From creatures that speak in human tongues to deities representing the abstract, these tales have been a fundamental part of human history, providing insight into the human psyche and the mysteries of the unknown. Here are five intriguing and whimsical myths that have captivated the imagination through the ages: 1. The Silent Orangutans of Indonesia … Continue reading 5 Fascinating Narratives from the World of Mythologies
5 Fascinating Narratives from the World of Mythologies
From creatures that speak in human tongues to deities representing the abstract, these tales have been a fundamental part of human history, providing insight into the human psyche and the mysteries of the unknown. Here are five intriguing and whimsical myths that have captivated the imagination through the ages: 1. The Silent Orangutans of Indonesia … Continue reading 5 Fascinating Narratives from the World of Mythologies
Stubborn Myths That Just Won’t Go Away For Some Reason
Did you know that the surface of Neptune was once all water?
I didn’t either, because it’s not true. I just made it up. But if I slapped that on a meme it might just spread around enough that a handful of people carried it around with them as though it were fact.
That’s why it’s important to check up on things before you spread ’em. Otherwise you end up with these:
What is a common myth that has been debunked but too many people still believe? from AskReddit
Debunkers of Reddit, do your thing.
1. You have to wait 24 hours to file a missing persons report
There’s no law governing how long you have to wait before notifying the police of a missing person. It’s nonsense. File a report as soon as you suspect the person is missing or in danger.
Do you know how many wellness checks officers go on in a day? Call it in man…
– grammar_oligarch
2. We only use 10% of our brains
You actually use 100% of your brain.
Each section is responsible for controlling different functions of your body. For example, the Prefrontal Cortex controls, thoughts, memory and behavior.
The Parietal Lobe controls language and touch.
The Occipital Lobe controls, visual processing and the brain stem controls basic functions such as breathing and maintaining your heart rate.
– CrotchWolf
3. Shaving makes hair grow back thicker
When I was learning how to shave, I remember this one being debunked in a teen magazine.
What they said made sense. A new hair grows with a kind of pointed tip. When you shave, you cut off that part. So what is now growing is middle of the hair which is thicker.
I would also add, I started shaving before my hair was fully grown in (moving from per-adolescence to adulthood) and hair continues to come in thicker over time. So it has more to do with when females often start shaving compared to having reached full maturity.
– OctobersAutumn
4. Your hair and fingernails grow after you die
It’s mainly an optical illusion.
Your skin decays and shrinks, causing hair and fingernails to look like they’ve grown.
– CasinoKitten
5. The War of the Worlds radio broadcast caused mass panic
We all know the story: Orson Welles broadcast War of The Worlds over the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). But people only tuned in part way through, and heard the radio announcing that machines were landing in the country and were advancing and attacking. People panicked in the streets and thought aliens really were invading. There was hysteria on the streets, people were looting and traffic jams banked up as people tried to escape.
But it turns out, that isn’t really true. It turns out barely anyone actually listened to the broadcast, and the few that were listening knew it was Orson Welles and knew it was just a broadcasting of War of the Worlds. If there was anyone that did tune in and mishear it and panicked, it was nowhere near the hundreds and thousands that have been reported in this myth.
– LittlestSlipper55
6. Lightning never strikes in the same place twice
Yeah, that would basically invalidate lightning rods.
And I think that park ranger who’s been struck by lightning 6+ times would tend to disagree with that notion.
– MrLuxarina
7. NASA spent millions on space pens when they could have just used pencils
Before the Space Pen was developed, NASA used pencils in space (expensive custom-made mechanical pencils starting with the Gemini missions) and the Soviet space program used a mix of regular pencils and grease pencils […].
Both programs were aware of the potential problems with graphite dust, and both were dissatisfied with the writing quality (pencil smears a lot more easily than ballpoint ink, and grease pencil smears if you look at it funny), but they took their chances with the least-bad available options.
And once the space pen was developed by a private company, both space programs bought a bunch of them.
– Gyrgir
8. You swallow 8 spiders a year in your sleep
It was made up to prove how misinformation can spread so quickly over the internet.
– Dr_McKay
9. Vaccines are linked to autism
Debunked decades ago. The sole proponent lost his medical license over it.
Yet every anti-vaxx mom apparently knows someone whose friend’s cousin has a child who turned autistic after the measles vaccine and somehow not a single one has met this alleged autistic child but the story is of course 100 percent true and vaccines are terrible.
– whereismyporcupine
10. Everyone in the Middle Ages was literate
The study that influenced the idea determined literacy by the prevalence of books written in Latin, which only the upper class knew.
Most peasants could actually read and write in their own language.
– luke56slasher
11. We only recently learned the Earth was round
By around 500 B.C., most ancient Greeks believed that Earth was round, not flat. But they had no idea how big the planet is until about 240 B.C. when Eratosthenes devised a clever method of estimating its circumference.
