How about “The human body is 98% watermelon”
Sorry, no. You’re just repeating the “factoid”. It may sound logical, but in practice, it doesn’t work that way.
I don’t know your experience, but I’m a chef. I’ve probably logged around 8000 hours in a kitchen and have the burns and cuts to prove it.
A sharp knife is only more dangerous if you are careless and not paying attention to what you are doing. For instance, if you pull a knife across your body and nick your arm/hand, a dull knife may simply slide across because it will not cut without significant pressure.
Dull knives often create the most serious injuries because of the force required to operate. Wounds caused by sharp knifes generally heal faster than wounds caused by dull knives. Sharp knives slice cleanly, while dull knives rip and tear the skin.
Bugger. I always KNEW I was born in the wrong millenium.
Maybe we could debate the blunt knife thing elsewhere (for the record, my own experience in an amateur kitchen, I’m inclined to agree that dull knives are more risky).
What we need here is factoids that sound right, very superficially, but are patently wrong just as soon as you’ve finished parsing them properly.
Nobody knows how the Ancient Egyptians got it up there in the first place.
It was the aliens who helped build the Pyramids. Duh.
A study has shown that people whose names start with a vowel are 37% less likely to become criminals than people whose name starts with a consonant.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
– Mark Twain
“Warm water freezes faster than cold water.”
This one is more of a double-bluff - it sounds so obviously wrong, that you immediately think, “Hey, it’s one of those quirky facts that sounds wrong but is actually true”. In fact it’s just wrong.
All men’s nipples are 9 inches apart.
If you don’t eat your breakfast you will be hungry all day long.
A kilo of stone is heavier than a kilo of feathers
There is no such thing as a pineapple tree.
If humans descended from the apes, why are there still apes?
I really think (and hope) it is a whoosh.
I actually did a lil experiment…an ice tray filled with hot water, and an ice tray filled with cold water. “Hot” and “cold” were tap-water temps…so neither was absurdly hot or absurdly cold…but the hot water ice tray did get a film of ice quicker than the cold one. I stopped paying attention after that because there was booze involved, and it needed ice.
Damn it!
Pineapples grow on short shrubby plants like this.
How about factoids that get cause and effect mixed up,
Taking antidepressants increases the chance of suicide…. (They are already depressed, so have a higher chance of suicide)
People who drink a lot break fewer limbs during skiing trips? (The more they drink the less they ski…)
A pound of gold weighs the same as a pound of feathers.