Today's Topic: Popular Myths

[ER]

Not the Norse and Greek kind, like fallacies. Know any good ones?

Like some people say Country Time lemonade is made with fetal tissue inside. (Seriously, some people think that.)... Or that some singer named Mama Cass choked on a ham sandwich.... Growing up I remember there was this rumor that Wendy's put worms in its beef, no matter how much convincing evidence Wendy's put out showing that was nuts.... Pop rocks and jolt cola also never exploded "some kid in California or Utah's" head.... Throwing a penny off a skyscraper never split anyone in half. I know because I tried this.... Homeopathic remedies typically offer a solution so diluted as to contain none of the compound it claims to be offering, people are getting water or oil only, and yet homeopaths rake in billions per year off the suffering and credulous, proving placebos are powerful cures.... Sherlock Holmes never said, "Up yours, Watson!" And how often have you heard that line quoted?... Also Carl Sagan never said there were, "Billions and billions of stars."... Kirk never said, "Beam me up, Scotty."... Columbus never set foot in North America.... Hitler did indeed drink alcohol and was not really a strict vegetarian.... Jaws' girlfriend in that James Bond movie did not have metal braces on, causing an instant kinship.... Mars is showing the same warming trend as this planet, yet it has no known industry there, leading some to say Martians have gone underground, or that human-authored global warming is a hoax. Is it? Maybe, maybe not, but that topic SHORE does make people get contentious fast.... Um, Walt Disney's brain is not frozen.... Greenland is not the size of Africa, despite what maps seem to show.... Gary Oldman and Sam Neill are not the same person....Michigan has actually beaten Ohio State, despite what my cousin claims... And I am sure Mormons do not still have a working spaceship.

[Alex]

I sort of have a friend on facebook who was always posting up stuff that proved assorted urban myths. For a while I'd look into each of them, and couldn't find any I couldn't disprove in five minutes. Shame 'cos some of them sounded pretty interesting. Eventually ended up just unfollowing her so while we are still friends I just don't see her posts.

My favourite myth though is that JFK shot himself via time travel. Or maybe the one about the car that crashed into the side of a mountain after having a rocket pack used to assist cargo aircraft on short takeoffs fitted to it (see the Darwin awards site for the full story if you are interested).

[Pacman000]

Greenland is not the size of Africa, despite what maps seem to show

Depends on the type of map. Mercator Projection causes that problem, but it wasn't designed to give the size of objects; it was designed to allow sailors to chart courses using straight lines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection

The designer used another type of map to show size: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinusoidal_projection

[sprite75]

Up in Dubuque the popular myth for many years was that city founder Julien Dubuque looked like this;



A few years back a forensic artist did a reconstruction based on pictures taken of Dubuque's skull before he was moved to his final resting place in the late 1890s, and found he probably actually looked more like this.



 

[Pacman000]

Here's one from the land of video games: Polybus.

Polybus was (supposedly) an early 80's arcade game which brainwashed kids. The units were picked up by men in black. Had trippy, Tempest-like gameplay.

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4362

Article musing on the possible origin of the Polybus urban legend. Claims it's probably a combination of a few other real stories, of gamers having epileptic seizures, police stalking arcades looking for drug deals, etc.

I'd suggest that the Tempest-like game play might've been inspired by the rare (and trippy) Cube Quest laser disk game:

! No longer available

[Flangepart]

JFK shot himself via time travel...ah, the Red Dwarf EP.

[ER]

Up in Dubuque the popular myth for many years was that city founder Julien Dubuque looked like this;



A few years back a forensic artist did a reconstruction based on pictures taken of Dubuque's skull before he was moved to his final resting place in the late 1890s, and found he probably actually looked more like this.



 

What a cool post!

[indianasmith]

Lots of those on the history front:

- George Washington never had wooden teeth; they were made of ivory.
- The whole "cherry tree" story was always a myth.
- the Bible does not say "God helps those who help themselves."

[LilCerberus]

Brandon Lee was killed by a piece of cardboard.

What really happened, For one scene, a dud that had been chambered somehow got stuck in the barrel of the gun, then, with doing a safety inspection, the same gun was loaded with blanks for the next scene. A blank shell was then chambered behind the dud. The blank shell propelled the dud out the barrel, killing the actor.