Common Myths

I'm a big fan of Mythbusters, The Straight Dope, and Snopes. There is so much pseudoscience and common bull floating around that it's nice to have easily accessible repositories of experimental and authoritative evidence.

That being said, I'm going to point you at a lad rag who compiled a top 10 list of commonly held misnomers. Even dubious sources get it right on occasion.

To save you a trip to their site, I've compiled the list here:

10: Birds do not blow up if you feed them uncooked rice. The reason you don't throw rice at weddings is because those tiny grains are slippery when applied to the smooth rock steps commonly found at church entrances.

9: Napoleon wasn't short. He was 5 foot 6 inches, the average height for a Frenchman in the 1800s. Due to the tall stature of his soldiers and British propaganda, Napoleon will forever be comically small.

8: Hair does not grow darker and thicker after you shave it. New hair hasn't been sun bleached yet, and body hair tends to get thicker as you age. A popular myth among adolescence, the truth is that we just don't have much control over hair growth.

7: You're supposed to burn witches, but the Salem witches were hung. In 1692, burning was forbidden in Massachusetts. All Salem witches went to the gallows except for Giles Corey, who refused to enter a plea and was crushed to death.

6: In space you experience micro gravity, not zero gravity. Astronauts are in a constant state of falling with only their forward momentum keeping them aloft. This should be taught in every science class, but I imagine physics isn't everyone's strong suit.

5: Marie Antoinette is attributed the cruel "Let them eat cake" quote. This was another propaganda slurring during the peasant uprising. The line actually originated from Jean-Jacques Rousseau when Marie was only 10, and even then he was writing about an event that occurred a decade before her birth.

4: What man made structure can you see from space? The Great Wall! Well, kind of. Its earth colored bricks actually makes it very difficult to detect. The US interstate system is much more visible from low orbit.

3: Thomas Edison industrialized the light bulb. He figured out how to create them cheaply and market them. Warren De la Rue is the actual inventor of the first sealed light bulb.

2: Humans use considerably more than 10% of their brain. Magnetic imaging has documented vast sections of brain activity during complicated tasks. People just like to believe that they have massive untapped potential.

1: 54% of men think about sex a few times a day. The rest spend less time contemplating coitus. Of course it's more fun to accuse men of digressing every 7 seconds.