Facts that Distract

  Through this process, urban legends and rumors sneakily jump the gap between popular fiction and established fact. Here are some popular examples that you can leap on and quash immediately, establishing yourself as a joyless, antagonistic pedant.

As Seen From Space

   The Great Wall of China is often cited as the only man-made structure visible from space without magnification or image intensification, but in reality the wall is practically invisible at any altitude above 80 miles and then only under perfectly clear conditions.   As for it being the only human-built object visible from space, astronauts claim that it’s easy enough to distinguish cities from the surrounding countryside and the larger freeways and interchanges, and it’s been claimed (without much more authority than the Great Wall claims) that Romania’s massive Palace of Parliament can be made out within the confines of Bucharest.

Math and Einstein

   During the brief period in American history when physicists were celebrities, a curious rumor got started—that Albert Einstein, godlike conqueror of the atom, had failed math in high school. What a fun, relatable fact about an otherwise inaccessibly brilliant man!   Unfortunately, someone pointed this out to the man himself, who stated for the record that he had done perfectly well in math throughout his academic career. A possible source of confusion would be the fact that Einstein did fail his entrance exam to the Federal Polytechnic Institute the first time he took it, but considering he was two years younger than any other student a few snags were inevitable.

F**K
   People have some weird ideas about the etymology of curse words. The f-bomb has variously been explained as an acronym for “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” punishing illegal sex-havers, “Fornication Under Consent of the King” for licensed fornicators, or even as a corruption of the phrase “pluck yew” (supposedly a term for firing a longbow at someone) when in reality it’s just a corruption of the ancient German “ficken.” 

Those explanations seem outlandish on their face, but much more pernicious is the idea that the word crap is a back-formation of British toilet builder (not inventor) Thomas Crapper, which sounds fairly legit until you find out that the first usage of “crap” in England was during the Middle Ages as a derivation of the Dutch krappen (to pluck out and separate) and the Old French crappe (rejected waste) and actually wasn’t used to refer to feces until the middle of the nineteenth century. Freakin’ weird!



The Bullet Proof Vest
  In 1969, a Detroit man named Richard Davis was shot while out on delivery, so he invented the vest for protection, and even tested it on himself.

Best Basketball movie ever
  "Space Jam," the 1996 basketball comedy starring Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny, made $90 million domestically and more than $230 million globally. Coming in at a very distant second place is the 1992 comedy, "White Men Can't Jump."

Then of course there are things like list of things that distract us, and in which hardly anyone will remember but ridicule their memory for not serving up trifles when demanded.  So, you got that going for ya.