Last week, I went out on a limb and suggested that the lesson from the old story of the Hare and the Tortoise might not be as true anymore.

I mentioned that I thought the rules have changed in such a way that the basis of the story is no longer the norm.  I believe we are now running in an Internet world, where information is cheap and readily available, giving the impatient and easily bored but faster Hares the advantages.

Here are other beliefs that I once believed to be true that aren’t today:

• Pluto is no longer a planet!  It’s been demoted to a dwarf planet.  Sometimes life sucks if you’re an outlier and not like the other planets!  I heard that Pluto doesn’t really mind (much)…
• Dogs do see colors!  My daughter asked this because she said she believes that they do.  Now I’ve been told since I was a wee lad, that dogs only see in black and white.  Not so, they do see colors, but scientist believe that they don’t see as many colors as a normal human being.  The scientists now say that they can see what a color blind human can see today.  (click the link to the left, it’s a great writeup)
• I remember learning in elementary school that violins were made from cat’s intestines (guts).  But I have since learned that this was never true, old violins were not literally made of catguts!  Instead they were made from sheep or goat intestines.  Some people believe that catguts really stood for cattle guts (but this hasn’t been proven).
• Holding a toad will not cause warts.  Wash you hands afterward though, some toads are poisonous.
• Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb (but he did refine it)
• Ford didn’t invent the automobile but did make the process more economical by creating an auto assembly line.

After googling false facts, I came across this great site:  https://ctrldotlife.blogspot.com/2007/12/false-facts-you-thought-were-true.html.  It has a lot of great facts, check it out!

Is there anything that you have recently learned wasn’t true, that you once took as an obvious fact?

-MR