Fact-based Weird Facts
Lightning Does Strike the Same Place Twice
The old saying is wrong: tall, pointy, isolated things are struck again and again, and New York's Empire State Building takes an average of 23 hits a year.
Home Series Things You Were Taught Wrong
Things You Were Taught Wrong
Some facts arrive in childhood and are never checked again: that lightning never strikes the same place twice, that you can see the Great Wall of China from the Moon, that a goldfish forgets everything in three seconds. This collection takes those beliefs one at a time and sets them against the evidence.
The aim is not to make anyone feel foolish — most of these mistakes are reasonable, and some are half right. Each article explains where the belief came from and what is actually known, and lists its sources, so the next time it comes up at dinner you will have the whole story.
Articles
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Part 1
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Part 2
Fact-based Weird Facts
You Cannot See the Great Wall of China From the Moon
It is one of the most repeated facts in the world, and it is wrong: from the Moon the wall is invisible, and even from orbit it is so hard to spot that astronauts argue about it.
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Part 3
Fact-based Weird Facts
Goldfish Do Not Have a Three-Second Memory
The famously forgetful goldfish can remember things for months, learn to press a lever for food, work out what time dinner is served and tell its owner apart from other people.
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Part 4
Fact-based Weird Facts
T-Rex Never Met a Stegosaurus — They Missed Each Other by 80 Million Years
Stegosaurus lived around 150 million years ago, T. rex about 68 to 66 million years ago. We are closer in time to T. rex than it was to Stegosaurus.
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Part 5
Fact-based Weird Facts
Cleopatra Lived Closer to the Moon Landing Than to the Pyramids
The Great Pyramid was already about 2,500 years old in her time. The first Moon landing came about 2,000 years after her.
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Part 6
Fact-based Weird Facts
Flamingos Are Not Born Pink
A baby flamingo hatches fluffy and pale grey, and it only turns that famous pink because of what it eats, a colour its parents can lose again while feeding it.
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Part 7
Fact-based Weird Facts
Why Honey Keeps Almost Forever
Honey is too dry, too acidic and too sugary for most microbes to survive in, which is why a jar at the back of the cupboard is almost always still good.
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Part 8
Fact-based Weird Facts
There Is No Such Thing as a Raw Cashew
The bag says raw, the shop says raw, and it is not raw — because the shell it came out of holds an oil that irritates skin much like poison ivy does.
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Part 9
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Why Does Your Stomach Rumble?
That loud growl in a silent room is not really your stomach complaining about lunch, but your gut running a cleaning cycle through pipes that happen to be empty and echoey.
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Part 10
Fact-based Weird Facts
Are Trees Really Plumbed Into Each Other by Fungi?
Fungi really do live on tree roots and help trees grow. Whether they link whole forests into a sharing network is far less certain than the popular story says.
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Part 11
Fact-based Kitchen Science
Stale Bread Is Not Dry Bread, and the Fridge Makes It Worse
A loaf sealed so tightly that not a drop of water can escape will still go stale, because staling is the starch quietly rearranging itself rather than the bread drying out.