Nine things taught as fact in classrooms, each one since taken apart by the evidence. The first is about this exact view.
The Great Wall runs for thousands of miles but is only about 20 feet wide, the width of a road. From low orbit, astronauts cannot pick it out unaided.
Imaging shows activity spread across virtually the whole brain over a normal day. There is no dormant nine-tenths waiting to be switched on.
Goldfish have been trained to run mazes and escape nets, then repeat the trick weeks later. Their recall is measured in months, not seconds.
Every bat species has working eyes. Fruit bats navigate largely by sight and smell, and the ones that echolocate use it on top of vision, not instead.
Chameleons change color mainly with mood, temperature and to signal rivals or mates. Matching the background is a side effect, not the point.
The hump is stored fat, not a canteen. It feeds the animal when food runs short, and a spent hump flops sideways until the camel eats again.
Not one horned Viking helmet has ever been excavated. The look was invented by a costume designer for an 1876 staging of Wagner's Ring cycle.
Lightning favors tall, sharp, conductive targets and keeps coming back to them. The Empire State Building takes roughly 25 strikes a year.
A 1995 review pooled 23 blinded trials covering more than 1,400 children and found sugar changed neither behavior nor thinking. The rush is the party.
Every one of these is short, vivid and fun to repeat. That is exactly what keeps a wrong fact circulating long after the science has moved on.