I'm just singing random words
Thought I'd do another list that no one will read, this time debunking common rumours (mostly resulting from misquotes). Here we go!
Myth: Al Gore claimed that he invented the Internet.
Fact: Al Gore only said that he took the initiative in creating the Internet, by spearheading the funding that helped develop the technology that made the Internet possible.
Myth: John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.
Fact: He actually said "more popular than Jesus", and was making a statement on Christianity at the time (the full quote was "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that - I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now - I don't know what will go first, rock and roll or Christianity.") His statement was taken out of context for a smear campaign by the American press.
Myth: Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat during a live performance.
Fact: Actually, this really did happen. However, Ozzy THOUGHT it was a prop - unlike what the rumours say (or at least imply), he had no idea it was real.
Myth: Elvis Presley once said "The only thing negroes can do for me is shine my shoes and buy my records".
Fact: Elvis never said anything like this, and people who worked closely with him when he was alive often commented on his near-total lack of racism. He did once make a rather insulting remark about his black backup singers' breath smelling like catfish during a live show, but this was attributed to his out-of-control drug use at the time, which caused him to behave in increasingly bizarre ways.
Myth: Machiavelli said "The ends justify the means".
Fact: Niccolò Machiavelli actually said the precise opposite of this: in The Prince, he wrote "Si guarda al fine", meaning "one must consider the final result".
Myth: Galileo muttered "And yet it moves" under his breath after being forced by the Church to admit that the Sun revolves around the Earth rather than the other way around.
Fact: There is no evidence that Galileo said "E pur si muove" ("And yet it moves"), or indeed anything at all, after his trial. The phrase first appears in print over a year after Galileo's death.
Myth: When told that her subjects were starving because they had no bread, Marie Antoinette replied "Let them eat cake".
Fact: Marie was deeply involved in charity work for the poor and gave a significant portion of her income (more than the rest of the French royal family combined) to feed them. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher, once wrote that a "great princess" once said "S'ils n'ont plus de pain, qu'ils mange de la brioche" - meaning "If they have no bread, let them eat brioche" (brioche being a type of bread but with a higher egg and butter content than normal bread, not really a cake), but he wrote this when Marie was a child.
Myth: Henry Ford offered the Ford Model T in "any colour as long as it's black".
Fact: The Ford Model T was initially not available in black at all. Several other colours, such as green, grey, red and blue, were available, but not black. They later switched to producing all of them in dark blue (probably because darker paint was cheaper and dried quicker), then two years later to black.
Myth: Antoine Magnan claimed that bumblebees were incapable of flight.
Fact: What he actually said in Le Vol des Insectes was that bumblebees can't fly unless they flap their wings (i.e. they can't glide like birds do, they have to flap their wings constantly in order to stay airborne).
Myth: Paul Revere rode through town shouting "The British are coming!"
Fact: This comes from a poem about the event. Paul's mission depended on secrecy, so shouting about it wouldn't have done much good, and besides, most colonists still considered themselves British at the time.
Myth: Winston Churchill said that the only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash.
Fact: A LOT of quotes have been mistakenly attributed to Winston Churchill, including this one, which he never said, although he apparently wished he did say it. Churchill is also often cited as responding to someone invoking the obscure rule of English grammar that one must never end a sentence with a preposition with "This is nonsense up with which I will not put!", but again, he never said that.
Myth: Julius Caesar said "Et tu, Brute?" after being stabbed.
Fact: This is actually from Shakespeare's play. In fact, Caesar never said "Et tu, Brute?" (meaning "Even you, Brutus?") after Brutus stabbed him - some theorise he said "Kai su, teknon?", which is Greek (since Romans in the Senate spoke Greek, only peasants spoke Latin) for "You too, my child?" (meaning "child" in a metaphorical sense, since it was impossible for Brutus to have actually been Caesar's son), but this has also been more-or-less debunked now. General consensus nowadays is that not only did he say nothing, he couldn't say anything - he was stabbed several times in the face, which probably significantly impacted his ability to talk.
Myth: Ronald Reagan said that ketchup was a vegetable.
Fact: He passed legislation allowing ketchup to be counted as a vegetable in school lunches so that the lunches could meet the minimum vegetable requirements, but he never said or indicated that he believed ketchup was actually a vegetable.
