Examples of misconceptions in history. Different parts of the tongue respond to different tastes

The word "vandalism" comes from vandals who, in a blind rage, destroyed everything to the ground.

The vandals weren't vandals at all. In any case, this tribe of Germans, which during the great migration of peoples traveled a long way from Silesia and Western Poland through the whole of Europe to North Africa, did not leave for posterity any special memory of “vandalism.”
And when the Vandals settled in North Africa and from there made a campaign against Rome, then during the sack of Rome they behaved, according to the concepts of that time, quite “within the limits”: they did not destroy the city walls, did not carry out a massacre (the city surrendered almost without a fight). The Vandals took with them everything that was not screwed and nailed down, as the Romans themselves did at other times and in other cities.
The Romans were shocked not so much by the plunder as by the fact that the roles had changed:
the once proud Romans, rulers of the world, became defeated, the uneducated barbarians became winners. It is for this reason that this event left such a deep mark on the collective consciousness of Europe. Already in the ancient French epic, and then in the poems of Chabart (1772), vandals appear as destroyers, and when the bishop of Blois, in a speech before the French national convention, wanted to find a suitable expression to express his indignation at the robbery of castles and the destruction of works of art by the Jacobins, he designated it with the word “vandalism” and thereby forever predetermined the image of one of the many Germanic tribes, which was no worse and no better than others.

The bagpipe is a classic Scottish musical instrument.

Bagpipes did not come from Scotland at all; they were known back in Ancient Greece. In Persia, China, Ancient Rome(“tibia ultricularis”) she was also known. In the Middle Ages, the French called this instrument "cornemuse", and the Italians "cornamusa". The Germans called the bagpipes "sackpfeife" ("pipe with a bag"). The word "bagpipes" is even used in the Bible. “As soon as you hear the sounds of horns, pipes and zithers, harps, lutes and bagpipes and other instruments, fall on your face and pray to the golden statue that King Nebukadnezzar erected” (from the book of the prophet Daniel, 3.5).
Perhaps the bagpipes came to England with Caesar's troops, and from there to the Scots, who still love to play them to this day. But they didn’t invent it.

The Hippocratic Oath is intended to protect the sick.

The so-called “Hippocratic Oath” does not belong to Hippocrates at all, and it does not say at all what we think. When Hippocrates, the famous physician of antiquity, died in 377 BC, there was no trace of such an oath. Like many other things, this oath was attributed to him in later editions of his works - probably to give them additional weight. And the text itself is misunderstood these days. Modern version of the oath, so
the so-called Medical Commandment, published in 1848 in Geneva, omits large chunks of the original text. Along with the thesis about maintaining medical confidentiality and caring for the patient (“My primary task is to restore and preserve the health of my patients...”, etc.), the Hippocratic Oath contains passages that are aimed not so much at caring for the patient, but at protecting the interests of the doctors themselves, for example: “I will pass on my knowledge of medicine only to my sons, the sons of my teachers and officially registered students, and to no one else.” This original medieval text clearly reveals the intention to reduce the number of doctors, that is, competitors, as much as possible. Some versions of the ancient Hippocratic Oath mention that a doctor should provide free care to colleagues and their families, that is, again we're talking about about the benefits for members of the medical profession, and not for everyone.

The American Declaration of Independence was proclaimed on July 4, 1776.

This Declaration proclaimed the declaration of independence from the mother country by thirteen former British colonies. But this did not happen on July 4, 1776, although this date is mentioned in all textbooks. In fact, the decision to secede from England was made by members of the so-called Second Continental Congress, and this happened two days earlier. The next day this announcement was published in various newspapers, and after another day, namely July 4, 1776, the Declaration was adopted by Congress. The official proclamation from the balcony of the Independence House took place on July 8. In addition to the date, there is also an error in the title of this Declaration. The word “independence” (in English “independence”) is not mentioned anywhere. Official name Declarations: "Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America."

If an earthworm is cut, both halves continue to live.

If a worm is cut in half, only the front part continues to live. At the rear part, a tail forms at the cut point, so that it has two tails. But she has no head, she cannot eat, so she inevitably dies. If you cut off only a small front part of the worm, it will die, and a new head grows at the cut site, and the worm continues to live. The fact is that this will not damage the regeneration organs, which are located between the 9th and 15th segments of the worm (its entire body can contain up to 180 segments).

The Star of David is a Hebrew symbol.

The six-pointed Star of David, which Jews were required to wear on their clothes in Nazi Germany, became a symbol of the Jewish nation only in the 19th century. It was from then on that Jews began to paint a six-pointed star as a symbol of their faith on the walls of synagogues, just as Christians erect crosses on churches. Until this time, Jews did not attribute any special meaning to the six-pointed star - it was known as a magical symbol in many cultures and religions.

The snake hears the sound of a flute when its tamer plays it.

When a snake handler in a bazaar somewhere in Arabia or India puts a basket on the ground, lifts the lid and begins to play the flute, the snake sticks out of the basket first its head and then its body and begins to wriggle in time with the sounds of the flute. But she doesn’t hear any sounds; snakes have no hearing at all. If they perceive sound waves, it is only as vibrations of the soil (but not air). We can say that they "feel" sounds. So the snake sways not in time with the sounds, but in time with the movements of the flute.

Gold is rarer than iron.

Once upon a time everything was the other way around. The Incas of South America did not know iron at all before the Spanish conquest, but they had plenty of gold. They used it not only for jewelry, but also made dishes, combs, and nails from gold.!!! IN Ancient Egypt Silver was considered more valuable because it is less common in its native form.

Do not leave food in an open can.

Probably, this legend was allowed to walk around the world by dishware sellers. They assured that stewed cabbage, pork, and sausages should not be left uneaten in the jar - they should be transferred to a saucepan. In fact, food in a tin can stores just as well (or as poorly) as food in plastic. You just need to place the open jar in the refrigerator.

Eve in Paradise took a bite of the apple of knowledge.

Nowhere in the Bible is there any mention of the forbidden fruit called "apple." An accurate translation of the Bible says the following: “And Eve answered the serpent: You must eat the fruit of the trees in this garden; only do not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden, said the Lord, otherwise you will die.”
No one really knows how the tree that stood in the middle of the garden turned into an apple tree. The author of this biblical text hardly thought about apples, which do not grow at all in the Middle East. Most likely, it was a fig tree, the leaves of which covered Adam and Eve after they tasted the fruit.
Apparently, the apple found its way into the Bible through Greek and Celtic myths. Among these peoples, the apple was a symbol of the goddess of love, and since love relationship considered something sinful for good Christians, the forbidden tree turned into an apple tree.

Jesus Christ was born in year zero.

We believe that there is no zero year in our chronology. So Jesus Christ was born in 1 AD. e. Another thing is that, according to some sources, in 1 AD. e. he could already be 5-7 years old. After all, if he was born during the reign of King Herod, he could not have been born after the death of this king. And Herod, in all likelihood, died in the spring of 4 BC. e. The population census undertaken by Emperor Augustus, for the reason that Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem, took place in 8 BC. e.
Various interpretations Star of Bethlehem- whether it is a planet, or a comet, or a supernova - still indicate that Jesus was born several years before our era. A supernova was recorded by astronomers in April 4, a comet between March and May 5, and finally a triple opposition. Saturn and Jupiter, which most researchers associate with the phenomenon called the star of Bethlehem in the Bible, took place in 7 BC. e. But in the interval between 1 BC. e. and 1 year AD e., i.e. at the turn of the millennium, no special incidents were observed in the starry sky of Palestine.
The first year of birth was attributed to Christ much later, in the 6th century, when many sources and eyewitnesses had turned to dust and dust. Year 1 of our chronology corresponds to the year 754 according to the Roman calendar. Scientists believe that the monk Dionysius Exigius, who carried out these calculations on behalf of the pope, simply shortchanged himself by 4 years. Guided by his own considerations, Exigius had to calculate the year 750 of the Roman calendar, i.e. 4th year of our calendar. In this case it also turns out that Christ was born before the beginning of the 1st century. But there are also arguments of the opposite kind. Thus, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was “about” 30 years old when John baptized him. The baptism took place in the 16th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius (we calculate this according to Luke), i.e. Christ was born 14 years before Tiberius came to power - already in 1 AD.
To complicate this puzzle, another argument can be made. The same Luka
claims that when the population of Palestine was censused, Quirinius was the governor of Rome in Syria, and Quirinius, which is known for certain, was sent by Rome as governor to Syria
in 6-7 BC e.

Lucifer is one of the names of the devil.

The name Lucifer does not appear anywhere in the Bible. In antiquity, the word "Lucifer" was used as the name of the morning star - the planet Venus. Nothing diabolical was implied by this. Perhaps this word began to be understood in its current sense because of the Gospel of Isaiah, where, in relation to the Babylonian king, it is said: “You have fallen from heaven, you are a shining
son of the morning. You fell to the earth, ruler of the nations." Later, the church fathers saw in this a hint of the "true" Satan. The following relationship was obtained: Satan = king of Babylon = son of the morning = morning Star= Lucifer.

Cannibals satisfy their hunger with the meat of their victims.

Once upon a time, the custom of eating people, which was very widespread among wild tribes (it is also called in Greek “anthropophagy” - “devouring human flesh”), was not intended to satisfy hunger, but to enrich the soul and strength of the eaten victims.
So the numerous jokes about missionaries being eaten by the aborigines are historically incorrect - no cannibal would eat a missionary, because he did not want to become him and take on his soul or appearance.

There is nothing living in the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea is not so dead in terms of biological life. It contains various microorganisms that feed, in particular, on cellulose; sea crustaceans and one species of flies live here, the eggs of which serve as food for tropical fish. Finally, there are plants called halophytes, which simply thrive in very saline and alkaline environments.
In general, various legends are told about the Dead Sea, which people believe less and less, especially with the development of tourism. They said that bricks do not sink in it. Of course, the density of the Dead Sea with its 30% salinity is much greater than that of fresh water, but the bricks are still quite heavy. They said that birds die if they try to fly across the sea, that the Dead Sea is the gateway to hell (this legend is apparently associated with the smell of sulfur, but the reason for this is simple - there are many sulfur springs), that fruits grown on the seashore, If you put a match to them, they burn out.

New York is the capital of New York State.

The capital of New York State is Albany. Albany lies 200 kilometers north of New York. The city has 115 thousand inhabitants.

In New York there is the Statue of Liberty,
Famous statue Liberty in New York Harbor is not located on New York soil (neither the city nor the state). Liberty Island (Liberty Island, and formerly Boudleau Island) geographically belongs to the state of New Jersey.
By the way, the famous sculpture officially has a different name - “Freedom,
illuminating the world" (at least under this name the statue was given to the Americans
the French in 1885).

"Made in Germany" is a traditional symbol of quality.


