25 Facts Learned in School That Are No Longer True

Hair and fingernails don’t continue to grow after a person dies

When oxygenated blood stops circulating at death, cells that create new hair and fingernail tissue can no longer function. According to the BBC, the idea that hair and nails keep growing is a misinterpretation of what happens to a body in the hours and days after an individual dies. The skin dries out and retracts at the fingertips, making the nails look longer. Men’s facial skin tends to get dehydrated, which can disperse stubble and make it appear to have grown longer.

Columbus didn’t discover the Americas

It is clearly wrong because native Americans have been living on the continents for at least 15,000 years. But even if you thought he was the first European to set foot in the Americas, you ‘d be wrong — Viking explorer Leif Erikson seems to have entered North America 500 years before Columbus came along. In addition, Columbus had only visited the Bahamas, Hispaniola, and some of the Central and South American coastlines— and he never knew that he had discovered a whole continent, according to the Washington Post.