20 Misconceptions People In This Online Group Had For Years

Article created by: Saulė Tolstych

Do you know the feeling when you are so confident about some specific fact that you try your hardest to prove it to others, despite them not believing you? And you don’t even stop to question that fact because you just simply believed it for so long? It may be because your friends or family members kept telling you or you read it online somewhere and it just stuck with you because it made sense. For example, I kept hearing that if you eat watermelon seeds, it means that a watermelon will grow in your stomach. Well, as you may know - it’s not true. Okay, this may not be the most reliable information that you could believe for many years, but has anybody ever told you that if you crack your knuckles it will give you arthritis? Well, that’s also not true! And also, for your knowledge, a piece of gum doesn’t take 7 years to digest…

So speaking of that, one Reddit user asked community members to share ‘facts’ that they believed for many years only to find out that they’re actually not true at all. So, folks, explore some of the best or funniest ones that may make you also question if all the facts you are so confident about are actually true.

More info: Reddit

• Read More: 20 Misconceptions People In This Online Group Had For Years

#1

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#2

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#3

I'm South American and it's "common knowledge" there that American movies need to show the flag at least once to get tax cuts. I've known this as a "fact" for maybe 15 years and after living in America for 5 I brought it up in a conversation, and all the Americans in the room had no idea what I was talking about. Googled and found out it's just a South American myth.

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#4

That Einstein failed math and I'm sure there are a ton of people out there tjat still believe that. What's funny is that hen he was shown a clipping from Ripley's Believe It or Not, which ia likely the origin of this myth, he responded, "I never failed in mathematics. Before I was 15 I had mastered differential and integral calculus"

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#5

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#6

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#7

If you dont wait for one hour after eating to swim you will get such incredibly debilitating cramps that you will lose all motor function and sink and drown. Edit... I also remember as a child having an empty inbox lol. This hit a nerve eh?

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#8

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#9

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#10

In the early 2000s my dad told me Bobby Flay, who I loved, passed away. I believed it until I saw him on tv maybe 3-4 years ago. I called my dad and told him, I couldn’t believe it. I thought he must have faked his passing. Turns out my dad lied to me because apparently he wanted to watch something other than Bobby Flay in tv that day.

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#11

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#12

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#13

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#14

That a penny could injure someone if dropped off the Empire State Building.

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#15

I was in the UK army (16 yrs old, when they still did junior leaders ) And was told during a driving theory lesson that we should never try to steal army diesel because they could test your fuel at any time and if they found you stealing they could send you to prison, they could tell because under a microscope the diesel would have tiny arrows in it. Years later I'd left the army and (having never really doubted it, but to be honest, never really thinking about ) I was telling someone at work when it suddenly dawned on me how ridiculous that was. I'd just accepted it was a fact for well over 20 years Edit: thank you for all the responses, I didn't think my embarrassing story would get so much attention. In case you were wondering, yes, I've got a drawer full of left handed screw drivers and I've got a grinder and 50 sparks being delivered later XD

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#16

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#17

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#18

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#19

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#20

My dad used to say Jenna Fischer (Pam from the office) was Carrie Fisher’s daughter (Princess Leia from Star Wars) so I thought it was true and shared that info with a few friends. Stupid me didn’t think to look it up, and when I finally did, I told my dad the truth. Of course he doesn’t remember ever telling me this...

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When I was 7, I touched a bare electric line, received a shock, went crying to my mom. She was preparing dinner at the time, making a salad. She gave me some lettuce, said it would make a shock go away. I didn't eat lettuce, but it was worth making the pain go away. The pain subsided, as it would have regardless. So, I believed her about the lettuce. Years later, mom overheard me telling a friend about lettuce being a cure for electric shocks, and confessed that she'd made it up. When I was younger I had a pet bird and she flew away one day when I was cleaning her cage (her name was Cathy, lol). I was obviously devastated because she was my first pet and my best friend, so my dad said he was going to go out and find Cathy for me. Two hours later he comes home with a yellow budgie saying he found her in a tree down the block and caught her. I was so thankful and couldn’t believe he got her back for me. I literally only realised a couple years ago that there’s no way he could have caught her, and when I asked he confirmed that he just went to the pet shop and bought me a new yellow budgie. I lived with the belief that she was Cathy for 16 years. This is a conversation between my friend and his GF in college: GF: How do they know where to put gas stations? Friend: I assume they do market research to see how much need there is for another gas station in the area. GF: No, I mean how do they know there will be gas on the corner where they build the station? Friend: They truck in the gasoline with tankers... GF: Oh. Bats are not blind. They have eyes and can see. Also they have an excellent night vision. Not me, but I met multiple people from France who didn't believe in yellow school buses. Apparently, everybody in France believe they only exist in American movies, not in real life. That cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis My one earlobe is a little smaller than the other. My dad told me he bit it off accidentally when I was a baby, and I believed it for about 15 years. My mom told me that the paws of dogs never grow and they are born with the size they'll have. A few years later after I embarrassed myself with that fact in front of my friends a few times I asked her again and apparently I got it wrong. The paws are an indicator for the size the dog will reach later but obviously they do grow. Imagine how ridiculous it would look, a pup with huge paws. That driving with the overhead light in your car on is illegal. I believed that thunder was the sound of clouds hitting each other. My roommates told me otherwise just a few days before college graduation when there was some thunder on a cloudless day. Mom swears she doesn't know where I got that idea. That he great wall of China is the only man made object visible from space My growth slowed pretty early on, and i was obviously upset about that. My mom noticed, and told me that "you grow a little bit with each hiccup," probably to give me hope. From that day, whenever I would start hiccuping I would try to do everything in my power to KEEP hiccuping, just so I could grow a little taller. I believed that until i was 15. That the Arctic was named because there are Polar Bears there (from the Greek word for bear: arktos). And that the Antarctic was named because there are No Polar Bears there.