http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4192932441686635859The Lie: Lemmings commit suicide en masse.
The Truth: Lemmings are stupid, not depressed. The myth of lemming suicide goes back a long way – at least to Freud, who in Civilization and Its Discontents (1929) examined the human death instinct in the context of the purported mass suicide of lemmings. But suicidal lemmings didn’t fully enter the pop culture lexicon until Disney made the “documentary” White Wilderness in 1958. Disney shipped dozens of lemmings to Alberta, Canada (where they do not live), herded them off a cliff, filmed the poor creatures falling to their deaths, and passed it off as nonfiction. Ah, the magic of Disney. In fact, lemmings aren’t suicidal. They’re just dumb. When the tundra gets crowded, they seek out new land. Sometimes they fall off the cliffs.
The Lie: When elephants get ready to die, they go to elephant graveyards.The Lie: Throwing rice at weddings causes birds to explode.
The Lie: Chewing gum stays in your digestive system for seven years.
The Lie: If you don’t wait an hour after eating to get in the swimming pool, you will get a cramp and die.
The Lie: Walt Disney is cryogenically frozen.
The Lie: The original Harlem Globetrotters are from Harlem.
The Lie: Adam and Eve ruined everything for the rest of us by eating an apple.
The Lie: Mussolini made the trains run on time.
The Lie: The Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from space.
The Lie: Van Gogh cut off his left ear and mailed it to a prostitute.
The Lie: Hair grows back thicker and darker after you shave it.
The Lie: You only use 10 percent of your brain.
[Read the truths at Neatorama]
From the book Mental Floss: Scatterbrained (highly recommended!) published in Neatorama with permission.
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog!
Some very interesting questions there… and to find out the truth, go ahead and visit Neatorama’s blog post with the answers. Some of these I already knew… but it was nice to have the links to back up the truth.
Tags: Book Review, History, Interesting, Reading, Wishlist
