what we believe (that we shouldn’t)

It’s a fascinating Google search: “things people believe that are untrue.”

As compiled by BestLifeOnline, Reader’s Digest, and Treehugger, the following are things we the people tend to believe that aren’t actually true:

  • “All Your Fingernails Grow at the Same Rate”
  • “Bagpipes Are Scottish”
  • “Bananas Grow on Trees”
  • “Bats Are Blind”
  • “Bulls Hate Red”
  • “Coffee Stunts Your Growth”
  • “Cracking Knuckles Leads to Arthritis”
  • “Dogs Sweat by Salivating”
  • “Don’t Eat and Swim”
  • “Don’t Touch Baby Birds”
  • “Dropped Pennies Kill”
  • “Goldfish’s Three-Second Memory”
  • “Milk Increases Mucus”
  • “Most Body Heat Is Lost Through the Head”
  • “Oil Stops Stuck Pasta”
  • “Only 10 Per Cent of the Brain is Used“
  • “Penguins Mate for Life”
  • “Police Require a Waiting Period Before Filing a Missing Person’s Report”
  • “Salty Water Boils Quicker”
  • “Seven Years to Digest Gum”
  • “Shaving Thickens Hair”
  • “Sleepers Swallow Eight Spiders Per Year”
  • “Sugar Makes Kids Hyperactive”
  • “Toads Cause Warts”
  • “Twinkies Last Forever”
  • “We Have Only Five Senses”
  • “You Can Get Sick From Being Cold”
  • “Your Hair and Nails Keep Growing After Death”

We even believe things about people that aren’t true…

  • “Einstein Failed Math”
  • “Napoleon Was Short”
  • “Ninjas Wore Black”
  • “Vikings Wore Horned Helmets”

Or that “Ben Franklin Wanted the Turkey to Represent America.” To be clear, “while designing a national seal,” reports Reader’s Digest, “Franklin proposed an image of Moses, not a wild turkey, to represent America.”

I’ll be the first to admit, even as I write this, there is still much I want to shake my head and say, “Hey, no way!” For example, of course bananas grow on trees! Well, in actuality, they indeed look like a tree, but they’re really massive herbs upon which the bunch grows.

And hair? We all know it grows in darker once puberty’s onslaught of shaving begins! Foiled again. “Regrown hair isn’t thicker, coarser, or darker; it just appears so because it grows back with a blunt tip.”

So the zillion dollar takeaway of the day is simple but profound… maybe humbling, too…

What else do we wholeheartedly believe that is untrue? That we refuse to see differently?

What have we concluded about another person that is just plain wrong?

For the record, another widely held misconception is that “Toilet Seats Are Full of Germs.” I’m sorry, but that’s going to take major work to get rid of that one, even if a University of Arizona study found them to be relatively clean since they are often routinely cleansed and disinfected.

According to that same study, in fact, toilet seats were found to have “10 times fewer germs than cell phones.”

Time to think about what we actually believe.

Respectfully…

AR