25 Facts That People Often Get Wrong | KickassFacts.com

1. You most probably weren’t the fastest sperm cell. The egg has an outer protective layer that takes several sperm to wear down before fertilization. Honestly, you were probably one of the slowest cells who arrived too late to do any work but still won the lottery. Also, the egg actually has a number of chemical barriers that select sperm with certain attractive chemical markers. The egg actively chooses which packet of DNA makes it to fertilization. – Source
2. Tourette’s Syndrome usually does not involve yelling swear words. Only about %10 experience vocal tics – Source
3. Bulls are color-blind and to them it doesn’t matter if the matador’s cape is red or any other color. It’s the flapping it in their face that makes them charge it. Furthermore, they are aggressive in the arena because before they are let loose, they are neglected, starved, and abused extensively. – Source
4. You cannot really see the great wall of china from space with the naked eye.
5. Carrots don’t give you good eyesight. This was propaganda spread by the British soldiers in WW2 to hide from the Germans the fact that they had invented radar and could detect incoming air-raids much earlier.

6. Carrots are bad for rabbits. The misconception that rabbits loved them started with the popularity of Bugs Bunny cartoons.
7. Chameleons change color because of mood, temperature, light, and for communication purposes, not primarily for camouflage.
8. The “Sugar Rush” or hyperactivity in children as a result of sugar intake is a myth. The hyperactivity you feel after ingesting sugar is just a placebo.
9. The average human being normally does not swallow any spiders in their lifetime, contrary to popular belief of eight spiders per year.
10. Men do not think about sex every six seconds, but an average man thinks about sex 19 times a day, according to an Ohio State study.

11. Toilets in the Northern and Southern hemispheres don’t flow in opposite directions due to the Coriolis Effect. It’s simply not powerful enough at such a small scale to have any impact. –
12. The “tongue map” that shows different parts of the tongue being responsible for different tastes is actually a myth. All taste sensations come from all regions of the tongue. –
13. Mac computers aren’t “immune” to viruses and they’re definitely not immune to malware. –
14. Contrary to movies and popular belief, if asked “Are you a cop?” an undercover police officer does not have to tell the truth. –
15. It is a myth that if you are being held at gun point to take money out of an ATM type in your pin backwards to alert the police. –

16. Napoleon was not short. He was average height. There are two factors in this myth. One is the English, and the other is his bodyguard. The English used a different foot than the French did, which meant the 5’2″ French measurement was closer to 5’6″ English, which is average height. Secondly, he was often seen next to his bodyguards. Military guard units of the time generally consisted of the tallest men available. This means he was seen around guys who were significantly taller than him all the time. It is going make you look short. –
17. There is no such thing as “Left brain vs. right brain” in terms of logic vs. creativity or emotion vs. analysis. The hemispherical breakdown in the brain pertains mostly to control of a specific side of your body in terms of motor function, but things like analytics, creativity, and other higher functions are spread out between both hemispheres. –
18. The old Churchill quote about Lady Astor saying if she was married to him she would poison his drink and Churchill replies “Madame, if I was married to you, I’d drink it”. That was not said by him it was said by his friend. –
19. MSG is not that bad for you. The public’s misconception of MSG is based off of one anecdotal and unscientific study. –
20. Pencil lead was never made of real lead. It has always been graphite. Instead, the lead poisoning from pencils came from the lead-based paint. The core of a pencil is probably called lead because that’s what graphite was mistaken for when it was first discovered, a form of lead. –

