Pete Tar
Senior Member.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions
Makes for very interesting reading, but one wonders how easy it would be to create bunk with these. I think most people take a certain pleasure in having a factoid they can say about "actually, that's a common misconception, what really happened was...", which could easily be used against them by some prankster.
Some random ones -
Makes for very interesting reading, but one wonders how easy it would be to create bunk with these. I think most people take a certain pleasure in having a factoid they can say about "actually, that's a common misconception, what really happened was...", which could easily be used against them by some prankster.
Some random ones -
- Vomiting was not a regular part of Roman dining customs.[1] In ancient Rome, the architectural feature called a vomitorium was the entranceway through which crowds entered and exited a stadium, not a special room used for purging food during meals.[2]
- It is true that life expectancy in the Middle Ages and earlier was low; however, one should not infer that people usually died around the age of 30.[5] In fact, the low life expectancy is an average very strongly influenced by high infant mortality, and the life expectancy of people who lived to adulthood was much higher. A 21-year-old man in medieval England, for example, could by one estimate expect to live to the age of 64.[6]
- There was no widespread outbreak of panic across the United States in response to Orson Welles' 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Only a very small share of the radio audience was even listening to it, and isolated reports of scattered incidents and increased call volume to emergency services were played up the next day by newspapers, eager to discredit radio as a competitor for advertising. Both Welles and CBS, which had initially reacted apologetically, later came to realize that the myth benefited them and actively embraced it in their later years.[47][48]
- Albert Einstein did not fail mathematics in school. Upon seeing a column making this claim, Einstein said "I never failed in mathematics... Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus."[52][53] Einstein did however fail the entrance exam into the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School on his first attempt in 1895, although he was two years younger than his fellow students at the time and scored exceedingly well in the mathematics and science sections.[54]
- Actor Ronald Reagan was never seriously considered for the role of Rick Blaine in the 1942 film classic Casablanca, eventually played by Humphrey Bogart. This belief came from an early studio press release announcing the film's production that used his name to generate interest in the film. But by the time it had come out, Warner Bros. knew that Reagan was unavailable for any roles in the foreseeable future since he was no longer able to defer his entry into military service.[55] Studio records show that producer Hal B. Wallis had always wanted Bogart for the part.[56][57]
- Microwave ovens do not cook food from the inside out. Upon penetrating food, microwave radiation decays exponentially due to the skin effect and does not directly heat food significantly beyond the skin depth. As an example, lean meat has a skin depth of only about 1 centimeter (0.4 in) at microwave oven frequencies.[78]
- Non-standard, slang or colloquial terms used by English speakers are sometimes alleged not to be real words. For instance, despite appearing as a word in numerous dictionaries,[86] "irregardless" is sometimes dismissed as "not a word".[87][88] All words in English originated by becoming commonly used during a certain period of time, thus there are many informal words currently regarded as "incorrect" in formal speech or writing. But the idea that they are somehow not words is a misconception.[89] Examples of words that are sometimes alleged not to be words include "conversate", "funnest", "mentee", "impactful", and "thusly".[90] All of these appear in numerous dictionaries as English words.[91]
- Black holes, contrary to their common image, have the same gravitational effects as any other equal mass in their place. They will draw objects nearby towards them, just as any other planetary body does, except at very close distances.[120] If, for example, the Sun were replaced by a black hole of equal mass, the orbits of the planets would be essentially unaffected. A black hole can act like a "cosmic vacuum cleaner" and pull a substantial inflow of matter, but only if the star it forms from is already having a similar effect on surrounding matter.[121]
- Meteorites are not necessarily hot when they reach the Earth. In fact, many meteorites are found with frost on them. As they enter the atmosphere, having been warmed only by the sun, meteors have a temperature below freezing. The intense heat produced during passage through the upper atmosphere at very high speed then melts a meteor's outside layer, but molten material is blown off and the interior does not have time to warm appreciably. Most meteorites fall through the relatively cool lower atmosphere for as long as several minutes at subsonic velocity before reaching the ground, giving plenty of time for their exterior to cool off again.[124]
- When a meteor or spacecraft enters the atmosphere, the heat of entry is not (primarily) caused by friction, but by adiabatic compression of air in front of the object.[125][126][127]
- Egg balancing is possible on every day of the year, not just the vernal equinox,[128] and there is no evidence of a relationship between astronomical phenomena and the ability to balance an egg.[129] The tradition of balancing eggs on a particular date originates in China, when it was reported on by Life magazine in 1945.[130] However, in 1987, Frank Ghigo was able to balance some eggs on every day from February 27 to April 3, 1984. However, he also found that "...some eggs would simply never balance, on the equinox or otherwise."[129]
