Brown - 1000 Random Things You Always Believed That Are Not True

1000 Random Things You Always Believed That Are Not True

by

John Brown

Kindle Edition

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Published by John Brown at Amazon Kindle

1000 Random Things You Always Believed That Are Not True

Copyright 2015 by John Brown

MYTH 1. | The Earth is orbiting around the Sun. The Earth doesn't orbit around the Sun, it actually orbits around the Solar System's center of mass, known as the Barycenter. Although this point often falls within the mass of the Sun, it can also be shifted by the pull of other larger planets. Therefore, at least some of the time, everything in the solar system is orbiting around empty space.

MYTH 2 . | The tongue has different regions dedicated to different tastes. The tongue doesn't have different regions dedicated to different tastes. Every single taste can be sensed on every part of your tongue.

MYTH . | Returning baby birds to their nests causes their mothers to reject them. Picking up baby birds and returning them to their nests will not cause their mothers to reject them.

MYTH 4. | Sugar makes you hyper. Sugar doesn't actually make you hyper, and the idea of a sugar rush is an urban myth. According to a recent study done by researchers at Yale University, the entire "rush" is a placebo effect that we get from believing that sugar will make us hyper.

MYTH . | Chameleons change their colors to blend into their environment. While chameleons often do change their color to match that of their environment, they do it in order to communicate.

MYTH . | Napoleon was very short. According to the average height of a French man, Napoleon was actually taller than the average.

MYTH 7. | Vikings had horns on their helmets. Vikings did not wear helmets with horns on them.

MYTH . | Ingesting chewing gum will take 7 years to digest. It doesn't take 7 years to digest chewing gum. In fact, it can't be digested at all and will simply pass right through you as is.

MYTH . | People with red and blonde hair are going extinct. Red heads and blondes aren't going extinct, they're just becoming more rare due to the world population increasing. In order for red heads or blondes to go extinct, every single person that carries that particular gene would have to die or not reproduce.

MYTH 10. | Bats are blind. Bats aren't actually blind. While some do use echolocation, they also have excellent night vision which allows them to see just as well as we see in the daylight.

MYTH 11 . | Life expectancy in the middle ages was low. Life expectancy in the middle ages wasn't as low as many people think. The average age was brought down due to high infant mortality rates, however, most adults lived well into their late 60s.

MYTH 12. | Fingers wrinkle because they absorb water. Your fingers don't wrinkle because they absorbed water, they wrinkle because your brain sends them a message to. While many people aren't sure what the exact cause behind the wrinkling is, many researchers suspect it's to improve our grip on wet surfaces.

MYTH 13 . | The Coriolis effect changes the direction the toilet flushes. The Coriolis effect doesn't change the direction the toilet flushes, it only affects very large bodies of water. If your toilet is flushing backwards, it's because the water enters the toilet backwards.

MYTH 14 . | The goldfish has a 3 second memory. While the goldfish doesn't remember things like us, their memory is capable to absorb much more than 3 seconds of information.

MYTH 15 . | Sharks don't get cancer. Just like any living thing, sharks do get cancer.

MYTH 16 . | Cracking your knuckles will lead to arthritis. Cracking your knuckles won't lead to arthritis. In fact, a doctor did an experiment on himself by cracking his knuckles on one hand every day for sixty years to see if it would lead to arthritis. In the end, it didn't and Donald Unger, the doctor, received the Medicine Prize from Ig Nobel Prizes.

MYTH 17. | Dropping a penny from the top of the Empire State Building will kill someone. Dropping a penny from the top of the Empire State Building will not kill anyone as the penny wouldn't be able to reach the necessary force to do any damage to a human being.

MYTH 18 . | Fingernails and hair continue to grow after death. Fingernails and hair do not continue to grow after death, however the surrounding skin will start to recede which gives off the illusion that the nails are growing.

MYTH 19 . | Dogs sweat through their tongue. Dogs don't sweat through their tongue since most of their sweat glands are located in their foot pads. While panting does help keep them cool, panting doesn't mean that they're sweating.

MYTH 20 . | You are born with all of the brain cells you will ever have. You aren't born with all of the brain cells that you will ever have because your brain continues to grow and produce new cells in certain regions. This process is called neurogenesis.

MYTH 21 . | The color of the mucus in your nose indicates whether you have a bacterial or viral infection. The color of the mucus in your nose doesn't have anything to do with indicating if you have a bacterial or viral infection as the color can vary due to a variety of different illnesses.

MYTH 22 . | Lightning doesn't strike the same spot twice. Lightning can and does strike the same spot multiple times. In fact, the Empire State Building is struck up to 100 times a year.

MYTH 23 . | Lemmings follow each other and commit mass suicide. Lemmings don't follow each other and commit mass suicide. This was wrongly created by a 1958 Disney documentary titled "White Wilderness," in which the filmmakers ran a pack of lemmings off a cliff in order to make an "entertaining" documentary.

MYTH 24 . | There are people who have a photographic memory. There is no such thing as having a photographic memory. While there are people who have exceptional memories, they still can't recall events with as much detail as a photo taken with a camera.

MYTH 25 . | All people with Tourettes randomly yell out swear words. Not all people with Tourettes randomly yell out swear words, only a very small percentage do. It's a lot more common for people with Tourettes to have involuntary movements and other sound tics than to just yell out profanity.

MYTH 26 . | Shaving your hair makes it thicker. Shaving your hair doesn't make it thicker. While it might feel coarser, that's just because the ends are more blunt from being freshly shaved than from the hair being thicker.

MYTH 27 . | During the middle ages, many people thought the Earth was flat. In fact, during the middle ages, most scholars knew that the Earth was round. The myth that people believed that the Earth was flat was started in the 1940s by the Members of the Historical Association.

MYTH 28 . | McDonald's burgers can't rot. McDonald's burgers can and will rot under the right conditions in order for the processed foods to be broken down.

MYTH 29 . | Stress causes chronic high blood pressure. While stress can temporarily increase blood pressure, the main causes of chronic high blood pressure are smoking, genetics and a bad diet.

MYTH 30 . | HIV transitioned from monkeys to humans through cross-species intercourse. While the exact point of transfer of HIV from monkeys to humans is still unknown, it's a lot more likely that the virus jumped through hunting and ingesting monkeys than through cross-species intercourse.

MYTH 31. | Ostriches stick their heads in the ground when they're scared. Ostriches don't stick their heads in the ground when they're scared, they flop on the ground and play dead.

MYTH 32. | The northern hemisphere of the Earth is closer to the Sun when it's summer. The northern hemisphere of the Earth is not closer to the Sun when it's summer, it's just warmer in the summer because the northern hemisphere it tilted towards the Sun, which allows us to get hit with the Sun's rays directly.