things the masses of people seem to believe that aren't true.

[shortroundd]

I am not talking about conspiracies here that can't be proven with a bit of digging but more false stuff that seems to stick in the minds of the general population as truths.

1. All/majority of lotto winners go broke after 5 years. I have seen this touted out a lot yet there is no known source of it as no such research exists. There is the handful of bad stories that are circulated but this is only a minority out of 1000s of big winners worldwide. Infact, I recall the tabloids doing a feature with winners to celebrate Camelot's 20th anniversary or so and many winners had said their lives were better.

1. Marriage means all assets are split 50/50. Another huge misconception.

1. Prenups will protect 1 in divorce- again I think 2 and 3 come from people watching tv shows and movies that use this as factual when it's not.

1. Elvis sings 'Lonely this Christmas.'

1. The capital of Brazil is Rio.

That David Bowie had heterochromia, or his eyes were two different colours.

One of his pupils was permanently dilated after he was punched in the eye by a mate when they were fighting over a girl. Both eyes were blue - but the enlarged pupil created an illusion of that eye being darker. An understandable myth!

@FacebookPhotos

People did a fair bit of damage to their teeth with rough food, but tooth decay isn't super common because the standard diet wasn't very sugary. That all comes later.

That’s really interesting and makes a lot of sense. Can you recommend any good books for a complete novice to medieval history? It’s a time period I’d like to explore but keep procrastinating because I don’t know where to start.

(Sorry for going off topic.)

This would be an obvious place to start. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Traveller's_Guide_to_Medieval_England

Ooh which village?

@Sux2Buthen it’s a village called Watford Gap.

That you can't drive until 6 weeks after a c-section

It was my doctor who told me this one. Claimed it was an insurance thing. I asked my insurance company who laughed.

It is true on some policies. Perhaps not yours.

In my own case, it was 6 weeks on the policy or with a doctor's sign off. My doctor was happy to agree to it after 3 weeks.

I found the seatbelt did sit a bit awkwardly on the scar, so I didn't drive much until at least a month, then I was fine

I'm always surprised that people think their experiences are universal!

@OneTC

I don't think the average minimum wage cashier gives a hoot if the multimillion pound business makes a loss or not.

I've never seen a major supermarket refuse a card for any transaction or any value. This is something I've only ever seen in small shops

I really don't understand your point.

You CAN use a card for lottery.

You DON'T have to pay for your lottery separate to the rest of your stuff.

Small shop minimum card spend have to do with it? That's shop policy. Nothing to do with lottery.

*this is another myth, the 'people all died in their 40s and when you were 30 you were old - actually, if you made it to 40 you might well make it to 60 or 70, and people in their early twenties were not always considered full-fledged adults).

If you look at skulls in graveyard sites, you can see that while there are instances of tooth damage, many people had perfectly decent teeth. They knew to clean them, for starters*

ok which credible source are you getting this from?

Nothing bad ever happens to the wicked people, it only happens to good people and only the good die young. I've been at the funeral of a few people died young and its always said they didn't deserve that, why couldn't it happen to

[quote PotatoGoblins]@Leftbutcameback generally speaking they do…but things like teeth, hair, hard bits of bone like shoulder blades and kneecaps etc are usually too much effort for the average pig. Also because they tend to dig around in their food, a lot of the “mushier” parts of bodies like brain matter just end up churned into the dirt which is then pretty easy to find and determine that’s it’s human if the area were to be searched.
You could starve a pig for a few weeks, and it probably still would think kneecaps and shoulder blades are too much like hard work.[/quote]
I'm not sure you should speak for The Average Pig. Did you actually ask him about this, or are you just putting words (amongst other stuff) in his mouth?

@FacebookPhotos

People did a fair bit of damage to their teeth with rough food, but tooth decay isn't super common because the standard diet wasn't very sugary. That all comes later.

That’s really interesting and makes a lot of sense. Can you recommend any good books for a complete novice to medieval history? It’s a time period I’d like to explore but keep procrastinating because I don’t know where to start.

