However. . .
There was a recent story about a woman who had spent three days trapped in quickmud. OK, there’s technically no such thing as ‘quickmud,’ but apparently it had completely immobilized her, and at least didn’t swallow her. It wasn’t disclosed how deep the mud was, at least that I could determine.
Some Darwin-Award candidates even seek out the “quicksand experience”:
Not sure what the difference is between quicksand and quickmud is. There’s dry quicksand but that is a different beast.
There was an explorer who was checking out some stream in Middle of Nowhere, Utah, and he wound up in quicksand. Due to a stream flowing directly over it, he was unable to get out. His head was above the water but, had no one noticed him, he’d probably have died a miserable death of exposure. Fortunately they were able to get him out.
A very popular myth is that every animal, insect, plant in Australia will kill or eat you should you leave your car outside a city. In fact, somewhat less than 83% will kill you.
Usually some dentist offers to X-ray bags of candy loot.
I wonder if there is a term for a Urban Legend that comes true after the UL is common? In other words, someone gets the idea from the UL.
Snopes agrees-
We searched for cases of children accidentally eating marijuana edibles that were slipped into the Halloween candy for every year since 2010, and while we found multiple warnings during this timeframe, we didn’t find a single case of a person purposefully giving children marijuana edibles in an attempt to harm them.
Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, said:
“Children are not at risk for contaminated treats … For one thing, edible marijuana products are very expensive and this would be a very expensive prank.”
“My research stretches back to 1958 … I have been unable to find any evidence that any child has been killed or seriously injured by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating.”
Whatever people continue to think, the third Monday in January has not been scientifically shown to be the “worst day of the year.”
Of course, even if some psychopath really were to adulterate Halloween candy, why would they do it in a way that’d show up on an X-ray? Poison would probably be a lot cheaper, per dose, than razor blades or needles or whatever.
Ostension.
This is the story I linked to in my reply to JAQ.
In that story, there is yet another link to an earlier quicksand incident on the same trail, but not at the same location.
It’s also not true that there is less crime on Mother’s Day.
Have we mentioned Turkey, tryptophan, and getting sleepy after Thanksgiving dinner? That’s a common myth.
Or more domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday.
Size isn’t everything.
Some homes only give out fun-size treats.
Here’s an old one. We believed for many years that Coca-Cola put a higher concentration of syrup and/or sugar in the 8-ounce bottles as compared to the 12-ounce bottles. Given a choice, the “enlightened and knowledgeable” people would smugly choose the smaller bottles, while assuring the rest of us stupid kids that they were getting at least as much Coke deliciousness for less $$$.
I can see how that may seem true even if you ignore the placebo effect. The first 8 ounces of any drink might be better than the last 4 of a 12 ouncer, because you are less satiated in the beginning and the soda is fresher. So once you’ve heard the rumor, I can see how it can have legs since you remember that per ounce the 8 ounce drink was tastier than the 12 ouncer, and it isn’t even a false memory.
Of course there are records and some of them are even permanent - the record of my HS graduation still exists , even if a record of the classes I took doesn’t. The part that’s a myth is that the record will follow you all through life and your future high schoool/college/employer will find out you got detention in second grade.
It’s often claimed the rotational direction of (draining) water in a toilet or sink is CCW in the northern hemisphere and CW in the southern hemisphere, due to the Coriolis effect. While the effect is real, it’s too weak to affect toilets & sinks; the force is still there, but it’s swamped by other forces. (However, if you performed a very carefully-controlled experiment, water will drain CCW in the northern hemisphere and CW in the southern hemisphere. MIT Professor Ascher Shapiro proved it in 1962.)
Yes, primate mouths are some of the nastiest in the animal kingdom, we’re barely better than gila monsters (unless that is also an urban myth that needs debunking).
I did encounter a big-ass spider in the stand of peaches at a Safeway, some sort of yellow orb weaver I think. I yelped, told the nearest person to “watch out for spiders in the fruit”, and left without my peaches.
I’m reminded of the Doper who said, a few years ago, that the reason oral sex is dirty is because “it puts a germ-laden, poorly-cleaned part of the body in contact with the genitals.”