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This list of common or popular misconceptions details various ideas described by multiple reliable sources as widely held, but which are false, misleading or otherwise flawed.

History

The Americas

• Christopher Columbus's efforts to obtain support for his voyages were not hampered by a European belief in a flat Earth. In fact, sailors and navigators of the time knew that the Earth was spherical, but (correctly) disagreed with Columbus' estimates of the distance to India (see Flat Earth). If the Americas did not exist, and Columbus had continued to India (even putting aside the threat of mutiny he was under), he would have run out of supplies before reaching it at the rate he was traveling. The intellectual class had known that the earth was spherical since Ancient Greece.
• George Washington did not have wooden teeth. According to a study of Washington's four known dentures performed by a forensic anthropologist from the University of Pittsburgh (in collaboration with the National Museum of Dentistry, itself associated with the Smithsonian Museum), the dentures were made of gold, hippopotamus ivory, lead, human and animal teeth (including horse and donkey teeth).
• The Pilgrims did not dress only in black, nor did they have buckles on their hats or shoes.
• U.S. president William Henry Harrison did give a three-hour inauguration speech on March 4, 1841, with his jacket off during a wintry day, but he did not catch pneumonia or a cold that day. The pneumonia-like symptoms that eventually killed him April 4 began March 26, three weeks after his speech.

Cooking

• Searing meat does not "seal in" moisture, and in fact may actually cause meat to lose moisture. Rather, meat is seared to create a brown crust and to add a rich flavor via the Maillard reaction.
• Mussels that do not open when cooked can still be fully cooked and safe to eat.
• Some cooks believe alcohol evaporates quickly when heated. However, it takes 3 hours or longer to dissipate or 'burn off' all the alcohol.
• It is a common misconception that Sushi is raw fish. In fact, the proper Japanese term for that would be sashimi. The term "sushi" actually refers to the way the rice is prepared with a vinegared dressing. Toppings for the rice may traditionally include raw fish but also cooked seafood or vegetarian toppings.

Science

Astronomy

• It is commonly claimed that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from the Moon. This is false. None of the Apollo astronauts reported seeing any man-made object from the Moon. The misconception is believed to have been popularized by Richard Halliburton decades before the first moon landing. (See Great Wall's visibility from space.)
• Black holes, unlike the common image, do not act as cosmic vacuum cleaners any more than do other stars. When a star evolves into a black hole, the gravitational attraction at a given distance from the body is no greater than it was for the star. That is to say, were the Sun to be replaced by a black hole of the same mass, the Earth would continue in the same orbit. Due to a black hole's formation being explosive in nature, the object would lose a certain amount of its energy in the process, which—according to the mass–energy equivalence—means that a black-hole would be of lower mass than the parent object, and actually have a weaker gravitational pull.
• When a meteor lands on Earth (after which it is termed a meteorite), it is not usually hot. In fact, many are found with frost on them. A meteor's great speed during reentry is enough to melt or vaporize its outermost layer, but any molten material will be quickly blown off (ablated), and the interior of the meteor does not have time to heat up because rocks are poor conductors of heat. Also, atmospheric drag can slow small meteors to terminal velocity by the time they hit the ground, giving the surface time to cool down.
• Seasons are not caused by Earth being closer to the sun in summer than in winter, as is claimed, for example, here. Rather, they are caused by Earth's tilted axis. In July, during Northern Hemisphere summer, Earth actually reaches its furthest distance from the sun, but the northern part of the planet is tilted towards the sun, giving longer days and more direct sunlight; in winter, it is tilted away. The seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere, which is tilted towards the sun in January and away from the sun in July (note that if distance from the sun dictated the seasons, it would be impossible for them to differ by region in this way). The tropics do not have substantial seasonal variation in sunlight.
• The North Star, Polaris, is not the brightest star in the northern hemisphere night sky, as is sometimes supposed. The brightest star is Sirius, with an apparent magnitude of −1.47; Polaris in comparison is 1.97, barely making the top-50 brightest stars list (a lower number indicates a brighter star). Its importance lies in its proximity to the north celestial pole, meaning its location in the sky currently marks North.
• It is a common misconception that it's easier to balance an egg on its end on the first day of spring. In fact, the ease or difficulty of balancing an egg is the same 365 days a year. This myth is said to originate with the "egg of Li Chun", an ancient Chinese folk belief that it is easier to balance an egg on Li Chun, the first day of spring in the Chinese lunar calendar. It was introduced to the western world in a Life article in 1945, and popularized once again by self-titled 'urban shaman' Donna Henes, who has hosted an annual egg balancing ceremony in New York City since the mid-1970s.

