10 Completely False ‘Facts’ Everyone Knows

This may not have hit your radar when it happened, and
even if it did, you might not have given it a second
thought. But we did, my friend, we did. In 2005, the
Spitzer Space Telescope (launched in 2003) beamed
back conclusive proof that the Milky Way isn't the
simple spiral galaxy you've seen illustrated your whole
life. It's really a barred spiral galaxy. So instead of
elegant arms coiling out from a central sphere, there's a
big fat bar across the middle, and the arms of our
galaxy sprout from either end.
Now, scientists had been debating this possibility and
trying to come up with decisive proof one way or the
other for years. And when they did – not much
happened. Some mainstream news outlets gave it a
little airtime, and the astronomy community talked it up
for a while. Once the space devotees all knew about it,
everyone else continued on in blissful ignorance, not
knowing they were imagining the galaxy they lived in all
wrong.
From geography to physiology, there are many
examples of people collectively doing it wrong by
learning fiction as truth. Here are 10 of the biggest
errors walking around masquerading as well-known
facts.