hi I'm John Green welcome to my salon
this is Mental Floss and one Vikings
never wore horns on their helmets at
least not until in 1876 staging of
vogner's opera the ring of the nibble um
is the first of 50 myths I'm about to
bust for you
you know Iron Maiden's those medieval
torture devices that inspired the name
of the fourth best heavy-metal band of
all time yeah they were fictional Marie
Antoinette never actually said let them
eat cake when told that peasants were
starving due to lack of bread and while
we're on the topic of French Royal women
who were forcefully separated from their
heads and bolin did not have 11 fingers
or at least most historians don't think
she did the American Declaration of
Independence was not signed on July 4
1776 it was signed on August 2nd 1776
also not too harsh on your buzz but the
US Constitution was not written on hemp
paper it was written on parchment
Napoleon did not have a Napoleon complex
because he was 5/7 which was actually
slightly above average height for people
of his time Albert Einstein did not fail
math at school in fact when he was shown
a newspaper column claiming he had
Einstein responded before I was 15 I had
mastered differential and integral
calculus Einstein did marry his first
cousin though so that's something we'll
talk about that in the future episode
John F Kennedy did not say I am a jelly
doughnut when he said ich bin ein
Berliner no one in Berlin was confused
on that day about what Kennedy was
saying sushi does not mean raw fish it
means sour rice placing medal in a
microwave doesn't ruin the microwave I
mean it's a bad idea you shouldn't do it
but look we just microwave this in
tinfoil and now in the smoldering
remains I am microwaving a hot pocket
the word crap is not derived from the
great Thomas Crapper who helped give us
indoor plumbing unfortunately crap just
comes from Latin like every other word
4/20 is not the Los Angeles police code
for marijuana possession police code 420
just means juvenile disturbance which
only sometimes involves marijuana
possession the Great Wall of China is
not the only man-made object visible
from space for one thing many man-made
objects are visible from space for
another thing the Great Wall of China is
not one of them there is no such thing
as an elephant graveyard when elephants
want to die they just lie down and do it
like the rest of us even puppy-sized
elephants the 1992 book sharks don't get
cancer led to a huge increase in people
using ground-up shark cartilage to treat
cancer but one that doesn't work and two
sharks do get cancer chameleons don't
primarily change color to camouflage it
helps them regulate their temperature
and also it's a way of communicating
they're like hey there you're pretty
attractive but I don't know how to talk
so I'm just gonna turn red throwing rice
at weddings does not lead to birds
eating that rice and then the rice
expanding and there
stomachs and then the birds exploding
that has never happened in all of human
history or bird history an earthworm
does not become two earthworms when you
cut it in half if it's lucky the part
with the mouth survives and you're left
with one smaller earthworm but in all
likelihood you're left with one dead
earthworm in two pieces
humans have more than five senses
including a sense of time acceleration
limb position the five senses were made
up by Aristotle with whom I have a
long-standing and very public feud and
as usual he was wrong and I am right and
shut up about how he isn't here to
defend himself shaving does not cause
hair to grow back thicker or coarser no
matter what part of your body you're
shaving also your fingernails don't keep
growing after you die they appear to
keep growing because your skin recedes
if you swallow your gum it will not
stick in your stomach for seven years it
goes through your body just the same as
anything else that you eat except
batteries if you take one thing away
from this video don't eat batteries
people do not just use 10% of their
brains William James seems to have
coined this one but he was speaking
figuratively
you can't catch warts from toads but you
can catch warts from other people and
that's why I always say only socialize
with toads a penny drop from the Empire
State Building will not kill someone if
it lands on their head because the
terminal velocity of a penny is between
30 and 50 miles per hour not fast enough
to kill anyone also if you drop a penny
from the top of the Empire State
Building it will land like three stories
below you because the building is shaped
like this not only did Abner Doubleday
not invent baseball he never claimed to
have invented baseball and speaking of
people who didn't invent things the
Caesar salad is not named for Julius
Caesar but rather for Caesar Cardini who
supposedly invented the salad in Tijuana
Mexico in 1924 Puff the Magic Dragon not
about marijuana as Mary of Peter Paul
and Mary put it believe me if he wanted
to write a song about marijuana he would
have written a song about marijuana
Sherlock Holmes never said elementary my
dear Watson nor did anyone ever say play
it again Sam in Casablanca also Sarah
Palin never said I can see Russia from
my house Al Gore never said I invented
the internet oh and for the love of God
Ron Burgundy never said well that asked
awaited quickly he said boy that
escalated quickly all right we gotta
speed up danishes are from Austria not
from Denmark humans didn't evolve from
chimps we share an ancestor but we did
evolve it's a chest of drawers not a
Chester drawers as I learned when I was
28 years old furthermore if you can
replace you
with you are than contract otherwise
don't the Italian libertine is Don Juan
but in Byron's epic poem Don juin rhymes
with ruin he would not explode in the
vacuum of space but you would die no one
was burned at the stake during the Salem
witch trials people were hanged and one
was crushed with stones but no burn a
Chinese fortune cookies are not Chinese
they're California
neither blondes nor redheads are about
to go extinct no one died during the
chariot race sequence of Ben Hur
Mussolini did not make the trains run on
time and storing batteries in the
freezer does not improve their
performance
and speaking of unnecessary cooling
there is never a need to refrigerate
peanut butter unless it's like all
natural organic stuff and that isn't
even really peanut butter Walt Disney is
not cryogenically frozen Fidel Castro
was never given a trial by The
Washington Senators or any other
American baseball team and lastly I
return to the Portrait Gallery to tell
you that Fame sexologist dr. Ruth was
not a sniper in the Israeli army what
she was really dari fine 50 Julia Child
was not a spy for the United States
during World War two she was this is
ridiculous I give up thanks for watching
Mental Floss on YouTube which is made
with the help of all of these nice
people if you have a mind-blowing
question you've always wanted an answer
- submit it in comments and we'll try to
answer them at the end of each video
starting in April