There seems to be a lot of 'doom and gloom' posts these days, so I thought we should lighten things up with a fun thread.
Basically, find a cool Wikipedia link and post it here for others to enjoy. I'm not to be held responsible for any time lost due to random information binges.
There is no evidence that
Vikings wore horns on their helmets.
The
United States Constitution was written on
parchment, not
hemp paper.
It is commonly claimed that the
Great Wall of China is the only human-made object visible from the Moon. This is false. None of the
Apolloastronauts reported seeing
any specific human-made object from the Moon, and even earth-orbiting astronauts can barely see it. City lights, however, are easily visible on the night side of Earth from orbit.
[94] The misconception is believed to have been popularized by
Richard Halliburton decades before the first moon landing. Shuttle astronaut
Jay Apt has been quoted as saying that "the Great Wall is almost invisible from only 180 miles up."
The claim
[102] that a
duck's quack does not
echo is false, although the echo may be difficult to hear for humans under some circumstances.
Bats are not blind. While many (most) bat species use
echolocation as a primary sense, all bat species have eyes and are capable of sight. Further, not all bats can echolocate and these bats have excellent night vision (see
megabat, vs.
microbat).
Hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after a person dies. Rather, the skin dries and shrinks away from the bases of hairs and nails, giving the appearance of growth.
Thomas Edison did not invent the
light bulb.
[323] He did, however, develop the first practical light bulb in 1880 (employing a carbonized bamboo filament), shortly prior to
Joseph Swan, who invented an even more efficient bulb in 1881 (which used a cellulose filament).