(Sorry for going off topic.)

Sorry, I can't but it sounds as if the Time Travellers Guide one is good.

@SickAndTiredAgain

Ooh which village?

@Sux2Buthen it’s a village called Watford Gap.

Sorry, an area called Watford gap. Near the village of Watford.

As above, in Scotland there is no common law marriage, or as it was known, marriage by cohabitation with habit and repute. It was an irregular from of marriage but very rarely successfully founded on and abolished wef 2004.

Yes I'd second "people died really young in the olden days, most people were dead by forty and almost nobody made it past sixty" as a widely held misconception. Mean life expectancies were heavily skewed by the number of people who died before the age of one. Once you'd made it to five you had a decent chance of making old bones, barring plague or famine.

@shortroundd

*this is another myth, the 'people all died in their 40s and when you were 30 you were old - actually, if you made it to 40 you might well make it to 60 or 70, and people in their early twenties were not always considered full-fledged adults).

If you look at skulls in graveyard sites, you can see that while there are instances of tooth damage, many people had perfectly decent teeth. They knew to clean them, for starters*

ok which credible source are you getting this from?

Um, I've looked at a lot of medieval skulls?

I could do proper digging around if you want, but at a quick google, there's a paper here examining teeth as an indicator of general health; since the sample includes people with no issues, plainly, not all medieval people had bad teeth. So that'll do you for a start.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3094918/

Or did you mean the other bit about life expectancy?

@ivykate44 the land was 50% gifted by Coventry Council and 50% Warwickshire. The Warwickshire bit is now part of West Midlands but it changes regularly between the two, depending on how well Birmingham is doing. The chose the name Warwick as Coventry didn't want it to be Warwickshire and vice versa.

Nothing bad ever happens to the wicked people, it only happens to good people and only the good die young

i would not say that's a commonly held belief by any means.

Yep it's said to be the Watford in Northamptonshire (specifically the Watford Gap). It amuses me that some people think the North of England begins in Hertfordshire.

All part timers doing the same hours get the same amount of time off, it's just if you have Mondays as a non working day you get to decide when more of your time off is than if you worked Mondays and had to have Bank Holidays off.

All part time HR peeps have Mondays off if they possibly can!

@PuppyMonkey

Is this going to turn into one of those threads where somebody says they always thought Skegness was in Scotland?

Probably. But the enlightened know that it's Skegvegas!

*Um, I've looked at a lot of medieval skulls?

I could do proper digging around if you want, but at a quick google, there's a paper here examining teeth as an indicator of general health; since the sample includes people with no issues, plainly, not all medieval people had bad teeth. So that'll do you for a start.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3094918/

Or did you mean the other bit about life expectancy*

see the problem is that is 1 paper and yes not 'all' but likely the majority. I am no expert but we are told fluoride was 1 of the best things in 20th century science as tooth decay globally declined, we are also told that teeth not washed will decay even on a very healthy diet.

Then you come in and say it was only when sugar came the teeth declined which goes against what we are taught. You use 1 paper to go against dozens of text book/internet sources. I am not saying you are all wrong by any means but I am saying there is such a drive to rewrite history the lines become very blurry.

The eight glasses a day thing - it's just random and not based on any scientific fact.

@WeWashEverythingExceptLaundry

That it's 'another thing coming'

I love you.

That there would ever be a situation where an obstetrician might make a choice between a mother and baby surviving childbirth. Or that the mum or the birthing partner might be asked to make that choice.

Nonsense.

Thanks CharacterForming and SarahAndQuack. Ian Mortimer is far from my fave history writer but I’ll give him another go on your recommendations 😁

@onedayoranother I think that's true about the 8hrs of sleep a night too. Some people can thrive on 5 or 6 hrs, others need 10. For me 8.5-9hrs is optimal but almost never happens 😂

People also don't seem to understand that if you use ANY of your mobile phone bill for personal use, NONE of it is actually claimable but if you can prove what was, it's usually given.

Not so. You can claim the portion of your mobile phone bill that is used for business use in your self assessment.