371 facts. An interesting read

[Dooey Jo]

"Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite "
Uh, no, there are not peanuts in dynamite. Who fuck comes up with shit like that

"No piece of paper can be folded more than 7 times"
Obviously incorrect.

"The are 255 squares on a Scrabble board"
Last time I checked, scrabble was played on a 15x15 board...

"The force of 1 billion people jumping at the same time is equal to 500 tons of TNT"
Force != energy.

"Mosquitoes have 47 teeth"
Mosquitoes don't have any teeth because they don't even have a fucking skeleton.

"It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open (DON'T try this at home!)"
I sneezed with my eyes open today. My eyes fell out
Also, why shouldn't we try it if it's impossible?

"The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger"
Certainly not my middle finger.

"A duck's quack does not echo and no one knows why"
That's just silly.


Did you know that most of the facts in these kinds of collections are false?

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

I wonder who actually makes these things. Or maybe, do they just come from random spam generators like the Post Modernism thing?

[Darth Servo]

"The are 255 squares on a Scrabble board"

Last time I checked, scrabble was played on a 15x15 board...

255 doesn't even have a rational square root.

[Beowulf]

"No piece of paper can be folded more than 7 times"
Obviously incorrect.

If it had said, in half 7 times, then it would be closer to correct. If you take a standard letter size sheet, you get to about fold 5 or 6 before it gets thick enough you can't fold it further. Of course, you can always got monstrously sized sheets *takes roll of paper from a book printer*

[Darth Garden Gnome]

Of course, you can always got monstrously sized sheets *takes roll of paper from a book printer*

Brainiac strikes again. They tried it and proved that no matter what size paper, and no matter how thick or thin, you can only fold it the same amount of times as normal paper.

[Darth Servo]

Of course, you can always got monstrously sized sheets *takes roll of paper from a book printer*

Brainiac strikes again. They tried it and proved that no matter what size paper, and no matter how thick or thin, you can only fold it the same amount of times as normal paper.

I just tried it with a standard 8 1/2 x 11 and the 7th time I folded it in half turned out to be nothing but wrinkling the paper.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Of course, you can always got monstrously sized sheets *takes roll of paper from a book printer*

Brainiac strikes again. They tried it and proved that no matter what size paper, and no matter how thick or thin, you can only fold it the same amount of times as normal paper.

Blah, Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope already proved it years ago.

[Darth Garden Gnome]

Blah, Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope already proved it years ago.

Buried somewhere in their archives, maybe, but this was information downloaded directly into my brain via TV.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Bah, when it was first printed in the newspaper, it was brand new.

[Adrian Laguna]

Of course, you can always got monstrously sized sheets *takes roll of paper from a book printer*

Brainiac strikes again. They tried it and proved that no matter what size paper, and no matter how thick or thin, you can only fold it the same amount of times as normal paper.

Blah, Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope already proved it years ago.

Also shown years* ago in Disney's Art Attack!. They got this huge piece of paper. My guess is 2x3 meters. Couldn't fold it in half more than 7 times.

*My guess is that I was around 8 or 9. So call it '96 or '97. Exept that I watched it in Spanish, so it is probaby older than that (takes time to tranlate those things).

[Braedley]

251. When someone annoys you, it takes 42 muscles to frown, but it only takes 4 muscles to extend your arm and whack them in the head

I just like this one.

[Pick]

The Scrabble one is merely a typo. They probably meant 225, not 255.

As for the peanuts=>dynamite one, I got this explanation: Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite. Peanuts to peanut oil, peanut oil to glycerol, glycerol to nitroglycerin, nitroglycerin to dynamite. This may be outdated, but it would not surprise me if it was true at one point.

Most of these are probably accurate, but who cares? It's not largely useful information anyway. It's more... pop-trivia bullshit that gets confused with actual applicable knowledge.

[Mr. T]

20. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance

[Straha]

20. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance

Not as far from untruth as the others. His mother was in a carriage when she went into labour with him, and I think he was born there as well.

[Frank Hipper]

On Winston Churchill, thank Huitzilopochtli for Snopes!

Winston Churchill's Birthroom...

[Dooey Jo]

Guys, I hope you were joking about that shit about not being able to fold any paper more than seven times, because I just folded a piece of newspaper eight times, and a piece of tissue paper eight times also. And there's no doubt that if that tissue hadn't been so damn small I could have folded it quite a few times more.

