Things people learned in school that are actually bogus -19 nonsense ‘facts’ to make your head swim

11.

Young George Washington and the cherry tree. That story was in textbooks in our elementary school.
–CanisArgenteus

The myth, according to Mount Vernon:

The cherry tree myth is one of the oldest and best-known legends about George Washington.

In the original story, when Washington was six years old, he received a hatchet as a gift and damaged his father’s cherry tree with it.

When his father discovered what George had done, he became angry. Young George bravely said, “I cannot tell a lie…I did cut it with my hatchet.”

Washington’s father embraced him and declared that his son’s honesty was worth more than a thousand trees.

Alas, it was invented by one of Washington’s first biographers, a travelling minister and bookseller named Mason Locke Weems.

12.

That Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.
–Rogue-Hero94

(Alessandro Volta, Humphrey Davy and Joseph Swan played a critical role in the development of lightbulb technology.)

13.

Eating carrots helps your night vision.
–dohrk

Technically true if you have an underlying Vitamin A deficiency and subsequent low retinal health.
–MusicusTitanicus

14.

Who else here was raised in the 80s where the Food Pyramid was drilled into your head?

I’ve known longer that it’s hogwash than I ‘lived’ with it – but I still can’t get it out of my head, and my subconscious will always think that’s the ‘appropriate’ way of meal planning.
–Nail_Biterr

15.

That the dollar sign is a U superimposed on an S, that stands for the United States. The Symbol predates the US.
–stonefarfalle

16.

Turns out the American Civil War was not a result of “Abraham Lincoln being a poopy-head”.

Gotta thank the Mississippi school system for that one.
–regurgitator_red

17.

The whole “taste map of the tongue”.
–touloir

18.

That American Indians were not a civilisation because they never built any permanent buildings.
–Bridgestone14

Oh God, I remember my World History spouting this, that there were no ancient civilizations in the New World because they didn’t build stuff. I lost it.

Pre-Columbian history was one of my special interests at the time.

So I asked her “That’s not right, what do you think Tenochtitlan, Teotihuacán, and Chichen Itza were?”
–Ravenamore

19.

The discovery of America. Columbus was FAR from the wide-eyed visionary explorer children’s books make him out to be. Very, very far.
–Zorothegallade

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