Lies You Learned at School

By Michael Powell

The book that sets the record straight on classroom inaccuracies, from erroneous history and wobbly geography to sloppy science and bad math.

Everyone knows that you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, hear on TV, or find on the Internet, but you don’t expect the same advice to apply to what you learned at school. Well, think again, because you can guarantee there’s heaps of stuff in your head that you’ve been taught that just isn’t true, or it if is, has been dumbed down so much as to be just plain wrong. And that’s before you even begin to consider the political bias that may have been added to your schooling. If you don’t believe us, read this book and you’ll discover how much dodgy information you’ve been carrying around in your noodle all these years.

• Two plus two doesn’t always equal four
• Henry VIII only had two wives
• Napoleon wasn’t French
• Mirrors don’t reverse everything
• Cold isn’t the opposite of hot
• Clouds are heavy
• Gravity is weak, and there’s plenty of it in space
• Ben Franklin’s kite wasn’t hit by lightning
• Electrons travel slowly
• Nothing in the universe is really unique
• The big bang wasn’t big or a bang
• The U.S. isn’t a democracy (it’s a constitutional republic)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781435136939

Michael Powell

An Adams Media author.

Book preview

9781435136939_Dis_0002_001

LIES YOU

LEARNED AT

SCHOOL

Michael Powell

9781435136939_Dis_0002_002

© 2010 by Fall River Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by

any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,

without prior written permission from the publisher.

Written by Michael Powell

Designed by Allen Boe

Fall River Press

122 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10011

ISBN: 978-1-4351-3693-9

Sterling ISBN 13: 978-1-4351-3693-9

Publisher’s Note: The views expressed herein are the personal

views of the author and are not intended to reflect the views of the publisher.

Contents

Introduction

The Declaration of Independence was

signed on July 4, 1776

There are nine planets in our solar system

Water is colorless

Ben Franklin’s kite was hit by lightning

Henry VIII had six wives

Vikings wore horned helmets

An ostrich buries its head in the sand

Betsy Ross made the American flag

Goldfish have three-second memories

Nero fiddled while Rome burned

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is male

Two plus two equals four

The universe began with the Big Bang

Chameleons change color to match their backgrounds

Albert Einstein discovered relativity

Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world

Gravity in space is zero

Napoleon was French

The United States is a democracy

The Nazis invented the Fascist salute

Airplanes fly because of the Bernoulli Principle

Roman emperors spared lives with a thumbs up

Shakespeare wrote, Shall I compare thee to a rose?

Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin

The Great Wall of China is visible from the

moon with the naked eye

Without a spacesuit you would explode in space

Lemmings commit mass suicide

Mussolini made the trains run on time

The Germans invented the concentration camp

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living organism

You use only ten percent of your brain

All popes in history have been male

America was named for Amerigo Vespucci

George Washington chopped down his father’s

cherry tree

It is dangerous to swim immediately after eating

The guillotine is a French invention

The Wright Brothers built and flew the world’s

first airplane

The United States is composed of fifty states

Christopher Columbus discovered America

Electrons travel at the speed of light

Marie Antoinette said, Let them eat cake.

The last ice age ended 10,000 years ago

Reading in bad light will damage your eyes

Gold is the only metal that won’t rust

Human beings evolved from apes

Jesus Christ had long hair and a beard

There isn’t much space inside an atom

A penny dropped from the top of the Sears Tower

could kill a pedestrian on the ground

All deserts are hot

Baseball was invented by Americans

Bats are blind

Charles Darwin coined the phrase "survival of

the fittest"

Diamond is the hardest known material

George Washington was the first American President

Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death

There are three states of matter

The Earth is round

A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why

Elephants are afraid of mice

Lightning never strikes the same place twice

Julius Caesar was born by cesarean section

Patrick Henry said, Give me liberty or give me death!

Paul Revere shouted, The British are coming!

Camels store water in their humps

It takes seven years to digest chewing gum

Molly Pitcher took her husband’s place in battle

during the Revolutionary War

In the 1960s feminists burned their bras

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the

Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony

Thomas Edison invented the electric lightbulb

The Colossus bestrode the harbor at Rhodes

Witches were burned at the stake in Salem,

Massachusetts

Isaac Newton developed his theory of gravity

after being hit on the head by an apple

Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear

The Earth’s magnetic north pole is in the Arctic

There are exactly twenty-four hours in a day

The Titanic sank because of a huge hole in its hull

Introduction

You know that you shouldn’t believe everything you read in newspapers, see on TV, or find on the Internet, but you don’t expect to have to take the same precautions with what you learned at school.

