If you say something often enough, it will become a fact, regardless of how true it is. Here are 13 common misconceptions that you've probably gotten wrong.
Coffee trees grow coffee cherries, which are harvested for their seeds. We call these coffee beans but they only look that way.
2. You lose the most heat from your head
Your head is only approximately 10 percent of your body. Therefore it can only contain 10 percent of the heat overall. It's more likely that you lose most of your heat through your core, since it is the largest part of your body.
3. Napoleon Bonaparte was short
He was recorded as being 5 feet 2 inches in French units, before they converted to the metric system. In actuality he was 5 feet 7 inches, which was above average height for the era. It's not even so short now; leave the poor man alone!
4. One dog year is seven human years
It actually varies from dog to dog, considering they live for different amounts of time and mature at different ages.
5. Bulls are provoked by the color red
Bulls have dichromatic vision, which means they only see blue and yellow. The rest of their vision is gray, so the motion of the flag is probably what angers bulls; not the color.
6. You have to wait to swim after eating
Less than 1 percent of people have drowned after eating, and let's be real -- it probably wasn't because of digestion.
7. Goldfish have terrible memories
Studies have shown that goldfish can retain environmental information for over a year, which is frankly much better than me.
8. It takes seven years to digest gum
Gum gets digested the same way as everything else, so you can swallow all the gum you want without a care (although that seems super unpleasant; why do you like doing that?).
9. Storing batteries in the freezer makes them last longer
Storing batteries in the freezer does nothing but take up space.
Ever wonder where the Godiva chocolate namesake comes from? In medieval England, Lady Godiva begged her husband Leofric to lower the oppressive taxes he raised on the people of Coventry. He said he would if she rode through the town midday naked. The myth claims she did so and was a hero to her people. Unfortunately this never happened
11. Viking helmets
They didn't have horns; that's so impractical. That would essentially be like running into battle with murder handles that have direct access to the one place you really don't want to get stabbed.
Sorry Aristotle, but humans have a lot more than five senses, such as: a sense of time, motion and balance. We have a ridiculous amount of senses; why did he think we only had five?
13. George Washington's wooden teeth
George Washington's teeth were made of a lot of gross things; but none of those were wood. They were bone, hippopotamus ivory, human teeth, brass screws, lead, gold and metal wire.
So the next time someone tries to seem like a know-it-all at a party, you can seem like an even bigger know-it-all because you have facts. Congratulations, you use your power for good.