He realized that if he knew the distance from Alexandria to Syene, he could easily calculate the circumference of Earth. But in those days it was extremely difficult to determine distance with any accuracy. Some distances between cities were measured by the time it took a camel caravan to travel from one city to the other. But camels have a tendency to wander and to walk at varying speeds. So Eratosthenes hired bematists, professional surveyors trained to walk with equal length steps. They found that Syene lies about 5000 stadia from Alexandria.
Eratosthenes then used this to calculate the circumference of the Earth to be about 250,000 stadia. Modern scholars disagree about the length of the stadium used by Eratosthenes. Values between 500 and about 600 feet have been suggested, putting Eratosthenes’ calculated circumference between about 24,000 miles and about 29,000 miles. The Earth is now known to measure about 24,900 miles around the equator, slightly less around the poles.
– JohnDax
12. 95% of the ocean is unexplored
It depends how you define ‘explored’.
People throw this figure around like 95% of the Earth’s ocean surface is just a huge blank spot on the map, or like there’s plenty of space for a surviving population of plesiosaurs to live where we just haven’t checked.
Neither of those things is remotely accurate.
– green_meklar
13. Fad diets are the most effective weight loss method
No, calorie deficit is the one responsible for weight loss no matter the diet.
– vox_verae
The more you know!
What else would you add to this list?
Tell us in the comments.
The post Stubborn Myths That Just Won’t Go Away For Some Reason appeared first on UberFacts.
People Discuss Debunked Myths That Just Won’t Go Away
It was Mark Twain who once said “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
A point that’s all the more poignant when you consider that actually it was probably not Mark Twain who said that.
Just goes to go how confusing following the truth can be, like in these cases:
What is a common myth that has been debunked but too many people still believe? from AskReddit
What does Reddit have for us to debunk today? Let’s find out.
1. Albert Einstein failed math as a kid
This myth originated due to a misunderstanding of grading scales.
Einstein’s primary education took place in Germany, where the grading scale went from 1 (best) to 5 (worst).
His secondary education was in Switzerland, where the grading scale went from 1 (worst) to 6 (best).
His scores in math and science were excellent at all stages of his education.
– sillybear25
2. Dogs see black and white
Most placental mammals are dichromats with two types of cone cells in their eyes. They’re descended from tetrachromats with four retinal pigments, but we believe that two were lost during an era when mammals were primarily nocturnal and color vision was less useful at night.
A branch of primates including apes and, specifically, us mutated up a new pigment, different from either of the ones that were lost, getting us back to trichromatic vision. (Our L and M, or red and green, cones are very similar, with one being a mutation from the other that proved useful to have exist in parallel.)
It’s why hunters wear orange vests and tigers are bright orange despite living in jungles.
To prey species, they both look green like vegetation.
– ThePowerOfStories
3. Lemmings are suicidal
they were filming a disney nature documentary where the producers herded them off cliffs and the misconception stuck
It’s been debunked but you ask someone about lemmings and see what they say.
– graeuk
4. The tongue has “taste zones”
Not only was this one a myth, they TAUGHT us this in school.
I remember coloring in the different sections of the tongue various colors.
– MattieMcNasty
5. Handling a baby bird will make the mother reject it
Most birds don’t have a significant sense of smell. So put the nakey baby back in the nest!
Now, sometimes mother birds will push a sick or otherwise terminal chick out of the nest, so when people try to put it back she goes “Hey, thought I got rid of you” and does it again.
But that’s not because of you, she just knows something you don’t, so take that babe to a rehab rescue and hope for the best.
But a lot of the time the little squishy beans just wiggle out of the nest, so feel free to put them back in. No harm done.
– AlwaysWantsIceCream
6. Bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly
Except they obviously can.
I think bumble bees perfectly exemplify the fundamental misunderstanding that laypeople have of the scientific process and the difference between a law and a theory.
A scientific law is a physical description of what we observe under specific circumstances. A theory, on the other hand, explains why we observe different phenomena when at least one variable isn’t controlled for.
So it isn’t that “bumble bees shouldn’t be able to fly”. It’s that they fly as a result of a different set of variables within the mechanisms of flight.
– Dynasuarez-Wrecks
7. Direction of a toilet flush depends on the hemisphere
The design of toilets direct water in a specific way, the Coriolis effect would never change that, but even in more passive drainage systems, the internal flow of water and geometry of the basin will be much more significant than that of the Coriolis effect. This is true even if water sits still for long periods of time.
Under very specific scientific conditions, with a flat, perfectly circular pan and a centralized drainage hole, many days after filling the water the Coriolis effect can begin to govern the direction of the water as it’s emptied, but this is not exactly practical. We do see the effect in weather patterns of course though, so that’s something.
– CanFjord
8. Blood is blue before being exposed to oxygen
Seriously tho, I was told that everyone’s blood was blue on the inside when I was younger, and I honestly don’t know why my Mom thought that.
Maybe it’s just one of those things that you only believe because your family has been saying it since your Grandma’s Grandpa’s Grandma’s Grandma’s Grandpa or something like that.
