We learn a lot through our many years of schooling. However, some of the facts we learn later get disproven by science.
It can be jarring to find out that a fact you’ve carried over the years simply isn’t true or isn’t true anymore.
Saturn Has Four Rings
It used to be taught in school that there were four rings on Saturn. That’s what our telescopes had been able to see at that point. However, it’s since been found that there are thousands of rings there. It was also taught that only Saturn had rings, and that has been disproven as well.
Ash Slowly Buried Pompeii
It was once thought that the falling ash buried people and buildings slowly. We now know that things happened much more rapidly with superheated gas that was traveling at enormous speeds.
Giant Squids Are Real
There were old tales of sea monsters that were depicted looking like enormous squid, but this was thought to be a cryptid like Bigfoot. Today, we know that these animals are quite real and even bigger than we ever imagined.
Knuckle Cracking Causes Arthritis
Weren’t we all told as kids not to crack our knuckles because it would cause arthritis later? That’s since been disproven. There is no harm in cracking your knuckles.
Nine Planets
Most people alive these days learned about the nine planets of the solar system. However, there are eight planets and countless dwarf planets at the far end of the solar system. Pluto is one of these dwarf planets.
People Will Offer You Free Drugs
There were a lot of anti-drug programs that taught students they’d be offered free drugs at any time. They’d give it to you for free for a while until you got addicted to it. No one is handing out free drugs, especially at Halloween when kids go door to door.
The Grain-Heavy Food Pyramid
The Food Pyramid was heralded as the official, scientifically proven way to eat healthily. It is recommended that people mostly eat grains. Since then, it’s been changed as new studies have shown that this is a very unhealthy way to eat.
Different Areas of the Tongue Taste Different Things
There are different types of taste buds that taste certain things, and it was once believed that they were all grouped together in certain areas of the tongue. It’s since been found that the different types of taste buds are all mixed in together on the tongue.
You Only Use 10% Of Your Brain
This was kind of a silly idea, and it developed a life of its own. Fiction is full of stories of what would happen if we used more of our brains. However, we use different parts of our brains at different times, and certainly more than 10% of it.
Lemmings Will Just Jump off a Cliff for No Reason
There was a documentary that seemed to show this, and people who were followers were soon called lemmings. It was later found that the studio forced the lemmings to jump and then filmed the results. The studio? None other than Disney.
Some of Your Blood Is Blue
The blood in your veins is blue until it hits oxygen, right? At least half of it is blue. Well, no. Your blood is red due to its high iron content. There is no blue blood in the body.
You Won’t Always Have a Calculator With You
You were supposed to learn math that could be done with a calculator because you wouldn’t always have one handy. Guess what? We all have one handy now.
Glass Is a Liquid
Many students were taught that glass was a liquid. After all, the glass in old windows droops, so it must be slowly settling. No, glass is a solid. It has an interesting structure that makes it behave a little oddly, but it’s still solid.
Christopher Columbus Was the First European in the New World
There are many different finds that suggest Europeans came to the New World much earlier than Columbus. One of these, Vinland, was an entire settlement in what is now Canada. It was settled hundreds of years before Columbus arrived.
Ain’t Ain’t a Word
We were often taught not to say things that weren’t “real” words. However, the use of a word makes it real. Ain’t is found in every dictionary today, and so is “unfriend.”
15 Behaviors That Are a Dead Giveaways Someone Is Poorly Educated
We all like to think we are always acting at our most intelligent and rational. Yet, ignorance from a lack of education can sneak up on us or be on full display in others.
Awareness is key to preventing and correcting some of our worst ideas and behavior. Here are 15 signs of ignorance and poor education to look out for.
15 Behaviors That Are a Dead Giveaways Someone Is Poorly Educated
15 Things People Mistakenly Think Are Real but Aren’t
People believe all kinds of ridiculous things, and they believe some true-sounding things that are actually false as well. Some of these things have been repeated for ages and will probably never go away.
Others have sprung up more recently and spread fast, thanks to the internet. While you probably can’t convince the people who repeat such misinformation that they’re wrong, you can at least know the truth when they try to push it on you!
15 Things People Mistakenly Think Are Real but Aren’t
The 20 Most Successful Singers Of All Time
It’s easy to judge the success of an artist based on how many Grammys they’ve won or by how much money they’ve made. A better look at success, however, is to see how many singles they’ve released relative to the number of Grammys they’ve won.
According to BonusInsider, these artists are the most successful based on these metrics.