Here 11 Popular Misconceptions And Myths That I Guarantee You Had Absolutely No Idea Were Made Up, But I'll Be Impressed If You Did
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There's absolutely no shame in admitting that you're wrong, even if you spent your entire life believing that lie was the truth.
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In that spirit, I'm sharing 11 myths, misconceptions, and outright lies that I definitely believed until I looked them up:
1.The myth that the Titanic was "unsinkable" was actually way more popular after the ship sank than before. While contemporary articles did report on the Titanic's advanced safety features before it set sail, most people were interested in the ship for its grandeur and luxury. It was not until after the ship's demise that people fixated on its claim to be unsinkable.
Since its famed sinking in 1912, the Titanic has long been touted as a ship that was previously thought to be "unsinkable," with a line in the award-winning film based on the voyage saying, "God himself could not sink this ship!" The reality of the situation is that while some people did genuinely believe that the ship couldn't be sunk, the idea that it was a popular belief that the Titanic was unsinkable, ironically, rose to popularity after the ship had already sunk.
In reality, most media outlets and passengers were more concerned with the size of the ship and the aristocratic accommodations inside rather than the actual ship, which makes sense, because the ship actually didn't have enough lifeboats to accommodate the all crew and passengers in the event of a sinking.
2.The iconic photograph entitled "V-Day In Times Square," which features a sailor kissing what was believed to be a nurse, is one of the most recognized photographs of all time - despite the fact that the two subjects actually didn't know each other.
In 1945, photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt snapped the photo during a celebration in Times Square after Imperial Japan surrendered in World War II, marking the end of the war. In the excitement of the day, Eisenstaedt recounted that he had been frantically taking photos, and was unable to get his subjects' names. After being published in Life magazine, the photo instantly became famous.
It was determined that the figures in the photograph were most likely Greta Zimmer Friedman and George Mendonsa. Friedman, who was actually a dental assistant on break at the time of the photograph, had previously reached out to Life magazine after recognizing herself in the photo, though editors did not reach out to Friedman until 1980 when they planned a reunion of the photograph's subjects.
It turned out that Mendonsa and Friedman were complete strangers, and Mendonsa was actually in Times Square with his fiancee at the time he kissed Friedman. Later, Friedman commented on the kiss and said, "It was just somebody really celebrating. But it wasn't a romantic event. It was just an event of 'Thank God the war is over' kind of thing because it was right in front of the sign.
Friedman also added that she had no idea that Mendonsa would kiss her, and said, "it wasn't my choice to be kissed. The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed."
3.In disappointing news, it turns out that pirates were not burying their treasure as frequently as the stories would have you believe.
The idea that pirates buried their treasure was actually popularized by books like Treasure Island, whose plot focused on a hunt for the infamous Captain Flint's buried treasure. Notably, a legend sprung up before real-life pirate, Captain Kidd, was hung for piracy, he supposedly buried his treasure, though the location is unknown and the treasure has never actually been found.
4.The quote "Let them eat cake" is often attributed to the queen of France, Marie Antoinette, upon being told that French peasants were too poor to afford bread to eat. However, there's no evidence that she ever actually said that, and the quote itself has actually been around much longer than Antoinette was ruling as queen. In fact, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr recalled reading the line in a book published in 1760, which would have been when Marie Antoinette was only five years old.
Moreover, the quote, "Let them eat cake," in the original French actually wasn't referencing cake at all — but brioche bread, which is often considered a cross between a pastry and bread.
5.It was widely reported after the Columbine shooting in 1999 that assailants Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were members of the "Trench Coat Mafia," a group of outcasts at Columbine high school who wore black trench coats. Immediately after the shooting, students fleeing the building reported that Klebold and Harris were members of this group, to the point where the New York Times reported that the dozens of members were potentially also responsible for the shooting. Today, we know that Klebold and Harris were never actual members of the group.
While the two sometimes wore black trenchcoats, students saw the two enter school on the day of the shooting wearing trench coats, which most likely led to the association.
In fact, most of the members of the "Trench Coat Mafia" had previously been seniors and had graduated the year before. As Columbine was a school that held over 2,000 students, many of them didn't actually know Klebold or Harris personally.
6.The release of Steven Spielberg's Jaws instilled a fear of sharks in viewers, despite the fact that you're not incredibly likely to get attacked by a shark. In fact, you're more likely to get struck by lightning than bitten by a shark. While the novel Jaws was based on a real series of shark attacks that occurred along the coast of New Jersey in 1916. In fact, sharks are more in danger to us than we are to them, as the release of Jaws led to many people hunting sharks for sport.
During the 1900s, people in the US generally believed that sharks were harmless. However, in 1916, a series of shark attacks occured on the coast of New Jersey over the course of 12 days, wherein four people were killed and one person was severely wounded. Though these attacks sparked a fear of sharks, perpetuated by newspaper headlines, many Americans forgot the shark hysteria by 1917, when the US entered World War 1 and the news cycle shifted to war coverage.
Nevertheless, the attacks inspired the story for Jaws (released in 1975). The movie resulted in four sequels and countless shark fishing tournaments, causing the reduction of many shark species over the following decades. Since 1970, the global abundance of oceanic sharks and rays has declined by 71%.
The author of Jaws, Peter Benchley, later said, "Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today...Sharks don't target human beings, and they certainly don't hold grudges."
7.Because of the way that dinosaurs are represented in films like Jurassic Park and The Land Before Time, many people assume that all dinosaurs coexisted with one another when the Mesozoic Era is actually split into three time periods: Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. Because each period lasted millions of years and had different dinosaur species, it also means that certain dinosaurs wouldn't have had any contact with each other as they lived in separate time periods.
In fact, by the time the Tyrannosaurus Rex appeared in the Cretaceous period, the dinosaur Stegosaurus had already been extinct for nearly 90 million years. That means that in the grand scheme of time, the existence of the Tyrannosaurus Rex is actually closer to the existence of humans than of the Stegosaurus.
8.The iron maiden, previously thought to be a medieval torture device, actually began popping up around the 19th century. An iron maiden was thought to be a coffin with spikes, used to impale the victim trapped inside, but there's actually no indication that this device was used for torture at all.
9.There's actually no evidence that Vikings ever wore horned helmets like the one pictured — called Veksø helmets. In fact, the horns can actually be traced back to the Bronze age. Moreover, the helmets were also never proven to be used in battle, as previously thought, and were rather thought to be symbols of authority.
10.The Challenger never actually "exploded" and several news outlets actually added the sound of an explosion to footage of the ship's final voyage.
If you've seen some news broadcasts of the Challenger disaster in 1986, you might assume that the ship exploded in the air. In reality, the shuttle's fuel tank tore apart after an O-ring wasn't properly resealed and exhaust gas was able to escape from the booster. After the external fuel tank collapsed, the ship began to break up and the remaining pieces of the ship were flung into the sea.
Because the spilling of oxygen and hydrogen created an enormous fireball, it did appear that there actually had been an explosion, which led several news outlets to add in the sound of an explosion during later footage of the wreck, even when the sound was not produced organically in the disaster.
The belief that the ship exploded also led to the belief that the crew of The Challenger died instantly, which is also not the case. Because the forward section of the ship holding the crew broke apart in one piece, the crew had likely survived the initial breakup of the ship, though they were most likely rendered unconscious and most likely died of oxygen deficiency.
11.In the film Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, the film's most iconic line is Darth Vader's constantly quoted, "Luke, I am your father." However, LucasFilm actually revealed that the actual line is "No, I am your father."