In fact, the “made in Germany” label was originally intended to designate second-class products - like the current “made in China”. The fact is that in 1887, England passed a law according to which foreign goods had to bear a clear mark of the country of origin so that consumers would not confuse them, God forbid, with high-quality English goods.
The notes of the German engineer and mechanical engineer Franz Rolo, who, as director of the Berlin Academy of Crafts, served on the jury at the 1876 World Exhibition, have been preserved. In Letters from Philadelphia, he wrote: “Almost all of the German goods brought to Philadelphia look cheap and wretched.”
In particular, these notes by Franz Rolo served as the reason for organizing a campaign for quality in factories and enterprises of the German Reich, which after several decades yielded excellent results. But many, many more years passed before the reference that the product was made in Germany became an unconditional sign of quality.

The "SOS" signal is an abbreviation of the English "save our souls" (save our souls).
The “SOS” signal did not originate as an abbreviation for “Save our souls,” not for “Save our ship,” or even for “Stop other signals,” at least because not all potential rescuers know English language. At the beginning of the 20th century, sailors from different countries agreed to use this signal because it is easily reproduced and remembered in Morse code - three dots, three dashes and three dots again.

Chewing gum came from America.

Already the ancient Greeks put in their mouths and chewed the resin of the mastic tree (or pistachio tree). They used resin to clean their teeth and maintain a pleasant smell in their mouth. American Indians chewed pine resin. The thickened sap of the sapotilla tree, on the basis of which most modern types of chewing gum are made, was long known to the ancient Mayans, from whom the first white colonists adopted the custom of chewing it.

Chameleons change their color to match the color of their environment.

Chameleons can indeed change their color, but not at all depending on the color of the foliage or stones on which they lie. A chameleon's change of color is a reaction to heat, cold, hunger, and fear. At night, chameleons become lighter in color.

Boxing gloves are used to protect the opponent from strong blows.

Boxing gloves actually primarily protect not the opponent, but the boxer himself - thanks to the gloves, he keeps his hands intact. The kinetic energy falling on the opponent’s head or body, and therefore the risk of injury due to gloves that weigh 200-400 grams, only increases. Therefore, until the end of the last century, it was forbidden to use gloves in boxing. The last world boxing champion who won the title while boxing with unprotected hands was John Sullivan. And this was in 1889.

A good boomerang returns to where it was thrown from.

The main advantage of a boomerang is not that it returns to the person who threw it, but that it flies further than a straight piece of stick. The return of the boomerang is used by the natives primarily for training and to scare away birds. "Real" combat boomerangs don't come back.
In the First World War, the Australian army used the so-called boomerang grenade. If she returned to the thrower, this could hardly be counted among her merits.

Vampires suck blood.

The bat, which is actually called a vampire (Vampyrus sektrum Linnaeus), hates blood. She, like the other 30 species of bats living in Europe, feeds on fruits and insects. By the way, the Mecca of bats in Europe is Berlin - 16 species of bats have been found here. And those few “blood-sucking” species that are known to science do not suck, but only lick blood. With their incisors they bite through the skin of the victim and lick off the protruding blood with their tongue. This is primarily a bat, which is called the “big vampire”. Its body can be up to 7 centimeters long. It is found in the tropical regions of South America and is a real scourge for animals and humans. “He was a gloomy man of unpleasant appearance,” writes Gabriel García Márquez about one of his heroes, “his face was deathly pale, he had lost a lot of blood, which bats drank while sleeping.”

Waterfalls

Travel lovers have heard of many waterfalls, each of which seems to be the most formidable and the largest. But the largest is not the Angel in Venezuela, which falls from a height of almost a thousand meters, or the Guaira Falls on the border between Brazil and Paraguay, which discharges almost 13 thousand cubic meters of water per second (and of course, not Niagara in the United States and Victoria Falls in Africa). None of them can compare in height or volume of water with the waterfall in the so-called Denmark Strait. Here, between Iceland and Greenland, over a distance of 200 kilometers, five million cubic meters of water are dumped into the Atlantic every second from a height of several kilometers.
Another thing is that not a single person has seen this waterfall, because all this happens under the surface of the sea. But this is a real waterfall, in which the cold, and therefore dense and heavy, water of the Arctic Ocean is discharged into the warm water of the Atlantic Ocean. There are other underwater waterfalls: around Antarctica, near the equator, beyond the Strait of Gibraltar.

Most gold is mined in gold mines
Most gold is found not on land, but in water. There are almost 9 million tons of gold floating in the oceans, about 200 times more than has been mined in all the gold deposits in human history.

Moths eat holes in fabric.
Only moth larvae are dangerous for clothing. Adult moths do not pose any danger to textiles.

The largest pyramids are in Egypt.

The largest pyramid in the world is located in Mexico in the town of Jolula de Rivadabia, one hundred kilometers southeast of the capital of Mexico, Mexico City. This pyramid was built between the 2nd and 6th centuries AD. e. in honor of the Aztec god Quetzalcoat. It covers an area of ​​18 hectares, its height is 54 meters, and its volume is 3.3 million cubic meters, i.e. almost a million more than the Cheops pyramid.

The city of Pompeii was destroyed by lava flowing from the crater of Mount Vesuvius.

Ancient Pompeii was destroyed not by lava, but by ash and stones thrown into environment during the eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, 79. The cause of death for most city residents was the suffocating poisonous gases that accompanied the eruption. If Pompeii had been covered by lava, like neighboring Herculaneum, it would not have survived in its original form for 17 centuries. But it was precisely thanks to the ashes that covered Pompeii with a layer
7 to 8 meters thick, and then baked into a thick crust; when it rained after the eruption, the city remained in the form that was revealed to modern archaeologists.

"RELIGION IS THE OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE"
This coined definition belongs not to Marx or Lenin, as everyone thinks, but to the German writer Novalis. “Your so-called religion acts like an opium: it entices and dulls pains instead of giving strength,” Novalis wrote in 1798. By the way, most of the other “Marxist” sayings also do not belong to
Marxists: “Proletarians have nothing to lose except their chains” (Jean-Paul Marat),

"Workers of all countries, unite!" (Karl Schapper)

"Dictatorship of the Proletariat" (Blanks)

“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” (Louis Blanc), and so on.

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If a person is thrown into outer space without a spacesuit, he will explode. Meteorites fall to Earth hot. The color red irritates bulls. A coin thrown from a skyscraper can kill a person. These and other misconceptions are very popular and even have “scientific” explanations.

Biology

Human body in space explodes

Science fiction films often feature a scene when one of the characters finds himself in outer space without a spacesuit. In this case, the victim certainly bursts (always with a characteristic pop, although sound waves do not propagate in a vacuum, since there are no particles there that could transmit vibrations), and its insides beautifully scatter into different sides. This outcome seems logical: in order to withstand the weight of many kilometers of air, the pressure inside our body is maintained equal to that which we experience outside. That is, the pressure is one atmosphere. In interstellar space, molecules of any kind are very rare, which means that nothing puts pressure on a person who finds himself without any protection and must be torn apart from the inside. Actually this is not true. Human body- a very stable design, at least to this kind of damage. Even though people do not have a solid exoskeleton, like insects, for example, their skin, vessel walls and bones will prevent the organs from moving from their places. Although, left without equalizing external pressure, the internal organs will swell somewhat and their “swelling” can break some capillaries. The lungs and organs of the digestive system will especially increase in size, since they are filled with gases that were greatly compressed by external pressure just a second ago. The “freed” oxygen will quickly leave the lungs and circulatory system, and the body will begin to suffer from hypoxia. A person thrown into space will lose consciousness, but before passing out, he may have time to feel something boiling inside him: with a significant decrease in pressure, the liquids contained inside turn into a gaseous state. But the resulting gas will not be able to tear a person apart from the inside - if only because there are too many holes and cracks in the body through which it will leak out. In total, a person who mistakenly goes into outer space without a spacesuit has about 90 seconds to return to the ship (although taking into account quick loss consciousness, this time is reduced to 15 seconds). After a minute and a half, the unfortunate person’s blood will begin to boil; in addition, the brain damaged by hypoxia will never be able to fully restore its functionality.

Hair and nails grow for some time after death

The belief that hair and nails continue to grow for some time after death is very common. Proponents of this hypothesis explain this by the fact that some physiological processes in the body of the deceased continue after death. In reality, the elongated nails of a dead man are a visual illusion. After death, the body begins to rapidly lose fluid, and the skin of the corpse dries out and shrinks. In particular, the pads of the fingers shrink, causing the nails to appear longer. Those who believe in the life of nails after death can be consoled by the fact that there is some truth in their beliefs. Most cells are less sensitive to a lack of oxygen than brain cells, so there is still a hypothetical possibility that after cardiac arrest, nails continue to grow for several minutes.

Bats are blind

Bats navigate in the dark using echolocation, the same mechanism used in submarines. Animals emit sounds in the high frequency range (ultrasound) and “catch” their reflection from surrounding objects. If the sound returned quickly, it means that the obstacle is nearby, but if it traveled for a long time or did not return at all, the space nearby is free. By sending out a lot of these pulses and analyzing them carefully, mice can very accurately determine what is around them. Many people believe that owners of such a perfect “navigator” do not need ordinary eyes and their vision is almost completely atrophied. This is wrong. First, not all bats use echolocation. Secondly, even those animals that actively use this mechanism can navigate quite well with the help of vision. Moreover, in fruit-eating bats, the eyes are very well developed and occupy no less space on the face than the eyes of comparable nocturnal rodents. The visual organs of insectivorous bats are noticeably smaller, but they are also quite functional: with the help of their eyes, animals determine their height relative to the ground, estimate the size of large obstacles and look for a way, focusing on large objects. In addition, by assessing the level of illumination with the help of their eyes, mice determine that night has fallen and it is time for them to fly out to hunt.

Red color irritates bulls

Another typical misconception regarding the characteristics of vision in animals, which became popular thanks to the bloodthirsty Spanish bullfight. It is believed that the matador “winds up” the bull with the help of a red cape, which he waves in front of the animal’s nose. Keeping this characteristic of bulls in mind, many people avoid appearing near the herd in red clothes. They have no reason to worry: bulls, like most other mammals (with the exception of primates), have dichromatic vision, that is, they are simply unable to distinguish between red and green colors. The ability to see colors is determined by special light-sensitive cells called cones, or more precisely by how many types of opsin proteins these same cones contain. For example, in the eyes of people and monkeys of the Old World there are three types of opsins, thanks to which we distinguish several thousand shades (according to some sources, up to one hundred thousand). Bird cones carry four types of opsins, so from the point of view of birds, all humans are color blind. Color vision bulls are very poorly developed, so the matador’s cloak does not stand out to them as anything special. And sudden human movements and sword thrusts infuriate animals.