Myth: John F. Kennedy told Germans that he was a jam-filled doughnut.
Fact: JFK's "Ich bin ein Berliner" was actually correct German - though the rumour claims that he should have said "Ich bin Berliner" without the indefinite article "ein", the fact is that including the "ein" gives the sentence more of a "one of us" feel, implying that he was a Berliner in spirit rather than literally from Berlin. While there is a type of doughnut in Germany called Berliner Pfannkuchen, they're only called that outside Berlin - inside the city they're referred to simply as "pfannkuchen". In any effect, someone saying "Ich bin ein Berliner" wouldn't be interpreted by a German as referring to themselves as a jam doughnut any more than a German saying "I am a New Yorker" would be interpreted as him calling himself a magazine.
Myth: Bees die whenever they sting anything.
Fact: Bees only die when they sting humans - our skin is far tighter than that of other animals, and traps their stinger, meaning they rip out their insides when they try to fly away. They can sting other animals freely without fear of death.
Myth: The average person consumes about seven spiders in their sleep in a lifetime.
Fact: This was made up by a magazine, just to see the kind of ridiculous thing people will believe if it's printed in a magazine.
Myth: It's dangerous to wake a sleepwalker.
Fact: While they will no doubt be confused and disoriented, it's probably more dangerous not to wake them, as they might bump into things or trip and hurt themselves. The safest thing to do is to gently guide them back to bed. The myth that it's dangerous to wake a sleepwalker actually comes from an old belief that the soul leaves the body when asleep, experiencing adventures that we later remember as dreams. Waking someone up before the soul was firmly back in their body was thought to lead to rather unfortunate consequences. (On rare occasions, a sleepwalker can turn violent if disturbed, which is probably also partly where the rumour came from). On that note, the way sleepwalking is often portrayed in fiction (with eyes closed and arms outstretched) is not what it actually looks like (in real life, sleepwalkers have their eyes open and move relatively normally, though often slower than normal and will look rather sleepy and out of it).
Myth: Cats only purr when they're happy.
Fact: Cats often purr when they're happy, but will also purr if scared, in pain or dying as a way to comfort itself. They will also sometimes purr in order to calm down other cats (or even humans) that are angry, stressed or upset.
Myth: Al Gore claimed that he invented the Internet.
Fact: Al Gore only said that he took the initiative in creating the Internet, by spearheading the funding that helped develop the technology that made the Internet possible.
Myth: John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.
Fact: He actually said "more popular than Jesus", and was making a statement on Christianity at the time (the full quote was "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that - I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now - I don't know what will go first, rock and roll or Christianity.") His statement was taken out of context for a smear campaign by the American press.
Myth: Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat during a live performance.
Fact: Actually, this really did happen. However, Ozzy THOUGHT it was a prop - unlike what the rumours say (or at least imply), he had no idea it was real.
Myth: Elvis Presley once said "The only thing negroes can do for me is shine my shoes and buy my records".
Fact: Elvis never said anything like this, and people who worked closely with him when he was alive often commented on his near-total lack of racism. He did once make a rather insulting remark about his black backup singers' breath smelling like catfish during a live show, but this was attributed to his out-of-control drug use at the time, which caused him to behave in increasingly bizarre ways.
Myth: Machiavelli said "The ends justify the means".
Fact: Niccolò Machiavelli actually said the precise opposite of this: in The Prince, he wrote "Si guarda al fine", meaning "one must consider the final result".
Myth: Galileo muttered "And yet it moves" under his breath after being forced by the Church to admit that the Sun revolves around the Earth rather than the other way around.
Fact: There is no evidence that Galileo said "E pur si muove" ("And yet it moves"), or indeed anything at all, after his trial. The phrase first appears in print over a year after Galileo's death.
Myth: When told that her subjects were starving because they had no bread, Marie Antoinette replied "Let them eat cake".
Fact: Marie was deeply involved in charity work for the poor and gave a significant portion of her income (more than the rest of the French royal family combined) to feed them. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher, once wrote that a "great princess" once said "S'ils n'ont plus de pain, qu'ils mange de la brioche" - meaning "If they have no bread, let them eat brioche" (brioche being a type of bread but with a higher egg and butter content than normal bread, not really a cake), but he wrote this when Marie was a child.
