Check out some facts, check out the facts not the lies

[venta]

The pedants are revolting...

Someone just sent me via email a list of "surprising facts".

Mostly, I'm surprised that these lists of facts are forwarded around so frequently, despite being largely bollocks.

So, cutting out the cutesy pictures, here's the list (sic, throughout):

1. Elephants are the only animal which cannot jump.


2. The body's strongest muscle is our tongue.


3. Stastically, people are more afraid of spiders than they are of dying.


4. All polar bears are left-handed.


5. Crocodiles cannot stick out their tongue.


6. Butterflies taste with their feet.


7. A cockroach can live nine days without it's head. It only dies because it cannot eat.


8. A duck's quack has no echoe, and nobody knows why.


9. Each King on playing cards represent a real King in history. (Spades: King David, Clubs: Alexander the Great, Hearts: Charlemagne, Diamonds: Julius Caesar).


10. It is impossible to sneeze with your eye's open.


11. Starfish have no brains.


12. Multiplying 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321


13. A statue in a park with a soldier on a horse with it's two feet in the air means the soldier died in combat. If the horse has only 1 foot in the air, the soldier died of injuries from combat. If the horse has all 4 feet on the ground, the soldier died of natural causes.


14. Mosquitoes have teeth.


15. Thomas Edison was afraid of the dark.


16. The word "cemetery" comes from the Greek koimeterion which means dormitory.


17. When the English settlers landed in Australia, they noticed a strange animal that jumped extremely high and far. They asked the aboriginal people using body language and signs trying to ask them about this animal. They responded with "Kan Ghu Rhu" the english then adopted the word kangaroo. What the aboriginal people were really trying to say was "we don't understand you", "Kan Ghu Rhu".


18. During historic civil wars, when troops returned without any casualties, a writing was put up so all can see which read "0 Killed". From here we get the expression "O.K." which means all is good.

Now, some of those - the kangaroo and the equestrian statues - were old-hat urban legends when I was a kid. I've grown up knowing these things were untrue - are there really still people believing them?

A couple are true: that is, I think, the derivation of cemetery, and the multiplication is correct. Some of the others I'm not actually sure about.

Elephants can't jump (and, in fact, according to Wikipedia there's some interesting stuff about their gait). I've never seen an earthworm jump, though, so I'm not convinced about "only animal". If they mean "only animal that looks like it might", then I don't know; maybe that one's true. Apparently, crocodiles really can't stick out their tongues.

Some (like the third) I can't even quite make sense of. What does it mean? An average person fears spiders 59% but only death 37% ? Saying starfish have no brain is technically correct, but a bit unfair on the average echinoderm. And that's possibly the least convincing etymology for OK that I've ever heard - and I've heard quite a few.

What intrigues me, though... do people believe these lists ? Do they just regard them as entertaining diversions on a work-day afternoon, and that it doesn't matter whether they're correct or not ? Do you forward/receive lists like this ? Am I taking it all a bit seriously ?

Shall we make our own up ? Anyone want to volunteer a "fact" (for best results, make it one which is hard to prove false by a one-stop visit to Wikipedia) ?

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

The majority of those aren't true, as far as I know! A duck does echo, and mosquitoes definitely don't have teeth under any reasonable definition of the word 'teeth'. They do have saw-like protuberences on their proboscis that allow them to penetrate tough human and animal skins, but that's not the same thing.

The only one that's vaguely right, I think, is the origin of the word 'cemetery', which does indeed come from the Greek for 'sleeping room'.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah. I hadn't got round to looking up the mosquitoes!

According to Wikipedia the crocodile one is true, and the butterfly one is trueish if you are reasonably generous in your definition of "taste".

It did seem like an impressive hit rate of bollocks, though, even by the standards of these lists!

(Edited to remove spurious "n't" that altered the sense of my last sentence!)

[simont]

#12 is true too!

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I'd guess if you put out a survey asking people what they were afraid of (as opposed to providing a list to tick or rank) then heights, snakes and spiders would all outrank death.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Really I was just amused by the use of the word "statistically" at the beginning of the sentence. Which I think, in context, means "our survey was scientific, you can't argue with this forthcoming fact!"

[deeteeuk.livejournal.com]

Nonetheless, it is difficult to say fewer people fear death than spiders. One can only support this fact with a survey asking what people do not fear. If more people list death than spiders, your hypothesis is true. And you should stop conducting surveys in mental wards.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Apparently, crocodiles really can't stick out their tongues.

And I have great difficulty believing that they can jump.