Chameleons change color to camouflage with their environment

Chameleons' ability to change color is often the only thing people know about these tropical lizards. And the majority is firmly convinced that funny reptiles turn green, blue or black in order to better camouflage themselves with their surrounding conditions. For a long time This belief also existed among scientists, but recently experts have come to the conclusion that mimicry of nearby branches and flowers is the last reason why chameleons change the color of their integument. Lizards change the color of their integument thanks to special cells - chromatophores, which contain granules of various pigments. Chromatophores have a complex branched shape, and pigments can be located both in the processes and in the center of the cell. This or that color appears when pigments of the corresponding shade are located in the “branches”. In order to “drive” the pigments there, the chromatophore relaxes. If it is necessary to collect granules of the dye in the center of the cell, it, on the contrary, shrinks. Observations of lizards in nature and laboratory experiments have shown that recoloring in different colors They need, first of all, for thermoregulation and interaction with each other. Chameleons, like other reptiles, are poorly able to maintain a constant body temperature: it can vary over a fairly wide range depending on the temperature external environment(scientists call this property the complex word poikilothermy). This or that color appears due to the corresponding pigments, which, in particular, include melanin. This pigment is responsible for the darker color of the lizard's integument, and since dark surfaces absorb more sun rays than light colored, chameleons turn brown when they are cold. In addition, with the help of skin color, reptiles communicate to their relatives about their mood. If the chameleon is ready for a romantic date, he chooses one shade, and his intention to immediately attack his neighbor is announced in another. Recently, scientists have found that the more complex the social structure of a particular chameleon species, the more often the animals change color and the less it correlates with the color of surrounding surfaces.

Physics

If you throw a coin from a skyscraper, it can kill a person

Everyone knows that walking around a construction site without a helmet is dangerous - something even not very heavy can fall from above and hit your head. As long as a small bolt or nut flies from, say, the 15th floor, it will accelerate to such a speed that it will begin to pose a real danger. There is an opinion that the same applies to very light objects - for example, coins, if you drop them from a sufficient height, say, from Ostankino Tower. In reality, you can throw coins from skyscrapers without fearing for the lives of other people. Due to air resistance, a coin can only accelerate to a certain threshold value (for example, paratroopers, who, of course, are larger than coins, with a stable flat free fall accelerate up to 40 meters per second, and with an unstable one, that is, tumbling, up to 50 meters per second). And this does not even take into account gusts of wind, which are very significant for a small coin. The second thing to remember is that due to its shape, when assessing the danger from a coin, you only need to take into account its kinetic energy. It is calculated using the well-known formula E=m*v2/2, where m is the mass of the object, and v is its speed. When the street is calm, a coin dropped from the observation deck of the Ostankino TV tower, at best, will pick up a speed of 70 kilometers per hour (about 19 meters per second). For a 50-kopeck coin, this corresponds to an energy of 26.6 Joules. For comparison, a 9 mm pistol bullet at exit has an energy of about 350 Joules.

Lightning never strikes in the same place twice

This belief has probably cost the life of more than one person. Lightning not only strikes the same place multiple times, but some objects are downright favorite lightning targets. This especially applies to tall metal objects that “attract” lightning discharges - in fact, the action of lightning rods, which logically should be called lightning rods, is based on this fact. The spire of the same Ostankino tower is struck by 40 to 50 lightning strikes every year. Even in the absence of “traps” for lightning, their one-time hit, say, on a tree does not turn it into a guarantor of safety. If there is a thunderstorm over a specific area, then all places in this area can be “attacked” with equal probability. A lightning strike in one place or another does not affect the probability in any way, although such a conclusion seems intuitively incorrect: this misconception even has a special name “gambler's error.”

In different hemispheres, a funnel of water (for example, in a sink) twists in different directions

Theoretically, it is possible to conduct an experiment proving that the Coriolis force really affects the movement of any liquids on Earth. To do this, you need to fill a fairly capacious round container with water, exactly in the middle of which there is a tiny hole plugged with a stopper, and always from the bottom (so that manipulation of the stopper does not lead to disturbance of the liquid). After a week, when even the smallest fluctuations in the water have subsided, you need to carefully remove the plug and wait a few hours until the weak Coriolis force manifests itself. Such an experiment was carried out, and its results coincided with those expected: the water in the container swirled in the same direction as the cyclones in a particular hemisphere. “Be sure to look at which direction the water is swirling when you wash your face,” - everyone who went on vacation to Australia, New Zealand or South Africa. Confidence that in different hemispheres any flows of liquids circulate in opposite directions has been stuck in the heads of a huge number of people since school - alas, the example of a sink is often mentioned by teachers who talk about the rotation of the Earth and the Coriolis force. The force of inertia, named after the French scientist Gustave Gaspard Coriolis who described it, is indeed associated with the rotation of our planet and affects the movement of large masses of air and water: flows in storms and cyclones in the southern hemisphere spin clockwise, and in the northern hemisphere, counterclockwise. However, compared to the rotational processes that we observe in ordinary life (that same water funnel in a sink), the Earth rotates around its axis very slowly, and in order of magnitude the Coriolis force is much less than any of the forces that control the processes of rotation of objects around us. Therefore, under normal conditions, it is impossible to notice the influence of the Coriolis force on the behavior of water in the sink, and the direction in which the liquid is sucked into the drain depends, first of all, on how the sink was filled and on its shape.

Astronomy

Meteorites falling to Earth are heated to very high temperatures.

In many cartoons and science fiction films, meteorites that have fallen to Earth are red-hot and even smoke. The scriptwriters of such films and most of their viewers believe that the celestial body heats up due to friction with the air. This process actually takes place: already at an altitude of about 100 kilometers above the Earth, the meteorite, which had previously traveled in the vacuum of space, collides with a huge amount gas molecules. Collisions with them heat the outer layer of the stone to enormous temperatures, turning the solid rock into a gas, which is immediately carried away into the atmosphere. The majority (about 90 percent) of meteorites that fall to Earth are stone, and stone has very poor thermal conductivity. As a result, if the meteorite is large enough, then the heat from the outer layers does not have time to be transferred to the inner part of the stone in the few seconds (on average, 19 seconds) that the body spends in the atmosphere. If it was also cold enough initially, then the center of the meteorite may generally be frozen. At an altitude of 10-15 kilometers, such a meteorite usually slows down and begins to fall without significant friction with the atmosphere, then it has a lot of time for the cold center to cool the surface layer. As a result, a meteorite that has just fallen will not be hot at all, but warm or, at best, hot. That is, he cannot start any fire, for example. These considerations, however, apply only to bodies of average mass - large meteorites crash into the surface at tremendous speed and explode, so whether they are cold or hot does not matter.

The change of seasons is associated with the Earth's approach to the Sun

This is perhaps one of the most persistent misconceptions. At first glance, it seems logical: the closer the Earth is to the Sun, the more heat and light enters the planet. Why winter and summer exist in different hemispheres at the same time, although both of them are on the same planet, supporters of this point of view can no longer explain. The true reason for the change of seasons is less obvious: the Earth has several seasons due to the fact that its axis of rotation around the axis is not parallel to the axis of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. The angle of inclination between them is constant and amounts to 23.5 degrees. One can imagine that the earth's axis is a needle piercing the planet right through so that its tip comes out of the North Pole and looks conventionally "up", and the blunt end sticks out from the South Pole and points "down". When the tip of the needle points to a star, it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun rises high above the horizon, and its rays fall in the area north of the equator at smaller angles: that is, they do not slide along the surface, but seem to “rest” against it. The maximum amount of solar energy reaches the Earth when the rays fall vertically, which is why summers are warmer than winters. At equatorial latitudes, the rays fall perpendicularly all year round, so the seasons there are not distinguished. Summer in the southern hemisphere occurs when the tip of the needle is pointed away from the Sun.

Arabic numerals were invented by the Arabs.
Arabic numbers 1,2,3,4,5... were not invented by Arabs at all, they came to us from India. It’s just that the Arabs brought from there this form of writing numbers, which then spread through North Africa and Spain to Europe. True Advantage Arabic numerals in comparison with the Roman ones, not in their writing, but in a brilliant invention - a positional number system, in which the “weight” of a digit is determined by its position. So, 5 in the number 15 means only five, and in the number 2523 - five hundred (after all, 2523 is 2 times a thousand, 5 times a hundred, 2 times ten and 3).

SHARKS
Between 1916 and 1969, a total of 32 attacks on humans by the white shark, the largest and most dangerous species, were recorded worldwide. 13 of them with fatal, i.e. less than one case per year. If you add other sharks, such as tiger and blue sharks, the number of victims increases, but still not enough to compare with the number of people who die each year from dog attacks.

It rains often in England.
In London, 590 millimeters of precipitation falls per year, in Rome 760, in Florence 870, in Milan 1000, and in Genoa even 1100. It can be argued that London is one of the driest cities in Europe.

The term "blitzkrieg" is an invention of Hitler.
“I have never used the expression ‘blitzkrieg’ because it is a completely idiotic word,” said Adolf Hitler on November 8, 1941. The fact is that it was then that the German offensive on Moscow fizzled out, and Hitler was clearly uncomfortable with comparisons with those lightning-fast easy victories that the German army won in Poland and France.

Eating in the evening is worse on the stomach than in the morning or during the day.
If you are gaining weight, it no longer matters for you what time of day you eat. “There is no evidence that eating late in the day will lead to fat storage more calories compared to food consumed during the day - from the report on the effects of food on health, University of Berkeley, California, USA. “The calories you get from eating at night will still be used by your body when it needs it.”

A population goes hungry when people don't have enough food.
Only extremely rarely does hunger arise as a result of nutritional deficiencies. As a rule, in countries where people suffer from famine, whether in this century or in the past, there was enough bread or rice. For example, during the great Bangladesh famine of 1974, there was more rice per capita than in any other year between 1971 and 1976. During the famous Ethiopian famine of 1973, local food production declined only marginally. History records a terrible famine in Ireland in 1845, but a study of historical materials shows that there was enough food available. Then about a million people died in Ireland, many left the country, the population dropped from 8 to 5 million, and yet it was during these years that Ireland exported thousands of tons of meat and flour to England. As Harvard professor Amartya Sen argues, the real problem is never the quantity of food, but its distribution. Although there is generally enough food in the country, pots and baskets ordinary people remain empty - food does not reach them, and wheat and rice rot in granaries. The Great Famine in Bangladesh resulted primarily from mass unemployment. Due to the unprecedented flooding, gigantic areas were under water, hundreds of thousands of day laborers lost their jobs, and they did not have the means to buy rice. Although there was enough rice left from the previous harvest, and the current year's crop was not too badly damaged by the flood, thousands of people were unable to buy food and were dying of hunger.

The term "Iron Curtain" was coined by Winston Churchill.
In March 1946, Churchill, addressing audiences at Westminster College American state Missouri, said, explaining the widening divergence between the countries that defeated fascism: “From Stettin on the Baltic Sea to Trieste on the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across Europe.” In light of the emerging Cold War, these memorable words made headlines and have since been attributed only to Churchill. In fact, this image was first used by the Belgian Queen Elizabeth, speaking of the German advance in 1914: “Now it is as if an iron curtain has fallen between Germany and me.” In the twenties, the British ambassador in Berlin commented on the expected security pact between the Germans and the French: “I remain of the opinion that the best protection for both the French and the Germans would be an Iron Curtain. I mean a neutral zone that no one would dare to cross. Maybe turn the English Channel into such an iron curtain?” On February 1–8, 1945, an article entitled “Behind the Iron Curtain” appeared in the Berlin newspaper Das Reich, and on February 25, 1945, the same newspaper broadcast a speech by the Minister of Goebbels propaganda, where he twice mentioned the Iron Curtain between Russia and Germany.

