33 "Facts" Everybody Knows That Are Actually Total Lies

1. Drinking alcoholdoesnt kill brain cells.

2. Thomas Edisondidnt invent the light bulb.

3. You do not use only 10% of your brain. You use 100%.

4. You cant see the Great Wall of China from space. (For a start, its the same colour as the surrounding landscape.)

5. Twinkies do not last forever. Their shelf life is about a month and half.

6. Nobody ever said, Beam me up, Scottyin the originalStar TrekTV series. Also, nobody says, Its life, Jim, but not as we know it.

7. Vitamin C probably wont stop you from getting a cold.

8. Toilet pioneer Thomas Crappers name isnt where we get the word crap from.

9. Goldfish dont have a memory of three seconds. They can actually remember things for quite a long time.

10. Sugar does not make children hyperactive.

11. The popular image of Santa Claus was not invented by Coca-Cola for an advertising campaign.

12. Sherlock Holmes never says Elementary, my dear Watsonin Arthur Conan Doyles stories.

13. The supposed distinction between less and fewer has never been a feature of the English language.

14. People at the time of Christopher Columbus didnt believe the world was flat, and nobody was worried he was going to sail off the edge of the world. (The idea that Flat Earth theory dominated the middle ages is a 19th-century invention.)

15. Water does not spiral down the plughole in opposite directionsin the northern and southern hemispheres.

16. Youre probably a lot more than six feet away from a rat.

17. A coin dropped from the Eiffel Tower (or the Empire State Building) would be very unlikely to kill someone.

18. Chameleons dont change colour as a disguise to match their environment. They change colour to communicate with other chameleons.

19. Schizophrenia has nothing to dowith having multiple personalities. Dissociative identity disorder, the widely accepted current term for multiple personality disorder, is a completely different, unrelated (and historically controversial) illness.

20. Whether youre more emotional and creative or logical and analytical has nothing to do with being left brained or right brained.

21. You dont lose most of your body heat through your head. Your head loses heat at the same rate (per square inch of skin) as any other part of your body.

22. If you cut an earthworm in half, its not truethat both halves regrow their body, resulting in two complete worms. Only the head stands a chance of surviving. (But there arespecies of flatwormsthat can regenerate from any body part.)

23. Theres absolutely no reason why you shouldnt decide to cheerfully, gleefully, even recklessly split infinitives.

24. Climate change is not a fraud perpetrated by a global conspiracy of lavishly funded scientists.

25. Elephants dont travel to a secret elephants graveyardwhen theyre close to death.

26. Orson Welles radio broadcast ofWar of the Worlds did not result in nationwide panicby Americans believing there was a real alien invasion taking place.

27. Your fingernails and hair dont keep growing after you die.

28. Ostriches dont stick their heads in the sandwhen they feel threatened.

29. Napoleon Bonaparte wasnt short; his height was actually above average for his time.

30. You dont taste different flavours with different parts of your tongue.

31. Eating turkey doesnt make you any more sleepythan most other foods.

32. Lightning strikes the same place twice quite a lot, actually.

33. Vaccines do not cause autism.

33 "Facts" Everybody Knows That Are Actually Total Lies