Health

• Different tastes can be detected on all parts of the tongue by taste buds, with slightly increased sensitivities in different locations depending on the person, contrary to the popular belief that specific tastes only correspond to specific mapped sites on the tongue. The original "tongue map" was based on a mistranslation by a Harvard psychologist of a discredited German paper that was written in 1901.
• People do not use only ten percent of their brains. This myth is thought by some to have emerged after the discovery of glial cells in the brain, or it could have been the result of some other misunderstood or misinterpreted legitimate scientific findings, or even been the result of speculation by self-help gurus.
• There is no single theory that satisfactorily explains myopia—in particular, studies show that "eyestrain" from close reading and computer games does not explain myopia. There is also no evidence that reading in dim light or sitting close to a television causes vision to deteriorate.
• Hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after a person dies. Rather, the skin dries and shrinks away from the bases of hairs and nails, giving the appearance of growth.
• Snapping or cracking one's knuckles does not cause arthritis.
• A disproportionate amount of heat is not lost through the head. This myth originated from a poorly undertaken military study that went on to suggest that "40 to 45 percent of body heat" was lost through the head. Recent studies have shown that heat loss from the head is completely proportionate.
• Eating at night is not associated with weight gain. Some studies have shown this to be true, however it has since been shown that such conclusions were due to a confusion between correlation and causation.
• Prolonged exposure to cold weather such as rain or winter conditions does not increase the likelihood of catching a cold. Although common colds are seasonal, with more occurring during winter, experiments so far have failed to produce evidence that short-term exposure to cold weather or direct chilling increases susceptibility to infection, implying that the seasonal variation is instead due to a change in behaviors such as increased time spent indoors close to others.

Biology

• The claim that a duck's quack does not echo is false, although the echo may be difficult to hear for humans under some circumstances.
• The notion that goldfish have a memory of only three seconds is completely false. They have been trained to navigate mazes and can recognize their owners after an exposure of a few months.
• Lemmings do not engage in suicidal dives off cliffs when migrating. They will, however, occasionally, and unintentionally fall off cliffs when venturing into unknown territory, with no knowledge of the boundaries of the environment. The misconception is due largely to the Disney film White Wilderness, which shot many of the migration scenes (also staged by using multiple shots of different groups of lemmings) on a large, snow-covered turntable in a studio. Photographers later pushed the lemmings off a cliff.
• Some bats use echolocation to navigate while flying in darkness. Bats are not blind, however. Their eyes are small and poorly developed, but they are still capable of sight, particularly long-range, and in fact can be severely disoriented by excessive light.
• Chameleons do not change color to match their surroundings. They are naturally camouflaged and, although they can change their skin color into a variety of different colors, these changes are caused by temperature or interaction with predators or other Chameleons. Anole lizards commonly known sold as "Anole Chameleons" do change color for camouflage.
• According to urban myth, the Daddy Long-Legs Spider (Pholcus phalangioides) is the most venomous spider in the world, but it is harmless to humans because its fangs cannot penetrate human skin. This is false as Pholcus phalangioides can pierce human skin, however, the toxicity of this spider's venom has just a weak effect on insects, let alone humans. It is likely this myth arose because some pholcidae actually prey upon and eat other spiders, including the black widow spider. In addition, there is also confusion regarding the use of the name Daddy Long Legs, because Harvestmen (order Opiliones, which are not spiders) and crane flies (which are insects) are also commonly referred to as Daddy Long Legs.