Proper nutrition is when the bulk of the day's food is absorbed in the morning.
The legend about the usefulness of breakfast was born in the 40s, when volunteers were tested how well they tolerated stress depending on the time of eating. Although, to be honest, the results of the experiments did not give an unambiguous result, the American concerns that paid for these studies - manufacturers of corn flakes - trumpeted the benefits of a hearty breakfast to the whole world, and since then breakfast has been considered so healthy. Fifty years have passed, but not a single study has confirmed such a prominent role of morning food. Most scientists believe that everyone, especially adults, can start their daily diet right from lunch.

\"AND STILL SHE CAN SPIN!..\"
Galileo never uttered such words. We do not find them either in the protocols of the Inquisition, or in the letters of Galileo, or in any other contemporary written sources. The first mention of these historical words we find in the notoriously inaccurate " Literary sources” (“Querelles Litteraires”) by Abbot Irelli, who seems to have simply invented them. The extraordinary popularity of these words is explained by the fact that they express triumphant confidence in victory over the Catholic Church, and Galileo looks like a martyr for justice.

Indians have red skin.
When the first settlers from Europe appeared on the North American continent, they called the aborigines “Indians,” “wild,” or “pagans,” but not “redskins.” The myth of the “red skin” of the Indians was invented by the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, who in the 18th century divided people into “homo europaeus albescens, homo americus rubescens, homo asiaticus fuscus, homo africanus niger” (European a white man, American Red Man, Asian Yellow Man, African Black Man), but did not take into account that the red complexion of American Indians is often associated with the color of their war paint. The natural complexion of Indians is pale brown. But Linnaeus’ followers, without hesitation, accepted his classification as the ultimate truth and, having never seen a single representative of this tribe in their lives, even began to assure the readers of their scientific works that the Indian’s skin color was similar to copper. Hence the "redskins".

Canada is located north of Germany.
Not certainly in that way. Most Canadians live at the latitude of Italy. The latitude at which Toronto lies, for example, south of latitude Milan, and even cold Montreal are located south of all German cities. 20 million of Canada's total population of 27 million live south of Lake Constance. If, nevertheless, when we hear the word “Canada,” something cold comes to mind, it is because, despite the indicated latitudes, winter in Canada is very cold. And, of course, the fact that large areas of Canada are located far to the north. But very few Canadians live there.

Charlemagne executed 4 thousand Saxons at Verdun.
This terrible story wanders from one book to another, as soon as you start talking about Charlemagne. It rests on a misunderstanding. It is true that the Saxons annoyed Charlemagne more than others and in battles both sides did not spare their bellies. But the story according to which Charles ordered the heads of four thousand captured Saxons to be cut off is fiction. This could not have happened even in ancient harsh times. This story migrated to later textbooks from the chronicles of Archbishop of Reims Jean Tourpin, who lived approximately 300 years after the events described. Even today, out of 40, they sometimes make 400, or even 4 thousand. But, most likely, an inattentive copyist rewrote the word delocati (relocated) as decollati (beheaded). In fact, Charlemagne simply ordered the barbarians who fought so desperately against him to move to other places. The names of the settlements of Saxenhausen near Frankfurt or Saxe near Ansbach have still been preserved, indicating where the “beheaded” Saxons went.

KETCHUP
This version of tomato sauce came to the United States with immigrants from China, who called it qetziap. The 25-year-old descendant of German immigrants, Henry John Heinz, made this Chinese sauce, thanks to mass production and cunning advertising, the American product “ketchup” that we know so well.

The Chinese have yellow skin color.
A typical Chinese is no yellower than a typical Frenchman. At the first meetings of Europe with Far East there was no talk about the “yellow race”. “Di nostra qualita” (“like us”) is how the Italian traveler Andrea Corsali, who visited China in 1515, described them. A few years later, the Privy Councilor of the German Emperor Transylvanus described the Chinese this way, based on the stories of Portuguese sailors who visited China: “They are white-skinned people, distinguished by a very high level of social structure ... like us Germans.” First mention of yellow color skin appears in the 18th century, when they began to divide humanity into races. At the same time, an intermediate race was “required” between the whites in the north and the blacks in the south. It was then that the yellow race was invented, to which the Indians were first assigned, and then, so to speak, the Chinese were assigned by official decree. At that time, the book by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a professor of medicine from Göttingen, was very popular. He wrote about the "Caucasian race" with white skin, about the Mongolian race, whose skin color is yellow, like ears of wheat (like boiled quince or dried lemon peels); the American race was "red as brass" and finally the Africans were black. These ideas were made up from thin air, invented at a desk on the basis of ridiculous theoretical premises (to give just one example: it was assumed that Asians often get jaundice, so they remain yellow for the rest of their lives). As a rule, the inventors of this classification never saw anyone other than Europeans.

The whip cracks as a result of the friction of the whip.
In fact, when the whip hits, its tip develops a speed exceeding 1100 kilometers per hour, i.e. sound speed. The crack of a whip occurs when it breaks the sound barrier.

CONVEYOR
Many people associate the word "conveyor" with the name of Henry Ford and his famous Model T automobile. It is often forgotten that Henry Ford was by no means the first automaker to use a production line for this purpose. For example, back in 1902, i.e. 6 years before the first Model T, Ford's competitor Ransom Olds used a conveyor belt - his cars moved around the factory floor on wooden carts. The Olds factory made up to two and a half thousand cars a year. Ford ordered the construction of a moving belt instead of wooden carts. However, the fundamental idea - to bring the machine being assembled to the person, and not to force the person to approach the machine - does not belong to him.

MIDDLE AGE CRISIS
In fact, about 5 percent of people experience a midlife crisis. This includes those who, on the one hand, set themselves the task of, say, becoming the president of the Mercedes-Benz company and by the age of 35 discover that they did not become one, or, on the other hand, over-cautious people who are all for anything They hoped and ran away from everyday difficulties, but in the end they discovered that life was getting to them. “For both types of people,” writes American psychologist Ronald Kessler, “it is typical that they are not able to perceive reality in its true expression. A person turns 40 and suddenly sees a huge mountain of difficulties in front of him. This is where the crisis comes.” And for the remaining 95% of the population, this is age as age.

SMOKERS (1)
Smokers increase health care costs. First of all, let's make it fundamentally clear - the authors of this book do not smoke and were not bribed by Marlboro, Camel or any other cigarette manufacturers. So we can look people squarely in the eye when we say that smoking does not increase health care costs, but rather reduces them. The excess costs of maintaining a smoker's health are offset by the fact that he dies earlier. Let's understand the relevant statistics. To begin with, let us note that smokers in Germany get sick more often - 1 smoker who smokes 25 cigarettes a day costs health care a thousand marks more than a non-smoker. Smokers are twice as likely to have heart and liver damage, three times more likely to have stomach ulcers, and 6 times more likely to have bronchial inflammation. Smoking makes hundreds of health problems annually, but rather reduces them. The excess costs of maintaining a smoker's health are offset by the fact that he dies earlier. Let's understand the relevant statistics. To begin with, let us note that smokers in Germany get sick more often - 1 smoker who smokes 25 cigarettes a day costs health care a thousand marks more than a non-smoker. Smokers are twice as likely to have heart and liver damage, three times more likely to have stomach ulcers, and 6 times more likely to have bronchial inflammation. Smoking annually makes one hundred thousand people in Germany disabled, gives rise to 1/3 of all cancers, and even more for lung cancer. A complete ban on smoking would give the following results (here we do not mention that 20 thousand people employed in the tobacco industry in Germany would be left without work): 1. People would become healthier. 2. People would live longer. 3. Health care costs... And here we come to an unexpected result. Although 1 smoker puts an additional burden on the budget of health insurance funds, due to the much earlier death of a smoker compared to the average German citizen, all the funds spent on elderly and old people are reduced. As Woody Allen once put it, “Death is a surefire way to cut costs.” Let us consider that a non-smoking person will not be ascended to heaven at the end of his life. He will probably die from heart failure, and caring for such patients costs 3 times more than caring for lung cancer patients. Calculations made by Swiss economists Robert Lew and Thomas Schaub showed that the costs that the health care system spends on maintaining the life of a smoker are offset by the costs that are required to care for long-lived people, of whom the statistical majority are not smokers. Thus, from an economic point of view, quitting smoking does not provide any real benefit to the health budget. It is interesting to note that in England, which has always been distinguished by enviable practicality, an insurance policy for smokers is cheaper than for non-smokers. To console non-smokers, we note that policies for drunkards and overweight people are also cheaper.

SMOKERS (2)
Smokers die early because they smoke too much.
Yes, smokers die earlier than non-smokers, but not only because they smoke a lot. They are more likely to commit suicide, they are more likely to be killed, and they are more likely to be victims of road accidents. Psychologists believe that there is something that could be called "smoker's syndrome" - a tendency to live a more dangerous life. They would have died sooner even without tobacco, so when calculating the average life expectancy of such people, it would be necessary to subtract from it the years that they will not be able to survive simply due to their own recklessness.

Lemmings commit suicide by rushing into the depths of the sea.
Lemmings, belonging to the family of shrew mice, are known for the fact that when their populations sharply increase, they rush en masse into the sea and die in the waves. Only this happens not because they intend to put an end to their existence (say, so that the remaining ones have more territory or food), but, so to speak, as a result of a navigational error. The fact is that lemmings, moving to new territories, often cross water barriers - rivers and lakes. Having encountered the sea on the way, they perceive it as a familiar water barrier and, without fear, go on an assault, belatedly realizing their mistake. It happens that lemmings crawl up almost inaccessible mountain slopes in search of new territories.

Lucifer is one of the names of the devil.
The name Lucifer does not appear anywhere in the Bible. In antiquity, the word "Lucifer" was used as the name of the morning star - the planet Venus. Nothing diabolical was implied by this. Perhaps this word began to be understood in its current sense because of the Gospel of Isaiah, where, in relation to the Babylonian king, it is said: “You have fallen from heaven, you are the shining son of the morning. You have fallen to the ground, ruler of nations." Later church fathers saw this as an allusion to the “true” Satan. The following relationship was obtained: Satan = King of Babylon = Son of the Dawn = Morning Star = Lucifer.

Medicine has always been a great boon to humanity.
To be honest, even before late XIX century, the doctor was, as a rule, much more dangerous for the patient than his illness. Back in about 1910, medical historians estimated that the average patient had no more than half a chance of improving his health if he came into the hands of the average doctor. And before that, doctors did more harm than good, and this is not surprising if we remember that for a whole thousand years after Hippocrates, the liver was considered the center of blood circulation, and washing hands before examining a patient was an unnecessary whim. Only very strong organisms tolerated the treatment prescribed by the doctor.

Lightning strikes from heaven to earth.
Not all lightning strikes from the clouds; sometimes the earth strikes back. Approximately 10% of lightning starts from the ground. They especially often throw fire arrows skyscrapers and television towers.

