Checking Your Facts and Checking it Twice

Art received the following FORWARDED message a while ago and told me I should put it on my blog. Hmmmm.... I don't like to put misinformation on my blog so I checked some (not all) of the facts. He sent those fun facts to his sister and I hope she doesn't pass it on. I put what I checked in red.

Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better. 

OK... I find this is true with Art and me. He can read much smaller print that me, but yes, I can hear much better than him. But is this true of others? I don't know.

Coca-Cola was originally green.

Nope. Not true. I checked SNOPES and got this:

"The original formula called for caramel to give Coca-Cola its rich brown color, and although the recipe has undergone some changes through the years, none of them affected the ultimate color of the product."

It is impossible to lick your elbow. 

The State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska 

The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% 

The percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38% 

The cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $16,400

The average number of people airborne over the U.S. in any given hour: 61,000 
 
Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

The first novel ever written on a typewriter, Tom Sawyer
It appears this one could be true.

The San Francisco Cable cars are the only Mobile National Monuments. 

Apparently true.

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: 

Spades - King David 

Hearts - Charlemagne 

Clubs -Alexander, the Great 

Diamonds - Julius Caesar 

Apparently true.

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987, 654,321
(look at the numbers…) 

I did this on my calculator and got this answer: 1.234567898765e16 Hmmm... I don't know what e16 means.

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. 
If the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died because of wounds received in battle. 
If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes. 

Geee... I thought this was true but when I researched it on National Classroom, it said:

 "While there are plenty of statues that follow the “rule” of the hoof positions, particularly with statues commemorating Gettysburg soldiers, there are at least nine instances where the rule does not hold for Gettysburg statues.

Subsequently, most historians do not believe the myth."

Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later. 

Hmmm... I don't know about this one. I got this from the National Constitution Center website:

"Once the Congress approved the actual Declaration of Independence document on July 4, it was sent to a printer named John Dunlap. About 200 copies of the Dunlap Broadside were printed, with John Hancock’s name printed at the bottom." So I don't know about Charles Thomson.

Q. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of what?
A. Their birthplace 

Q. Most boat owners name their boats. What is the most popular boat name requested? 
A. Obsession 

Q. If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you
would find the letter 'A'? 
A. One thousand 

Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers have in common? 
A. All were invented by women.  

Hmmm... I just looked online and it said:

The bulletproof vest was invented by: Casimir Zeglen who was a Polish priest who invented a silk bulletproof vest. At the age of 18 he entered the Resurrectionist Order in Lwów (today Lviv, Ukraine).

The fire escape was invented by a woman though: Anna Connelly.

As for the windshield wiper well.... the earliest patent was by George Capewell in 1896. Mary Anderson however patented a form of it in 1903.

The laser printer was invented by Gary Starkweather in 1969 at the Xerox research lab in Webster, New York.

Ahhh well...

Q. What is the only food that doesn't spoil? 
A. Honey 
But what about sugar and salt?

Q. Which day of the year are more collect calls made than any other day of the year? 
A. Father's Day 

According to AT&T, it's true.

In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. 
When you pulled on the ropes, the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase . . . 'Goodnight , sleep tight' 

Sigh.... I looked this up too. This is another theory that's been debunked. I looked it up and got the explanation in the DREAMS website. You can click on this link to get the whole explanation. 

It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his new son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon. 

Hmmm.... I don't know. I looked this up too and found this on Wikipedia:

Today, honeymoon has a positive meaning, but originally it may have referred to the inevitable waning of love like a phase of the moon. In 1552, Richard Huloet wrote:

"Hony mone, a term proverbially applied to such as be newly married, which will not fall out at the first, but th'one loveth the other at the beginning exceedingly, the likelihood of their exceadinge love appearing to aswage, ye which time the vulgar people call the hony mone.

— Abcedarium Anglico-Latinum pro Tyrunculis"

In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old England , when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them 'Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down.' . . .
It's where we get the phrase 'mind your P's and Q's'

Hmmm... I checked SNOPES and got this:

"At the time the saying became part of the English lexicon, beer wasn’t vended in pubs by the pint or quart. Instead, it was drawn from kegs, with patrons charged by the glass or tankard. Vendors therefore would not have utilized chalked tote boards scrawled with p’s for “pints” and q’s for “quarts” in an effort to keep track of who owed for what." 

The bottom line is that they don't know the origin of Ps and Qs though some people think it was from teachers admonishing their students to be careful of their p's and q's.

I guess this is a lesson for everybody to CHECK before you send off forwarded mail, or you would  merely be spreading more misinformation. Sorry, that's the teacher in me, I'm afraid.

Aha! Did you just try to lick your elbows?  🤣