Myth: Henry Ford offered the Ford Model T in "any colour as long as it's black".
Fact: The Ford Model T was initially not available in black at all. Several other colours, such as green, grey, red and blue, were available, but not black. They later switched to producing all of them in dark blue (probably because darker paint was cheaper and dried quicker), then two years later to black.
Myth: Antoine Magnan claimed that bumblebees were incapable of flight.
Fact: What he actually said in Le Vol des Insectes was that bumblebees can't fly unless they flap their wings (i.e. they can't glide like birds do, they have to flap their wings constantly in order to stay airborne).
Myth: Paul Revere rode through town shouting "The British are coming!"
Fact: This comes from a poem about the event. Paul's mission depended on secrecy, so shouting about it wouldn't have done much good, and besides, most colonists still considered themselves British at the time.
Myth: Winston Churchill said that the only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash.
Fact: A LOT of quotes have been mistakenly attributed to Winston Churchill, including this one, which he never said, although he apparently wished he did say it. Churchill is also often cited as responding to someone invoking the obscure rule of English grammar that one must never end a sentence with a preposition with "This is nonsense up with which I will not put!", but again, he never said that.
Myth: Julius Caesar said "Et tu, Brute?" after being stabbed.
Fact: This is actually from Shakespeare's play. In fact, Caesar never said "Et tu, Brute?" (meaning "Even you, Brutus?") after Brutus stabbed him - some theorise he said "Kai su, teknon?", which is Greek (since Romans in the Senate spoke Greek, only peasants spoke Latin) for "You too, my child?" (meaning "child" in a metaphorical sense, since it was impossible for Brutus to have actually been Caesar's son), but this has also been more-or-less debunked now. General consensus nowadays is that not only did he say nothing, he couldn't say anything - he was stabbed several times in the face, which probably significantly impacted his ability to talk.
Myth: Ronald Reagan said that ketchup was a vegetable.
Fact: He passed legislation allowing ketchup to be counted as a vegetable in school lunches so that the lunches could meet the minimum vegetable requirements, but he never said or indicated that he believed ketchup was actually a vegetable.
Myth: John F. Kennedy told Germans that he was a jam-filled doughnut.
Fact: JFK's "Ich bin ein Berliner" was actually correct German - though the rumour claims that he should have said "Ich bin Berliner" without the indefinite article "ein", the fact is that including the "ein" gives the sentence more of a "one of us" feel, implying that he was a Berliner in spirit rather than literally from Berlin. While there is a type of doughnut in Germany called Berliner Pfannkuchen, they're only called that outside Berlin - inside the city they're referred to simply as "pfannkuchen". In any effect, someone saying "Ich bin ein Berliner" wouldn't be interpreted by a German as referring to themselves as a jam doughnut any more than a German saying "I am a New Yorker" would be interpreted as him calling himself a magazine.
Myth: Bees die whenever they sting anything.
Fact: Bees only die when they sting humans - our skin is far tighter than that of other animals, and traps their stinger, meaning they rip out their insides when they try to fly away. They can sting other animals freely without fear of death.
Myth: The average person consumes about seven spiders in their sleep in a lifetime.
Fact: This was made up by a magazine, just to see the kind of ridiculous thing people will believe if it's printed in a magazine.
Myth: It's dangerous to wake a sleepwalker.
Fact: While they will no doubt be confused and disoriented, it's probably more dangerous not to wake them, as they might bump into things or trip and hurt themselves. The safest thing to do is to gently guide them back to bed. The myth that it's dangerous to wake a sleepwalker actually comes from an old belief that the soul leaves the body when asleep, experiencing adventures that we later remember as dreams. Waking someone up before the soul was firmly back in their body was thought to lead to rather unfortunate consequences. (On rare occasions, a sleepwalker can turn violent if disturbed, which is probably also partly where the rumour came from). On that note, the way sleepwalking is often portrayed in fiction (with eyes closed and arms outstretched) is not what it actually looks like (in real life, sleepwalkers have their eyes open and move relatively normally, though often slower than normal and will look rather sleepy and out of it).
Myth: Cats only purr when they're happy.
Fact: Cats often purr when they're happy, but will also purr if scared, in pain or dying as a way to comfort itself. They will also sometimes purr in order to calm down other cats (or even humans) that are angry, stressed or upset.
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