  Along with the Proctor & Gamble canard...

[paul718]

Babe Ruth's "called shot". 

Ruth was trash-talking with the Chicago Cubs' dugout during his at-bat, and at one pont made a hand gesture while making a remark.  A local Chicago sportswriter believed he saw, from his angle, Ruth pointing toward the center field bleachers.  A few pitches later, Ruth hit a home run to center, and a legend was born. 

In the ensuing years, however, primitive footage recorded by fans that day have revealed that Ruth never really "called his shot".

[Lunar]

The toilets swirl in a different direction in the Southern Hemisphere because of something other than the direction that the water is introduced into the toilet

[Lunar]

Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the internet.

[Purple State]

The toilets swirl in a different direction in the Southern Hemisphere because of something other than the direction that the water is introduced into the toilet

But why is it introduced differently? Just to be contrarian?

[Lunar]

I don't know the particulars of every country. In Europe I often encountered strange and weird toilets.  It could just be that a lot of countries personalize their toilet design.