# Things you are shocked people don't know **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 19, 2016, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348 "2016-09-19T14:50:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2016, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/221 "2016-09-26T20:12:51Z")
I don’t know, ask the horse. 🙂 I would guess, if the horse has been trained to expect you to mount from the left side, it would get skittish if you tried it from the other side. I found one website that said you should do it from the opposite side every once in awhile but to try it slowly to see how the horse reacts. One should also not generally approach a horse from the rear. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2016, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/222 "2016-09-26T20:13:45Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > Some of us, to manage navigating, have to turn the map around at need, to match the direction of travel. Regarded with great contempt by the truly adept map-practitioners… This took some getting used to when I visited England, where, to be fair, there were an ample amount of tourist signs to help you find various landmarks. But they were all oriented with the sign reader’s forward view pointing upward. At every sign I tried to orient it by finding known landmarks, only to find that they were nowhere where I expected them! Which caused me to think that I simply had the scale wrong and not that it was oriented weirdly. To be fair, that kind of orientation would be more helpful given landmarks that are in line of sight, but after I start to walk down the street I’m not going to remember “go straight three blocks, then turn left on Grapecant Lane, then one block, then you’ll see it on the left” because my mind is trained to remember “go east three blocks, turn north on Grapecant Lane, then you’ll see the Old Abbey on the west.” (In addition to the fact that I actually had a compass on me at the time but no GPS maps.) ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2016, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/223 "2016-09-26T20:18:11Z")
> [@MsKaren](#): > > I’ve had 8th graders with no learning disabilities who didn’t know odds from evens; … I was surprised to find out that a good number of my 3rd/4th year Computer Science majors didn’t know that 0 was an even number. Remember, this is Computer Science. And the test for a binary integer being even is incredibly trivial. Once this prompted the following exchange between **FtGKid1** and me: “Is 0 an even number?” “Yes.” “Why?” “Because 1 is odd.” BTW: the kid was age 4 at the time. Yet I kept running into Computer Science majors who didn’t know this or could even figure out how to tell. ---
**Author:** ![Totenfeier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4bbf92/32.png) [@Totenfeier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Totenfeier)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2016, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/224 "2016-09-26T21:00:09Z")
Years and years ago, when I first taught American Literature, I gave the students a list of significant events in American history, in random order, and asked them to place them in chronological (note the “logical” part, there,) order. I have never dared do so again. Mind you, I watched them closely, and am certain they were not trying to hose me deliberately. They showed every evidence of, for want of a better term, concentration. I found out that, for significant numbers, the moon landing happened before the American Revolution. Television was invented before the Civil War. Vietnam occurred before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. World War II occurred long before World War I. George Washington could easily have been driven to his inauguration in an automobile. You really don’t want to know any more; I’m sure I don’t. I am not in the least bit kidding. ---
**Author:** ![Fir\_na\_tine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Fir\_na\_tine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fir_na_tine)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2016, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/225 "2016-09-26T21:47:10Z")
> [@Totenfeier](#): > > Years and years ago, when I first taught American Literature, I gave the students a list of significant events in American history, in random order, and asked them to place them in chronological (note the “logical” part, there,) order. I have never dared do so again. > > Mind you, I watched them closely, and am certain they were not trying to hose me deliberately. They showed every evidence of, for want of a better term, concentration. > > I found out that, for significant numbers, the moon landing happened before the American Revolution. > > Television was invented before the Civil War. > > Vietnam occurred before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. > > World War II occurred long before World War I. > > George Washington could easily have been driven to his inauguration in an automobile. > > You really don’t want to know any more; I’m sure I don’t. > > I am not in the least bit kidding. I suspect they were yanking your chain. For a group to be that stupid is very unlikely. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2016, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/226 "2016-09-26T21:48:01Z")