Milk turns sour during a thunderstorm
This superstition arose as a result of an incorrect conclusion, when simultaneously occurring events are considered dependent on each other. Since sour milk is unlikely to cause thunder and lightning, it remains to be assumed that it is they that cause the milk to sour. In fact, the reason is warm and humid air. It is in such an atmosphere that acidic bacteria develop especially quickly. And it is precisely in this state of air that a potential difference arises between the surface of the earth and the clouds, leading to a thunderstorm.

The Mona Lisa in the Louvre in Paris is the Mona Lisa Gioconda.
The Mona Lisa that Leonardo da Vinci painted is not a portrait of the Mona Lisa by Gioconda. As most modern art historians believe, the portrait depicts Duchess Isabella of Aragon, the granddaughter of the King of Naples and the widow of the Duke of Milan, who, like Leonardo, lived at the end of the 15th century at the Milanese court. The painting received its current, and, as we already know, incorrect name from the Italian art historian Vasari, who in 1550, 30 years after the death of Leonardo, first reported that da Vinci painted a portrait of the wife of the merchant Francesco del Gioconda, which now belongs to the king France.

Venice has the most bridges.
There are 398 bridges in Venice, 1281 in Amsterdam, and 1662 in Berlin. And the record for Europe is held by the city of Hamburg, which has 2123 bridges.

Mozart's name was Wolfgang Amadeus.
At baptism, Mozart was given the name Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus. The Greek "Theophilus" in German means "Gottlieb", and in Latin it means "Amadeus" (that is, "lover of God"). Of all three options, Amadeus is best perceived by ear. This is the name Mozart chose for himself.

Mozart lived his life in poverty and misery.
Mozart is considered a classic example of how great artists are exploited by the ruling class for meager remuneration. In fact, by today's standards,
Mozart received very decent fees.
For one hour of piano teaching, he billed 2 guilders (for comparison, his maid received 12 guilders a year); for performing at a concert, he asked, in his own words, “at least a thousand guilders.” If we assume that he gave at least six concerts a year, then in today's money Mozart received something like a quarter of a million marks. Meanwhile, it is known that he was an eternal debtor and constantly wrote letters asking for financial assistance or deferred payments. The fact is that Mozart lived beyond his means, and his wife Constance actively contributed to his extravagance. The family kept a maid, a cook and their own hairdresser. After Mozart’s death, he was left with a mountain of debts, and he was indeed buried in a pauper’s grave, but this was in no way the fault of the emperor or his courtiers, but a consequence of the amazingly wasteful management of the household and the genius’s addiction to cards and billiards, where he lost much more than he earned.

Munich is the beer capital of the world.
The most beer is brewed not in Munich, but in Dortmund (6 million hectoliters of beer are brewed here per year, and half a million less in Munich). So Dortmund should be considered the capital of brewing, not Munich.

Napoleon's campaign against Russia turned into a disaster due to severe frosts.
Napoleon's famous phrase: “Winter defeated us, we became a victim of the Russian climate,” but this is nothing more than a reluctance to admit our own mistakes. In fact, the weather during almost the entire Russian campaign was average - perhaps even warmer than usual. Eyewitness accounts have been preserved who claim: the average temperature in October, when the French had already begun to retreat to Kyiv and Warsaw, was 10, in Revel and Riga - 7 degrees above zero. Even by the end of November, during the famous crossing of the Berezina, the river was not yet frozen. Famous paintings, which depict soldiers hiding their faces from a snowstorm, clutching at fragments of ice floes, are the fruit of the wild imagination of painters. When Andre Maurois writes that Russian shells exploded thick ice on the river, this is as much a fiction as everything else. “The cold suddenly intensified,” Napoleon stated in his bulletin of December 3, “on the night of November 14-15 the thermometer dropped to minus 16 - minus 18 degrees. All roads turned into solid ice, cavalry and artillery horses died every night not in hundreds, but in thousands... We were forced to abandon and destroy most of our guns and ammunition...” The cold really intensified, only much later. The terrible losses of the French army leaving Russia were caused by poor planning, and the weather had nothing to do with it. Leaving Moscow, the army had supplies of fodder for horses for only one week, which is why the horses died like flies. Even in November the temperature in Kyiv was still above zero, as there is irrefutable evidence, and the coldest night near Smolensk, when the temperature dropped to minus 8 degrees, is still very far from the heartbreaking descriptions left by Napoleon. And they believed him because severe cold did indeed set in in Russia, but only in December, a few weeks after Napoleon’s army shamefully fled the country. But even those few soldiers who survived did not want to debunk their idol and openly admit their sad defeat. Hence the prevailing legend about the Russian frost, which destroyed the great army.

The death of the Invincible Armada put an end to Spain's dominion over the world.
How often do we come across the statement that after the death of the Spanish Armada in the summer of 1588, the influence of Spain in the world began to decrease, and the star of England rose. In fact, this disaster meant no more to Spain than the sinking of the battleship Bismarck meant to Hitler, i.e. was very insignificant in its consequences. Spain was doomed regardless of the fate of its fleet. Of course, the invasion plans of Philip II failed as a result of this, but of the total number (120) warships, only 24 were war galleons, and the naval power of Spain continued to inspire fear in the enemies (According to some historians, just after 1588, there was no doubt the superiority of the British on the seas was shaken.) Within a few years, the Spaniards commissioned new ships, and in the 15 years after the death of the armada, Spain brought more silver and gold from America than in any other 15-year period. So we should look for other reasons for Spain to leave the world stage and Great Britain to appear on it. As is often the case, one particular event is credited with having a fatal influence.

"THE NIGHT WATCH"
Rembrandt's painting "The Night Watch" really depicts the night Watch. This is perhaps the most famous painting The great master was initially called the Franz Banning Cock Company. A company of shooters is depicted who have gathered either for a parade or for their professional holiday, and in the light of the midday sun. The painting became “Night Watch” after it hung for many years near the fireplace in the Amsterdam Town Hall, where it became very dark from soot and soot, which gave it a gloomy flavor that was not at all part of the artist’s intention. The painting now hangs in the Amsterdam Riksmuseum.

NEW YORK (1)
New York is the capital of New York State. The capital of New York State is Albany. Albany lies 200 kilometers north of New York. The city has 115 thousand inhabitants.

NEW YORK (2)
The Statue of Liberty is located in New York. The famous Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor does not stand on New York soil (neither the city nor the state). Liberty Island (Liberty Island, and formerly Boudleau Island) geographically belongs to the state of New Jersey.

It is not advisable to drink after vegetables.
How often can you hear from a caring mother: “Baby, you’ve already eaten an apple, don’t drink so much water, otherwise your tummy will hurt.” The opinion is completely unscientific. According to experts from the Institute of Nutrition, water gets along quite peacefully with fruits. Meanwhile, some explanation for the widespread prejudice can still be found. The fact is that people used to drink unrefined raw water, in which there were many microorganisms. These bacteria began to ferment in the stomach under the influence of fruit juice, which is why abdominal cramps and diarrhea occurred. The water in a modern water supply is well purified, so there is no longer any danger.

Spiders are insects.
It is completely wrong to classify spiders as insects. They belong to the class of arachnids, which differ in many ways from insects: they do not have antennae, they have four pairs of legs, not three, like insects. They have no more in common with insects than with snakes or birds.

Swimming after eating is harmful and dangerous.
This is a fairytale. It was spread 50 years ago by the American Red Cross, which published a pamphlet advising against swimming after eating - it could cause stomach pain and could cause you to drown. No one now knows where this theory came from. In any case, empirical testing does not confirm it, as American sports physician Arthur Steinhouse claims. Steinhaus interviewed many swimmers and coaches and found that many of them regularly swim after eating. At the same time, pain and cramps in the stomach have never been observed, no one has ever drowned due to the fact that he had a full stomach. Therefore, the new Red Cross brochures do not contain such recommendations. Of course, swimming after a very heavy lunch can cause belching, but the same can be said about lumberjacks and mountain climbers.

When you need to sign a document, illiterate people put a cross instead of their name.
For many hundreds of years, educated Europeans simply put a cross instead of a signature, and to the right or left of it they wrote the full name, but it had to be confirmed by a special witness, and not by the signer himself. Since the 16th century, the opinion has spread that it is inappropriate to use the cross of God for commercial purposes, and people began to sign documents with their name and initials.

Poker - classic American card game.
Poker originated not in the American Wild West, but 3 thousand years earlier in Ancient Persia. The game was called “ace”, but already included all the basic combinations, such as pair, three of a kind, four of a kind, etc. And even then bluffing existed as the main technique of this game. The game was brought to Europe by the Crusaders. In Italy it was called "prime", in France "bulot". French colonists brought the game to Louisiana, and from Mississippi, poker spread throughout America.

GENDER DISCRIMINATION
An analysis of student admission to institutes indicates discrimination against girls. Let's take the admissions statistics for, say, the University of California, Berkeley. A total of 12,763 applications were submitted for the first year, including 8,442 from boys and 4,321 from girls. Of the total number, 44% of those who applied were boys and 35% of girls were accepted into the university. Hence the accusation of gender discrimination. Let's see if this is really so. Let's simplify the situation. Let's imagine that 1,000 people, equally divided between men and women, applied, and only two subjects, mathematics and sociology, had to pass exams. A lot of applications were submitted to the Faculty of Sociology, and only a small part of those who applied were accepted, namely 12.5% ​​of girls and 10% of boys. There were fewer people who wanted to enter the Faculty of Mathematics, and accordingly, 50% of girls and 40% of boys were accepted. In both cases, there were more girls accepted to study than boys. The simple fact is that girls flocked to more popular seminars, and since the survey was conducted on all seminars of both faculties, the statistics turned out to be not in favor of women. It's the statistics' fault, not the university's.

In old Prussia, officials were incorruptible.
One of the favorite German legends - and completely false. If the same criteria of incorruptibility or corruption that we now use were applied to the officials of the apparatus of Frederick William or Frederick II, most of them would end up behind bars. From the last royal lady-in-waiting to the first minister of the court, who took bribes from the British, the French and, finally, from the Austrian envoy, they all supplied foreigners with the information they had. What can we talk about if the own son of the “soldier king” Frederick William, who himself later became king, secretly received from his father an annual bribe from the Austrians in the amount of 2,500 ducats to pay his numerous debts.

Work brings joy.
How often this passage from the Bible is quoted, but this phrase is not there at all. True, Luther’s translation of Psalm 90 says: “Our life lasts 70 years, or even 80, and if it was joy, it was only thanks to work.” In fact, the author of the original meant just the opposite: we have to suffer all our lives, but even despite this, it seems joyful to us. The latest translations of the Bible are much more accurate: “The number of years of our life is measured and amounts to 70, and with special longevity - 80. And our whole life passes in works and worries, and even the joy of life is nothing more than a sad deception.” And yet I don’t want to completely correct this mistake of the great reformer - without some illusions life would seem even worse.