– Rand0mWe1rdGuy
9. The tryptophan in turkey makes you tired
The reason you always feel tired after a Thanksgiving meal is because your body is spending all its energy digesting your big meal.
– LiquidMetalStarman
10. It’s dangerous to swim after eating
There’s no reason that should be dangerous.
However swimming after drinking alcohol puts you at a substantially higher risk of drowning.
– Scrappy_Larue
11. Mammals have alpha males and beta males
The researcher who wrote it himself not only said that this cannot be used to interpret human behaviour in any way, but he even proved his own findings wrong in a later study, because this behaviour only applied to wolves in captivity (so, a constantly stressful situation)
– JuFo2707
12. The McDonald’s “hot coffee lawsuit” was frivolous
Lady melted her vagina and only wanted to get enough for bills.
They wouldn’t even do that.
– Tenebrousoul
13. Electromagnetic fields cause nausea
A lot of people in Sweden believe this despite research attributing it to the nocebo effect.
– hampan97
14. Ted Bundy was a very popular playboy
That goes into a bigger myth that people with psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder are these cunning manipulative geniuses.
Ted bundy abducted girls in a busy af park going by the nickname ted and only got so many girls because cops didn’t communicate across state lines at all and there was virtually no video surveillance.
By definition these people have god awful impulse control, delusions that they can control people, and terrible control of their behaviours. They have awful control of how they act when they get emotional, and people like Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Wayne Gacy, ect. All got caught because they were genuinely suffering from arrogant , very dumb, and poorly planned behaviors.
– Antispam1432
It’s always nice to find out you were wrong!
What other myths would you add to this list?
Tell us in the comments.
The post People Discuss Debunked Myths That Just Won’t Go Away appeared first on UberFacts.
If You Could Learn the Truth About One Mystery, What Would You Choose?
I was flipping through the TV channels recently and I happened upon a show on National Geographic about the many conspiracy theories surrounding the JFK assassination.
I have no answers or ideas really, but every single time I come across anything to do with what might have happened in Dallas on that day in 1963, I’m immediately sucked in.
And I know I’m not alone on that one!
People on AskReddit discussed the mysteries they want to know all about. Let’s take a look.
1. What are we missing?
“Some animals can’t see color cause they don’t have the right organs for it.
What are all of the aspects of life we’re missing out on cause we don’t have the organs to perceive them?”
2. What happened?
“The truth from when my gran died and the weeks leading up to it. She died on the 6th of December.
She cancelled her life insurance just days before her death Wrapped every single present for the whole family and name tagged them (over 30 family members) when she usually wrapped them on Xmas eve She worked in a small gift shop along with the owner- both of them died within 3 hours of each other.
Has puzzled me for years and hopefully some truth comes out before I pass away.”
3. A big one.
“The Panama Papers.
LOADS of wealthy people involved and murders attached to it, also.”
4. Monsters of the deep.
“What deep sea creatures exist that we haven’t found yet?
Just how big is the largest squid out there?”
5. A weird one.
“I gotta go with the first ever unsolved mystery that really made me think. Mystery of the Somerton Man.
In 1948 a guy was found dead on a beach in Adelaide, Australia. He was never identified and months after finding his body they found a fake pocket in his pants. It was torn from a copy of the book Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam (I googled that) and had a phrase on it which said “Tamam Shud” which means ended or finished in Persian.
They found the book that it came from but the owner denied ever knowing the guy. There was an encrypted message in the book that they found and it still hasn’t been cracked. Apparently there’s been a development recently that might identify him as H.C. Reynolds but it’s not 100% certain.
It’s super interesting.”
6. Didn’t check out.
“Jennifer Fairgate/Fergate.
It’s a fascinating mystery – a woman checks into the Oslo Plaza Hotel, a five-star establishment, and is found dead in her room three days later. Initially assumed to have committed a suicide, but there’s no blood on her hands, no gunshot residue, no fingerprints on the bullets in the gun or the gun itself, which in addition to the odd position in which she is found on her bed really starts looking more like homicide.
Additionally, no personal belongings in the room besides clothes, shoes, a travel bag and an attaché full of bullets. Clothes and shoes have all producer labels/designations removed as well.
Contents of her stomach indicate that she had died the day before she was found, but a member of staff who knocked on her door heard a gunshot go off right after that, indicating someone’s presence inside.
The door was also locked from the inside but no one was there when they got in. Probably my favourite true crime thing.”
7. Never came back.
“One day grandfather just walked out the door and never came back.
This was before I was born. He left behind my grandmother and his three children. There was a state-wide search. My mom’s family never got closure.
Although, I think he might’ve had another family that he ran away to. But it still baffles me sometimes at night. My grandmother finally held a pseudo-funeral/memorial for him last year.”
8. MK Ultra.
“I wanna know if they kept going at it with the MK Ultra thing and how they do it now if it is.
Everything we know about it comes from 20,000 files that were misplaced, causing them to be missed when they attempted to destroy all documentation of the program.”