Physics

• The Coriolis effect does not determine the direction that water rotates in a bathtub drain or a flushing toilet. The Coriolis force is relatively small; it appears over large scales (like weather systems) or in systems such as the Foucault pendulum in which the small influence is allowed to accumulate over time. In a bathtub or toilet, the flow of the water over the basin itself produces forces that dwarf the Coriolis force. In addition, most toilets inject water into the bowl at an angle, causing a spin too fast to be affected by the Coriolis effect.
• Gyroscopic forces are not required for a rider to balance a bicycle. However, the stability of a bicycle is improved by gyroscopic forces as well as by its geometry and the rider's ability to counteract tilting by steering.

• It is not true that air takes the same time to travel above and below an aircraft's wing. This misconception, illustrated at right, is widespread among textbooks and non-technical reference books, and even appears in pilot training materials. Further information: Equal transit-time fallacy, List of works with the equal transit-time fallacy, and Lift (force)
• Some textbooks state that electricity within wires flows at nearly (or even exactly) the speed of light, which can give the impression that electrons themselves move almost instantly through a circuit. The electrons in a typical wire actually move at a drift velocity on the order of centimeters per hour (much slower than a snail). The random thermal motions of the electrons are much faster than this, but still much slower than light, and with no tendency to occur in any particular direction. It is the electrical signal that travels almost at the speed of light. The information that a light switch has been turned on propagates to the bulb very quickly, but the charge carriers move slowly. Further information: Speed of electricity
• The blue color of lakes and oceans is not only a reflection of the blue sky. Water looks blue because water is blue; the water molecules do absorb some light, and they absorb red frequencies more than blue. The effect is small, so the blue color only becomes obvious when observing layers of water many meters (or more) thick. (This effect is noticeable to a lesser amount in white-painted swimming pools.) In salt water or mineral-laden fresh water, the color of dissolved minerals can also be seen. Sky-reflection does play a role, but it is not the only factor.
• It is commonly believed that airplanes flying long distances between two places usually take less time flying west-to-east than east-to-west because of the earth's rotation. This is false. The difference is accounted for by jet streams, which usually flow in and eastward direction.
• Some believe that the sky looks blue because it reflects the color of the ocean. The sky actually looks blue because the color of air varies with the viewing angle to the illumination source. Sunlight reflected (scattered) from the air is of shorter wavelengths toward the violet end of the visible spectrum, while the remaining transmitted sunlight has longer wavelengths of the red end of the spectrum. In fact, the sun appears reddish in the evening because the transmitted sunlight has lost much of its blue wavelengths because of scattering, leaving only the long wavelength red light to reach the observer. This phenomenon is referred to as Rayleigh Scattering.
• Astronauts in orbiting spacecraft are not in a location where there is zero gravity in an objective sense. They accelerate along with the spacecraft. The principle of equivalence shows that accelerating free-fall environment is exactly the same in every respect as zero-gravity. NASA refers to near free-fall conditions with low G-force acceleration as microgravity. Earth's gravitational effects are very strong at the low orbit altitudes used by the space shuttle, where the acceleration due to gravity is about 85% of what it is at Earth's surface. Gravity falls off rapidly as one leaves the Earth's surface, but one can never completely escape the gravitational pull even at vast distances, though the effect will become negligible. A free-fall situation is sometimes called "simulated zero-gravity", and can be experienced in any near-freefall situation, including extremely fast elevators and skydiving. Astronauts ride inside free-falling airplanes for training (see Vomit Comet).
• While the Earth's north magnetic pole is near the geographic north pole, it is in physics terms a south magnetic pole. By accepted convention, a compass needle is a magnet whose north-seeking end is termed the "north" end of the magnet. Therefore, because magnetic poles are attracted to their opposites, the compass needle points to the magnetic south pole of the Earth's magnetic field. The Arctic pole is a south-type pole, while the Antarctic pole is a north-type pole. The poles have undergone geomagnetic reversal in the past, the last being the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal of 780,000 years ago. Earth also has a more complicated magnetic field than one might get from a simple dipole. The earth has a strong overall dipole which is superposed on a weaker quadrupole, as well as higher-order magnetic moments. Not only have the magnetic poles moved to opposite geographic poles in the past, but they also drift around more or less randomly, presumably because of the movements of the molten nickel-iron alloy in the Earth's core.
• Introductory science courses often teach that the period of a pendulum is independent of its amplitude (this is called isochronism), and students often mistakenly believe that is precisely true. It is only approximately true and only for small amplitudes, (see small angle approximation), for which a pendulum approximates simple harmonic motion
• It is not true that a nozzle (or a person's thumb) on the end of a garden hose makes the water squirt farther because the same amount of water gets forced through a smaller opening. The rate of flow of water through the hose is not a set constant; in fact, putting one's thumb over the end of the hose reduces the rate of flow. What is constant is the water pressure at the source. When water is flowing, the pressure decreases the farther from the source one gets due to friction between the water and the pipes it's flowing through. The faster the water moves through the pipe, the greater is the friction that cuts down pressure at the output end. A thumb over the end of the hose decreases the flow rate, causing the friction from the source to decrease, causing the remaining water to have more speed.
• Putting a teaspoon in the neck of an opened bottle of champagne will not help it retain its fizz. The misconception may arise from the fact that few people have two bottles of champagne open and unfinished at the same time to perform an accurate comparison. and likely suffer from subjective validation bias.
• It is not true that paper can be folded in half a maximum of seven, eight, ten, or indeed any selected number of times. It is true, however, that there is a loss function associated with each fold, and thus there is such a practical limit for a normal sized (letter or A4) sheet of writing paper. (A football field-sized sheet of paper was folded in half eleven times on episode 72 of Mythbusters.)

