{"id":118,"date":"2011-11-09T01:45:47","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T01:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/?p=118"},"modified":"2011-11-10T23:09:43","modified_gmt":"2011-11-10T23:09:43","slug":"2201-fascinating-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/2011\/11\/09\/2201-fascinating-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"2201 Fascinating &#8220;Facts&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a wee trivia buff, I received a book called &#8220;2201 Fascinating Facts.&#8221;  In fact, if I remember correctly, I actually received *two* copies of it within the span of a year or so.  And I loved it.  I read it several times in my youth and learned lots of wonderful facts.  But in the internet age, you actually get to learn what is a fact and what is not, thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/snopes.com\">Snopes<\/a> and the invaluable <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_common_misconceptions\">List of Common Misconceptions page<\/a> on Wikipedia.  And since that time, I have learned that A LOT of the &#8220;facts&#8221; in the book are not so.  Such things include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Great Wall of China is the only manmade structure visible from space (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.snopes.com\/science\/greatwall.asp\">debunking<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>You can see the stars in daytime from the bottom of a well (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.snopes.com\/science\/well.asp\">debunking<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>The deer botfly can travel more than 800 miles per hour (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Deer_botfly#Fastest_of_all_flying_insects.3F\">debunking<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And the one that brought all this back to mind: a duck&#8217;s quack doesn&#8217;t echo (<a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/z0YWCoLJ\">debunking<\/a>).  So now I&#8217;m totally skeptical of anything and everything I&#8217;ve read in that book.  Here&#8217;s what I&#8217;m going to do: I&#8217;m going to start reading it again to (a) brush up on my trivia knowledge and (b) brush away all the false facts I&#8217;ve learned by researching any claims that seem suspect.  <\/p>\n<p>A first one that has always seemed suspect to me: there is a claim that some royal figure described St. Paul&#8217;s cathedral as &#8220;awful and artificial&#8221; &#8212; meaning it as a compliment!  Supposedly, &#8220;awful&#8221; meant &#8220;awe-inspiring&#8221; and &#8220;artificial&#8221; meant &#8220;full of great art.&#8221;  This is actually retold in <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=w9XsNfsqxG8C&#038;lpg=PA86&#038;dq=awful%20and%20artificial&#038;pg=PA86#v=onepage&#038;q&#038;f=false\">several places<\/a> including some that inspire confidence, but no one seems sure of its accuracy and there doesn&#8217;t seem to be an official debunking (or, um, bunking).  Can anyone find anything about that?<\/p>\n<p>All right, this blog is going to start detailing my journey.  There may not be as many mistakes as I think there are, but I have to know.  And you&#8217;re all coming along for the ride.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a wee trivia buff, I received a book called &#8220;2201 Fascinating Facts.&#8221; In fact, if I remember correctly, I actually received *two* copies of it within the span of a year or so. And I loved it. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/2011\/11\/09\/2201-fascinating-facts\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trivia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexboisvert.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}