83 Common Misconceptions That We Should Forget

"The Teddy Bear was named for a bear that Theodore Roosevelt spared on a hunting trip. However he didn't exactly spare it and it wasn't exactly out of mercy. There was a professional trapper/tracker/hunter dude with him who's job was to find a bear for him to kill. However the bear he found was so pathetic looking that Roosevelt just didn't think it worth his effort. The trapper dude just cut it's neck open instead."

"The boiling frog experiment that's quoted everywhere didn't work.

For those not familiar, it is said that you can boil a frog to death by raising the temperature of the water it's in extremely slowly so that it doesn't notice.

Well, it only works when parts of the frog's brain are removed. A frog with an intact brain will jump out, no matter how slowly the water is heated."

delkadr200 said:
"That Texas retains the right to secede back to the Republic of Texas when ever it wishes."

alien6 replied:
"Don't they have the exclusive right to split themselves into multiple states without Congressional approval, though?"

PM_ME_UR_REDDIT_GOLD replied:
"Mayyyybeeeee. The were given that right when they joined the union, but not when they came back again after leaving to join the CSA. Or maybe they never actually legally left the union, since the Union didn't acknowledge the succession as legitimate and so retain the right. And just maybe the US Federal government doesn't have a good record of letting people keep the rights they were granted by treaty. In other words: Mayyyybeeee."

SuperSecretMoonBase said:
"'Circa' means 'approximately' not just 'back in the year of.' Only use it when it's not known exactly when something happened."

SOwED replied:
"Doesn't it literally mean 'around?'"

"A lot of people seem to think that Easter Island is a great environmental fable: a small island, almost the most remote place on Earth, cut down all of their trees to build giant head statues, resulting in the collapse of their society and extinction.

Except that native Easter Islanders didn't go extinct. They're still there. The collapse of their society was precipitated by slavers, who took most of the population - anybody who could read, basically, in the written language they had invented - to work on the west coast of South America. Also, a lot of those heads are full bodies that have sunk into the sandy soil."

"Scientists aren't super clean and organized people in lab coats with beakers full of colourful liquid. They're incredibly messy and unorganized people with notebooks full of scribbles and multiple beakers of clear, messily labelled liquid. Every single lab I've worked for is a mess, as is every scientist I've met (myself included)."

"There is no 'Skip all the floors' button combination on any elevator you're going to be in, and even if there is one there's no way you'll find it.

I'm an elevator lover, and I have family in the elevator repair business, so I've spent a lot of time listening to elevator stories, and doing my own research. All those pictures and posts about how if you 'Hold the buttan and the close door button you skip the calls' are all lies, especially the ones that say it's for emergency services. Emergency services that would realistically need this kind of control over an elevator have keys to turn the elevator into fire mode, which does indeed skip all floor calls.

If a building owner wanted an elevator to be able to ignore calls without fire emergency operation mode, there's another way. Called Independent Service mode, sometimes called 'Operator's service' like the old time elevator operator who sat in the elevator and drove it all day. Independent Service is also usually key activated, though It could be activated through a button at the front desk, on a computer, or in the controller room at the top of the shaft manually. In 30 years of elevator installation and repair, my uncle says he has never once seen an elevator that had a button combination set up to do anything like that without first inserting an operators key. The only exception being in hospitals freight elevators, which usually have a 'code blue' button on the inside panel and the outside call buttons, but those are usually employee access only, and there is an understanding in a hospital that you don't just hit that button for no reason."

i-want-to-say-hello said:
"That low testosterone levels make a man effeminate or emotional or gay. Not how it works! Low testosterone makes a man apathetic and unmotivated.

Obviously apathy/unmotivation could be symptoms of other things, too (such as depression). I’m not trying to diagnose anyone with low testosterone. Please go see a doctor, my guys."

CommandoDude replied:
"Wow, I constantly feel apathetic and unmotivated.

...maybe I should take supplements?"

hubert_cumberdalee said:
"Undercover cops have to tell you they are cops if you ask."

albyagolfer replied:
"I learned that lesson vicariously. From Badger."

plainawesomeXx replied:
"It's in the constitution you know."

"There is no such thing as 'aircraft grade aluminum.'

It's just a marketing scam, we use many different grades and tempers depending on the application."

Notasupervillan said:
"My room and car being a mess doesn't prove I don't have OCD. In fact, if I didn't have it it'd be easier to get things like cleaning done."

blindedbytofumagic replied:
"Explaining the difference between OCD and OCPD is maddening. Plenty of patients with OCD hoard and they act far differently than Monk."

pinksugarsun said:
"Babies placed for adoption at birth in the US DO NOT go into foster care. There’s a waiting list at least 36 people long for each newborn placed for adoption. That’s why it’s expensive. That’s why people go overseas to adopt."

hollisd09 replied:
"I was adopted at birth but was with a foster family for about a month. Don't know why, birth mom didn't second guess the adoption, but my birth dad did. They weren't together, just found out this year he wanted to raise me. Am 28."

"I'm late to this thread, but as an artist, it irks me SO MUCH when people say 'I'm not good at drawing because I can't even draw a straight line!' Newsflash: most professional artists can't do this either. We use rulers.

I really don't get what straight lines supposedly have got to do with being good at drawing."

"Abraham Lincoln's famous a log cabin was not built during his lifetime. This was built 30 years after his death by entrepreneur Alfred Dennett."

arunkumarcea said:
"There is no specific Plymouth Rock, but there is an enshrined rock that someone basically picked out and people pilgrimage to."

SanJOahu84 replied:
"Most boring landmark ever."

ewwFatties replied:
"And it's been replaced more than once from what I remember."

"Anything about nice Canadians apologizing for everything."

Jonsmith78 said:
"The 'black box' (flight recorder) on an aircraft is orange, not black."

Trifusi0n replied:
"In engineering a black box is a standard solution to something which can be integrated into a larger system, despite the designer not knowing what the interiors of that 'box' are.

I would guess that these things were designed by separate companies to the plane manufacturers and then sold to them as black boxes. It probably doesn't have anything to do with colour."

"Not exactly a misconception, but people who think evolution is just "humans came from monkeys" make me cringe. My PSR teacher once blatantly said that to us and my group of friends at the table that we were sitting all face palmed in unison."

"There isn't a dead body being transported on all or most commercial airlines. Seriously, what airline or airport has all these corpses going back and forth?

I work the ramp at O'Hare, I might see a corpse being transported once a month and maybe handle one once a year.

Now if you ever see the fire department and police lined up at a plane coming into a gate, not following the plane as if it was an emergency, chances are there is a fallen servicemember or someone notable that is being transported to their final resting place."

"That getting the chicken pox means you can't get shingles later in life. It's the other way around god damn it."