Things I Thought Were True Which Turned Out To Be False

Consisting of a very incomplete list of urban legends which I, at one time or another, thought were true, or at least likely, lifted from the alt.folklore.urban urban legends FAQ.

• A penny dropped from the Empire State Building (or the CN Tower in my native land), will embed itself in concrete or is otherwise insanely dangerous.
• Water will drain in the opposite direction in the other hemisphere because of the Coriolis force (actually the force is insignificant unless you take huge pains to isolate the water from all other influences).
• People explode and/or boil in space.
• Swimming right after eating will cause cramps and you'll drown. (But heck, no point in tempting fate by trying it is there?)
• Welding while wearing contacts will fuse them to your eyes or otherwise cause horrible damage. (Well, I thought it was possible.)
• Glass flows like a liquid, but slowly, which is why so many old windows are all wavy etc. (I include the reference because I had to look at it before I would believe I was wrong about this one.)
• The Great Wall of China can be seen with the naked eye from the moon.
• The Great Wall of China is the only manmade structure visible from orbit.
• Some bank programmer made a pile of money by skimming fractions of a cent off bank accounts or payrolls or some such when calculating compound interest.
• Some Russian automatic translation program translated "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" as "the vodka is good but the meat is rotten."
• The term "bug" originated with Grace Hopper in 1947 when she found a moth in the Harvard Mark II machine (as reported on CNN)!
• Hair and/or nails continue to grow after death. (They only appear to as the corpse shrinks.)
• People occaisionally spontaneously combust and burn to death.
• Phil Collins' song "In the Air Tonight" is about a death he witnessed (The one I heard was he saw some guy drown while this other guy watched and didn't help... then tracked down the guy and sang the song to him at a concert. Actually the song was inspired by the breakup of his first marriage.)
• Thomas Crapper invented the flush toilet. (He didn't, but he did make improvements!)
• The word crap is derived from his name.
• Eskimos have a hell of a lot of words for snow.
• "Ring Around the Rosie" is about the Black Plague. (The refutation comes from a folklore professor in my home town.)
• There was this UK cartoon series with characters with names like "Master Bates", "Seaman Stain" and so on... (Reported in the Guardian and they were sued!)
• "Baghdad Betty" broadcast (during Desert Storm) told US soldiers that Bart Simpson was sleeping with their wives.
• There was a significant increase in births in New York nine months after the 1965 blackout.
• Walt Disney's body was frozen at death.
• Ship captains can perform marriages on their own authority.
• 'Witches' were burned during the Salem witch hunt. (They were killed in other ways though, and the last alleged witch was cleared in 1957!)
• A U.S. Patent Office head once claimed that everything had been invented.
• Birds won't sit on their nests if you touch their eggs.

Just in case you think I'm a credulous moron here's some evidence that shows I can be a skeptical moron too. These are things I thought were false which turned out to be true.

• People with their heads (or is that bodies?) cut off remain conscious long enough to blink, maybe even more than ten seconds!
• There really is a woman who had seziures when she heard Mary Hart's voice.
• A town in Oregon banned all sex.
• Some people do pee if you put their hand in water while they are asleep.