Author: Noah Berman / Source: did you know?
You know how knowledge just sometimes seems to filter into your mind, almost as if through osmosis? Like, one day you go to sleep, and the next day, you think that eating lots of carrots can make your night vision sharper?
Yeah, well. That’s not how learning works.
Myth 1: Eating carrots improves your eyesight.
If this were true, why would people be walking around with glasses on their faces? You could just eat carrots and have super-vision – seems like a pretty good deal to me.
Actually, though, the carrot/vision connection is (largely) a myth, and we happen to know exactly how it started. The carrot fallacy dates back to World War 2, specifically to a (very successful) propaganda campaign waged by the British against the Germans.
During the 1940 Blitzkrieg, the German air force regularly crossed the English channel to bomb London. In response, the city would turn off power to make it harder for enemy pilots to see what they were bombing. But the English had a secret weapon – a new radar technology, called the Airborne Interception Radar, which was installed in the Royal Air Force’s planes and could detect German bombers before they’d even crossed the channel.
To keep their pilot’s methods secret, the English put it out that the reason they could see so well at night was that they’d figured out that eating loads of carrots gives you superhuman night vision. And a myth was born!
That being said, the science is settled that Vitamin A (which carrots contain) is important for your eyes. If you spend several months not eating any Vitamin A, your vision, especially your night vision, does get worse. But eating mega-doses of Vitamin A does not make your vision improve beyond normal.
Myth #2: Incoming American presidents have to swear the oath of office on the Bible.
Just because most of them do doesn’t mean that they have to. In fact, no elected official has to swear their oath of office on a bible – or on anything. They can use a religious text, if they want, but they could also swear on a photo album, or their favorite novel. In fact, John Quincy Adams chose to swear on a book of law, and Teddy Roosevelt was sworn in so fast after President McKinley was killed, that he didn’t even have time to find a bible.
Myth #3: There are no words in…
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