We've all grown up believing something that turned out to be a total lie (hello, SANTA?!). But some myths stand the test of time longer than others. So, when Reddit user u/Eichberg posed the question, "What is an annoying myth people still believe?" the AskReddit community brought up some very eye-opening myths that might surprise even you.
Here are some of the top responses:
1. The myth that if you touch a baby bird, its mother will abandon it because of the smell.
"(Most) birds actually have a very crappy sense of smell."
—grmidnight
2. You have to wait 24 hours before filing a missing persons report.
"In fact, by federal law, missing juveniles must be listed as missing within two hours of the report to local law enforcement agencies, no matter how recently they've gone missing, unless they are located within that time."
3. The Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure visible from space.
"First of all, it's not (visible from space with the naked eye), and second, other ones are."
4. Cracking your knuckles makes them bigger/gives you arthritis.
"This is an ongoing battle between myself and my older coworkers."
6. You can "detox" your body from toxins and parasites by drinking certain teas.
"Repeated diarrhea and frequent urination doesn't indicate toxins leaving your body, your liver and kidneys do the job. If your liver is not functioning or you have a kidney disorder, obviously you need help, but it won't be teas that someone on Instagram is boasting about."
8. MSG — a lot of people still believe it's basically poison.
"It's no more harmful than regular salt."
9. That you get warts from frogs/toads.
"Warts come from the human papilloma virus and come from contact with the virus through broken skin. It is a human specific virus and cannot be spread through different species."
—mtn-cat
10. Einstein was a bad student who failed math.
11. People in the middle ages believed the Earth was flat.
"The ancient Greeks knew that shit was false. The myth of the flat earth was a post-Romanticism fancy in pop culture, not a serious scholarly movement. That line from Men in Black has pissed me off ever since I learned the truth."
14. Tryptophan in turkey makes you sleepy during Thanksgiving.
"No. Chicken has more tryptophan than turkey, and we only get sleepy on Thanksgiving because we eat so much."
18. A higher tax rate means your entire income is taxed at that rate.
"Oh boy, this is a big one. I hear people all the time that say, 'I don’t want a raise ‘cause it’ll put me in a higher tax bracket, and I’ll make less money than I do now because they’ll take more taxes.' Like, no. They only take that percentage from the ADDITIONAL money you’ll be making. You’ll still be making more money!"
19. That companies "can't" say that you were fired, or why you were fired, "by law."
"They can, they usually just don't!"
20. Driving with interior dome lights on at night is illegal.
21. And finally, we only use 10% of our brains.
"A philosopher came up with the 10% thing as a way to say we don’t think things through properly. It has no scientific evidence. In fact, in a normal brain there is activity in 100% of it. Just not all the time."
Note: Some entries have been edited for length and/or clarity.