• Several incorrect explanations have been circulated for what causes a Crookes radiometer (pictured) to turn. The earliest incorrect explanation – that its motion is caused by radiation pressure – was posited by its inventor, Sir William Crookes. A common subsequent explanation, still offered by references such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, is that its motion is caused by expansion of gas near the black side of the vanes, due to its absorbing more radiation and passing on that heat to gas molecules that strike it. This explanation only explains a part of the force exerted on the radiometer. A fuller explanation includes the effect of thermal creep – the tendency of a gas to flow from hot to cold areas (in this case, around the edges of the vanes).
• Surface area does not have much influence on the frictional force between two surfaces. Although friction is not an exact science, a good approximation in many circumstances is that the frictional force between two surfaces sliding past each other depends on two factors: the coefficient of friction and the normal force between the surfaces. A common misconception is that increasing the width of a vehicle's tires will decrease the breaking distance.
• Glass is not a high-viscosity liquid at room temperature: it is an amorphous solid, although it does have some chemical properties normally associated with liquids. Panes of stained glass windows often have thicker glass at the bottom than at the top, and this has been cited as an example of the slow flow of glass over centuries. However, this unevenness is due to the window manufacturing processes used in earlier eras, which produced glass panes that were unevenly thick at the time of their installation. It is not uncommon to find old windows that are thicker at the sides or the top.

Evolution

• Biological evolution does not address the origin of life; for that, see abiogenesis. The two are commonly and mistakenly conflated. Evolution describes the changes in gene frequencies that occur in populations of living organisms over time, and thus, presupposes that life already exists. Evolution likewise says nothing about cosmology, the Big Bang, or the origins of the universe, galaxy, solar system, or Earth, although the term 'evolution' in the sense of a slow unfolding is used to describe such processes, e.g. Stellar Evolution, Cosmic Evolution.

Earth science

• Claims that the number and intensity of earthquakes are increasing are unfounded. The number and intensity of earthquakes vary from year to year but there is no increasing trend.

Linguistics

• The Inuit do not have a large number of words for snow. In fact, English has many unrelated root words for snow, such as: snow, sleet, powder, flurry, drift, avalanche and blizzard. Each Eskimo-Aleut language has a similar number of unrelated root words. Since these languages are polysynthetic, arbitrarily complex thoughts such as "snow with a herring-scale pattern etched into it by rainfall" can be expressed in a single long word each, but this feature of the language is by no means restricted to snow.

Psychology

• The word "schizophrenia" has been commonly and erroneously used as a synonym for dissociative identity disorder.