Perhaps they meant that elephants are the only mammal that can't jump? And had forgotten about sloths?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I wondered about crocodiles. I think they can jump out of the water, though, so I guess you could make an argument for that. I suspect said jump is tail-powered rather than a standard jump, though.

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

Crocodiles can most certainly jump!

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I confess myself surprised.

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

That sounds like bitter experience?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm hoping there's a story behind that one too :)

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

They sit on the bottom of rivers, tail coiled beneath them. Then they use the tail to propel themselves upward, as they chomp through whatever unfortunate critter was above them.

Doubt they can jump without using the tail.

[venta.livejournal.com]

That's an explanation. I wanted a story, preferably involving mr_jack narrowly escaping with his limbs intact.

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

I have it under authority that white guys can't jump either.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

But do they have four knees?

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Anyone want to volunteer a "fact" (for best results, make it one which is hard to prove false by a one-stop visit to Wikipedia) ?

- Bedouin tribespeople speak an Arab dialect, with an additional 14 words for sand.

- The Colossus of Rhodes was left-handed.

- Viagra added to liquid plant food will produce firmer cucumbers and marrows.

- Lighting kills more people each year than lightning.

- Film star Shia LaBeouf wears a mullet wig when out and about to avoid being recognised by fans.

^{Some of these things might be true.}

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, that was at least a more entertaining list!

[ebee.livejournal.com]

Aghhhh...I got sent one of these about 'people in the 1500's' today. I was practically frothing!

[glamwhorebunni.livejournal.com]

Post it here!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, pop it up here so we have more fun fact-spotting (I'd be interested to spot how many of them are plausible to a non-specialist audience.... if you want to email it to me I'll make it into a poll to check :)

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

This site appears to support the thing about the playing cards, but it only really works for the traditional French designs. Anyway, Julius Caesar repeatedly stressed that he wasn't a king - though to be fair he probably wouldn't have had to do so if people hadn't generally thought he was behaving rather like one.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Interesting - I didn't know that the court cards all had names on the French deck. I admit I just discounted #9 as there are so many sets of alledged derivations for playing cards, but it sounds like it was at least less rubbish than some of the others!

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I was always led to believe the uterus contained the strongest muscle in the body.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, according to Wikipedia it very much depends on how you define strength. But the uterus is a contender for one of the definitions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle#The_.22strongest.22_human_muscle

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

Curious....although that would only work for the female of the species. The Uterus is certainly not *my* strongest muscle !!!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

One (slightly) interesting thing about these lists is assessing their evolution. For yours, for example, I would guess it started life as 12 surprising facts, and the later ones (which are (a) mostly more verbose, and (b) mostly sillier) have been added on its journey around the interweb.

The last two perhaps were added most recently of all, having migrated across from a list of folk etymologies, attracted by the presence of the one about cemeteries.

I suppose ideally one would gather a bunch of similar samples from different times, and draw up a cladogram.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Being a true pedant, the one thing that caught my eye was the misplaced apostrophe!

[venta.livejournal.com]

You say that as if there were only one!

[deeteeuk.livejournal.com]

1) The people of Patagonia are statistically the most superstitious in the world.

2) There are more undiscovered species than discovered.

3) There is a letter missing from the ancient Greek alphabet. No-one knows what it is.

4) Henry the Eighth never slept with his last wife, Catherine Parr. She was allergic to the sheep's gut condoms were made from, and Henry did not want to father any more children that might oppose his daughter Elizabeth's ascent to the throne.

5) Dogs can look up, but they cannot see the colour purple.

6) "Scrotum" means "leftover skin" in Arameic.

7) Admiral Nelson never wore an eyepatch, as he did not lose an eye, only the use of it. He was, however, terrified the "dead" eye would fall out, and frequently checked to make sure it was still there.

8) BBC television series "The Deep" was written by the winners of a national school writing competition.

I could go on. I won't.

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

6) "Scrotum" means "leftover skin" in Arameic.


Surely for beliveability that should be foreskin ???

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

....and another thing. In "historic civil wars" (wars plural)how can we be sure the lingua franca would be English, given that we've had only one that most people could think of?

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I can think of at least two in (nominally) English-speaking countries.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I guess people didn't much speak English (or, possibly, have the character '0') during the war between Stephen and Matilda. But I think Shakespeare makes reference to the practice being commonplace during the Wars of the Roses period:

"And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here;
For none were killed, and so it was OK
Tto fight with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

[venta.livejournal.com]

The internet is still, I fear, largely US-biased so "the" civil war doesn't involve the Cavaliers and the Roundheads :)

[brrm.livejournal.com]

http://gullible.info/ (http://gullible.info/) has some good ones! And a good URL to boot...