9. Creepy.
“The Korovina Group.
Basically a group of seven hikers start hiking the mountains when six of them start bleeding from the eyes, ears, nose and mouth. They all scream, start seizing, one even starts bashing their head on a rock. The remaining survivor flees, but later comes back to the bodies to get supplies. She’s found a few days later but refused to talk about it
A lot of people say its a deadly nerve agent that Russia was using (this happened in Siberia? I think) but that doesn’t explain why the last one survived, even going back and still being unaffected.”
10. Vanished.
“Harold Holt (Australian Prime Minister in the 1960’s) ‘disappeared’ while swimming at the beach.
He was never found.”
11. Missing persons.
“A man only a year older than me went missing in my town, right near my place of work a few years ago. He just disappeared. I remember seeing the missing posters and the police conducting searches.
It has been several years and he is still listed as missing. I think about him from time to time and wonder whatever happened to him. I’d want to know about him.
There are so many cases like his, I hope his family and the other families one day get answers.”
12. This one is eerie.
“The Yuba County 5
5 young mentally handicap men went missing. They were gone for months thout any clues other than a few mysterious phone calls saying not to look for them. Their vehicle was found up on a mountain road a few days after they went missing. It turned on and ran perfectly fine
They were finally found in a trailer deep in the mountains,the strange thing was the one full corpse that was found starved and froze to death when there was plenty of food, water and heat in the trailer to last all 5 boys a year.
Some of the food had been eaten showing that they hadn’t had a problem accessing the food. While they did have impairments, they were all independent and would have know how to turn on the heat and get food, call for help.
To add the mystery rhe 5th man’s body was never found and while the others were cognitively impaired he suffered from schizophrenia and had several disturbing incidents leading up to their disappearance.
The full corpse that was found was wearing this man’s shoes, but wasn’t him, the corpse had been wearing boots the night they disappeared and its believed that the man either stole them or talked the other young man into giving him his boots.
What happens to the 5th man? Why did the man in the trailer starve to death surrounded by food. Why did the other men leave the trailer and die just 100s of feet away from it when there was food and warmth so close.
Why did they leave the car to begin with? Why didn’t they follow the trail back to the road?”
Are there any urban legends you want to know the truth behind?
If so, tell us all about it in the comments.
Please and thank you!
The post If You Could Learn the Truth About One Mystery, What Would You Choose? appeared first on UberFacts.
People Discuss the Mysteries, Urban Legends, or Conspiracy Theories They Want to Know the Truth Behind
I love all kinds of mysteries, urban legends, and conspiracy theories.
Even if I don’t really believe in a particular story, I still think they’re fascinating to read about…and there are a ton of them out there to dive into.
What unsolved mysteries would you like to know the truth behind?
Let’s get weird with some folks on AskReddit.
1. Suddenly gone.
“I wanna know what happened to Louis Le Prince, the true inventor of the film camera.
Boarded a train but never left it.
No body found.”
2. What really happened?
“I would want to learn the truth around the Mothman and what people were seeing in the days leading up to the bridge collapse.”
3. D.B. Cooper.
“Assuming he died (are we allowed to learn two truths about one mystery?), where did most of D.B. Cooper’s ransom money end up after he jumped from that airplane?
I believe the FBI lets you keep it if you find it, as long as you give them a chance to analyze it for latent prints/DNA first.
Those bills must be worth a fortune to a collector. Even if they aren’t, I’ll still get tens of thousands of dollars in cash. Who doesn’t want that?
So, I get my name in the papers for finding Cooper’s money, and I get a nice chunk of change to keep. A double-whammy of good fortune.”
4. Who wrote it?
“Who wrote the Voynich Manuscript and why? And why was it written encoded or in an unknown language?
I like learning about weird mysteries in history and this is one that remains unsolved to this day despite quite extensive research through the centuries.”
5. Unsolved.
“There is this famous case in France where a bourgeois family was killed, except the father who disappeared.
He is of course the prime suspect, as the events they have reconstructed suggest he got the oldest son back home himself to kill him after the other family members has already been murdered. He buried them all under the terrace and they weren’t found right away, so he got a “head start” so to say.
It’s been years and no one knows what happened to him. There have been plenty of sightings, all over the country, but he looks very average and forgetable. A few years back, they thought they got him on a flight in (from?) Scotland, and didn’t show his picture until a few days later… and everyone who knows about the case wondered wtf was the police thinking, because the man who was arrested looks nothing like him.
Anyway, I’d like to know what happened to him and if he really did it. I have little doubt he did, but he went to such length to cover his tracks, sending letters to family members saying he and his family were relocating under witness protection in the US, or suggesting he was involved in a big case and couldn’t disclose his location etc…
Some people even believed the people buried in his yard were not his real family but morgue corpses with elements of DNA to link it to the family so they could escape/fake their death.
Netflix did an episode on it in their remastered Unsolved Mysteries (Season 1) if you want to know more about the case, it’s really interesting.”
