40 Annoying 'Facts' People Have To Finally Stop Believing In

Isaac Newton didn't discover gravity because an apple bonked him on the head. Rather, he witnessed an apple falling and wondered why objects always fall down instead of up or sideways, a thought that inspired his Law of Universal Gravitation. When he saw the apple drop, Newton was in the orchard of his childhood home, Woolsthorpe Manor. He had been studying at Cambridge University, but the school was temporarily closed due to an outbreak of the bubonic plague.

Lightning can and does strike the same place twice. The Empire State Building gets struck 25 times a year on average. And speaking of lightning striking once and coming back for more, one unlucky fellow by the name of Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning seven times. That's the most lightning strikes any one person's ever survived.

The myth that a sleepwalker should be left alone stems from an ancient belief that the soul leaves the body during sleep, and if a sleepwalker is woken up they will be a body without a soul. Metaphysical reasoning aside, the presumption that sleepwalkers will exhibit wildly disturbing behavior when awakened is largely unfounded. Although some people may become aggressive, researchers have found that most of the time sleepwalkers are simply confused, disoriented, scared, or embarrassed. Waking a sleepwalker should be done as gently as possible to avoid such responses.

The Mexica people (known as "Aztecs" post-conquest) didn't believe that Hernando Cortés and the other conquistadors were gods. Francisco López de Gómara, Cortés's secretary and a man who had never been to Mexico, came up with that story in 1552. In de Gómara's version of history, Cortés was seen as "a god named Quetzalcoatl, who long ago had disappeared in the east." But there is no evidence that the myth of Quetzalcoatl existed before the Europeans' arrival, and the Mexica responded to the "technology gap" between them and Cortés's forces with "intelligence and savvy rather than wide-eyed talk of gods." The story both glorified the Europeans and alleviated their guilt by recasting them as returning gods rather than invading conquerors.

Benjamin Franklin didn't publicly or seriously advocate for the turkey to be the national bird of the United States. According to the Franklin Institute, Franklin "defended the honor of the turkey against the bald eagle" in a private letter to his daughter, but his pro-turkey leanings didn't go any further than that. In the letter, Franklin criticized the design of the bald eagle on the Great Seal of the United States, pointing out that it resembled a turkey. He then went straight for the bald eagle's jugular, writing that it is, "a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly…[he] is too lazy to fish for himself.” The noble turkey, in comparison, is "a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America. ... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage." Ultimately, Franklin kept his reservations about the honor of the eagle out of the public sphere.

It takes seven years for your body to digest a piece of gum. Actually, gum will pass right through you and leave your body within a matter of hours or days. According to Healthline, the ingredients in gum can't be digested at all, so your body will move it along and pass it as a bowel movement.

Shaving thickens hair. No - shaving hair doesn't change its thickness, color, or rate of growth. Shaving facial or body hair gives the hair a blunt tip. The tip might feel coarse or "stubbly" for a time as it grows out. During this phase, the hair might be more noticeable and perhaps appear darker or thicker - but it's not.

Cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis. This was probably told to you by people who can't stand the sound of bones popping, cracking your knuckles or other body parts will not give your arthritis. Dr. Robert Klapper, an orthopedic surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and co-director of their Joint Replacement Program, explained on the hospital's site that there is no harm to cracking your knuckles. "The noise of cracking or popping in our joints is actually nitrogen bubbles bursting in our synovial fluid," he wrote. "It does not lead to arthritis."

The biblical forbidden fruit is an apple. In the Old Testament, it is said that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was an apple. It is likely that the theory about Adam and Eve eating an apple appeared because of the translation of the Bible into Latin, which was done in the 4th century. The Latin word "malum" can be translated as "apple" or "evil." So the forbidden fruit could be anything from pomegranates to figs to something abstract.

Bats are blind. No, bats are not blind. Bats have small eyes with very sensitive vision, which helps them see in conditions we might consider pitch black. They don't have the sharp and colorful vision humans have, but they don't need that

"Irregardless" is a real word. The fine folks at Merriam-Webster wrote a whole article defending its existence. They point out that other major dictionaries include it as well, and that the word meets its criteria for inclusion because lots of people use it, it's been around for a long time, and it has a "specific and identifiable meaning ('regardless')." The fact that it's considered awkward or unnecessary doesn't matter, since it is "not a dictionary's job to assess whether a word is necessary before defining it."

Eating rice doesn't make birds explode. Birdseed expands more than uncooked rice when soaked (40% versus 33%), so if bursting birds were a problem, we'd already know about it. Besides, lots of birds eat uncooked rice "all the time with no ill effects," because their stomachs aren't hot enough for the grains to absorb much liquid. So don't worry about our avian friends too much the next time you find yourself at a wedding with a handful of grain.

Walt Disney's body is cryogenically frozen. His biography states that after he died from lung cancer complications in 1966, his body was cremated in Glendale, California. Mental Floss reported that the rumor likely got started because the president of the Cryonics Society of California told the Los Angeles Times that Walt Disney Studios had inquired about the process.

Although Walt was not cryogenically frozen, people remembered the association of Walt Disney with cryonics, and the rumor persisted.

Caffeine dehydrates you. Not really. The diuretic effect of caffeine is offset by the amount of water in a caffeinated drink. Drinking caffeine-containing beverages as part of a normal lifestyle doesn't cause fluid loss in excess of the volume ingested. While caffeinated drinks may have a mild diuretic effect — meaning that they may cause the need to urinate — they don't appear to increase the risk of dehydration.

Paul Revere didn't yell "The British are coming!" on his midnight ride through colonial Massachusetts. First of all, Revere's mission was a stealth operation that needed to be conducted "as discreetly as possible," and there is nothing less discrete than a man on horseback screaming about imminent doom. Then there's the fact that at the time, the American colonists still thought of themselves as British, so Revere's supposed warning would be nonsensical at best. What he may have said is that "the Regulars" (British soldiers) were en route, but either way, he didn't yell about it.

Twinkies definitely don't last forever. In fact, their shelf life used to be only 26 days, though it's currently around 45. Though the snack cakes have a reputation for being unnatural, they're made of "mostly flour and sugar" and their rate of decay "is absolutely typical of all processed foods." The NPR Science desk kept one for 18 months to observe its supposed invincibility, and they wrote of their findings, "The subject shows no signs of disintegrating — or of still being edible: It's now hard as a rock." So if you were planning on including Twinkies in the pantry of your doomsday bunker, you should probably take your business elsewhere.

Wolves howl at the moon. There is no direct connection between a full moon and wolves howling. Howling is a way of communication between wolves, and they lift their heads to make the sound spread better. Wolves can howl in complete darkness as well. However, due to the fact that moonlit nights are usually windless, it's simply easier to hear the howling. Moreover, it's impossible to see a howling wolf when the moonlight is not there.

Toads cause warts. No, there are no amphibians that give you warts. This myth has been around for a long time and is probably related to the fact that many frogs and toads have warty looking bumps on their skin. These are glands and do not secrete anything that can cause you to have warts!

Twenty women accused of being witches were executed during the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, but none of them were burned at the stake. That isn't to say they didn't have a rough time. Nineteen of the victims were hung on Gallows Hill, and the twentieth, an elderly man named Giles Corey, was pressed to death with stones after he refused to plead either guilty or innocent. In addition to those executed, "more accused sorcerers died in jail while awaiting trial." This misconception probably originated with the fact that burning witches at the stake was a "disturbingly common practice" during European witch trials.

Black holes. Not really “holes,” but rather hugely dense objects with massive gravitational pull.