Religion

• Albert Einstein was neither religious (in the traditional sense) nor an atheist. He did not believe in God in a "personal" sense and discounted the existence of a creator; rather, he was a rationalistic pantheist and follower of Baruch Spinoza. Many people misinterpreted his words in public, to which Einstein himself responded by saying: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." (See also: Einstein quotes)
• The phrase "separation of church and state" does not occur in the U.S. Constitution. It was first used in a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut, reassuring them that religious minorities (such as Baptists) would be protected under the Bill of Rights. His expression "wall of separation between church and state" was a description of an intended effect of the First Amendment's Establishment and Free Exercise provisions, not a quotation therefrom.

Judaism and Christianity

• Nowhere in the Bible is the fruit eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden referred to as an apple. The fruit is called the "fruit of the tree" (that is, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), and neither the fruit nor the tree is identified by species. In Middle English, as late as the 17th century "apple" was a generic term for all fruit other than berries but including nuts. However, in continental European art from that period representing the Fall of Man the fruit is often depicted as an apple.
• The term Immaculate Conception does not refer to Jesus's conception by the Virgin Mary (see Virgin Birth of Jesus), but rather to the Roman Catholic teaching that Mary herself was conceived without the stain of Original Sin. (See also Blessed Virgin Mary.)
• Nowhere in the Bible is Mary Magdalene ever referred to as a prostitute. Before her seeing the risen Jesus, the only other mention besides the listing of her name is the mentioning in Luke 8:2 that she had been possessed by seven demons. In fact there are several sinful women mentioned in the gospels, one of whom is "caught in adultery". Pope Gregory conflated this woman with Mary Magdalene in one of his sermons and thus propagated this idea.
• The canon of the New Testament was not selected by Constantine at the First Council of Nicaea. Constantine did not personally have a vote on the council, and the canon had been settled mainly by common consent among the clergy from the early second century. Furthermore, the council did not consider the matter of canon in its proceedings. (See Development of the New Testament canon.)
• Nowhere in the Bible does it say exactly three wise men came from afar on camels to visit "Baby Jesus" It was assumed that there were three Biblical Magi because three gifts are described.
• The Gospel accounts of Jesus' birth say nothing about an inn-keeper or even an inn. The Greek word for an inn is pandocheion, while the word used to describe where Jesus was supposedly born is kataluma, which is better translated as "guestroom".

Hinduism

• Hinduism is not one distinct religion, but was considered to be so since at least AD 1323, as attested by South Indian and Kashmiri texts, and increasingly so during the British rule. Since the end of the 18th century the word has been used as an umbrella term for most of the religious, spiritual, and philosophical traditions of the sub-continent, excluding the distinct religions of Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism and Islam. Despite this, many traditions considered "Hindu" today draw their validity from core texts called the Vedas, though in various degrees; some traditions assert that their own texts supersede the Vedas. The traditions that reject the Vedas are considered nastika (heterodox), as opposed to astika (orthodox). Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma are now seen as trinity; that is, highest in the order of Hindu Gods (See Astika and Nastika). Nastika is often translated as "atheist", though it does not exactly correspond to the English word.

Technology

Inventions

• Johannes Gutenberg was not the first to invent the printing press or movable type; these were in use in China centuries before. Gutenberg was the first European to use movable type, and he probably invented it independently; the printing press did have a larger influence on Western than on Eastern culture.
• Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet.
• Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb. He did, however, refine the internal gases and filaments, making a bulb last longer.
• Henry Ford did not invent the automobile or the internal combustion engine. He added conveyor belts to the assembly line for automobile production, and used it to bring the cost of automobiles into reach of many more people.
• George Washington Carver did not invent peanut butter, although he developed many other uses for peanuts. Other individuals of Carver's era had patents for peanut butter.
• It is commonly believed that Neutron bombs are nuclear weapons whose blasts exclusively affect living tissue. This is not true. There is still some heat and blast energy but at only a fraction of the intensity of a conventional thermonuclear warhead.

