The internet has made it so easy for information to spread, for people to find out things that they wouldn’t have known before. And it’s so quick! Unfortunately, this also means that it’s very easy for incorrect information to spread, and spread, and spread. So here are 10 facts that the internet loves that are, in fact, wrong.
1.) You can see the Great Wall of China from space
Nothing man-made is visible from space. We just aren’t that great. Sorry.
2.) Cracking your knuckles gives your arthritis
No one knows where this “fact” came from, but it’s been definitely disproven several times. When you crack your knuckles, all you’re doing is popping bubbles of gas in the joints. Nothing major.
3.) Bulls hate the colour red
We’re all familiar with the image of a matador swinging his red cape and the bull charging and the matador viciously killing the bull. Turns out, bulls are colour blind and the fact that the cape is red is irrelevant. They just hate the way it moves.
4.) Humans did not evolve from apes
Your idea of evolution is all wrong. We didn’t come from apes; both humans and apes came from a common ancestor. You’re not your cousins child (well, in most of the world, anyway. Yee-haw)
5.) Vikings wore horned helmets
Picture a Viking. He’s probably a) ginger, b) has a great big bushy beard, c) is carrying a huge axe, d) is wearing a horned helmet, and e) is horny for the raping and the pillaging. Well, most of those are probably wrong. The helmet part definitely is. Horned helmets were gone from the regions the Viking moved through long before their time.
6.) Your nails and hair continue to grow after death
They don’t. Sorry. It just looks like they have, because of the slight shrinking that takes place in the body after death, due to a lack in water content.
7.) A penny thrown off the Empire State Building is deadly
Force = mass times acceleration. And a penny ways, I believe the scientific term is, practically nothing. You’d have to drop it from a lot higher than the Empire State Building for it to hurt.
8.) We only use 10% of our brains
Nature hates waste. We may only consciously use about 10% of our brain, but the rest of it is still being used. Think of how many things your body does without your input – memory, breathing, heart rate, liver function, etc. etc. Way more thinking than you do yourself. So sorry Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman – Lucy sucked.
9.) We lose most of our body heat through our heads
No, no we don’t. Heat loss is, in fact, almost equally distributed. It’s just that we’re usually not wearing hats, but we are wearing clothes.
10.) The whole Vaccines/Autism link
This one is just plain stupid. There was one study that said there was a link, which was conducted using poor science and just generally crap, and has subsequently been denounced by actual scientists. VACCINES DO NOT CAUSE AUTISM. Say it with me. If you don’t vaccinate your kids, you’re putting lives in danger.