> [@Totenfeier](#): > > Years and years ago, when I first taught American Literature, I gave the students a list of significant events in American history, in random order, and asked them to place them in chronological (note the “logical” part, there,) order. I have never dared do so again. > > Mind you, I watched them closely, and am certain they were not trying to hose me deliberately. They showed every evidence of, for want of a better term, concentration. > > I found out that, for significant numbers, the moon landing happened before the American Revolution. > > Television was invented before the Civil War. > > Vietnam occurred before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. > > World War II occurred long before World War I. > > George Washington could easily have been driven to his inauguration in an automobile. > > You really don’t want to know any more; I’m sure I don’t. > > I am not in the least bit kidding. That reminds me of a South African lady I knew in Bangkok. She was shocked to learn how old Harvard was, because she honestly did not think American history extended more than 100 years in the past. Really. She did spend time in psychiatric wards, in Bangkok and elsewhere, and that’s no kidding. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/227 "2016-09-27T02:36:56Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > Some of us, to manage navigating, have to turn the map around at need, to match the direction of travel. Regarded with great contempt by the truly adept map-practitioners… > [@panache45](#): > > Not “contempt” at all, but surprise that some people need to do this. > [@Ludovic](#): > > This took some getting used to when I visited England, where, to be fair, there were an ample amount of tourist signs to help you find various landmarks. But they were all oriented with the sign reader’s forward view pointing upward. At every sign I tried to orient it by finding known landmarks, only to find that they were nowhere where I expected them! Which caused me to think that I simply had the scale wrong and not that it was oriented weirdly. To be fair, that kind of orientation would be more helpful given landmarks that are in line of sight, but after I start to walk down the street I’m not going to remember “go straight three blocks, then turn left on Grapecant Lane, then one block, then you’ll see it on the left” because my mind is trained to remember “go east three blocks, turn north on Grapecant Lane, then you’ll see the Old Abbey on the west.” (In addition to the fact that I actually had a compass on me at the time but no GPS maps.) Neither intuitively nor by training, do I have the ability – which it seems you guys do (anyway, if I correctly understand your post, **Ludovic** ) – to rapidly make the mental adjustment “north at the top” vis-a-vis what’s actually on the ground in front of me. If in a car, navigating for someone else, rapid reaction is often needed ! ---
**Author:** ![Shamozzle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shamozzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shamozzle)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/228 "2016-09-27T04:19:56Z")
I know a guy who thought all rivers flowed south. Because, you know, maps on walls and gravity. I also argued with him for a full minute over the date for Christmas. I’m firmly in the camp that it is the 25th of December. He was not. For an entire minute. Christmas. And he’s the Christian! My mother was simply astonished when I told her that when she looked up and saw a star in the sky, that light had traveled for tens of thousands or many millions of years across interstellar/galactic space all by its lonesome, nothing to do, only to get trapped in her retina and cause a chemical/electrical reaction that was then registered in her brain. I asked her, “Well, what did you \*think \*was happening?” She had no idea. She also thought she should be able to get the internet on her laptop simply by plugging the power supply into the wall because “that should be good enough”. She was surprised to learn that there was more to it than that. More in the WTF department: My father lives on a lake shore. Lake “X”. He, his girlfriend, and I drove north for \*three hours \*and then found ourselves on a rise of land from which we could see a small lake, perhaps a mile or two away. She asked, “Is that Lake ‘X’”?..Huhwaaa?!? People blow my mind sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Mona\_Lisa\_Simpson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ce7236/32.png) [@Mona\_Lisa\_Simpson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mona_Lisa_Simpson)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/229 "2016-09-27T04:45:41Z")
In nursing school I was in the same clinical group with a woman (age 18) who was told to give the patient an enema. She was supposed to wait for Mrs. A, our teacher but she was intimidated by the nurse and gave it to her patient. She came and told me that the liquid “all came back out”. It did not assist the patient to have a bowel movement. This woman, who by all appearnces was both toilet trained and had passed puberty gave the poor woman a vaginal enema! I tried to stick up for her, the nurse was really intimidating but this classmate did not plead nervousness. Her answer was “I’m Catholic we don’t know or talk about things like this.” I bet Mother Theresa knew her rectum from her vagina! By the next week this classmate had decided she was leaving college to go to hairdressing school instead. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/230 "2016-09-27T04:51:31Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > Some of us, to manage navigating, have to turn the map around at need, to match the direction of travel. Regarded with great contempt by the truly adept map-practitioners… The problem is when you get someone like that who then needs to straighten the map to read the signs. It probably counts as great arm exercise or something, mind you, but I get tired just watching it. ---