Computing

• ENIAC, (1946), was not the first digital computer; rather, it was the first general-purpose all-electronic computer. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) (1942), was the first digital electronic binary computer. The partly-electromechanical Z3 (1941), was also among the earliest digital and general-purpose computers. The first Colossus computer (1943), but was not general-purpose, being designed only for particular applications.
• The clock rate of a CPU is not a good measure of its performance. Computer performance is affected by many things, especially the design of the CPU's instruction pipelines, branch prediction, memory subsystem, and caches; the number of cores; and the ability of software to take advantage of a given CPU architecture's features. This is known as the megahertz myth, and was largely driven by marketing considerations.

Gaming

• Pong was not the first video game. In fact, OXO, created in 1952, was one of the first electronic games to use a graphical display, utilizing a cathode ray tube on the EDSAC computer. There are also patent records for an earlier game using a CRT, but no existing physical records of it. The first commercially sold coin-operated video game, Computer Space, was created in 1971 by the future founders of Atari. Fearing that Computer Space had not been popular because of its complexity, Nolan Bushnell and Allan Alcorn created Pong in 1972 after Bushnell had seen a similar game at a trade show.

Transportation

• The ship Mary Celeste was not called Marie Celeste. Arthur Conan Doyle used the Marie Celeste spelling in his fictional story J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement, based on the incident.
• The first heavier-than-air craft was not flown by the Wright brothers. Human-flown gliders and kites had been flown far earlier. The Wright brothers did fly the first heavier-than-air craft capable of controlled and sustained powered flight. There is even some evidence to show Clément Ader was the first to fly a heavier-than-air craft capable of controlled and sustained powered flight in 1890.
• Charles Lindbergh was not the first man to fly the Atlantic Ocean, although he was the first to have flown across it solo. The first flight had been done first in stages between May 8 and May 31, 1919, by the crew of the Navy-Curtiss NC-4 flying boat which took 24 days to complete its journey. The first truly non-stop transatlantic flight was made in 1919 by John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown in a modified Vickers Vimy bomber.
• The United States Interstate Highway System was not designed with airplane landings in mind. A common urban legend states that one out of every five (or ten) miles of highway must be straight and flat to allow emergency (or military) airplane landings, but this is not the case. However, several parts of the German and later the Swiss Autobahn system were indeed designed to be auxiliary military airports, both during World War II and the Cold War.

• The German Autobahn was not designed by Adolf Hitler or the Third Reich cabinet. It came into design 20 years before Hitler's reign, and was first implemented a year before he came to power.
• The Black box, used for aviation accident investigation, is actually bright orange.
• Toilet waste is not dumped overboard in aircraft. All waste is collected in tanks which are emptied on the ground by special toilet waste vehicles. A vacuum is used to allow the toilet to be flushed with less water and because plumbing cannot rely on gravity alone in an aircraft in motion.

See also

• Conventional wisdom
• Counter-intuitive
• Drug urban legends
• Factoid
• List of cognitive biases
• List of fallacies
• List of memory biases
• List of misquotations
• List of topics related to public relations and propaganda
• Misnomer
• Old wives' tale
• Pseudodoxia Epidemica
• Urban legend
• QI
• Straight and Crooked Thinking