As for the peanuts=>dynamite one, I got this explanation: Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite. Peanuts to peanut oil, peanut oil to glycerol, glycerol to nitroglycerin, nitroglycerin to dynamite. This may be outdated, but it would not surprise me if it was true at one point.

I highly doubt that. Back in the days, the glycerol for the nitroglycerin mostly came from soap production (just like in Fight Club), which uses mostly animal fats. Though I wouldn't be surprised if the reasoning behind the "fact" actually was "dynamite => nitroglycerin => glycerol => fat/oil => peanut oil = oil => dynamite has peanuts in it"...

[Bounty]

Didn't mythbusters disprove this?

They did, and then I saw Brainiac put them to shame. Adam and Jamie spent all day trying to get this thing to work; they had a super sound room and computers and shit. You could never actually even hear the duck's echo, they just proved that it did happen with their computers.

On Brainiac they took a duck into a tunnel and you could hear it's echo very clearly.

Wait, people actually felt they had to waste time disproving the idea that a duck can somehow violate the laws of physics?

The show's subtitle is called "science abuse", one of their recurring "experiments" is seeing which things you can't do while being electrocuted and they used to end every episode by blowing up a caravan. The duck echo experiments was one of their more productive ones in comparison.

Suffice to say that just debunking this myth on paper is not part of their MO

[felineki]

I remember bringing up the "cats have five toes on each front paw, four toes on each back paw" thing here recently...

[Admiral Valdemar]

Also shown years* ago in Disney's Art Attack!. They got this huge piece of paper. My guess is 2x3 meters. Couldn't fold it in half more than 7 times.

*My guess is that I was around 8 or 9. So call it '96 or '97. Exept that I watched it in Spanish, so it is probaby older than that (takes time to tranlate those things).

Disney's? I bet their copy doesn't have Neil Buchanan as in the original show. Still, I always find Brainiac is funnier when they try disproving common misconceptions. The paper they had was about 20 metres by 5 metres, IIRC. And it was toilet roll too, so very thin. On the seventh fold, they were using an industrial motorised compactor to squash the paper as you would newly laid hardcore.

[Beowulf]

Guys, I hope you were joking about that shit about not being able to fold any paper more than seven times, because I just folded a piece of newspaper eight times, and a piece of tissue paper eight times also. And there's no doubt that if that tissue hadn't been so damn small I could have folded it quite a few times more.

It's not just folded. That's obviously false. The requirement is folded in half. Once you've got 7 folds into a standard sized sheet of paper, it's 128 layers thick. Most people can't fold something that's 128 pages thick, and .7 in x 1.1 in long and wide. It's literally almost as thick as it is wide.

[Dooey Jo]

It's not just folded. That's obviously false. The requirement is folded in half. Once you've got 7 folds into a standard sized sheet of paper, it's 128 layers thick. Most people can't fold something that's 128 pages thick, and .7 in x 1.1 in long and wide. It's literally almost as thick as it is wide.

I did fold them in half, and the claim was that no piece of paper could be folded [in half] more than seven times. If that can somehow mean that no A4-sized paper can be folded more than seven times, then it is still false since the tissue paper was even smaller than that. Or maybe they meant "it is impossible to fold a paper of a certain size, thickness and fibre density more than a certain number of times", but that's pretty far from what they wrote...

[CaptainChewbacca]

23. There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous

^This one is also wrong. Off the top of my head there's also "Hideous", "Previous", and "Tremulous".

[Admiral Valdemar]

^This one is also wrong. Off the top of my head there's also "Hideous", "Previous", and "Tremulous".

You'd have a point, if they actually ended with "-dous", which they don't.

I did fold them in half, and the claim was that no piece of paper could be folded [in half] more than seven times. If that can somehow mean that no A4-sized paper can be folded more than seven times, then it is still false since the tissue paper was even smaller than that. Or maybe they meant "it is impossible to fold a paper of a certain size, thickness and fibre density more than a certain number of times", but that's pretty far from what they wrote...

I'd sure like to see that, because I call bullshit until someone can show it me. It was clearly shown on Brainiac from smaller than A4 size paper to tissue paper the size of a hangar that you cannot fold more than 7 times. I just tried on an A4 sheet and a piece of double-ply bog roll, and neither would fold.

[DocHorror]

23. There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous

^This one is also wrong. Off the top of my head there's also "Hideous", "Previous", and "Tremulous".

Urrm, none of those words you mentioned end in '-dous'

[Pick]

This is a reasonably good reference for the validity some of them.