Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

1. Men don't, actually, have any less ribs than women, despite what it says in the Bible and the title of that 1970s Feminist magazine Spare Rib.

[Jah Womble]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

2 Charles Manson was among those who auditioned to be in The Monkees.

[Bored Of Education]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

There was a TV (possibly 'Nationwide') hoax where they said that, for the silver jubilee, they were going to cut the Isle of Man into the shape of the queen's head

[moo cowe]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

Sumo wrestlers tuck their genitals inside their bodies before a fight, I fell for it unquestioningly.

[Ross McLochness]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

Dogs can't look up.

[Guy Profumo]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

The NHS is safe in the hands of the coalition.

[Femme Folle]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

moocowe wrote: Sumo wrestlers tuck their genitals inside their bodies before a fight, I fell for it unquestioningly.

This made me laugh out loud. Not sure if I'm laughing at the first part or the last.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

Cows cannot walk down stairs.

[The Purple Cow]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

.

[gjw100]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

A duck's quack doesn't echo.

[treibeis]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

Brown cows give chocolate-flavoured milk.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

Celery is a negative-calorie food

(Actually, it is for some people but not for everyone. It's complicated. And the calories we're talking about are single-digit.)

[beak]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

Ross McLochness wrote: Dogs can't look up.

I've never even understood how this one is supposed to work.

Similarly, bees flying as a physical impossibility.

[Reed John]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

My dog can definitely look up. In fact he often looks so far up that he looks behind.

[Ginger Yellow]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

I've never even understood how this one is supposed to work.

Likewise. Someone at school insisted this was true, but it's not like dogs are particularly uncommon and you can see them looking up all the time. At their owners, for instance. How does this idea get any currency at all?

Similarly, bees flying as a physical impossibility.

This one at least has an understandable aetiology. IT clearly started out as "physics can't explain how bees fly" (which isn't true either, but is at least plausible), and got corrupted to "bee flight breaks the laws of physics".

[HORN]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

I thought the dog not being able to look up thing only related to specific breeds. Like dachshunds.

[salt n shake]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

Ginger Yellow wrote:

I've never even understood how this one is supposed to work.

Likewise. Someone at school insisted this was true, but it's not like dogs are particularly uncommon and you can see them looking up all the time. At their owners, for instance. How does this idea get any currency at all?

It was an in-joke between Pegg/Frost/Wright as far as I know(because of difficulties filming Spaced, I think, trying to get Colin the dog to look up in one scene), which made its way into Shaun of the Dead... and from there, into common use as a popular quote/catchphrase from the film.

That may be not quite right, but I think it's the jist of where the phrase comes from. Utterly untrue that they can't, of course.

[Ginger Yellow]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

Spaced wasn't on TV until after I left school, so it seems unlikely that it was the origin of it.

[Hobgoblin]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

The gypsies are taking our children.

[Bored Of Education]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

[salt n shake]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

Ginger Yellow wrote: Spaced wasn't on TV until after I left school, so it seems unlikely that it was the origin of it.

Ah. I'll move along then! That was what I thought, though I can't for the life of me think where I got that from...

[Incandenza]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

Turkeys are so dumb that they'll look straight up in a rainstorm, fascinated by the rain, and they drown because they keep their mouths open.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

Almost at the risk of self-parody here, lemmings voluntarily hurl themselves off cliffs.

[TNC]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

TAB and Dalliance are the same person.

[Third rate Leszno]

Stuff you'd heard once and assumed was true

If you pick a guinea pig up by the tail, its eyes will fall out.