I Was Today Years Old When I Learned These 13 Commonly Believed "Facts" Aren't Actually True
Fellow "wanna hear a fun fact?" people — rejoice! Do I have a treat for you! Last year, I shared a list of common urban legends and myths that are actually completely false. In the comments, I asked BuzzFeed readers to share ones I might've missed on the first go, and they certainly did not disappoint. If I'm being totally honest, I definitely learned a thing or two while researching these. Without further ado, here are 13 commonly believed "facts" that are actually completely false:
Additional submissions have also been pulled from the original Reddit thread.
1.That most of the oxygen we breathe comes from trees.
—u/duckyoumate
When you were in school, you probably learned about how trees and other plants use carbon dioxide — what we breathe out — in the process of photosynthesis, which creates oxygen — what we breathe in — as a byproduct. People often assume that most of the oxygen we breathe comes from trees or other plant-dense forests, but that's not true. According to National Geographic, only about 28% of oxygen on Earth comes from rainforests. The majority of it — somewhere between 50% and 85% — actually comes from marine plants, like kelp and phytoplankton in the ocean. You can read more about it here.
2."That daddy longlegs are the most venomous spiders in the world, but their fangs just aren’t big enough to spread enough venom."
There are actually three different bugs that we consider "daddy longlegs," two of which aren't even actually spiders. Those two — crane flies and harvestmen — aren't venomous at all (harvestmen are poisonous, coating themselves in a poison that kills predators, but it's not poisonous to us). The one that is a spider — a cellar spider — does not have particularly potent venom. Its venom paled in comparison to a black widow in a 2019 study. Their fangs are about as long as a brown recluse's, but having longer fangs wouldn't make their venom any stronger. You can read more about it here.
3.That Albert Einstein failed math.
The popular myth that Einstein failed math in school is false, despite many sites and sources claiming otherwise. According to Time Magazine, in 1935 the notorious "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" column that claimed he'd failed math was shown to him by a rabbi at Princeton. Einstein replied, "I never failed in mathematics...before I was 15, I had mastered differential and integral calculus." You can read about it here.
4.That hair and nails keep growing after death.
"I imagine there’d be lots of fingernails protruding above ground from really old graves by now if that was true..."
As explained by the BBC, both our nails and hair need energy to produce new cells and grow, and that energy comes from burning glucose. Oxygen is needed to do that, but the heart is no longer pumping oxygen through our blood after death, so that glucose can't be burned and, in turn, there can be no growth.
The reason this myth has likely persisted over the years is because bodies can give the illusion of hair or nail growth after death. However, what is really happening is that skin is retracting because it's dehydrating, which in turn makes hair or nails seem like they've gotten longer. You can read more about it here.
5.That body hair gets thicker and darker every time you shave it.
"No, it does not. the end of the hair you just shaved is blunt rather than tapered, which gives it the appearance of being thicker and darker. If that were actually true, we'd all look like the wolfman."
Several studies have found that shaving does not, in fact, make hair grow back any thicker. Hank Green explained several reasons why it may appear that way to the average person, though. For starters, hair lightens over time from exposure to sun or chemical compounds, making it appear lighter than the hair that grows back after a shave. As for hair thickness, how shaving works plays into the illusion. Shaving, unlike waxing, doesn't pull out the whole hair from it's follicle — it just cuts part of it off. The ends of the hair, which are what we see, tend to be thinner, tapered, and softer. We cut the hair closer to the shaft when we shave, which is its thickest point. That doesn't mean your body hair is growing back thicker, it's just always thicker closer to the follicle. You can watch Hank Green explain it on Sci Show here.
6.That fortune cookies are Chinese.
A fortune cookie-like cracker, folded into the same shape and complete with a fortune inside, can be traced back to Kyoto, Japan in the 1870s. Their version of the treat — called “tsujiura senbei" — wasn't sweet like the fortune cookies we know today, but flavored with miso and sesame. It's believed that the cracker made its way to the US somewhere between the 1880s and early 1900s, as Japanese immigrants came to California following the demand of cheap labor caused by the Chinese Exclusion Act. Oftentimes, Japanese immigrants ended up opening restaurants that sold Chinese food rather than Japanese food, as Americans weren't enthusiastic about eating raw fish. It's believed that the American expectation of dessert at the end of a meal prompted restaurant owners to offer fortune cookies with the check. Several bakeries in Los Angeles and San Francisco claim to have come up with the sweet, vanilla fortune cookie we know today. Fortune cookies became further synonymous with Chinese culture as Chinese producers began making the cookies following FDR's Executive Order 9066, which sent Japanese Americans to internment camps, forcing them to close their businesses. You can read more about the history of fortune cookies here.
