Brokekid.net

I ran across this great list of misconception. Some examples -

Christopher Columbus’s efforts to obtain support for his voyages were not hampered by a European belief in a flat Earth. In fact, sailors and navigators of the time knew that the Earth was spherical, but (correctly) disagreed with Columbus’ estimates of the distance to the Indies.

Napoleon Bonaparte was not especially short. After his death in 1821, the French emperor’s height was recorded as 5 feet 2 inches in French feet. This corresponds to 5 feet 6.5 inches in modern international feet, or 1.686 metres, making him slightly taller than an average Frenchman of the 19th century.

The German crowd witnessing John F. Kennedy’s speech in Berlin in 1963 did not mistake Ich bin ein Berliner to mean "I am a jelly doughnut."

The claim that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo is false, although the echo may be difficult to hear for humans under some circumstances.

The Coriolis effect does not determine the direction that water rotates in a bathtub drain or a flushing toilet.

The word "theory" in "the theory of evolution" does not imply doubt in mainstream science regarding its validity; the words "theory" and "hypothesis" are not the same in a scientific context. While "theory" in conventional usage tends to denote a "hunch" or conjecture, a scientific theory is a set of principles which, via logical induction, explains the observations in nature. The same inductive inferences can be made to predict observations before they are made.