"RELIGION IS THE OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE"
This coined definition belongs not to Marx or Lenin, as everyone thinks, but to the German writer Novalis. “Your so-called religion acts like an opium: it entices and dulls pains instead of giving strength,” Novalis wrote in 1798. By the way, most of the other “Marxist” sayings also belong to non-Marxists: “Proletarians have nothing to lose except their chains” (Jean-Paul Marat), “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” (Karl Schapper), “Dictatorship of the proletariat” (Blanquis), “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” (Louis Blanc), and so on.

Eating fish is good for the brain.
This myth was born as a result of pseudo-research by the German physician and natural philosopher Friedrich Büchner (1824–1899). Buchner discovered phosphorus in the human brain and came to the conclusion that this substance is, as it were, a catalyst for thinking. And since fish also contains a lot of phosphorus, doctors have long recommended eating fish to improve brain function. In fact, our body does not need fish at all as an indispensable source of phosphorus. There is enough of it in eggs, meat, milk and vegetables, but phosphorus is not needed at all for good brain function. You can swallow as much phosphorus as you like, but it will not help one iota, say, think faster when coming up with a chess combination.

Air transport is the safest.
It depends on how you do the calculations. Let's try to recalculate the number of victims in road accidents per kilometer. We get the following figures: Railway: 9 deaths per 10 billion passenger kilometers. Airplane: 3 deaths per 10 billion passenger kilometers. However, if we take passenger hours instead of passenger kilometers as a basis, we get the following figures: Rail: 1 fatality per 100 million passenger hours. Airplane: 24 deaths per 100 million passenger hours. In other words, the danger cannot be survived next hour travel on an airplane is 3 times higher than on a train. Therefore, some people's fear of flying is not so irrational.

Young people are especially prone to suicide.
It is believed that the age of first love is especially dangerous for young people. This truth has become generally known since Goethe wrote “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” but it was also known earlier that love disappointments are a direct road to suicide. Statistics indicate the opposite. The number of people who commit suicide slowly but steadily increases with age. If among 20-year-olds this number is 5 per 100 thousand, then at the age of over 70 it increases to almost 50. Than older person, the more often he voluntarily dies. If you still wonder why we talk so often about suicide among young people, then the whole point is that death at a young age is generally an unusual event. Young people do not die from cancer, their heart, liver and kidneys function well, and they do not develop Alzheimer's disease. Therefore, suicide and violent death are almost the only reason their departure from life.

The century of development of free trade was the 19th century.
This statement can be found among many economists. In fact, in the 19th century, customs duties, licenses and other misfortunes that stood in the way of free trade already flourished. Here is another example of the gaping contradiction between the reasoning of theorists and real life. Although the free trade thesis came from the great Scot Adam Smith, in fact the economic life of Europe in his time was “an ocean of protectionism in which there were two or three liberal islands” (Paul Beirach). Truly free trade was allowed in Denmark, Holland, Portugal and Switzerland, whose populations accounted for barely 5 percent of all Europeans. Major powers, such as England, France, Austria, Prussia, have already put into practice the idea of ​​protectionist protection of their peasants or factory owners, which will become the cornerstone of the economic policy of the 20th century. Economic reason prevailed only for a very short period of time from 1860 to 1879. The rest of the time, customs tariffs were rampant on all borders: in France they were 12–15 percent, in Austria-Hungary - 15–20, in Germany and England a little lower, but there was no talk of truly free trade. You should not make love before important competitions - the effort spent on sex reduces athletic performance. It seems that we owe this mistake to Sigmund Freud, who convinced that each person has a strictly defined amount of energy (we consider his theory at its most general view), so that the energy spent on one will not be enough for the other. Coaches also have a hand in this theory, who find it easier to work with athletes who do not have outside connections. In fact, sexual relations have no effect on sports results shown during the competition. Several serious studies have been conducted on this topic among both men and women. It’s another matter if they didn’t sleep well after a night of love. Sleep is a useful thing in sports.

“Made in Germany” is a traditional symbol of quality.
In fact, the “made in Germany” label was originally intended to designate second-class products - like the current “made in China”. The fact is that in 1887, England passed a law according to which foreign goods had to bear a clear mark of the country of origin so that consumers would not confuse them, God forbid, with high-quality English goods. The notes of the German engineer and mechanical engineer Franz Rolo, who, as director of the Berlin Academy of Crafts, served on the jury at the 1876 World Exhibition, have been preserved. In Letters from Philadelphia, he wrote: “Almost all the German goods brought to Philadelphia look cheap and wretched.” In particular, these notes by Franz Rolo served as the reason for organizing a campaign for quality in factories and enterprises of the German Reich, which after several decades yielded excellent results. But many, many more years passed before the reference to the fact that a product was made in Germany became an unconditional sign of quality.

Scalping came from the Indians.
The custom of removing the skin from the head as a trophy and symbol of triumph was already known in ancient times. The Scythians cut the skin from the heads of their enemies - Herodotus testifies to this. A similar practice was common among the peoples of Western Siberia and among the ancient Persians. In contrast, the American Indians were not so cruel. Some historians even doubt that the Indians resorted to scalping before the arrival of white people. It was the whites, and not the redskins, who began to skin the heads of defeated enemies (after all, to receive the assigned bonus, one had to present a scalp). At first, scalping was known only in the eastern United States, the lower St. Lawrence River and the Gran Chaco in South America, and from there it spread to Central and Northwestern America.

Elephants have excellent memory.
The phenomenal memory of elephants exists only in the imagination of sensation-seekers. Indeed, an elephant can sometimes, after many years, recognize the person who tortured it, but the same is said, for example, about lions and tigers.

You can get tetanus by stepping on a rusty nail with your heel.
Tetanus, or tetanus, is transmitted by the bacterium Clostridium Tetani, which multiplies in the intestinal flora of herbivores. With their feces, the bacteria enters the soil. If, of course, the nail was lying in manure, and then its point got into the heel, you can get tetanus, but rust has nothing to do with it.

Married people prolong their lives.
Married people live on average 5 to 15 years longer than singles or widowers. But the cause-and-effect relationship here is the opposite - they have a life partner because they can live longer. In his famous treatise on death and marriage, the Englishman William Farr put it this way (1858): “Idiots don’t marry, idiots don’t marry, homeless vagabonds crowd together but rarely marry. Criminals by birth and upbringing rarely find their soulmate. It is unlikely that among those walking down the aisle you will find children from families in which relatives suffer from sleepwalking. Many hereditary diseases prevent marriage. Attractive to the opposite sex are beautiful, kind, healthy. In France, parents do their best to encourage such young people to get married.” In a similar way The situation remains the same today, whether in France or in other countries. It is possible that marriage also contributes to increasing life expectancy: married people eat more regularly and tastier food, since, according to the traditional distribution of roles, women should be able to cook well. As any psychologist will tell you, in a happy marriage, spouses create a positive biological field for each other, which also contributes to emotional stability and physical health. So there are a lot of reasons for mutual influence here, and since controlled studies on this issue are difficult to conduct, the debate can be long and tasteful. However, we can safely say that marriage is not only, as doctors believe, a cause, but also a consequence of a long life.

Tulips came from Holland.
Tulips are as closely associated with Holland as cheese, wooden shoes or windmills. At the same time, we forget that the origin of tulips is Turkic. The name tulip comes from the Turkic “tuliband” (“turban”). The tulip really resembles this headdress a little. Only in the 16th century did this flower make its way from the shores of the Bosphorus to the shores of the North Sea. Here it became extremely popular, and since then Since then, the word “tulip” carries for us the scent of Holland.

Reading at dusk is harmful to the eyes.
Nothing like this. This is as harmful to the eyes as, say, taking photographs in poor lighting is for a camera, that is, not at all. Of course, in order to see the letters in poor lighting, we need to strain our eyes more and the result may be a headache, but this does not harm the eyes.

CHOCOLATE (1)
Chocolate can be addictive. Chocolate is not addictive. True, chocolate contains certain chemical ingredients, such as theobromine and methylxanthine, which are present in both tea and coffee and “stimulate” our body in a certain way. But the content of these substances in chocolate is so small that you need to eat a mountain of this product to feel some kind of stimulating effect. In reality, you can’t eat that much, because too much chocolate simply makes a person feel sick. The taste of chocolate arises from the optimal mixture of fat and sugar, which is why it is so loved. In addition, chocolate does not promote weight loss. On the contrary, every person knows that it can cause weight gain. Psychologists know that fear gives rise to attachment, so constant thoughts that chocolate can make you fat paradoxically make you want to eat another bar. But unlike drugs, once you drive away the desire to eat chocolate, you won’t want it anymore.

CHOCOLATE (2)
The bulk of the calories in chocolate come from sugar. The main calories in chocolate are fat. More than 50% of the caloric composition of chocolate comes from fat, and only 40% comes from sugar.

CHOCOLATE (3)
Chocolate is not a nutritious food. We know that chocolate is high in sugar, fat and calories. But few people know that it also contains vitamins A, B1, B2, iron, calcium, potassium and phosphorus, and some types of chocolate contain more than an apple, a glass of yogurt or a slice of cheese, i.e. in products traditionally considered healthy.

CHOCOLATE (4)
Chocolate is bad for your teeth. According to a study carried out by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it is also not true that chocolate is harmful to teeth. Cocoa powder added to animal food did not cause tooth decay. Moreover, it was more likely to slow down the onset of this disease when added to substances that are cariogenic.

CHOCOLATE (5)
Chocolate causes acne. This is perhaps the most common myth regarding chocolate. At the end of the 60s, the American doctor Fulto and his colleagues proved that this was not so. For several weeks, they fed several dozen teenagers chocolate in such quantities that the children simply became ill. In this case, the group of subjects was divided into two parts: one was given real chocolate, the other was given an imitation, which looked and tasted exactly the same as real chocolate. Chocolate did not cause any acne. Of course, it is possible that some chocolate ingredients react with others chemicals, can contribute to acne, but these are special cases, not rules. Neither sugar nor chocolate are the “great pimple busters” that rumor has made them out to be.

Selfishness and concern for society are opposite concepts.
In fact they are quite compatible. Moreover, according to most economists, it is selfishness that guarantees prosperity and production growth throughout the world. There is something fundamentally different here: egoism, in other words, our desire to benefit ourselves, must be kept within limits. In a market economy, this happens in such a way that each participant in economic life can ensure his own benefit only if he simultaneously helps others: a baker does not sell his bread out of sympathy for his neighbor - he wants to earn more. The taxi driver waits until three o'clock in the morning at the station not because he cares about the welfare of the last passengers - he speculates on the impossibility of getting home in any other way. And the dentist is ready to see us at night not for any humane reasons, but because he wants to buy a new car. And the bee, in the end, pollinates the flower not in order to preserve the life of the plant, but because in this way it prolongs its own race. And if everyone on Earth behaved like Mother Teresa, life on this planet would have stopped long ago. Let us note, by the way, that not only left-wing radicals ardently protest against selfishness as a determining factor in human behavior. In the very first leaflet published by Hitler in 1920, he proclaimed: public benefit must come before personal benefit.

Misconception is a characteristic of our knowledge, expressed in a relative and limited nature. Individual delusion means a discrepancy between our subjective ideas and the objective state of affairs; this delusion can arise as a result of some errors, both in the process of our thinking, the information received, and irrational activity.

