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Debunked: You can make as much ice faster by starting with warmer water. |
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True: Boiled water freezes faster than ordinary water at same initial temperature. |
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Debunked: A penny falling from the top of the Empire State Building in New York City will embed in the pavement, or kill you if it hits you, or any of several other destructive things. |
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Debunked: Bathtubs and toilets drain the other way round in the other hemisphere, due to the Coriolis Force. |
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True: The Coriolis Force affects all fluids if you take incredible pains to isolate it. |
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Debunked: Putting your panties into the microwave is a good way to kill any yeast bacteria they may carry. |
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Debunked: Coloring the rims of your CD's with a marker will enhance the sound quality. Usually green is the color of choice, and sometimes a special marker is required. |
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In Dispute: CDs are the size they are because it could hold Beethoven's 9th symphony. |
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Debunked: People [explode/boil/something special-effecty] in the vacuum of space. |
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Debunked: Eelskin wallet demagnetizes bank cards |
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Debunked: Daylight sky appears dark enough to see stars from bottom of deep well. |
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True: Venus and perhaps a few other bright stars/planets can be seen in daylight. |
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Debunked: Bubbles in bubble wrap contain a cheap, but toxic gas. |
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Unknown: East German secret police "bug" factory now uses skills to make hearing aids. |
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Debunked: Hot-drying acid-washed jeans "re-activates" the acid. |
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Debunked: Ontario Hydro mandated poor installation,so copper fails as often as aluminium. |
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T: Fluorescent lamp will light up when held near high-voltage line. |
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Tb: Fluorescent light will break down vitamins in clear milk containers. |
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F: Fluorescent lights leach vitamins from your body. |
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Unknown: Leather saddles used to be treated with llama dung to alter their smell, to avoid scaring horses. |
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Unknown: This British specification regarding leather saddles was reborn as a US Army specification for leather jackets, leather airline seats, etc. |
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Documented: 3M "Post-It" notes were invented & marketed as an unofficial project. |
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T: Subliminal messages in advertising are ineffective, but outlawed anyway. ["Media Sources and Business Legends" in TCD] ...Ted Frank cited USA law. |
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Unknown: Filamentous phage M13 obtained from lab's letter rejecting the transfer! |
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T: Long term storage of paper in a PVC envelope is harmful (fumes degrade it). |
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T: Some combinations of metal tooth fillings can receive radio signals. |
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F: Printer/copier toner is carcinogenic. [But be careful about breathing it.] |
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F: The moon looks larger near the horizon than up in the sky due to refraction. |
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T: The above is due to an optical illusion. |
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T: Indiana House Bill #246 of 1897 is a piece of gibberish that could be interpreted to mean pi = 3.2, 4, or 160/49. Killed in state Senate. |
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Fb: Some state (e.g., KS, OK, etc.) once considered a bill setting pi = 3 (or some other arbitrary, non-transcendental number). |
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Debunked: US and Russia won't destroy their stocks of smallpox for fear of being unprepared for the other country renegging and launching a biological attack. |
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Debunked: People only use 10% of their brain capacity, and if we only were able to harness the other 90%, we'd all be telepathic genius superheroes. |
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Impossible: If the entire population of China jumped up at the same time, either the Earth's orbit would be disturbed, or the US would be swamped by a tidal wave, or some other bad thing would happen. |
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Impossible: If all the Chinese screamed at the same time, people in the US could hear it. |
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True: There was a natural nuclear reaction in Africa long ago. |
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Debunked: If you swim right after eating you'll get cramps and drown. |
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Impossible: Squeezing out the air from a partially consumed plastic soda bottle will keep soda from going flat. |
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Debunked: There are bodies of workmen who fell into the poured concrete of Hoover Dam and are entombed there to this day. |
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Debunked: There is a pillar in India made of metal found nowhere else in the world. |
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True: Tomatoes are not vegetables, they're fruit. |
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Documented: Tomatoes are legally defined as vegetables, however. |
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Documented: Workers in old watch factories got poisoned by licking the brushes they used for applying radium compound to watch faces. |
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Debunked: You can see glass flow in the windows of old buildings. |
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Debunked: Large telescope mirrors often become distorted due to glass flow. |
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Debunked: Glass is not a crystal, therefore it is a liquid and flows. |
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Documented: MRI used to be called "NMR" or "NMR Imaging", with the "N" standing for "Nuclear", but the "N" was dropped due to perceived public fear. |
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Impossible: Daylight-Saving Time is an evil manipulation of Time, and will cause chickens to stop laying, cows to become confused, and the extra hour of sunlight will scorch the plants and fade the curtains. |
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Debunked: A newspaper once substituted "in the African-American" for "in the black" in a fit of overzealous and unthinking political correctness. |
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Impossible: Welding while wearing contacts can cause them to stick permanently to your eyeballs if you look at the arc without goggles. |
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Debunked: NASA sent some very thin threads of gold to watchmakers in Switzerland, to show off some manufacturing technology. The watchmakers sent them back drilled with holes. |
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Debunked: Only on the spring equinox can you stand an egg on its end. |
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Debunked: The "Philadelphia Experiment" was a top secret, successful experiment where the US Navy made a battleship invisible. And maybe they teleported it, too. |
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Debunked: If you are completely covered in paint, you will die of asphixiation because your skin can't breathe. |
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Debunked: Scientists once concluded that it was "impossible" for bumblebees to fly. |
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Unknowable: No two snowflakes are alike. |
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Debunked: A woman faints in a grocery store checkout line from what turns out to be hypothermia. She "froze her brain" trying to shoplift a frozen chicken by hiding it under her hat. |
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Debunked: There is no Nobel Prize for mathematicians because Mrs. Nobel was fooling around with one. |
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Debunked: There was a "missing day" that was discovered by a NASA scientist. |
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In Dispute: The first bomb dropped on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the city. |
