In school I learned that during WWII, the King of Denmark wore a yellow star, in protest of Danish Jews being forced to wear the yellow star. I only recently learned this was a myth. This made me a little sad, I liked that story. Apparently Danish Jews weren’t forced to wear the Star of David in the first place, although their lives were certainly in peril, and King Christian took other opportunities to tell the Nazis to shove it, so that’s all good.
That electrial wires are multi stranded because the electricity flows on the surface, and so lots of thin wires carry more than one thick wire.
I’ve mentioned it here before…
During the Civil War, the battle of the ironclads took place in Hampton Roads between the Monitor and the Merrimac.
The USS Merrimac was a ship that was burned by Union troops to prevent it’s inevitable capture by Confederate forces. The ship burned to the water-line. Confederate forces captured it, rebuilt and plated it, and named it the CSS Virginia.
Worse yet, this teaching took place in Hampton VA. The waters in which the battle took place was within sight of my father’s office.
Even worse yet, a bridge-tunnel was built across the James River (oddly, NOT the bridge closest to the battle) and it was originally to be named the James River Bridge-Tunnel. Shortly before opening, it was re-named the Monitor Merrimac Bridge Tunnel.
Would you believe the officials responsible for naming the facility knew the correct names of the ships, yet named it improperly anyway!
I thought that was true. 
One of my teachers complained that she got a raise and her take home pay went down because it put her in a higher tax bracket. My father, an accountant, was really pissed when he heard that and went on to describe marginal tax rate in great detail. I also had a teache who claime that no acid could eat through glass. I asked him why flouric acid was kept in beeswax bottles.
It’s been years since I saw it, but I believe Roots agrees with you: Kunte Kinte was captured first by African slavers, who later sold him to the white men (IIRC).
Regarding the Columbus myth, I always have to point out that while he may not have been the first European to come here, his voyage was still the event that led to a permanent presence of European-descended people, and thence to the founding of virtually all the nation states in the New World. St. Brendan may have been to America in the 7th century, and Leif Erikson came in 1000, but those voyages ultimately amounted to nothing, and diminished almost to the point of myth.
I had an anthropology teacher in my senior year of high school who was something like that. What’s weird about it, however, is that he was actually a very good teacher and the class was almost like a college level course. But with certain words or names he just couldn’t or wouldn’t pronounce all the syllables. So the macaque monkey became a “macque monkey”.
I remember feeling the same way about my 10th grade chemistry teacher. He said more things wrong than right - the only one I remember now was that he changed Democritus’s name to “Democrates.” Made me wonder if he’d even read the textbook.
That red is the hottest colour.
That Hitler would have gone on to kill Asians if he ever managed to finish with the Jews.
That “artist” isn’t a real job (the teacher said all artists actually had office jobs and just drew in their spare time)
Nothing too scandalous. Maybe we live in enlightened times.
If anyone happens to be interested in more information about this (heh) there is quite a lengthy description of it here: Coanda Effect
And the reason isn’t angle of attack, though it’s important.
Pertaining to the topic…hmm
Ah, who am I kidding, I don’t remember anything of what I was taught…I tend to block that out 
I went to a Church of England primary school. So the myth I was taught was that whole “God” thing.
Of course, that’s always up for debate.
The whole thing about how haemoglobin is blue, and turns red when it comes into contact with oxygen, so you bleed red, and veins going to the heart are blue, while aorta coming from the heart are red, because they have picked up oxygen along the way.
Actually, now I write that, I’m confused. Is that the real explanation or the myth? Somebody help me out here!
We were told in 7th grade, by Sister Patricia Marie no less, that you could become pregnant if you held hands with a boy.
My then-best friend - the youngest of 15 - and I eyed each other and she said,
" I don’t think that’s how it works."
I learned not to trust my grammar-school science teachers, who obviously had no idea what they were talking about:
1.) Robins have red breasts because their blood shows through their skin
2.) You get malaria from mosquitos laying their eggs in youer blood
3.) Airplanes don’t flu because of Bernoulli’s Principle, or any highfalutin’ “angle of attack” stuff. They float on a cushion of air.
Even at the time I knew better than that. I learned to just ignore them.
In addition, they tried to tell us tha George Washington threw a dollar across the Potomac. we knew that it wouldn’t really get very far, unless you folded it into a paper airplane!
I’ve heard of this myth a few times, but never been taught it. Why would George Washington want to throw a dollar across the Potomac in the first place?
That the Pilgrims were a gentle, wrongly persecuted people who, upon landing at Plymouth Rock, set up a society that would become the modern USA. Oh, and they were freinds with the Native Americans.
Turns out that they were a dour, cold group of cultists who would be barely tolerated in today’s society. They did not celebrate Christmas, they stole from the Indians, and the first thanksgiving occured years earlier at Jamestown. I have since always considered Jamestown as the start of the USA.
I was taught about the experiment involving industrial melanism and the peppered moth - “evolution in action” - numerous times in high school and university (!) biology.
taran writes:
See here, at the end of the second paragraph:
What we wanted to know was how he could throw a piece of paper across the river that had his picture on it.
Cowgirl writes:
My understanding is that the jury was still out on that. In fact, here’s a scarily complete page on it:
http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Peppered_moth
The author of the most recent book on the topic, who has raised the moths himself, wholeheartedly supports the “evolution” interpretation:
Just out of curiosity, what do you mean by this? By all accounts it doesn’t appear that it is wrong:
Cite:
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/Moths/moths.html
Now, I realize there are cites out there that disagree, and all of them appear to be religious-orientated sites, so they are obviously biased and likely lying. If you can provide a reliable cite in contrary, I might be more inclined to believe your statement. (If I am reading the statement right anyhow)
Gah, beat me to it!