6. Rabbit holes.
“So many rabbit holes to go down.
What did they find in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947
Who killed Jon Benet Ramsey?
Who was the Zodiac Killer?
What happened to Walter Collins?
Who killed the Black Dahlia?
Where or what happened to Flight 370?”
7. A true crime mystery.
“The Jon Benet Ramsey one just sits on my brain sometimes!
She was born the same year as my little brother so when she died it was so hard to not be caught up in it.
It really bugs me that we still don’t have a definitive answer of who did it.”
8. A bunch of them.
“There are so many that I wonder about.
Did the British intentionally let the Germans sink the Lusitania to bring the US into WW1?
Did FDR have advance warning of Pearl Harbor, but did nothing?
What really happened to Hitler’s remains after he killed himself?
What really happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald to cause her to sink?
What caused the Moorgate Crash?
But probably above all else, the one I always wonder about:
What happened to that kid I witnessed being kidnapped when I was 7, and my parents forbade me from talking to the police about?”
9. Fascinating.
“The Zodiac Killer.
Not just his identity. His psychology, his motives, his planning, his affiliations.
I want every detail of that sh*t.”
10. Very strange…
“The Max Headroom signal 1987.
I want to know…
Some people who worked in the television industry at that time have said that it was impossible for an outsider to pull it off.
It had to have been done by someone who was knowledgeable about TV signals and had access to all the equipment, which wasn’t publicly available in 1987.”
11. A scary one.
“The disappearance of Lars Mittank in 2014. Read about it somewhere years ago and it still bothers me sometimes.
I try to sum it up: German tourist is on vacation in Croatia, gets into a little bar fight over soccer, gets injured on his ear. Doctor tells him not to fly until fully recovered, friends leave without him after he insists, that he’ll be fine without them.
He checks in into a hotel and suddenly shows serious signs of Paranoia and one day later he calls his mother, whispering that he is being followed by four men, that are trying to kill him. After some time, he can finally fly back and enters the airport, seemingly “back to normal”. This is covered by the airport cameras.
He even talks with someone inside the airport like everything’s normal. He then leaves the camera angle for a second with all of his luggage in his hand and just seconds later he runs full speed out of the airport, leaving his luggage behind just like that. In front of the airport he stands there shortly like he is looking for something, then he continues to run in a specific direction, clips over a decently high fence and disappears in a sunflower field and is never seen again, nor is his body.
The most realistic scenario is that he had some kind of concussion or brain damage from the hit that injured his ear, but his friends described him as perfectly normal after the incident. There are so many things weird and not fitting in this case.
Most of the media coverage is in German unfortunately but if you’re really interested I am sure you’ll find a more detailed article or video about it in English.”
What unsolved mysteries would you like to know the truth about?
Talk to us in the comments!
We’d love to hear from you!
The post People Discuss the Mysteries, Urban Legends, or Conspiracy Theories They Want to Know the Truth Behind appeared first on UberFacts.
What Myths Are Still Widely Circulated as Truth? Here’s What People Had to Say.
Have you ever tried to have a debate (or even a polite conversation) with someone who just can’t be talked to because they won’t listen to reason about a certain topic?
That can be frustrating. And it can be REALLY frustrating when that belief isn’t true and has been disproven over and over again.
But that’s the kind of world we live in because people are stubborn and they don’t like to accept new ideas…or facts.
Here are some myths that AskReddit users think are still widely circulated as truth. Let’s take a look.
1. Be careful out there.
“If an HIV positive person has s*x with another HIV positive person, they don’t have to worry about protection.
They do, because there are 140 different strains of the HIV/AIDS virus, and getting infected with another strain, especially a potentially-deadlier one, could be dangerous.
Also, pregnancy is still a very big risk for HIV positive women. If you are considering a s*xual relationship, get tested, and talk to your doctor about birth control.”
2. History lesson.
“That people in general though the world was flat until Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
No, the Ancient World figured that out a long time before.
People just thought that it wasn’t possible to sail across the ocean to Asia because sailors would run out of food by then, while Columbus thought that wasn’t case because he thought Asia was bigger than contemporary estimates.”
3. What does that logo mean?
“The white on blue roundel in the BMW logo represents the white blades of a propeller against the blue sky, alluding to BMW’s history as a manufacturer of aircraft engines.
This myth was popularized in BMW’s advertising for aircraft engines. (And perpetuated by the movie Finding Forrester.)
In truth, the blue and white come from the Bavarian flag, presented as a circular coat of arms in reverse order to avoid a trademark law prohibiting the use of symbols of state sovereignty in a commercial trademark.
It was only in later marketing for aircraft engines they overlaid the logo over spinning propellers, as coincidentally it could be taken to look like a propeller against the sky. They made all sorts of engines for land vehicles as well.”
4. Fact or fiction?
“That one I’ve heard repeatedly is “shaving makes your hair grow back thicker.”
I have had lengthy arguments with more than one person about this.”
