She wasn’t a princess – she was the daughter of an earl. While she was married to Charles she was Diana, the Princess of Wales (or Princess Charles); after their divorce she was Diana, Princess of Wales. But she was never “Princess Diana”, just as the current Princess of Wales isn’t “Princess Catherine”. And she was never “a princess”.
Current princesses: Princess Charlotte of Wales, Princess Lilibet of Sussex, Princess Beatrice, Princess Eugenie, Princess Anne, Princess Alexandra of Kent, and Princess Michael of Kent.
At common law, a wife shares in the rank of her husband, so a prince’s wife is, actually, a princess (as seen on recent royal birth certificates where the mother’s occupation is listed as “princess of the United Kingdom,” or on Diana’s passport where she is called a “princess of the royal house”). This is especially so, I think, in the case of a Princess of Wales, whose rank is guaranteed as a privilege of peerage. Other princesses by marriage can probably be deprived of that status by the sovereign.
One of the strongest explanations is parental expectation. There was a study where children were given a placebo containing no sugar at all, but parents were told their kids had received a high dose. Those parents rated their children as significantly more hyperactive. The effect wasn’t in the children. It was the adults watching them.
Social reinforcement and confirmation bias add to the myth. When one parent says, “She’s on a sugar high,” other adults nod along and agree. You remember the times sugar preceded hyperactivity and forget the times it didn’t.
Is it not the UK monarch who gets to decide whether you can style yourself “Prince[ss] Firstname”? Or use the title “Princess” at all? Look what happened to Andrew.
She did get “Princess of Wales” upon her marriage to the Prince of Wales.
Only women born into the Royal Family (by right of blood) can formally style themselves “Princess” followed by their first name. Thry don’t need the approval of the Monarch.
But Right that Diana Spencer could only properly be styled Diana, Princess of Wales after her marriage to the prince of Wales.
I used to think that this condition was entirely iatrogenic. Then I met a guy with focal aware seizures. He could seize up to an hour at a time, and during that time, he behaved like a child-- had the competencies or a child, used the vocabulary of a child, and needed to be watched like a child. He didn’t think he was behaving any differently from usual, and his adult life was outside his frame of reference (or so it appeared); when he came out of them, he didn’t remember anything that had happened during them.
Fortunately, his wife got him to a doctor when the episodes got that long (when the two met, they were very infrequent, 5-minute episodes, and she just thought he was being cute). The doctor referred him to a neurologist, luckily. If they’d gone to a therapist or shrink first, or been referred to one, he might have been diagnosed with DID.
There was a time when “aware seizures” axiomatically did not exist. IIRC, they’ve been recognized only the last 25 years of so.
In Florida, there is a persistent myth that love bugs (whose only natural predator seems to be the front bumper of a car, where they’re effective at ruining the paint finish) are a failed experiment by the University of Florida. The myth is that they were supposed to mate with mosquitoes to make them sterile, but instead only mate with each other.
It’s not true, though. They aren’t Franken-bugs.
There’s another odd myth that, if you’re being chased by an alligator, you should run zig-zag. I don’t know where this derived, but I think it’s advice that every kid in this god forsaken state gets in school.
Gators don’t run very well or much after that lunge and the first couple of steps. They’re more like to say "F— it! " and wait for the next person walking their dog. Cuban crocs might be able to run a little better and longer, but you’re a lot less likely to come across one of those.
Here is another one, which I was reminded of in the rich people bunker thread.
The myth is duck and cover, fallout shelters, and other nuclear war prep would have all been worthless in the event of an actual attack. Truth is, that once outside of the initial blast radius, deaths are the result of direct exposure to the radiation of the explosion, or due to secondary effects such as flying debris, collapsing buildings, and such.
Anything you would do in a tornado, such as duck and cover, or go into a storm shelter will help avoiding injury due to debris. Things as simple as being behind a wall were enough to shield people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the immediately lethal radiation dose.
I’m not saying anything about long term survival of a full scale nuclear war, rather the possibility of surviving the initial attack. For immediate survival the classic responses were about as good as you could get on very short notice from an incoming ballistic missile or such.
People panic during emergencies, especially if they don’t have an active role to play.
If they’re given something to do, even if it’s pointless busywork, it keeps them from panicking and let’s them feel they have some control over the situation. That’s not entirely worthless
