10 Things That Never Happened But Most People Are Sure Otherwise

Since school, we are sure that Newton discovered the law of universal gravity thanks to the apple that fell on his head, that Marilyn Monroe was blonde and that Othello strangled Desdemona. But not all the facts that we take for granted are true.

O awesome.club compiled in this article 10 myths that many people were 100% sure of and which turned out to be false.

Although in the story “The Hunchback” the word “elementary” appears and an appeal to Watson, they are separated by a paragraph. There are no more similar phrases in Doyle’s works.

The phrase “Elementary, my dear Watson” first appeared in the mouth of the detective “Psmith, journalist” by PG Wodehouse, and then was actively used in theatrical productions and film versions of Doyle’s works.

We know the story of the apple from the book by William Stackley, a friend of Newton, who described the case in a slightly different way than we used to think. According to Stackley, Newton said that while he was sitting under a tree, an apple fell next to him. At that moment, he wondered: why do fruits always fall perpendicularly to the ground? This was the impetus for the elaboration of the law of gravity.

Although Galileo had to conceal his repentance before the Inquisition, he was still convinced that the Earth rotated, and this is confirmed by his letters and those of his friends. But the fact that he uttered the phrase “And yet it moves” is nowhere to be seen. It does not appear in the biography of the scientist written by his friend Vincenzo Viviani, nor in the minutes of the trial. According to the investigation, this sentence was attributed to Galileo after his death, by popular rumour. Officially, these words were imputed to Galileo only in 1757 (many years after his repentance before the Court).

Ask one of your friends how Desdemona died in Shakespeare’s tragedy “Othello, the Moor of Venice.” The vast majority of people who have read the work, in response to this question, will say that they were strangled by a jealous Moor. But in fact, it is not so.

In fact, Othello started to strangle Desdemona, but he heard footsteps and, to speed up the process, stabbed her.

Many think that people believed in a flat Earth until the time of the Great Discoveries. But it’s not like that.

Already in the third century BC, the ancient Greek scientist Eratosthenes of Cyrene not only knew for sure that the Earth was a sphere, but also managed to measure its radius, reaching the figure of 6,311 km (he was practically not wrong). And about 100 years earlier, Aristotle (384-322 BC) cited 3 classic tests of the Earth’s sphericity:

1. During a lunar eclipse, the edge of the shadow the Earth casts on the Moon looks like an arc, and only a sphere can cast that shadow.

2. Boats, sailing towards the high seas, do not slowly disappear from the observer’s view, as they should on a large flat surface; they “sink” suddenly, disappearing behind the horizon line.

3. Some stars are only visible from certain parts of the Earth.

In the picture above you can see the scientist’s report card at the Cantonal School of Aarau, with grades on a 6-point scale. The scientist had high marks. The only exception was French.

The story that Albert Einstein was not a good student at school, but at the same time became a genius, is nothing more than a fiction. So, from this very moment on, there will be fewer students below the expectation of school performance who will be able to use this justification.

Marilyn was a brunette from birth. She decided to go blonde because she believed they were more successful as models.

English explorer James Cook was killed by Hawaiians during a fight on the coast. The Cook expedition’s relations with the islanders were aggravated by the constant thefts committed by the natives. To recover important parts of the ship, Cook tried to capture the chief of the Hawaiian tribes. The fight took place on the beach. Captain Cook was supposedly killed with a spear to the head.

The natives stayed with the body, the rest of the crew returned from the battlefield to the boats. After a while, the Hawaiians were asked to return Cook’s body and they did so. The captain’s remains were thrown overboard in 1779.

The myth that a fish’s memory is very short, only 3-5 seconds, has been refuted by scientists from Israel. For this, for a month, when feeding the fish, they always played the same song. Later, they discovered that the fish remembered the music, because when they heard it, they approached the source of the sound to receive their food.

This phrase was first used by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the book “Confessions”. There he mentioned Marie Antoinette, to whom he attributed this quote. At that time, Marie Antoinette was still a child and could not reason about the menu of her vassals. The phrase was not only unfairly attributed to the queen, it was also distorted. Initially, Rousseau’s nomination did not mention the cakes, but the brioche. In those days bakeries were forced to sell “social bread”, which was the cheapest. When the “social products” were sold out, the brioches were sold, and the difference in price between the two types of bread was negligible.

Do you know other interesting facts that turned out to be fiction? Tell us in the comments.