Read about popular misconceptions

You can get tetanus by stepping on a rusty nail with your heel. Tetanus is transmitted by the bacterium Clostridium Tetani, which thrives in the intestinal flora of herbivores. If, of course, the nail was lying in manure, and then its point got into the heel, you can get tetanus, but rust has nothing to do with it.

Married people prolong their lives. In fact, the relationship here is the opposite: they have a life partner because they can live longer. That is, they are instinctively chosen as the most tenacious.

You should not make love before important competitions. It seems that we owe this mistake to Sigmund Freud, who convinced that each person has a strictly defined amount of energy: if you spend it on one thing, you won’t have enough for another. In fact, sex has no effect on athletic performance. It's another matter if you didn't sleep well.

You need to have a good breakfast. The legend about the usefulness of breakfast was born in the 40s, when volunteers were tested how well they tolerated stress depending on the time of eating. To be honest, the results of the experiments did not give an unambiguous result, but the American concerns that paid for these studies - manufacturers of corn flakes - trumpeted the benefits of a hearty breakfast to the whole world.

Reading at dusk is harmful to the eyes. Nothing like this. Of course, in order to see the letters in poor lighting, we need to strain our eyes more and the result may be a headache, but this does not harm the eyes.

Swimming after eating is harmful and dangerous. This tale was propagated 50 years ago by the American Red Cross, which published a pamphlet advising against swimming after eating because it could cause stomach pain and could lead to drowning.

The famous midlife crisis actually affects only 5 percent of people. This includes those who, on the one hand, set themselves the task of, say, becoming the president of the Mercedes-Benz company and by the age of 35 discover that he did not become one, or over-cautious people who kept hoping for something and ran away from everyday difficulties.

A person turns 40 and suddenly sees a huge mountain of problems in front of him. For the remaining 95% of the population, this is age as age. website

The Chinese have yellow skin color. A typical Chinese is no yellower than a typical Frenchman. The first mention of yellow skin color appears in the 18th century, when they began to divide humanity into races. At the same time, an intermediate race was “required” between the whites in the north and the blacks in the south.

That's how the Redskins came into being. The Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, dividing people into 4 types (European white man, American red man, Asian yellow man, African black man), did not take into account that the red complexion of American Indians is often associated with the color of their war paint. The natural complexion of Indians is pale brown.

Eating fish is good for the brain. This myth was born as a result of pseudo-research by the German physician and natural philosopher Friedrich Büchner, who discovered phosphorus in the human brain and came to the conclusion that this substance is supposedly a catalyst for thinking. In fact, our body does not need fish at all as an indispensable source of phosphorus. There is enough of it in eggs, meat, milk and vegetables, but phosphorus is not needed at all for good brain function. It’s really good for the brain to eat not fish, but caviar, which contains amino acids and vitamin A.

Arabic numerals were not invented by the Arabs. In fact, they came to us from India. The Arabs simply brought this form of writing numbers from there.

Poker is not an American card game. Poker originated 3 thousand years ago in Ancient Persia. The game was called “ace”, but already included all the basic combinations, such as pair, three of a kind, four of a kind, etc. And even then bluffing existed as the main technique of this game. The game was brought to Europe by the Crusaders.

The death of the Invincible Armada was not so fatal for Spain. In fact, this disaster was very minor in its consequences for the Spaniards. Within a few years, the Spaniards commissioned new ships, and in the 15 years after the death of the armada, Spain brought more silver and gold from America than in any other period.

Medicine was terrible not only in the Middle Ages, but even more recently. Until the end of the 19th century, the doctor was, as a rule, much more dangerous to the patient than his illness. In 1910, medical historians estimated that the average patient had no more than half a chance of improving his health if he came into the hands of the average doctor. Only very strong organisms tolerated the treatment prescribed by the doctor.

Mozart did not live his whole life in poverty and squalor. In fact, he received very decent fees. For one hour of piano teaching, he billed 2 guilders. For comparison, his maid received 12 guilders a year. For performing at a concert, he asked, in his own words, “at least a thousand guilders.”

Henry Ford didn't invent the assembly line. Back in 1902, i.e. 6 years before Ford's first Model T, his competitor Ransom Olds used a conveyor belt - his cars moved around the factory floor on wooden carts. The Olds factory made up to two and a half thousand cars a year.

Napoleon lost the war against Russia not because of severe frosts. In fact, the weather during almost the entire Russian campaign was perhaps even warmer than usual. Eyewitness accounts have been preserved who claim: the average temperature in October, when the French had already begun to retreat to Kyiv and Warsaw, was 10, in Revel and Riga - 7 degrees above zero. Napoleon lost due to his own strategic mistakes.

They put crosses instead of signatures not because of illiteracy. For many hundreds of years, educated Europeans put a cross instead of a signature, and to the right or left of it they wrote the full name. Since the 16th century, the opinion has spread that it is inappropriate to use the cross of God for commercial purposes, and people began to sign documents with their name and initials.

Scalping is not an Indian invention at all. The custom of removing the skin from the head as a trophy and symbol of triumph was among the Scythians and the peoples of Western Siberia. The American Indians were not so cruel. Some historians even doubt that the Indians resorted to scalping before the arrival of white people.

It was the whites, and not the redskins, who began to skin the heads of defeated enemies, since in order to receive the assigned bonus it was necessary to present a scalp.

The Statue of Liberty is not in New York. Moreover, neither city nor state. Liberty Island (Liberty Island, and formerly Boudleau Island) geographically belongs to the state of New Jersey.

Popular misconceptions about alcohol

People often make up excuses for their behavior, particularly when they drink alcohol. Can be heard from different people(their relatives, friends, neighbors) about how alcohol affects the human body, what needs to be done if you have had too much to drink, and the like. I want to believe them. But in most cases, what they say is not true, and we want you to know the truth.

Hangover. Many are convinced that in a hangover it is necessary to drink a small amount of alcoholic beverage in order to recover. The liver can remove only 10 ml of alcohol from the human body in 1 hour.

By drinking additional amounts of alcohol, a person only increases the load on the already “overloaded” liver.

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Neither additional alcohol, nor coffee, nor a cold shower, nor fresh air lead to actual sobering up. The truth is that the only cure for a hangover is time. Alcohol is eliminated from the body only over a certain period of time. A person with a hangover should avoid drinking alcohol for 2 days to give their body a chance to “rest” and recover.

Alcohol is not a help in solving problems. Some people believe that alcohol helps them forget and not think about problems. However, you can forget about your problems for tonight, and in the morning they will remind you of themselves again.

If you always return to alcohol to forget about problems and grief, then this is a direct path to alcoholism. And then, next to the problems that I would like to forget about, another problem will appear - alcoholism. The truth is that alcohol will not solve problems, but will lead to new ones - alcoholism and neglect of others.

Beer. Some people believe that they can drink beer in unlimited quantities without risk to health, because beer is a low-alcohol drink. The truth is that 330 ml of beer (that's one can), 150 ml of wine (that's one glass) and 40 ml of vodka (that's one shot) contain the same amount of alcohol. So think about it, is it possible to drink as much beer as you like?

You can die from alcohol. Some people believe that you won’t die from alcohol: just drink and drink. The truth is that a person can die from a dose of alcohol that his heart cannot handle or his liver cannot handle.

About the measure and amount of alcohol consumed. Some, especially teenagers, sincerely believe that alcoholic drinks will not cause harm if you use them in moderation. However, they cannot determine this measure in any way: neither in grams nor in milliliters.

They think that moderation is when you don’t get so drunk that your friends take your drunken drinking buddy home with them. The truth is that, firstly, a state similar to that when friends of an overindulgent drinking companion drag themselves home cannot be considered a measure, and secondly, the effect of alcohol on the human body depends on the person’s weight and age. Children and teenagers weigh much less than adults. Consequently, young people who have not reached physical maturity cannot drink as much alcohol as adults.

IN European countries The measure is determined by a unit of alcohol, which, in turn, is determined in grams and milliliters. 1 unit of alcohol = 10 ml of pure alcohol. A 330 ml can of beer with a strength of 4%-5% contains 1.5 units of alcohol. A 150 ml glass of wine with an alcohol content of 11%-12% contains 1.5 units of alcohol. A 40 ml shot of vodka with a strength of 40% also contains 1.5 units of alcohol. If an adult regularly drinks more than three units of alcohol, he is harming his health.

About mixing alcoholic drinks. Some people believe that you can mix different alcoholic drinks. The truth is that mixing different alcoholic drinks with each other, especially of surrogate origin, is life-threatening.

We will continue to publish the section “Popular Misconceptions” on this page of our website, because there are a great many misconceptions in the world and we definitely want to “dispel” them, we will try to select and place on this page all the most interesting things from the world of misconceptions!

Popular misconceptions about facts, events, alcohol...

From delusions that can arise unintentionally, unintentionally, it is worth distinguishing from delusions caused intentionally, which are self-deception or deception of another person.

The sources of misconceptions can be several reasons - prejudice, self-confidence, imperfection, or lack of knowledge in a person, sometimes haste, lack of concentration, or stability of thinking. There are also such reasons for misconceptions as - insufficient cognitive material on the essence of the issue under discussion, subjective moods, prejudices and predispositions, addictions to this issue, disorderly processing of the problem under discussion, poor knowledge of the source, and therefore a misconception.

A misconception can be characterized as an idea, thought or train of thought, regarding which, although there is confidence that they are correct, nevertheless, they do not correspond to reality, i.e. factual circumstances, the nature of the subject, or simply contradict logical laws, which may be a formal error.

If a person is thrown into outer space without a spacesuit, he will explode. Meteorites fall to Earth hot. The color red irritates bulls. A coin thrown from a skyscraper can kill a person. These and other misconceptions are very popular and even have “scientific” explanations. Lenta.ru has compiled a list of the most famous errors and explained how everything really works.

Biology

Human body in space explodes

Science fiction films often feature a scene when one of the characters finds himself in outer space without a spacesuit. In this case, the victim certainly bursts (always with a characteristic pop, although sound waves do not propagate in a vacuum, since there are no particles there that could transmit vibrations), and its insides beautifully scatter in different directions.

This outcome seems logical: in order to withstand the weight of many kilometers of air, the pressure inside our body is maintained equal to that which we experience outside. That is, the pressure is one atmosphere. In interstellar space, molecules of any kind are very rare, which means that nothing puts pressure on a person who finds himself without any protection and must be torn apart from the inside.

Actually this is not true. The human body is a very resistant structure, at least to this kind of damage. Even though people do not have a solid exoskeleton, like insects, for example, their skin, vessel walls and bones will prevent the organs from moving from their places. Although, left without equalizing external pressure, the internal organs will swell somewhat and their “swelling” can break some capillaries. The lungs and organs of the digestive system will especially increase in size, since they are filled with gases that were greatly compressed by external pressure just a second ago.

The “freed” oxygen will quickly leave the lungs and circulatory system, and the body will begin to suffer from hypoxia. A person thrown into space will lose consciousness, but before passing out, he may have time to feel something boiling inside him: with a significant decrease in pressure, the liquids contained inside turn into a gaseous state. But the resulting gas will not be able to tear a person apart from the inside - if only because there are too many holes and cracks in the body through which it will leak out.

