Ugh, lately I seem to be spending a lot of time posting Snopes links to Facebook because a lot of the urban legends are coming around again as “facts”.
Had to send this one twice recently:
NASA did NOT spend billions of dollars developing a space pen while the Russians just used pencils
A personal pet peeve of mine - Ben Franklin did not want the turkey to be the bird of the United States of America.
Someone told me this urban legend in the 70s. It was hard to validate claims like this back then:
“Japan renamed a town ‘Usa’ so that it could legitimately stamp its exports ‘Made in USA.’”
Snopes shows its False: Was a Town in Japan Renamed 'Usa' So Its Products Could Be Labeled 'Made in USA'? | Snopes.com
Philipppides didn’t run the 25ish miles from Marathon to Athens and expire immediately after announcing the Greek victory.
He’s actually supposed to have run 150 miles from Athens to Sparta in less than two days and then run back to Athens to inform the Athenians that the Spartans would not be providing troops in time to help them at the battle. Following the Athenian victory, their entire army had to travel from Marathon to Athens the same day to potentially battle part of the Persian force that was sailing from Marathon to Athens. I think the race would be a bit harder if the runners had to travel 6 times the distance or were weighed down with bronze armor and weapons.
[Jerry Seinfeld]If only he’d delivered the news to the town of Sprint, which was just 100 yards away, he might have lived.[/jerry seinfeld]
Similarly, McDonalds doesn’t buy from a company named “100% Beef” so they can use 80% sawdust or whatever. They really do use 100% beef.
The Internet was not originally designed to survive nuclear war.
Well, it was designed to survive extensive equipment outages, and nuclear war is certainly one plausible source of such (along with a variety of natural disasters, etc.).
The first few hundred years of Roman history
It was designed to be robust in the face of equipment failure rates we’d now consider excessive, because the equipment of the early Arpanet period generally wasn’t as reliable as what we have now. However, the “Communications in the event of nuclear war” project did exist, and it wasn’t anything that turned into the Internet; it was a RAND Corporation design based on hardened voice lines.
News to me. Wikipedia observes that:
This casts doubt on the story, but by no means disproves it.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…
Alice Cooper/Ozzy Osbourne/Marilyn Manson threw live puppies into the audience and declared the show would not continue until they were killed.
The answer to the instruction: “Please state your title and full name, Dr. Presume.”
Mama Cass did not choke to death.
Theodore Roosevelt did not lead the charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba. He in fact was part of the assault on Kettle Hill, a secondary objective. He did lead a small group to support the Buffalo Soldiers who had already taken the hill (and received almost no recognition for it), but was immediately called back to defend the Spanish counterattack on Kettle. He managed to get his photo taken at the top of San Juan Hill along with the Rough Riders outfit. To his credit, Roosevelt initially gave credit to the black soldiers, but the press and his campaign staff insisted that he was the hero of the battle, and eventually he accepted it as truth. He was awarded a posthumous MOH for this action by George Bush II, while the officer who led the charge and was killed during it received zip point shit.
The Mayflower Compact was not the seminal moment for democracy in England’s American colonies.
(In fact, the Virginia colonists had elected their first House of Burgesses in 1619, more than a year before the Mayflower left England.)
The attorney who defended Harvey Milk’s assassin did not argue that the assassin was made criminally insane by consuming twinkies. He argued that when a person who was normally deeply concerned with healthy eating and fitness changes his habits greatly, that change in behavior can be an indication of mental illness.
Cites: Myth of the 'Twinkie defense' / The verdict in the Dan White case wasn't based on his ingestion of junk food
The Twinkie Defense: Debunking the Myths and Misinformation | Snopes.com
There was one important precedent set by the Mayflower Compact - the signers were acting on their own. They had not been authorized to set up a local government by England.
The Virginia House of Burgesses was authorized by the Virginia Company, which was itself authorized to run the colony of Virginia. So the Virginians were essentially given their local government by England. The Plymouth colonists formed a government on their own authority, even though they recognized English supremacy over that government.
Good work, keep them coming.
Al Gore did not win an Oscar. It was Davis Guggenheim that won for An Inconvienent Truth.