Things We Were Told and Taught Which Are Wrong Did you ever think maybe many of the things we have been told and learned are wrong? There are some people who think this way. They have an entire list of things they don’t believe that range from the simplest to the complex. Let’s start with something which is universally told to all of us, and that is how the universe was formed. We are told there was an explosion known as the Big Bang which spewed out material from a super atom and is responsible for the expansion of the universe. Before I get into that, I would like to add what Einstein told us which was nothing could travel faster than light. Yet the universe when it was exploding had to be going faster than light to reach where it went. Getting back to the Big Bang how can it be caused by an explosion when the universe is relatively flat and an explosion is not uniform? So, either the Big Bang theory is wrong, Einstein was wrong, or both are wrong. How many times were we told Vincent Van Gogh the artist went insane and decided to cut off his ear? I have heard this all my life, now it is being said this is not true. He did lose an ear, that part is true but it seems it was not by self-mutilation. It is being said he got into a fight or duel with Paul Gauguin another artist, and Gauguin cut it off with a sword. So many times, things which have been told us for years, decades and even centuries are incorrect. Could these things be told to us incorrectly on purpose for reasons we may yet not understand? History is full of untruths. This is not meant to insult anyone, but when we are discussing who discovered America, it certainly was not Columbus. Not only is this information wrong, but the information used to correct this is wrong. It claims the Vikings discovered America. The truth is ancient man was the first here and there are some objects which seem to point to Chinese, Romans and many other races coming here before Columbus including the Vikings. Some even believe the ancient Polynesians came here. Think about this, the Native Americans had to come from somewhere and Columbus didn’t set foot on North America. History might be one of the places where more false facts were given to us over the longest period of time. Taking into account relatively recent history we find most texts tell us Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Quite frankly I am tired of seeing this because there were several people who had light bulbs before him. It might be better to say he improved it. He wasn’t shy about taking credit for things he didn’t actually invent either. In 1860 a scientist in Great Britain named Joseph Wilson Swan had a bulb that worked. In 1880 he decided to patent it. We are told there were 13 original colonies and our flag reflects this but there really were only 12 because Delaware was never a separate colony, it was part of Pennsylvania. Have you been told you shouldn’t pick up a baby bird to put back in its nest, because the mother will reject it? If you see a baby bird who fell out and you can reach the nest, put it back. It is not true the mother will reject the bird. Napoleon Bonaparte has been given a bum rap about his height. He was not only not short, he was taller than average for his time. How many times have you seen Vikings depicted with horns on their helmets. I hate to break this to you, but they didn’t do that. Did they have a reputation for being quite vicious and this is probably where the legend came from? If George Washington had wooden teeth as we have been told, I am sure he would have eventually had a mouth full of splinters. He had a few different dentures and they were made from ivory, gold and unfortunately for him lead. Can you imagine how deadly it would be to wear lead teeth every day. I guess since he had so many pairs of teeth, he probably chose the ivory ones most of the time for that natural look. Many of us think Charles Lindbergh was the first man to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was the first to do it solo, but there were over 80 to do it before him. In 1919 two British Pilots flew a British bomber across the Atlantic Ocean. A German Zeppelin Airship had done it with full crews before Lindbergh. The Zeppelin was war reparations from Germany and that is why it was flown to America. I can understand why people thought chameleons change color to protect themselves. It seems obvious, but sometimes the obvious is not correct and it isn’t in the case of the chameleon. When they are mating, they change colors to attract a mate. Another reason for the color change is when they change from a light color to a dark one to absorb more heat. When I was a kid, I had one. You used to be able to buy them at the Barnum and Bailey Circus. I brought it home and it escaped into our apartment and it took us two weeks to find it. I don’t know if it took so long because it was blending into its surroundings. or it just found a good hiding place. It always made me wonder what it ate during that time. Sometimes something we were told was true at the time it was told to us, but things changed. An example of this was being told the hardest substance was a diamond. That is no longer true thanks to scientific advancements. There are a couple of things harder than diamonds and one is lonsdaleite which is 68% harder. We were told the codes guarding the US nuclear arsenal were unbreakable years ago. A white hat hacker went to a hotel room armed with nothing more than an Apple computer and in a couple of days broke the codes. This was in the past, but we have said this again even though we know this is probably not true and even if it is now, which I wouldn’t bet on, when someone comes up with a quantum computer those codes are toast.
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