21. Gladiators did not fight to the death. Sure they would fight and sometimes one would die, but they didn’t fight until one of them was dead. Sometimes it would just be until one was injured or one was too tired to go on. Gladiators were too expensive and valuable to have one killed at the end of every fight. –
22. Medical doctor Donald Unger cracked the knuckles of his left hand every day for more than sixty years, but he did not crack the knuckles of his right hand. No arthritis or other ailments formed in either hand, earning him the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine –
23. The notion that goldfish have a memory of a few seconds is nonsense. In fact they can be trained to react to light signals and perform tricks. –
24. The assumption that glass is a liquid, borne from the fact that antique windows are often thinner at the top than at the bottom, is incorrect. The thinning effect was created as the glass was produced, the glass was then placed with the thicker side down to help waterproof the window. Glass is neither a liquid nor a solid, but a state in between known as an amorphous solid. –
25. It is a myth that people in the middle ages thought the world was flat. They didn’t. They have known it was spherical for thousands of years. The Greeks even calculated its circumference 300 years BCE. Also, Queen Isabella didn’t think Columbus would sail of the edge of the Earth. She thought the earth was bigger than he said it was. She was right, and he was wrong. –

[Timgt5]

Thanks IT, I enjoyed this post, always appreciate the expansion of my knowledge.

[Timgt5]

A few more to add to your collection

Gladiators did not fight to the death. Sure they would fight and sometimes one would die, but they didn’t fight until one of them was dead. Sometimes it would just be until one was injured or one was too tired to go on. Gladiators were too expensive and valuable to have one killed at the end of every fight. –

To add to this one, Gladiators are often depicted in shows like Spartacus, Blood and Sand as being sculpted with 12 pack mid sections. In reality most Gladiators were some what pudgy in the middle like a modern offensive football line man. The extra belly fat actually prevented cuts to the mid section.

Despite what many people believe higher grade and more expensive gasoline does not mean its better. Modern engineering has tuned the vast majority of cars to run on regular grade gasoline. Putting premium gas into a car that does not specifically call for it has no effect whatsoever on the performance or fuel economy. For older cars that sometimes knock, a couple of applications of 3-5 dollar additive will solve that at much less expense that an extra 5-10 dollars a week at the fuel pump.

English versions of the bible place the Philistine Warrior "Goliath" at the equivalent of 9 feet tall. This is a mistranslation from the Greek versions which place Goliath at around 6'10. Considering the average man living back then was around 5'4 Goliath would still have been considered a giant of that time.

The "Dark Ages" were not as dark as people commonly believe. Sharp increases in global temperatures (aka the medieval warming period) brought about more rain which increased food production which in turn led to population increases and a generally higher standard of living for the peasant class than under the Roman empire. It is a known fact that during warmer periods that the strength and diversity of life increases markedly. It is during global cooling cycles that mass extinctions actually occur.

It is a popular belief that the Great Depression of the 1930s was brought about by the stock market crash of 1929-The two are not really connected. By the end of 1929 the stock market had recovered about 1/2 of the losses from the crash and after unemployment spiked at 9 percent it had fallen back to 6 percent by late 1930-with what looked like a slow recovery taking place. Hoover came into office raised taxes and signed into the law the Smoot Hawley tariff which set off a catastrophic trade war which all but shut down manufacturing, triggering the beginning of the Depression. Hoover was a true RHINO, who years earlier FDR had tried to recruit as a Democrat.

Despite all of the news of mass shootings, violent crime nationwide has fallen 51 percent since the 1990s.

[MiddayNap]

I find it bizarre anyone past grade-school would take these myths to be true, what with all of the information available to us.
I am especially, and very frequently, aggravated by the fact that the belief people with Tourette's run about screaming profanities is so prevalent. That is Coprolalia, which, as you stated, is only found in around ten percent of sufferers. I can't stand that the media perpetuates this misunderstanding as a means of earning a cheap laugh here and there. "Ha ha, he yelled ***** at a fancy party. It's almost as funny as that movie about the Bipolar guy who kept having mood-swings or the person with OCD who simply had to organize his pens! No need to represent disorders accurately; that wouldn't yield as much profit. And besides, what's wrong with spreading misinformation, thereby making it difficult for those actually affected to receive any sort of understanding?"
Curses, I say. Bloody biscuits at Sunday breakfast.

I always thought the Great Wall of China wouldn't be visible from space. It's not even big, it's just long . . .