References

1. For compendiums of common misconceptions, see Karl Kruszelnicki, Great Mythconceptions: The Science Behind the Myths (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2006); Ferris Johnsen, The Encyclopedia of Popular Misconceptions: The Ultimat Debunker's Guide to Widely Accepted Fallacies (Carol Pub. Group, 1994).
2. The Myth of the Flat Earth
3. Dicks, D.R. (1970). Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle. p. 68. ISBN 9780801405617.
4. MSNBC- Washington's False Teeth Not Wooden
5. Top 10 Myths about Thanksgiving
6. Does searing meat really seal in moisture?
7. McGee, Harold (2004). On Food and Cooking (Revised Edition). Scribner. ISBN 0-684-80001-2. Page 161, "The Searing Question".
8. Mussel myth an open and shut case
9. Does alcohol burn off in cooking?
10. The complete idiot's guide to Asian cooking by Annie Wong, Jeffrey Yarbrough; Alpha Books, 2002; ISBN 0028643844, 9780028643847.
11. How to Do Everything: Everything You Should Know How to Do Rosemarie Jarski; Published by Globe Pequot, 2007; ISBN 1599212218, 9781599212210.
13. The Family Memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley (Durham: Surtees Society, 1882-1887) Vol. 3, p. 142.
14. Great Walls of Liar, Snopes.com. Retrieved 2 January 2008.
15. Wolfson, Richard (2002). Simply Einstein: relativity demystified. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 261. ISBN 0393051544.
16. Misner, Charles W (1973). Gravitation. ISBN 978-0716703440. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
17. Plait, Philip (2002). Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax". John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-40976-6.
18. http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/seasons.html
19. http://ksnn.larc.nasa.gov/k2/s_seasons.html
21. http://gothamist.com/2007/10/31/donna_henes_urb.php
22. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2181377
23. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/mar/20/you-can-balance-an-egg-on-its-end-today-and-any/
24. Can You Balance Eggs on End During the Spring Equinox
25. Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions
26. Huang A. L., et al. ""The cells and logic for mammalian sour taste detection""., Nature, 442. 934 - 938 (2006).
27. Beyond the Tongue Map
28. Hänig, D.P., 1901. Zur Psychophysik des Geschmackssinnes. Philosophische Studien, 17: 576-623.
29. Snopes on brains
30. Vision myths
31. Graham-Brown, Robin (2007). Lecture Notes on Dermatology. Blackwell. p. 6. ISBN 1-4051-3977-3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
32. Prevention Health Books, Outsmart arthritis: expert-endorsed remedies for short-term relief and lifetime control (Macmillan, 2003), 15.
33. "Festive Medical Myths". Vreeman RC, Carroll AE. British Medical Journal 2008;337:a2769.
34. US Army Survival Manual: FM 21-76: US Department of the Army, 1970:148.
35. "Festive Medical Myths". Vreeman RC, Carroll AE. British Medical Journal 2008;337:a2769.
36. Zuger, Abigail 'You'll Catch Your Death!' An Old Wives' Tale? Well . . . The New York Times (March 4, 2003). Retrieved on 12-17-08.
37. "Common Cold". National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. 2006-11-27. Retrieved 2007-06-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
38. Dowling HF, Jackson GG, Spiesman IG, Inouye T (1958). "Transmission of the common cold to volunteers under controlled conditions. III. The effect of chilling of the subjects upon susceptibility". American journal of hygiene. 68 (1): 59–65. PMID 13559211.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
39. Eccles R (2002). "Acute cooling of the body surface and the common cold". Rhinology. 40 (3): 109–14. PMID 12357708.
40. Douglas, R.G.Jr, K.M. Lindgren, and R.B. Couch (1968). "Exposure to cold environment and rhinovirus common cold. Failure to demonstrate effect". New Engl. J. Med. 279.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
41. Douglas RC, Couch RB, Lindgren KM (1967). "Cold doesn't affect the "common cold" in study of rhinovirus infections". JAMA. 199 (7): 29–30. doi:10.1001/jama.199.7.29. PMID 4289651.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
42. Mythbusters Does a Duck's Quack Echo? (Season 1, Episode 8)
43. University of Salford Acoustics
44. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/19/2166204.htm
45. www.livenews.com.au: SA Schoolboy Explodes Fish Memory Myth
46. nootropics.com: Goldfish Pass Memory Test
47. Snopes - Lemmings
48. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x64745
51. http://www.ccmr.cornell.edu/education/ask/index.html?quid=912
52. http://spiders.ucr.edu/daddylonglegs.html
53. "Spider Myths - If it could only bite".
54. "UCR Entomology Spiders - Daddy Long Legs".
