If you are of a certain age, a large part of your Saturday morning routine was watching “Looney Tunes.” The adventures of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and their friends have been entertaining kids and adults since 1930. The cartoon series has not only come to be one of the most beloved examples of American animation in the world, but each of the cartoon’s characters has become global cultural icons.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Hidden Images Found In Cartoons

Fans of the show have come to accept that the cartoon is sometimes screwy in the perceptions about the animals the show’s characters are based on. We are not here to point out the problems with anthropomorphic animals, loose interpretations on the laws of physics, or why a rabbit would appear in drag. Instead, we will be looking at how “Looney Tunes” created misconceptions about how real-world animals act.

10 Rabbits Love Carrots

The most identifiable image of Bugs Bunny shows the rabbit munching on a carrot, asking “What’s up, doc?” The problem with this is that rabbits and hares in the wild would avoid the carrot. Carrots and other root vegetables are full of sugar, which rabbits are unequipped to digest. Rabbits typically eat grass, hay and dark leafy greens.

While a domesticated rabbit can eat a carrot, it is a bad idea to feed carrots to your pet bunny regularly. It is akin to you being force-fed candy daily; you may appreciate the treat, but it is doing nothing positive for your health.^[1]

9 A Roadrunner Can Outrace a Coyote

A running gag on the show is Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner, only for the Roadrunner to leave the hapless coyote in the dust. In real life, the chase would go differently. The greater roadrunner—the species of roadrunner likely to live in the American Southwest—is a long-legged member of the cuckoo family. The bird tends to weigh about a half-pound as an adult and is between 20 to 24 inches in length. Greater roadrunners typically run 20 miles per hour, but has been reported to reach 26 mph.

A coyote averages between 32 to 37 inches long—not counting its tail—and weighs between 20 and 50 pounds as an adult. A coyote prefers to stalk but can run as fast as 43 miles per hour if needed.

So, unless the roadrunner had a large head start or can somehow trick the coyote into slamming headfirst into a tunnel the coyote itself painted on a canyon wall, a coyote can easily catch a roadrunner.^[2]

8 Cats ‘n’ Skunks

This myth may be more due to animation design laziness than anything zoological. Some of the most memorable “Looney Tunes” episode show Penelope the Cat (or some other unfortunate feline) having a white stripe painted down her back. The cat is then thought to be a female skunk by the Casanova skunk Pepe Le Pew.

In real life, a cat cannot be confused with a skunk. Striped skunks are related to badgers and weasels. While about the size of a cat, stripped skunks have pointed snouts, rounded ears, and wide, flat tails.

Cats have flat faces, pointed ears, and narrow tails. Cats also have stout but flexible bodies, compared to a stripped skunk’s elongated torso. So, a cat with a white painted stripe down its back would look like a painted cat, and not a skunk.^[3]

7 Dogs Hate Cats

Evolutionary zoologists have found that there is nothing about a cat that makes a dog hate it. To the contrary, if the two animals are raised together, cats and dogs can see each other as part of their pride/pack. A dog may chase a cat as part of the animal’s hunting instinct, but this is not animosity. Cats are fast, and dogs like to chase fast things.

If a cat or a dog feels that its territory is being intruded on, it may attack. This is not limited to its so-called mortal enemy, though. Squirrels, mice, fellow cats or dogs, and even humans are likely to get this treatment if the animal feels threatened. While cats and dogs communicate differently, peace is as likely between cats and dogs as war.^[4]

6 Cats Kill Birds and Mice for Food

Speaking of cats, the cat and mouse/cat and bird archetype is also a vast simplification. Let’s be clear, though, before we start, cats do kill mice and birds. House cats are responsible for the extinction of 63 species of birds, small mammals and reptiles. It is estimated that the American cat population kills between 1.3 billion-4.0 billion birds and 6 billion-22.3 billion mammals every year.

The problem is that house cats do not just kill for food. While we can emphasize with Sylvester chasing Tweety while hungry, it is just as likely that Sylvester would go after Tweety regardless of his food situation. A cat’s predatory instinct is so strong that even a well-fed cat would ambush and kill a smaller animal. The situation has led the domesticated house cat to be classified as one of the 100 World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species.^[5]

5 A Tasmanian Devil Eats Anything

This is another oversimplification. Given the opportunity, a Tasmanian devil would eat anything. As scary as it may seem, “Looney Tunes” Taz is a spot-on depiction of the Tasmanian devil. Ornery to the point of being psychotic (by human standards), the Tasmanian devil was so named after early settlers of Tasmania saw the marsupial’s behavior.

With jaws strong enough to deliver a bite that can cut steel cable, a Tasmanian devil would kill or eat anything they comes across. A Tasmanian devil has been known to kill animals many times its size, including a sheep.