5. Space race.
“That the US spent over a million dollars and two years to develop a pen that could work in space…whereas the Soviets decided to just use a pencil.
In the early days, both used pencils, but since pencils are made out of graphite, and graphite is conductive, snapped graphite particles are dangerous in a pressurized space capsule….to put it lightly.
Fisher, the owner of the pen company, spent his own money to develop a pressurized ball point pen. And cost only about $3.00 per pen.”
6. Snake stuff.
“The Myth: You can tell if a snake is venomous or not by the shape of its pupil (slit for venomous, round for nonvenomous).
The Truth: Pupil shape has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not a snake has venom, and, if you’re close enough to get a good look at a snake’s pupils, you’re probably close enough to get bit.
The Advice: If you cannot, from a safe distance, immediately identify a snake beyond a reasonable doubt, assume it’s dangerous and behave accordingly; keep your distance, stay out of its direct path, and keep your eyes on it until one or the other of you leaves the area.”
7. Hmmmm…
“That urine neutralizes jelly fish stings.
Use vinegar instead.
That stuff will actually save you, at least long enough for an ambulance to arrive.”
8. That old story…
“That Marylin Manson removed 2 of his ribs to blow himself.
I will never understand how this one traveled around the world before widespread use of the Internet for stuff like this. Some of the other ones, sure, they were stuff that sounded medical or scientific were circulated by papers or magazines.
But this one somehow circulated in places that may have never even known who Marilyn Manson was.”
9. Those poor fish.
“That goldfish have a 6 second memory.
I mean it’s still not great, I think like a couple months. But still….
Get your fish a bigger d*mn tank”
10. They don’t?
“Undercover police have to tell you they are policemen when you ask them.”
11. Not true.
“Catherine the Great died after attempting to have s*x with a horse.
This myth was started by the French.
And then they ask why everyone believes Napoleon was a tiny, tiny man.”
12. Brainpower.
“That we only use 10% of our brain.
I legit read something that said “Normal people use only 8% of their brains; Einstein was able to achieve what he did because he used 11%. Imagine if we unlocked all of our brain.”
It’s scary how misinformation can be so prevalent.”
13. I remember this one.
“Something about touching baby birds and their parents abandoning them due to the smell of human touch.”
14. I wish it was true.
“That Mr. Rogers was a sniper and/or had tattoos covering his arms.
Both untrue.
Fred Rogers lived a pretty mundane live and dedicated considerable time to creating television programming that didn’t rot kids brains.”
Now we want to hear from you.
In the comments, tell us what myths you think people out there still think are true.
Please and thank you!
The post What Myths Are Still Widely Circulated as Truth? Here’s What People Had to Say. appeared first on UberFacts.
People Share Myths That a Lot of Folks Still Believe Are True
This is gonna be interesting!
The world is flat. Climate change is a hoax.
These are all examples of myths that are not true that people believed (and some still believe) for years and years.
We live in a superstitious world where people cling to their beliefs and ideas, no matter what kind of evidence is presented to them.
Let’s see what myths folks on AskReddit still think a lot of people out there believe are true.
1. Eat up!
“Carrots being good for your eyes.
It was a myth created in WWII by the Allies to explain how their pilots got so good at shooting down enemy planes all of a sudden.
The real reason was radar technology.”
2. False!
“That Lucky Strike is named such because it used to be that one cigarette in every 20 packs is a joint.
And if you found that joint, you were the lucky one.
In reality, the name comes from striking it lucky as a gold prospector. This joint claim has been disproved.”
3. That’s a tough one.
“The myth that if you work your *ss off during your college days, its gonna be smooth sailing in your adult years.
Nope.”
4. These people…
“That masks are ineffective.
Masks are incredibly effective, for both the wearer and those around them. Mask fibers are woven close enough to block the droplets that carry the coronavirus.
People say it’s like using a chain link fence to stop a fly, but it’s more like using a chain link fence to stop a fly that’s hitching a ride on a baseball. It reduces transmission drastically. It is proven science. I mean, for god’s sake, no one questions surgeons and nurses who wears them.
They do not block your breathing. And yes, they trap your coronavirus particles, but if they’re trapping your coronavirus particles then you already have coronavirus. It won’t make you more sick.
Masks are simple, easy. Put it over you face, and you’re doing your part to bring an end to this pandemic. All you people out there who are refusing for “my freedumbz” are making this thing last longer than it should and kill more people than it should.
You want things to go back to normal? You want the economy to come back? You want business to stop shutting down? You want children to actually go to school in person? THEN WEAR A MASK.”
5. Trippy!
“That LSD, Psilocybin and Cannabis are drugs that are highly addictive and have no medicinal value.
The literal reason for them being schedule 1 drugs and considered extremely criminal.
Its all bullsh*t and not true at all, Nixon made this up to harass and arrest his political opposition in the antiwar left and pro-rights blacks. They even admitted doing this and knowing well that the war on drugs would neither work nor had any sound reasoning behind it, yet 5 decades later we still kill thousands worldwide every year because of Nixon.