55. "Which way will my bathtub drain". Usenet Physics FAQ. Retrieved 2008-08-07.
56. Whitt, Frank R. (1982). Bicycling Science (Second edition ed.). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. pp. 198–233. ISBN 0-262-23111-5. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
57. Klein, Richard E. "Bicycle Science". Retrieved 2006-08-04. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
58. Jones, David E. H. (1970). "The stability of the bicycle" (PDF). Physics Today. 23 (4): 34–40. Retrieved 2006-08-04.
59. Incorrect Lift Theory
60. http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/miscon/eleca.html
61. hyperphysics
62. "What is the colour of water?".
63. National Weather Service on jet streams
64. Philip Plait, Bad Astronomy
65. Epstein, L.C. Thinking Physics. San Francisco: Insight Press. ISBN 0-935218-06-8
66. Jefford, Andrew. "Bubble and Chic". Retrieved 2008-07-18.
67. O'Hare, Mick (22 January 2008). How to Fossilize Your Hamster: And Other Amazing Experiments for the Armchair Scientist. Holt Rinehart and Winston. p. 256. ISBN 0805087702. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
68. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/LightMill/light-mill.html
69. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/489199/radiometer#ref76722
70. ^ http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0402011
71. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997APS..PC...J206K
72. http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/CrookesRadiometerAComedyOfErrors/
73. http://books.google.com/books?id=1AsFdUxOwu8C&pg=RA1-PA511
74. http://books.google.com/books?id=Nc0rAAAAYAAJ&dq=crookes+radiometer+%22radiation+pressure&q=radiometer+%22radiation+pressure%22&pgis=1#search_anchor
75. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/science/29glass.html
76. http://www.glassnotes.com/WindowPanes.html
77. Earthquakes on the increase
78. Eight Charts which Prove That Chandler's Wobble Causes Earthquakes, Volcanism, El Nino, and Global Warming
79. Exponential Increase in Earthquakes Continues to Escalate
80. USGS Earthquakes Hazards Program: Earthquakes Facts and Statistics
81. USGS Earthquakes Hazards Program: Number of Earthquakes per Year, Magnitude 7.0 or Greater
82. Pullum, Geoffrey K. (4 January 2007). "The snow words myth: Progress at last". Language Log.
83. Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists
84. Apple at the Online Etymology Dictionary
85. Luke 8
86. Snopes: 3 Wise Men
87. David Lorenzen, Who Invented Hinduism? New Delhi 2006, pp. 24-33; Rajatarangini of Yonaraja
88. Klostermaier, Klaus K. (1989). A Survey of Hinduism. SUNY Press. pp. p. 47. ISBN 0887068073. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
89. "Thomas Crapper". Snopes. 2007-02-22. Retrieved 2008-12-13.
90. Robert, Friedel. Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. pp. 115–117. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
91. "Automobile History - Invention of the Automobile". The Great Idea Finder. 2005. Retrieved 2008-12-13. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
92. Ideafinder - Assembly Line
93. Honeywell v. Sperry-Rand
94. Jack Copeland, Colossus and the Dawning of the Computer Age, in Smith, Michael (2002). Action This Day. Bantam. ISBN 0593049829. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |nopp= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
95. Warford, J. Stanley (2005). Computer Systems. Jones & Bartlett. p. 647. ISBN 0763732397. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |nopp= and |coauthors= (help)
96. http://www.forbes.com/global/1999/1227/061_01.html
97. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/08/BU137328.DTL
98. Video Games: In The Beginning. New Jersey: Rolenta Press. 2005. p. 81. ISBN 0-9643848-1-7. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
99. "The Wright Brothers & The Invention of the Aerial Age". Smithsonian Institution.
100. Link to web site about Clément Ader
101. Landing of Hope and Glory, snopes.com, retrieved 2007-12-30
102. Weingroff, Richard F. (May/June 2000). "ONE MILE IN FIVE: Debunking the Myth". Federal Highway Administration. Retrieved 2006-06-29. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
103. Autobahn-Flugplätze (NLP-Str), lostplaces.de, retrieved 2008-12-16
104. "German Myth 8 — Hitler & the Autobahn". German About.com.
105. How Stuff works. "How does the toilet in a commercial airliner work?". Retrieved 2008-06-27.
106. Philips, Matt. "On World Toilet Day, Let Us Praise the Airline Lav". Retrieved 2009-04-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |Work= ignored (|work= suggested) (help)

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