I came across this list of common fallacies. Some of these debunkings seem to me a little suspicious themselves - e.g.
Can anyone validate or debunk any of these?
The Alaska one is correct, because the Aleutian archipelago crosses the 180th longitude.
This is debatable, since both East and West are infinite directions, you can keep going and going in one of the directions around the globe. Not so with North and South.
You’re right it is debatable. However, their interpretation is reasonable. It’s not ridiculously contrived just to come up with a good factoid.
It is a bit strained to get “easternmost” (which is generally meant to mean “as measured from the center”), but it’s not wrong.
‘Rabbits are more closely related to horses than they are to rodents or mice.’
This is no longer accepted… Lagomorghs (rabbits and hares) are nowadays associated with the rodents once again, rather than ungulates…
Family tree
‘Saturn isn’t the only planet in our solar system with a ring. In fact, the only planet without a ring is Earth.’
Swipe me. here’s another one…
I don’t remember a ring being discovered around Venus, or Mercury, or Pluto, or even Mars…
but anyway, there are 100+ extrasolar planets now- we can’t possibly know whether any or none of these have rings.
‘The pineapple has nothing to do with pines or apples. They’re actually a berry.’
That’s funny, I thought it was the fleshy stem of a bromeliad…
Man… there are a lot more of those than I thought. I don’t want to say how much. Thirty-four pages. I saw a couple that I could validate on the first few pages, but aside from that planet’s rings one, nothing I knew was false. Are there any more specific ones you have in mind?
Just to back up eburacum45 and Achernar, while it is true that the jovian planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) all have rings, no rings have been detected around any of the terrestrial planets or Pluto.
It has been hypothesized that Mars might have a ring of dust knocked off of its outer moon, Deimos but this putative ring has never been observed.
The Kremlin thing is stupid. So what? There are a lot of white houses in the US – hell, I can look down the street and see one – but when people say THE White House, they’re pretty much referring to 1600 Pensylvania Avenue. So in Russian, Kremlin means a citadel or fortress – big deal. When people refer to THE Kremlin, they’re referring to the seat of government in Moscow.
More than a bit strained, I’d say. The only reasonable meaning of easternmost is “the point intersected by a longitudinal line when moving the line east from a point within the U.S., past which the line no longer has any point within the U.S.” This definition would need tweaking if an island were the easternmost point, but regardless, there is no way it’s Alaska. Saying that part of Alaska is in the Eastern Hemisphere is not the same as saying it is the easternmost point.
Does taxiing wear airplane tires most?
I can’t speak for the authority of the site but http://mb-soft.com/public/planetir.html says:
Well, sorta, maybe. Not much of a difference here. An “ox” is just a domestic bovine used for (typically farm) work purposes–generally a castrated male.
The only species named “ox” that I know of is the “musk ox,” which is not a bovine at all, but more closely related to sheep.
Reasonable. I have heard of very few hunters killed by drivers.
And the same thing goes for Greece and acropolis. It’s just the cliff around which you have built your city.
I thought this one had been beaten into obedience a long time ago. For the botanist it’s the fruit of the plant, for the chef it’s a vegetable.
“London Bridge isnt in London, its in Arizona”
I can assure you there is a London Bridge in London, its the next one west from Tower Bridge.
An earlier version was sold to some twit in Arizona.
To be fair, the list did say “in our solar system.”
Lawd knows, I’m not bird expert, but from what I found, this is akin to saying that “A tiger isn’t a cat. It’s a member of the feline family.”
“Robin” appears to be a very common name for certain members of different species (and genera) within the “thrush” family.