In total, a person who mistakenly goes into outer space without a spacesuit has about 90 seconds to return to the ship (although taking into account the rapid loss of consciousness, this time is reduced to 15 seconds). After a minute and a half, the unfortunate person’s blood will begin to boil; in addition, the brain damaged by hypoxia will never be able to fully restore its functionality.

Hair and nails grow for some time after death

The belief that hair and nails continue to grow for some time after death is very common. Proponents of this hypothesis explain this by the fact that some physiological processes in the body of the deceased continue after death.

In reality, the elongated nails of a dead man are a visual illusion. After death, the body begins to rapidly lose fluid, and the skin of the corpse dries out and shrinks. In particular, the pads of the fingers shrink, causing the nails to appear longer.

Those who believe in the life of nails after death can be consoled by the fact that there is some truth in their beliefs. Most cells are less sensitive to a lack of oxygen than brain cells, so there is still a hypothetical possibility that after cardiac arrest, nails continue to grow for several minutes.

Bats are blind

Fruit-eating bat Artibeus jamaicensis. Photo from si.edu

Bats navigate in the dark using echolocation, the same mechanism used in submarines. Animals emit sounds in the high frequency range (ultrasound) and “catch” their reflection from surrounding objects. If the sound returned quickly, it means that the obstacle is nearby, but if it traveled for a long time or did not return at all, the space nearby is free. By sending out a lot of these pulses and analyzing them carefully, mice can very accurately determine what is around them.

Many people believe that owners of such a perfect “navigator” do not need ordinary eyes and their vision is almost completely atrophied. This is wrong. First, not all bats use echolocation. Secondly, even those animals that actively use this mechanism can navigate quite well with the help of vision. Moreover, in fruit-eating bats, the eyes are very well developed and occupy no less space on the face than the eyes of comparable nocturnal rodents. The visual organs of insectivorous bats are noticeably smaller, but they are also quite functional: with the help of their eyes, animals determine their height relative to the ground, estimate the size of large obstacles and look for a way, focusing on large objects. In addition, by assessing the level of illumination with the help of their eyes, mice determine that night has fallen and it is time for them to fly out to hunt.

Red color irritates bulls

Another typical misconception regarding the characteristics of vision in animals, which became popular thanks to the bloodthirsty Spanish bullfight. It is believed that the matador “winds up” the bull with the help of a red cape, which he waves in front of the animal’s nose. Keeping this characteristic of bulls in mind, many people avoid appearing near the herd in red clothes. They have no reason to worry: bulls, like most other mammals (with the exception of primates), have dichromatic vision, that is, they are simply unable to distinguish between red and green colors.

The ability to see colors is determined by special light-sensitive cells called cones, or more precisely by how many types of opsin proteins these same cones contain. For example, in the eyes of people and monkeys of the Old World there are three types of opsins, thanks to which we distinguish several thousand shades (according to some sources, up to one hundred thousand). Bird cones carry four types of opsins, so from the point of view of birds, all humans are color blind. Bulls' color vision is very poorly developed, so the matador's cloak does not stand out to them as anything special. And sudden human movements and sword thrusts infuriate animals.

Chameleons change color to camouflage with their environment

Chameleons' ability to change color is often the only thing people know about these tropical lizards. And the majority is firmly convinced that funny reptiles turn green, blue or black in order to better camouflage themselves with their surrounding conditions. For a long time, this belief existed among scientists, but recently experts have come to the conclusion that mimicry of nearby branches and flowers is the last reason why chameleons change the color of their integument.

Lizards change the color of their integument thanks to special cells - chromatophores, which contain granules of various pigments. Chromatophores have a complex branched shape, and pigments can be located both in the processes and in the center of the cell. This or that color appears when pigments of the corresponding shade are located in the “branches”. In order to “drive” the pigments there, the chromatophore relaxes. If it is necessary to collect granules of the dye in the center of the cell, it, on the contrary, shrinks.

Observations of lizards in nature and laboratory experiments have shown that they need repainting in different colors, first of all, for thermoregulation and interaction with each other. Chameleons, like other reptiles, are poorly able to maintain a constant body temperature: it can vary over a fairly wide range depending on the external temperature (scientists call this property a compound word).

This or that color appears due to the corresponding pigments, which, in particular, include melanin. This pigment is responsible for the darker color of the lizard's skin, and since dark surfaces absorb more sunlight than light ones, chameleons turn brown when they are cold.

In addition, with the help of skin color, reptiles communicate to their relatives about their mood. If the chameleon is ready for a romantic date, he chooses one shade, and his intention to immediately attack his neighbor is announced in another. Recently, scientists have found that the more complex the social structure of a particular type of chameleon, the more often the animals change color and the less it correlates with the color of surrounding surfaces.

Physics

If you throw a coin from a skyscraper, it can kill a person

Everyone knows that walking around a construction site without a helmet is dangerous - something even not very heavy can fall from above and hit your head. As long as a small bolt or nut flies from, say, the 15th floor, it will accelerate to such a speed that it will begin to pose a real danger. There is an opinion that the same applies to very light objects - for example, coins, if you drop them from a sufficient height, say, from the Ostankino Tower.

In reality, you can throw coins from skyscrapers without fearing for the lives of other people. Due to air resistance, a coin can only accelerate to a certain threshold value (for example, paratroopers, who, of course, are larger than coins, with a stable flat free fall accelerate up to 40 meters per second, and with an unstable one, that is, tumbling, up to 50 meters per second). And this does not even take into account gusts of wind, which are very significant for a small coin. The second thing to remember is that due to its shape, when assessing the danger from a coin, you only need to take into account its kinetic energy. It is calculated using the well-known formula E=m*v 2 /2, where m is the mass of the object, and v is its speed.

When the street is calm, a coin dropped from the observation deck of the Ostankino TV tower, at best, will pick up a speed of 70 kilometers per hour (about 19 meters per second). For a 50-kopeck coin, this corresponds to an energy of 26.6 Joules. For comparison, a 9 mm pistol bullet at exit has an energy of about 350 Joules.

Lightning never strikes in the same place twice

This belief has probably cost the life of more than one person. Lightning not only strikes the same place multiple times, but some objects are downright favorite lightning targets. This especially applies to tall metal objects that “attract” lightning discharges - in fact, the action of lightning rods, which logically should be called lightning rods, is based on this fact. The spire of the same Ostankino tower is struck by 40 to 50 lightning strikes every year.

Even in the absence of “traps” for lightning, their one-time hit, say, on a tree does not turn it into a guarantor of safety. If there is a thunderstorm over a specific area, then all places in this area can be “attacked” with equal probability. A lightning strike in one place or another does not affect the probability in any way, although such a conclusion seems intuitively incorrect: this misconception even has a special name “gambler's error.”

In different hemispheres, a funnel of water (for example, in a sink) twists in different directions

Theoretically, it is possible to conduct an experiment proving that the Coriolis force really affects the movement of any liquids on Earth. To do this, you need to fill a fairly capacious round container with water, exactly in the middle of which there is a tiny hole plugged with a stopper, and always from the bottom (so that manipulation of the stopper does not lead to disturbance of the liquid). After a week, when even the smallest fluctuations in the water have subsided, you need to carefully remove the plug and wait a few hours until the weak Coriolis force manifests itself. Such an experiment was carried out, and its results coincided with those expected: the water in the container swirled in the same direction as the cyclones in a particular hemisphere.

“When you wash your face, be sure to look in which direction the water is swirling,” - everyone who went on vacation to Australia, New Zealand or South Africa has probably heard this phrase from their friends. The belief that in different hemispheres any flows of liquids circulate in opposite directions has been ingrained in the heads of a huge number of people since school - alas, the example of the sink is often mentioned by teachers who talk about the rotation of the Earth and the Coriolis force.

The force of inertia, named after the French scientist Gustave Gaspard Coriolis who described it, is indeed associated with the rotation of our planet and affects the movement of large masses of air and water: flows in storms and cyclones in the southern hemisphere spin clockwise, and in the northern hemisphere, counterclockwise. However, compared to the rotational processes that we observe in ordinary life (that same water funnel in a sink), the Earth rotates around its axis very slowly, and in order of magnitude the Coriolis force is much less than any of the forces that control the processes of rotation of objects around us. Therefore, under normal conditions, it is impossible to notice the influence of the Coriolis force on the behavior of water in the sink, and the direction in which the liquid is sucked into the drain depends, first of all, on how the sink was filled and on its shape.

Astronomy

Meteorites falling to Earth are heated to very high temperatures.

In many cartoons and science fiction films, meteorites that have fallen to Earth are red-hot and even smoke. The scriptwriters of such films and most of their viewers believe that the celestial body heats up due to friction with the air. This process actually takes place: already at an altitude of about 100 kilometers above the Earth, the meteorite, which had previously traveled in the vacuum of space, collides with a huge number of gas molecules. Collisions with them heat the outer layer of the stone to enormous temperatures, turning the solid rock into a gas, which is immediately carried away into the atmosphere.

The majority (about 90 percent) of meteorites that fall to Earth are stone, and stone has very poor thermal conductivity. As a result, if the meteorite is large enough, then the heat from the outer layers does not have time to be transferred to the inner part of the stone in the few seconds (on average, 19 seconds) that the body spends in the atmosphere. If it was also cold enough initially, then the center of the meteorite may generally be frozen.

At an altitude of 10-15 kilometers, such a meteorite usually slows down and begins to fall without significant friction with the atmosphere, then it has a lot of time for the cold center to cool the surface layer. As a result, a meteorite that has just fallen will not be hot at all, but warm or, at best, hot. That is, he cannot start any fire, for example.

These considerations, however, apply only to bodies of average mass - large meteorites crash into the surface at tremendous speed and explode, so whether they are cold or hot does not matter.

The change of seasons is associated with the Earth's approach to the Sun

This is perhaps one of the most persistent misconceptions. At first glance, it seems logical: the closer the Earth is to the Sun, the more heat and light enters the planet. Why winter and summer exist in different hemispheres at the same time, although both of them are on the same planet, supporters of this point of view can no longer explain.

The true reason for the change of seasons is less obvious: the Earth has several seasons due to the fact that its axis of rotation around the axis is not parallel to the axis of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. The angle of inclination between them is constant and amounts to 23.5 degrees. One can imagine that the earth's axis is a needle piercing the planet right through so that its tip comes out of the North Pole and looks conventionally "up", and the blunt end sticks out from the South Pole and points "down".

When the tip of the needle points to a star, it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun rises high above the horizon, and its rays fall in the area north of the equator at smaller angles: that is, they do not slide along the surface, but seem to “rest” against it. The maximum amount of solar energy reaches the Earth when the rays fall vertically, which is why summers are warmer than winters. At equatorial latitudes, the rays fall perpendicularly all year round, so the seasons there are not distinguished. Summer in the southern hemisphere occurs when the tip of the needle is pointed away from the Sun.