**Author:** ![stui\_magpie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stui_magpie/32/11010_2.png) [@stui\_magpie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stui_magpie)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/231 "2016-09-27T06:21:45Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > You don’t mow the yard in flip flops. I see this occasionally when I’m driving home. > > Two reasons. > > 1. No traction. You can easily fall. You better hope the safety kill switch stops the blade in time. > 2. No protection for your feet. Safety kill switch? On a lawn mower?😕 I mow the lawn all the time in thongs (flip flops) in summer, my mower doesn’t have any safety switch, the blades keep spinning unless you turn the motor off. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/232 "2016-09-27T06:41:23Z")
> [@stui\_magpie](#): > > Safety kill switch? On a lawn mower?😕 It’s a mandatory feature on mowers sold in the USA. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/233 "2016-09-27T10:02:09Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > It’s a mandatory feature on mowers sold in the USA. Perhaps he has an older one? I had a push mower once that had no safety bar, kill switch, etc… It just kept running until the throttle was turned all the way down. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/234 "2016-09-27T10:16:56Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > Perhaps he has an older one? He’s in Australia. Maybe it’s not required there. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/235 "2016-09-27T11:18:32Z")
Once, back in the '80s, we had a world map on the wall at work. One of my adult coworkers was amazed that the Soviet Union was larger than the U.S.; he thought we had the largest country in the world. Then he couldn’t believe that his neighborhood in Brooklyn was too small to see on the map. He couldn’t believe that all of NYC was just a small dot. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/236 "2016-09-27T12:50:22Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I grew up in West Texas and still did not know that until I was an adult. Do horses really care? What would happen if you tried mounting from the right? It varies somewhat by horse, but at the very least the change in routine is likely to make the horse skittish and nervous, which as a general rule is not a good thing in a horse you intend to ride. Some horses may pull away, or try to un-horse you (bucking or rearing) but that is a rare, even if possible response. It’s entirely convention, though - other than custom, there is no reason you can’t train a horse to be mounted from the right side and some people do make the effort for whatever reason. Once the horse is accustomed to the idea it won’t care. It’s a change in routine that upsets the horse. ---
**Author:** ![Cardigan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardigan/32/187_2.png) [@Cardigan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardigan)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/237 "2016-09-27T12:57:13Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Once, back in the '80s, we had a world map on the wall at work. One of my adult coworkers was amazed that the Soviet Union was larger than the U.S.; he thought we had the largest country in the world. Then he couldn’t believe that his neighborhood in Brooklyn was too small to see on the map. He couldn’t believe that all of NYC was just a small dot. How could that be? I’ve seen maps that prove otherwise… > **[1970s Map Reveals Worldview According to New Yorkers | 6sqft](https://www.6sqft.com/1970s-map-reveals-worldview-according-to-new-yorkers/)** > > This map from the 1970s depicts the world as seen by a stereotypical New Yorker. ---
**Author:** ![ZPG\_Zealot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47c2d/32.png) [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/238 "2016-09-27T13:13:23Z")
Another shocker from a student worker, a young man in his twenties (American and educated in the public school system) believed (until last night at least) that that a woman could only get pregnant if she was lactating. On the upside, he is not a biology major. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/239 "2016-09-27T13:40:30Z")
> [@ZPG\_Zealot](#): > > Another shocker from a student worker, a young man in his twenties (American and educated in the public school system) believed (until last night at least) that that a woman could only get pregnant if she was lactating. On the upside, he is not a biology major. Sounds like a garbled misunderstanding of the fact that it’s \*harder to get pregnant \*when lactating. ---
**Author:** ![Avarie537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/48db29/32.png) [@Avarie537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Avarie537)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2016, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348/240 "2016-09-27T13:49:01Z")
I work at a vet clinic in a low income area. No, your dog can not impregnate your cat (or vice versa). Yes, your male and female puppies from the same litter WILL breed and make babies. They don’t “know better.” Same with parent / offspring pairings. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-are-shocked-people-dont-know/766348.md?page=13)