7.That if you swallow gum, it'll stay in your body for seven years.
Submitted by: acekingkiwi11
Pediatric gastroenterologist David Milov told Yale Scientific, "Gum is pretty immune to the digestive process. It probably passes through slower than most foodstuffs, but eventually, the normal housekeeping waves in the digestive tract will sort of push it through."
8.That St. Patrick was Irish.
Despite being the patron Saint of Ireland (and St. Patrick's Day generally being a celebration of Irish pride and culture), St. Patrick was actually born in Scotland. He ended up in Ireland after being kidnapped by Irish pirates and kept as a shepherd. After six years, he escaped and returned to Britain, then supposedly had a vision that told him to return to Ireland as a Catholic missionary — which he did. He converted thousands of Irish to Catholicism, aka where the "patron Saint of Ireland" title comes from and the assumption that he's Irish himself. You can read more about him here and here.
9.That sugar causes hyperactivity.
"I hate the whole 'sugar high' myth."
The widely-believed myth was popularized in the late 1970s, spurred on by a book called Why Your Child Is Hyperactive and a study which supported it. According to the New York Times, this is likely because at the time, stimulant drugs were being popularized for treatment of hyperactivity and ADHD, and many parents preferred the idea of managing their child's hyperactivity through a change in diet rather than through a medication. The study, however, wasn't widely supported by scientists, and has again and again been disproven. According to this study, "The strong belief of parents may be due to expectancy and common association." You can read a more in-depth explanation of it here.
10.That lemmings are thoughtless followers and commit mass suicide.
"The ostrich thing isn't as annoying an animal myth to me as lemmings. Everyone thinks they're so damn smart when they call someone who they believe to be a thoughtless follower of false facts a lemming."
This myth can be traced back to a 1985 Disney-produced wilderness documentary that had a bit on how lemmings strangely commit mass suicide. A 1983 investigation into the documentary revealed that its director faked the deaths by having thrown the lemmings off the cliff, then edited it to look real. Still, though, the myth continues. You can read more about it here.
11."That people in the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat."
"The Greeks had already calculated the radius of the sphere with great precision centuries before."
—u/bpo1989
People in the Middle Ages did not think the Earth was flat, clarifies University of Delaware philosophy professor Kate Rogers. From the 9th century onwards, this was common knowledge for educated individuals, thanks to the discoveries of Aristotle and their own observation. You can read more about it here.
12.That putting potatoes in your socks when you're sick "cures" you.
Suggested by: smellsbells
The belief here is that the potatoes, which are black when removed, work like a detox and absorb/remove toxins from your body via the soles of your feet. I've personally seen this home remedy on TikTok a few times in the last handful of months. Typically, a creator cuts a potato into thin pieces, then places a couple slices of it on a sick (usually someone with a fever or flu-like symptoms) loved one's foot. Hours later (usually overnight), they remove the potatoes from their feet and find that the part of the potato that touched the person's foot is blackened, and that their loved one is feeling significantly better.
In actuality, the potatoes turn black not because they're absorbing any toxins from your body, but because they're oxidizing. According to the Idaho Potato Commission, when raw potato slices are exposed to air, they can darken. Additionally, if the knife used to cut the potatoes contains iron, this can cause the potatoes to blacken as well. WCNC asked a doctor, Dr. Karla Robinson, about if the detox claim holds any weight, to which she confirmed there isn't evidence of it being true.
13.And finally, the whole concept of "Alpha" and "beta" wolves.
"The whole thing about alpha wolves and beta wolves — wrong. The scientist who came up with the terms spent the rest of his life trying to get people to stop treating it as true."
According to Scientific American, wildlife biologists have mostly dropped using the terms 'alpha' and 'beta,' as wolf packs actually operate more like families in the wild. The studies that led to the terms in the mid-1900s were done on captive wolves, which operate much differently than wild packs. These wolves often didn't share family lines, which makes battling for hierarchy in the pack much more likely, as opposed to wild packs which are made up of parents and their offspring. In the wild, all the members of a pack defer to the mother and father of the pack and don't fight-it-out for dominance.
L. David Mech — one of the researchers who played a hand in popularizing 'alpha' and 'beta' wolves — has indeed fought back on the use of the terms since new research has proven them wrong. He took his book The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species out of print last year. You can read more about all this here.
Do you know of a commonly believed urban legend or myth like these that most people don't know is false? If so, tell us about it in the comments below!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
