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.

This is all a problem with overtraining, surely?

👍 Basically yes

I see people in my sport frequently train to exhaustion, to the point they physically can't do another rep, or another lap but have fully bought into the idea that because it's exercise it must be good for you

@sashh

What do defibrillators do?

They defibrillate.

The most common type of cardiac arrest (not a heart attack) is caused by the ventricles fibrillating, it has been described as looking like worms inn a sack. There is electrical activity but is is not synchronised.

The defibrillator temporarily stuns the electrical activity in the heart and effectively resets it.

Flatline isn't really a thing, but the closest thing to it is asystole, where the heart has no electrical activity.

The reason VF is an 'arrest' is because, although the heart is moving' there is no blood output.

You can also used a defib i atrial fibrillation but that's done as a pre booked procedure, not an emergency.

I’ve had a cardioversion using a defibrillator to reset my heart rhythm after my atrial fibrillation kicked off very badly (probably as a result of otherwise asymptomatic Covid) after being well controlled for ten years. It worked marvellously, was done as a day case and was non-invasive. Brilliant.

That we only use a certain (always rather low) percentage of our brain and the rest is a mystery. Often touted when trying to explain supernatural/psychic abilities etc.

Actually our brains are entirely mapped out and we know exactly what part does what, and it's at capacity.

@OneTC

This is all a problem with overtraining, surely?

👍 Basically yes

I see people in my sport frequently train to exhaustion, to the point they physically can't do another rep, or another lap but have fully bought into the idea that because it's exercise it must be good for you

I remember asking my fitness nut friends why, despite being at the gym doing weights and cardio every day, I was losing my muscle tone and seemed to be permanently sniffling and unwell. They told me in no uncertain terms to spend a week resting and eating loads of protein, and to reduce the weights to two or three times a week.

I'd always assumed that you needed to be Mo Farah to have to worry about overtraining. I learned the hard way that anyone can do it if they don't rest enough.

@Lockdownbear

I read somewhere that our modern unit measure of "feet"changed at some point. So 5 foot 6" of today is not the same as 5ft 6" of Napoleon's time. I've never researched that though so might be another myth

That might make some sense.
Even now the average man's foot is only 10.5 inches. At some point a "foot" would have been the size as a man's foot.
A yard is roughly a man's stride.
A hand as in horse measurement is 4" the width of a man's hand.

I think the British Imperial units of measure were standardised in 1824.

That we are all brought up to believe the moo moo cows, oink oink pigs and cluck cluck chickens we eat live happy and content in green grassy fields...

@Dutchesss

That the spots on a ladybird count how old they are.

Oh I wish this were true!

That someone needs to be missing for 24 hours before reported missing.
I'm a cop and worked in the missing person unit, we got an urgent response call as someone's wife was reporting her husband missing and had found a suicide note. She had WAITED 24 HOURS to report because she genuinely believed we wouldn't dispatch if not. He was found dead. Madness.

I’m always surprised by how many MNers think employers still provide highly detailed, personalised references and would have no qualms about slating you to future employers if you took the piss with long lunches in your notice period. The reality is you’ll be lucky to get ‘I can confirm Joe Bloggs was employed in the position of Turd Polisher from January 2019 to January 2022’ from most firms.

The Royal Family are ‘a bunch of Germans’. Of course they have a lot of German heritage, but it’s so simplistic. For a start, the Queen and Prince William both have British mothers, so our current and future monarch are both at least half-British. Prince Charles has Greek and Danish heritage from his father. Also, it implies that the Hanoverians were just some random Germans given the British crown on a whim - like Sophia of Hanover was some old dear having a walk in the park one afternoon who was suddenly asked if she fancied heading an empire and had to quickly run into Ye Olde Lidl to see if they had any cheap crowns in the middle aisle. Rather than being, you know, the granddaughter of a king.

Similarly, I’m amazed at how many people think the Norman Conquest completely severed any link with the Saxons. I remember being laughed at and told ‘You clearly don’t know much about history’ on one forum because I said The Queen was descended from Alfred the Great. I thought anyone with even basic knowledge would know that William the Conqueror and his son deliberately married into the Saxon royal family.

