25 Facts Learned in School That Are No Longer True

Columbus didn’t prove the Earth was round

The Washington Post also notes that educated people have known for years that the Earth was round before Columbus set off on his journey. During the Middle Ages, some Europeans began to believe that the Earth was flat despite ancient Greeks saying that the planet was a sphere during the time of Pythagoras in the sixth-century B.C.E.

By 1492, nobody was afraid that a ship at sea would fall over the edge of the planet. The theory may have started with the publication of the fictional biography of Washington Irving in 1828, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, which wrongly states that his voyage to the Americas showed that the Earth was round.

We use way more than 10 percent of our brains

Even though it seems like we’re not running on all the cylinders, brain scans show activity throughout the organ, even when we’re resting. Nobody’s sure where the notion originated from that 90% of our brain tissue is unused, however, every neurologist can inform you that it’s definitely incorrect.