Covers a wide variety of topics, including “glass is a liquid” , “oil and pasta”, etc.
In the Central Park jogger case, the youths who were first arrested for that crime and other crimes in the park were singing the song “Wild Thing” in their cells. Someone who overheard thought they were saying “Wilding” and that became the label the press gave to the incident. They said a bunch of youths out wilding had attacked the jogger. They were later exonerated.
This seems a bit misleading.
Firstly, to my understanding, the revisionist claim was that the youths told police that they were “doing the wild thing” based on the song, not that they were overheard singing it in their cells. Regardless, this is not significant either way, since by all accounts they were in fact attacking people in the park that night which is what the “wilding” lingo referred to, and they were not “exonerated” of that charge. (To the contrary, their claim of innocence in the rape case was based in part on the defense claim that they were attacking other people elsewhere in the park at the time the jogger was being raped.)
In addition, it’s not at all clear that they were “exonerated” even of the rape charge. Certainly the main perpetrator turned out to be someone else, but it’s not completely clear whether these defendants were also involved or not.
Exonerated in the legal sense. I’m agnostic as to whether they actually assaulted her but they had their convictions vacated and NYC paid them 40 million dollars.
Well, hell, there goes the joke, “If Mama Cass had just shared her sandwich with Karen Carpenter, they’d both be alive.”
Japan has called itself Nihon/Nippon for over 1,000 years (possibly earlier than the 7th century CE) but much of the western world calls it “Japan”. In the 1500s, Portuguese traders encountered Malay-speaking people in Southeast Asia who called the nation Japun or Japung which was itself a variant on the name spoken in some southern Chinese dialects.
Much of the confusion comes from the written language shared between China and Japan where characters represent ideas rather than sounds, so that what is written in Japanese would have the same meaning but different pronunciation in China.
Mary was a virgin in the ‘modern’ sense of not previously having sex. Does that count?
https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/people/related-articles/was-there-really-a-virgin-birth-in-the-bible
That the 9/11 terrorists came into the US through Canada? I still hear that repeated from time to time.
National Lampoon’s collection of objectionable bumper stickers:
“I brake for Jayne Mansfield’s head”
That Robert Atkins, “inventor” of the Atkins Diet died from a massive heart attack due to his diet. He actually died from complications after slipping on ice and hitting his head on the sidewalk.
Bijou Drains beat you to it. Post #10.
It has been erroneously believed that the name kangaroo means “I don’t understand you,” which supposedly was the response from one of the Australian Guugu Yimithirr people when Captain James Cook asked him what the animal was called. Actually, the response, “gangurru,” was their name for the animal, specifically the grey kangaroo.
So is that then an erroneous report after a supposed erroneous naming that wasn’t erroneous at all?
(I think the kangaroo thing is more an example of an apocryphal legend or misunderstood joke than what the OP was looking for.)
There are several other words like this. The french word Bistro is derived from the Russian word for quickly. Apparently Russian soldiers during the occupation of Paris would visit the cafe and call for their meals to be served quickly so they would not get in trouble for eating and the cafe owners thought it meant food.
Cortes said Yucatan was named when a spaniard asked what a place was called and the indian replied “I don’t understand you” which was pronounced like Yucatan.
Abidjan, Ivory Coast was supposedly named when an explorer asked a native the name of the village and the man misunderstood and replied I was cutting leaves, which became the name.
Mansfield wasn’t decapitated, but she was scalped and suffered a cranial avulsion. Not a decapitation, but more than just a scalping.
Movie myth I see repeated everywhere (including this very forum)
That John Wayne and the rest of the cast of the 1956 film “The Conqueror” died of cancer from all the nuclear tests done in the Utah desert nearby (including how apparently radioactive sand was trucked in during reshoots in California)
The origin of this myth comes from a speculative article in the 1979 magazine “The Star” which had absolutely nothing to back-up their claims. The next year People magazine did a somewhat more in-depth article where they tracked down the remaining cast and crew and reported on their cancer rates claiming the crew suffered from vastly higher rates of cancer than the normal population.
However actual research done since then has shown that the cancer rates of the main cast and crew of “The Conqueror” falls almost perfectly in-line with the average rate of cancer at the time, especially when you consider John Wayne himself was much more likely done-in by his multiple pack of cigarettes a day habit then any background radiation from four months of filming.
Nine months after the blackout of 1965 that affected much of the east coast, there were reports that there was an upward spike in births. Supposedly people having no tv decided to have sex. I believe it is still speculated every time something like that happens but if there is an upward spike, it is one of those random things
Pretty sure that was based on the death of film producer Don Simpson. Paulie even says something like “died on the john, just like Don what’s-his-name, the producer of The Simpsons.”
Odd how this parallels the death of another diet faddist, Dr. Arnold Ehret, some 80 years earlier. Ehret walked onto an oil slick on a wet street, slipped, and hit his head on the pavement. Basal skull fracture, said the coroner. Just like with Atkins, people spread rumors that Ehret’s fad diets were to blame.
That La-La Land won the Best Picture Oscar?
Warren Beatty will never hear the end of that one.