Most of the myths in reddit pages like this are silly or benign, while this myth is among the most deadly misconceptions that is only recently being very slowly reversed in younger generations.”
6. Oh, boy…
“The Earth is flat.
I went on a date with a guy that believed this. I laughed because I thought he was joking. He was not.
It was our only date.”
7. The old days.
“That cars were built better back in the day.
No, they weren’t.
Those old cars barely made it to 100k miles before sh*tting out.
Cars these days can go on for 500k+ miles if you do preventive maintenance on them throughout the years.”
8. Don’t wait!
“That you have to wait 24 hours before you can report a missing person.
If someone is missing, go get help!”
9. The numbers.
“10% of people are gay. This is taken from the Kinsey reports, and out of thousands of statistics, 10% appears only once.
It’s actually much more accurate to say (according to Kinsey) 4% are gay, 50% are straight, and 46-48% are somewhere on the bis*xual spectrum.”
10. Nope.
“That tax cuts for the rich result in job creation and a wealthier middle class.”
11. Old George.
“The myth that George Washington’s false teeth were made of wood should be put to rest.
The teeth in the contraption that he wore at times were teeth of different animals like elk, for one. The teeth were held in with wooden pegs.
Hence the myth.”
12. Gross.
“Margarine is healthier than butter.
It’s not, not even close it causes heart disease faster and your body doesn’t even recognize it as food.
Flies won’t even touch it.”
13. All kinds of stuff!
“Lightning round:
That Galileo was the first person to come up with a heliocentric model.
That Copernicus was the first person to come up with a heliocentric model.
That everyone believed the world was flat until Columbus.
That Columbus’ ships were named Niña, Pinta and Santa María.
That Columbus was the first European to discover America.
That tetanus is caused by rusty metal.
That Napoleon was comically short.
That the Great Wall of China is ‘the only manmade structure visible from space’.
That there is a rule in English that you aren’t supposed to boldly split infinitives.
That there is a rule in English that says ‘I before E except after C’.
That pot is a “gateway drug”.
That Einstein flunked math as a child.
That Mrs. O’Leary’s cow started the Great Chicago Fire.”
14. History lesson.
“The European “Dark Ages”
People seem to love the idea that, between the fall of Rome and, like, DaVinci or something, everyone in Europe was just blowing spit bubbles and looking at the funny pictures in the Bible.
Not only was there not a complete absence of classical learning in Europe during the dark ages, but throughout the dark ages and mediaeval period, there actually was a fair amount of progress in fields like architecture, engineering, metallurgy, philosophy, theology and yes, even science.
But then again, I suppose it all ties back to the notion that people in the past were somehow far stupider than we are.”
Now it’s your turn.
In the comments, share some more myths that are still widely believed to be true.
We can’t wait to hear from you!
The post People Share Myths That a Lot of Folks Still Believe Are True appeared first on UberFacts.
People Talk About 13 Commonly-Believed Myths and Explain Why They’re so Dumb
You can immediately verify pretty much any fact these days by looking it up on Google. If you’re savvy enough, you’ll have the truth within a few minutes. But once upon a time, misinformation spread really easily. To this day, there are a ton of “facts” that countless people believe are true, even though they couldn’t be more false.
A Reddit user asked, “What stupid myth do too many people believe?”
The people answered, and let’s just say everyone should read this thread to avoid looking stupid.
1. Frogs don’t jump out of boiling water.
“That if you put a frog in tepid water and slowly raise the temperature, the frog won’t try to escape and save itself when the temp gets too high.
Great for illustrating certain points, but completely untrue.”
2. Goldfish live in bowls.
“That goldfish ARE NOT meant to live in bowls! The average goldfish gets about fourteen inches long in proper conditions, and because they’re such dirty animals (they generate ammonia like you wouldn’t believe) they need heavy proper filtration. Yes, you should have 20 gallons per goldfish. That means two goldfish go into a FILTERED forty gallon tank. No, an air pump is not a filter. No, a plant is not a filter. No, you cannot put other tropical fish with your goldfish, because goldfish require lower temperatures (65 degrees Fahrenheit) while tropical fish require higher temperatures (78 degrees Fahrenheit).
Goldfish can live up to 25 years. Putting them in a bowl means you are stunting their growth, but not the growth of their inner organs. They stay 2 inches while their organs keep growing inside of them, which is why they die in 2 years, instead of living to be 25 years old, and over a foot long.
That turned more into a rant than anything but oh well, PSA brought to you by a humble aquatics associate at a pet store.”
3. The Bermuda triangle.
“For any given same-sized sea area there is statistically the same amount of missing ships and planes.
No, it’s not fucking a magically dangerous place.
Grow up.”
4. Gum stays in your stomach for seven years.
“Actual truth is that you shit out a piece of gum within a day or two in case anybody wanted to know.
So yeah… this one is complete bullshit”
5. You can target belly fat.
“Spot reduction of fat.