Well, guess what? There’s tons of stuff you’ve been taught that just isn’t true; or, if it is true, it has been dumbed down so much that it’s just plain wrong. And that’s before you even begin to consider the political and cultural biases that inevitably creep into a nation’s collective knowledge, and then sinuously infiltrate the education of subsequent generations.

This book sets the record straight on a classroom full of inaccuracies—from well-meaning health warnings against swallowing gum, reading in dim light, or swimming immediately after a meal, to classroom carelessness that inculcates inaccurate history, sloppy science, wobbly geography, and bad math. It will shake some of the most solid foundations of your knowledge, from the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence (it wasn’t on July 4) to self-evident truths such as two plus two equals four (not necessarily!).

Many facts about our nation have been wrongly reported (in many cases several decades after the event), and cultural memory has a tendency to become simplified or approximated over time to the point of falsehood, such as Ben Franklin’s kite getting struck by lightning (it wasn’t), Paul Revere shouting, The British are coming! (he didn’t), or Betsy Ross making the first American flag (she probably didn’t).

In some cases, the world and our knowledge of it have simply moved on. For example, there are now only eight planets in our solar system, since Pluto has been reclassified as a dwarf planet. In other cases, knowledge has been misrepresented: human beings did not evolve from apes but do share a common ancestor with them, and Charles Darwin did not coin the phrase survival of the fittest.

Sometimes, no matter how you cut it, the facts are just plain wrong: not all deserts are hot, chameleons do not change skin color to match their background, and ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand.

Next you’ll be telling us the Earth isn’t round!

Actually, it isn’t. Read on, and remember: Don’t always believe everything you learned in school!

The Declaration of

Independence was signed on

July 4, 1776

THE TRUTH

A widely held misconception about the United States’ most cherished symbol of liberty is that the Founding Fathers all lined up and signed it on July 4, 1776. The truth is that the final draft of the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the full Congress on that date, but the order to have it engrossed on parchment wasn’t given until July 19, which means that the official document that is now so carefully preserved in the National Archive wasn’t signed until early August.

The process that culminated in the Declaration’s adoption began on June 7, 1776, when Richard Henry Lee of Virginia read his resolution to Congress, which began: Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. The Lee Resolution was debated until June 11, when consideration was postponed and a Committee of Five was appointed to draft a declaration, whereupon Congress recessed for three weeks.

Thomas Jefferson completed the first draft in seventeen days; the other four members of the Committee of Five (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman) made some changes. The document was presented to the Continental Congress on July 2.

The Lee Resolution was adopted by twelve of the thirteen colonies, with New York abstaining. After two days of debate, the Declaration was adopted with amendments on July 4, and church bells rang out over Philadelphia.

On July 9, the action of Congress was officially approved by the New York Convention, so on July 19, Congress ordered that the Declaration be fairly engrossed on parchment, with the title and stile of ‘The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America,’ and that the same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress.

Finally, on August 2, the journal of the Continental Congress records that The declaration of independence being engrossed and compared at the table was signed. But not all of the fifty-six signatures that appear on the document were made on this date. Several members of Congress weren’t present that day and signed later. These include Elbridge Gerry, Oliver Wolcott, Lewis Morris, Thomas McKean, and Matthew Thornton.

Also, despite the July 19th order of Congress that the

Reviews for Lies You Learned at School

[osbaldistone · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting, with several insights new to me. However, Powell seems to stretch a bit to include enough to fill the book. I know there are many more things that could be in this book, but Powell seems to be steering clear of anything controversial or to close to the heart.

[veranaz22 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book covers sayings and phrases we've grown up knowing as "common knowledge" as being "lies." It explains for example why two and two does not always equal four and how the earth is not round, etc.I skipped the topics that did not interest me or those which I already knew the truth of. Some interesting tidbits, but this book would be most interesting to history buffs. An ok read, but nothing special really. Two out of five.