25 Facts Learned in School That Are No Longer True

Your blood isn’t blue when its oxygen is depleted

We ‘re also conditioned to think of the veins that return oxygen-poor blue blood to our hearts because that’s the way anatomical drawing is done. The veins tend to be blue because of the way the skin and tissues absorb the light that is reflected back to the eye. We ‘re all programmed to think of the veins that carry oxygen-poor blue blood to our hearts because that’s the way anatomical drawings usually look.

But that’s only to make the distinction easier— the blood becomes red when it’s full of oxygen in our arteries, and it’s still red (though darker) when the oxygen has run out and it’s going back to our hearts through the veins: Iron-rich hemoglobin gives it that color. Many species, including horseshoe crabs and squid, have blue blood, however, because the chemical that transports oxygen contains copper.

Women suspected of being witches were not burned at the stake

Firstly, no one was burned during the 1692 Massachusetts Bay Colony witch scare. In Europe, accused witches were often burned, but in England, they were hanged, and that’s the practice that the colonists followed after a group of young girls started to have “fits” that the doctor blamed on supernatural afflictions. In total, nearly 200 people were accused of being witches; 19 of them were convicted and hanged.

One individual was crushed to death by stones. Another myth about the Salem witch trials is that all of the victims were women. Five of those executed (including the elderly farmer who was crushed to death) were men; the charges also affected people from all backgrounds and social positions.