Wikipedia actually has a decent list of demonstrations that glass does not flow. Among them: 1) if medieval glass has flowed, Roman glass should have flowed more, but this is not observed; 2) if medieval glass has flowed visibly in that time period, modern glass should flow a small amount, enough to be detected in the glass in precision optical instruments for example, but this is not observed; 3) (as you note) sometimes medieval windows are found with the thick edge on top.
I was always taught this too! I am so glad I know better now. Thanks SDMB.
This almost sounds like a real warning we were given in grade school when a major highway was being built nearby. We were shown a poster with pictures of various kinds of blasting caps and told not to ever pick one up if we found them on the ground. We were to report them to a responsible adult.
Sounds like a plan!
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Tell young boys that there are explosive devices lying around, so they should never touch them and certainly not do anything very cool with the explosives and toilets or see saws.
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???
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Safety!
You may have solved my mystery. For 33 years I have wondered where that memory comes from. Thank you!
Did it used to rain blasting caps or something? I saw both a film and film strip on the topic when I was in grade school. I remember seeing posters about it at school and in public buildings like post offices and police stations. I believe I even saw PSA’s about it on local TV. I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, btw.
Yet the only blasting caps I’ve ever seen in real life were the ones the I used as a combat engineer during my olive drab period. No doubt, at least partially as a result of all that childhood indoctrination, I handled them with the utmost care and respect. Managed to come out with all my fingers and eyes still in original condition.
We do not.
We had a fire safety seminar in grade school where a fireman not only told us that hairspray was flammable, but demonstrated this fact. Every-single-boy went home and tried this amazing blow torch effect that night
Some do. It depends where we’re from/what accent we have. For example I don’t (RP), but my mother-in-law does (Lancashire).
True so far as it goes. It’s not however true to say without qualification that “Brits say Tor-toyse” any more than it is to say “Americans say y’all”.
Allow me to amend. I have heard some Brits doing that.
I’ll buy that. But I’ve probably heard “pacific” for “specific” more often than I’ve heard “tortoyse”. 
One of my favourite Pawn Stars moments is Rick telling off Corey for perpetuating the “glass is a liquid” myth when discussing an old lamp (IIRC).
I have been grossly misinformed on what it takes to be a successful pawn broker.
Certainly, and I was just about to challenge it when I saw that you already had! But it’s equally untrue just to say “no we don’t”, when some of us do.
At any rate, the teacher in my little anecdote was as Texan as Ann Richards (in fact she resembled former Governor Richards both physically and in the degree of her Texas twang).
Reminds me of the time I scammed a pawn shop by telling them that old foot locker contained a rare Higgs Boson.
Suckers.
On that last point…
I was in grade school in 1979 when I read that Pluto was entering into a closer orbit than Neptune. Not only that, but it was going to stay that way for twenty years. This was huge! Until some far-off, practically sci-fi date in 1999, teachers were going to have to teach kids a completely different mnemonic to remember the order of planets!
Except no one would believe me. The fact that a bunch of 5th-graders wouldn’t take my word over the teacher’s is one thing, but not a single teacher would believe it either! Uh huh…because when going for scientific truths, it’s always better to go with a Catholic school teacher over a fresh copy of Scientific American.
Texan here of both far West and Southeast and I have to say that is an astounding drawl. I have heard em too, kinda amazing. Were you in Texas or was she a transplant?
Capt
The short answer is that training takes less time with a musket, and fatigue doesn’t slow down a Musketeer as much.
The phrase used with regards to the longbow was: “If you want to train a longbowman, start with the grandfather”. You needed strength, years of training, and archers on full rations for a longbowman to be effective.
A crossbowman needs much less training, but still a substantial amount. The crossbowman does need decent rations as the reloading is an effort. The reloading was still slow, and in fact most crossbowman worked in pairs, one loading, one firing.
Musketeers needed minimal training. You could train a decent one in an afternoon. Muskets (or calivers, or arquebuses) use resources like gunpowder, but a half-starved Musketeer fires not much worse than a fully fed one. While Musketeers can work in pairs, they get more firepower if they all load and fire.
There’s also the fact that musket balls have more stopping power. They kill by crushing the opponent’s bones and internal organs. Crossbow bolts and arrows kill by bleeding you out, and that takes time. Hollywood likes to imply that a hit with an arrow is an instant kill if it hits anywhere in the chest, but that really isn’t the case. The enemy will probably eventually die, but he can still do damage while he is bleeding out. By comparison, a soldier even hit (solidly) in a limb with a musket ball is pretty much incapacitated.