‘The proof is in the pudding’. No no NO!!! It’s ‘The proof of the pudding is in the eating’!

@squashedalmondcroissant

That food handlers/workers should wear gloves because it's more hygienic. Wrong, it's actually the opposite!

That dogs are can't see colour (they can).

I was surprised to see someone handling a very old manuscript without gloves and she said the same, they washed their hands very frequently rather than wearing gloves which gathered the dust.

@PollyPepper

That someone needs to be missing for 24 hours before reported missing. I'm a cop and worked in the missing person unit, we got an urgent response call as someone's wife was reporting her husband missing and had found a suicide note. She had WAITED 24 HOURS to report because she genuinely believed we wouldn't dispatch if not. He was found dead. Madness.

Oh my God! That's awful

@Magicandspiders

You can catch a cold by being cold.... Out your jumper or you'll catch a cold. Drives me insane!

It's like saying you'll catch covid if you take your Jumper off. Nah!

That witches were burned in England.

Scotland, sure, but in England the penalty was hanging. If we want to split hairs you might be burned for treason or heresy for doing witchcraft but it wasn’t the actual witchcraft penalty.

I thought you could drink alcohol but tha doing so reduces the efficacy of the drug

As @OneTC said, metronidazole inhibits the second step of metabolism of alcohol. Alcohol is converted to acetaldehyde by alcohol dehydrogenase, which is then converted to acetic acid by aldehyde dehydrogenase. A side-effect of metronidazole is inhibition of aldehyde dehydrogenase, so if you drink alcohol you get an accumulation of acetaldehyde, which makes you feel unwell.

This action of metronidazole is the same as the action of disulfiram (Antabuse), which used to be used to try to stop alcoholics from drinking. (It is still used occasionally, but there are less barbaric approaches available for many alcoholics.)

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

That witches were burned in England.

Scotland, sure, but in England the penalty was hanging. If we want to split hairs you might be burned for treason or heresy for doing witchcraft but it wasn’t the actual witchcraft penalty.

Well, witches weren't really burned anywhere.

@BelieveInPeople

That pineapples grow on trees. I blame Black Lace for this one.

That there are spaghetti trees, Panorama in the late 50s really got people fooled with that one.

@HeavyHeidi

That if you just started going to the gym and put on weight, it's because 'muscle weighs more than fat'.

While what people really mean has been discussed above, this is still probably incorrect. Even if you are a man and actually go to the gym to build muscle and lift as heavy as possible, you can expect to gain a pound or 2 per month. If you have been to a couple of easy aerobics or yoga classes and put on 5 pounds in a week, it's not muscle growth.

Yes, the fastest possible human muscle growth (weight-wise) is miiiiles slower than even a fairly gently weight loss regime. So it's more likely to look like 'You've lost a miniscule amount less weight than you thought you would, due to muscle growth'

That 'money is the root of all evil.

The quote is actually 'for the love of money is the root of all evil'. A very different thing!

All that glisters.

That you can't tell jokes in German because the language structure is so inflexible. It's actually much more flexible than English.

On Autobahn stretches where ther's no speed limit, an 'orientation' speed (130 km/h) still applies and if you are involved in an accident going faster than that (certainly if significantly faster) you are very likely to be apportioned a larger share of any criminal or civil blame. So it's absolutely not a free-for-all to drive at bonkers speeds. My dh will occasionally do very short bursts at 180-200 km/h but only if the road is empty (or as good as) and all other conditions permit. But 130-160 is a lot more typical (and what most other drivers seem to do). Plus, as PP said, there are a lot of stretches limited to 120 or 130.

@ravenmum

That you can't tell jokes in German because the language structure is so inflexible. It's actually much more flexible than English.

What? I never heard this. Sounds like a slightly xenophobic joke itself!

@ravenmum

That you can't tell jokes in German because the language structure is so inflexible. It's actually much more flexible than English.

Yes!

Re German speed limits... Ironically, the only speeding ticket I've ever received was in Germany, for driving at 40 km/h (25 mph) in a 30 km/h (19 mph) zone.