5 Common Falacies and Urban Myths Revelaed!

You can live off baked beans.

This one is a real porky pie. There’s no such thing as a ‘miracle foodstuff’. Baked beans are pretty good for you, they’re high in all sorts of vitamins and minerals and are a great way to keep your diet balanced! However, if you tried to live on them, you would not be a very healthy individual at all.

And think of the Gas.

Baby food, in theory provides everything you need to survive, however not even that is totally efficient. The only way to maintain a healthy lifestyle is to eat a balanced diet from a variety of sources. Meats and fish can provide a very good source of a large portion of vitamins, carbs and minerals, but even then you still you need your greens!

Christopher Columbus thought the world was round.

Islam discovered that the world was round long before even the birth of Jesus. The ancient Greeks calculated the weight and circumference of the planet, as well as the distance to the sun and moon.

Why would a culture going through a renaissance, much less one with a huge navy, suddenly forget these important lessons? You can see the world is round just by watching a ship coming over the horizon. The top of the mast appear first, then the rest of it, then the bulk of the ship.

He actually thought it was pear shaped.

Water goes down the plug one way in the northern hemisphere, and the opposite way in the south.

Not true! You can make the water go either way you want. Try it.

The French are terrible fighters.

Perpetuated by the English as much as possible, and reinforced by the old google trick, this myth is unfounded. In fact, if you look at history, the French are some of the best fighters in the world:

Hundred Years War. 1337-1453 (Debatable)
Breton Wars of Independence. 1485-91 (Though they where sort of fighting each other)
War of the League of Cambrai. 1508-16
Thirty Years War (effectively a French victory). 1635-48
Franco-Spanish War. 1635-59
War of Devolution. 1667-68
Franco-Dutch War. 1672-78
War of the Reunions. 1683-84
American Revolutionary War. 1779-83
War of the First Coalition. 1792-97
War of the Second Coalition. 1798-1801
War of the Third Coalition. 1805
War of the Fourth Coalition. 1806-7
War of the Fifth Coalition. 1809
Crimean War. 1854-56
Second Italian War of Independence. 1859
First World War. 1914-18

If the French where really that awful at fighting, they never would have forged such a large country on a continent as bloodthirsty as Europe. They also managed ot build themselves a nice little empire. Here are some colonial wars they won:

Sino-French War.
First and Second Franco-Dahomean Wars.
Franco-Siamese War.
Wadai War.
First, Second and Third Mandingo Wars.
Second Opium War.
Rif War.

A big thanks to Jason B For compiling this list!

Leaving a spoon in a bottle of fizzy wine keeps the fizz in.

Nah-uh. On average, a bottle of fizzy wine will retain its fizz for at least a day, sometimes two. This myth probably originated when someone was fed up of loosing the fizz in their champers noticed that after accidentally leaving a spoon in the neck, the fizz stayed.

In science, there is a thing called rigor, which requires you repeat your experiments over and over again, keeping conditions as consistent as possible. This probably never took place, and the reason the fizz actually remained was because he drank it again much sooner. Try it for yourself if you don’t believe me!