People think that doing sit-ups will burn fat around your belly area.
How stupid can you be?”
6. Fire sprinklers go off whenever the alarm does.
“They don’t all go off by pulling a fire alarm.
They’re individually heat-activated.”
7. Cracking your knuckles causes arthritis.
“All it is is just gas bubbles popping.
Also some guy did a long term experiment (several decades I think) where he constantly cracked all knuckles in one hand and left the other one alone.
After the experiment was over, they took X-rays and tests to find that both hands were practically identical in terms of condition.”
8. How to cure a snake bite.
“You can suck venom out of a snake bite…..”
“My cat bit a friend who was catsitting for me, he tried to suck out the venom’ and spent several days in hospital with sepsis.”
9. Rabbits love carrots.
“This isn’t actually that stupid really but it’s my favorite weird myth: That rabbits love carrots.
They don’t, you give a hungry rabbit a carrot it’ll probably eat it, but they likely wouldn’t be high on it’s preference list. So why are carrots stereotyped as a rabbit’s favorite food? Weirdly, because of Bugs Bunny.
Bugs is always munching on a carrot, but why if rabbits don’t really eat carrots normally? Because he was created in 1938 and that particular quirk was a parody of Clark Gable’s character from the 1934 movie It Happened One Night, who had a famous scene being a wiseacre while munching on a carrot. The movie is mostly forgotten today but was a huge hit at the time. Contemporary audiences (who would have also been seeing the cartoons in a movie theater as pre-show shorts) would have recognized the reference as easily as early 2000s audiences would recognize a bullet dodging scene as Matrix parody.
The carrot munching bit became Bugs’ signature and over time the origin was mostly forgotten. Everyone associated rabbits with carrots so strongly because of that that it eventually became “common knowledge” that rabbits love carrots despite it not being true at all.
The myth is prevalent enough that pet shops will commonly warn people getting pet rabbits to make sure they feed them a proper diet, because carrots are not sufficient and the poor bunny can actually starve to death.”
10. Porcupines can shoot quills.
“Too many people believe that porcupines can shoot their quills when they actually have to jab you with their quills.”
11. Being an organ donor is risky.
“That if you’re an organ donor then doctors won’t try hard to save you and might ‘let you die’.
I’m a doctor, when I’m treating a patient whether the patient is an organ donor or not never crosses my mind, I will genuinely have no idea. And even if I did, why would I want to sacrifice MY patient for some random other patient across the country? Surely that would just make me look like a shit doctor!”
12. Humans only use 10% of their brain.
“Good grief I can’t listen to people who say this is true. The worst thing is, my teacher in elementary school thinks that humans only use 10-15% of their brain, and the reason Albert Einstein, for example, was super smart is that he used about 30% of his brain. The biggest amount of bullshit I’ve ever heard, and the person saying it is a science teacher…”
13. A fractured bone is different than a broken one.
“In my experience, it seems that most people think a fracture is when it’s not broken the whole way and broken means it’s broken clean in half (or multiple pieces).
In this case, I understand their intent, they simply don’t know the right words. Still annoying though, they do mean the same thing.”
So what did you think about those myths? Have your mind blown by any of that info?
Tell us a myth you couldn’t believe wasn’t true in the comments. Sharing is caring!
The post People Talk About 13 Commonly-Believed Myths and Explain Why They’re so Dumb appeared first on UberFacts.
Sweating Is Not at All Detoxifying, FYI
It feels good to feel your muscles sweat and work, and something about feeling the sweat pop out on your skin makes me feel accomplished, like it might all be worth it in the end.
But of course, you don’t have to exercise to sweat. Hot yoga, saunas, and sweat lodges have become more and more popular, at least in part due to their claims that they help you “sweat out toxins.” But well…that’s not even a little bit true.
Image Credit: Pixabay
Actually, your liver and kidneys do all of the heavy lifting when it comes to toxins, and exercise isn’t going to make them more or less functional.
Sweat is made up of mostly water, with a bit of sodium, chloride, potassium, and trace amounts of proteins, fatty acids, and maybe a stray “toxin” or two, says dermatologist Tsippora Shainhouse.
“Most of the ‘toxins’ that concern people include pesticides, residue from plastics, or from air pollution. These tend to be fat-soluble, and do not dissolve well in water, so they will not be removed from the body in any significant quantity, given that sweat is 99 percent water.”
Image Credit: Pixabay
In fact, attempting to detox merely by sweating can backfire. If you don’t drink enough water to replace what you’ve sweated out, your kidneys have to work overtime while you’re dehydrated – and if your kidneys are working especially hard, they may not be as efficient at weeding out actual toxins in the meantime.
Image Credit: Pixabay
Which is not to say sweating is bad, nor is exercise. Just don’t expect it to do what your kidneys and liver are already doing, and make sure to drink plenty of water when you’re done.
The post Sweating Is Not at All Detoxifying, FYI appeared first on UberFacts.