Considering this, Tasmanian devils usually prefer to eat carrion or already dead animals. Tasmanian devils are roughly the size of medium-sized dogs. An adult devil can reach lengths of 30 inches and weigh up to 26 pounds. Tasmanian devils are also slow, only capable of reaching speeds of eight miles per hour. Tasmanian devils will also eat insects, fish, small birds and snakes.^[6]

4 There is No Such a Thing as a Chicken Hawk

While Henery the Chickenhawk’s endless fight to “get a chicken” is a funny theme in the series, it is inaccurate. From a zoological point-of-view, there is no such thing officially as a chickenhawk or chicken hawk. The term chickenhawk has been used in some parts of the United States to describe three different birds: the red-tailed hawk, the sharp-skinned hawk, and Cooper’s hawk. Only the red-tailed hawk is brownish, like Henerey.

These birds do not generally eat chicken. While a red-tailed hawk may go after a free-range or wild chicken, the hawk usually eats rabbits (sorry Bugs) and rodents. Cooper’s hawks and sharp-skinned hawks are bird eaters but would not go after a chicken. A chicken may be the same size or larger than the hawks.

3 Ducks Must Fly South for Winter

Ducks, like most migratory birds, do not always travel south for winter. They simply move from one habitat to another that may offer them better odds for survival. While this may mean that most ducks do travel south, ducks that have a ready access to food may opt to winter where they are. Other ducks may travel west or even north to known feeding spots. Usually, the place ducks travel to migrate is based on their ancestral nests. So, Daffy going on strike from flying south is not so strange.

Of note, domesticated ducks don’t migrate during the winter. Domesticated ducks usually cannot fly—some have clipped wings, while others are too fat.^[7]

2 Rabbits are Fast Burrowers

A motif in many Bugs Bunny cartoon was the grey rabbit burrowing quickly from offscreen, only to emerge and be confused that he was not where he intended. “I should have made a left in Albuquerque” is one of the most memorable quotes in animation history. Like many things in “Looney Tunes,” this is only a half-truth.

Rabbits are prolific burrowers. The typical rabbit spends most of his non-foraging life digging. Rabbits have powerful front legs and long, sharp claws. Rabbits will burrow to build a den or nest underground (although, cottontail rabbits build dens above ground). These dens are connected to neighboring dens, forming a network called a warren.

Even though digging is instinctual for rabbits, it is a slow, time-consuming process. Rabbits will spend days—if not weeks—digging a single hole. While rabbits will spend large sums of energy digging, their small size means that only a small amount of dirt is moved at a time. This doesn’t dissuade them, though.

There is something about rabbit holes that “Looney Tunes” did get right. Usually, when Bugs needs to make a quick escape, he will dive into a nearby rabbit hole, only to appear somewhere else. This is typical rabbit behavior. To avoid predators, rabbits will dig deep escape routes in their foraging or warren zones. These rabbit holes are connected to the warren or to other rabbit holes. A frightened rabbit would head to the nearest rabbit hole, dive in, travel through the underground connections, pop out a different hole and escape, confusing the predator.^[8]

1 Finger In The Barrel

Common sense probably makes this a touch obvious, but just in case . . .. In 2012, the Discovery Channel show “Mythbusters” tested the Bugs Bunny troupe of sticking a finger in Elmer Fudd’s shotgun to make it backfire and explode. The logic behind this is that by sticking a finger in the barrel, the air space in front of the bullet cannot be vacated, leaving the expanding gas behind the bullet with nowhere to go. This would turn the shotgun into a bomb.

“Mythbusters” found that a finger stuck in a shotgun barrel would disintegrate in the path of the slug, along with most of the finger’s arm. If Bugs was to plug a shotgun barrel with his finger, Bugs would have died or been horribly maimed. Fortunately, “Looney Tunes” is just a cartoon and the laws of physic there are but a suggestion.^[9]

About The Author: Frederick Reese is a politics, financial, and emergent technologies reporter. Based in Upstate New York, Frederick has written for Yahoo!, CoinDesk, Bleacher Report and the Huffington Post. You can follow Frederick on Twitter.

Food is where we get the nutrients to fuel our bodies. We create and preserve intimate social relationships by breaking bread, and we often heal different ailments through our diets. In the developed world, we have shopping centers filled with all types of foods, and we mostly partake without a thought about the history of what we’re eating.

But thousands of years ago in some of the earliest civilizations on the planet, these basic foods were believed to be a sort of magic. At one time, they were worshiped and revered. Besides being used to heal specific physical and emotional conditions, certain foods were believed to bring loved ones back from the dead, protect people from evil, and more.

10 Amaranth

We are probably all familiar with ancient grains. Whether we incorporate quinoa into our daily diets or see different varieties gracing the feeds of Instagram in the all-too-trendy smoothie bowls, we could each name a few if we had to.

But one ancient grain was thought to provide supernatural powers by the Aztecs over 500 years ago. Not only was it a major component of their diets, but it played a vital role in their religious practices.

Using honey and sometimes blood from human sacrifices, the Aztecs would often make a paste from the grains and use it to create statues of their gods. During ceremonies of worship, the statues would be broken into parts and passed out to members of the tribe for consumption. Supposedly, this paste was also used to create shields, bows, and arrows to give to newborn boys to symbolize their manly duties later in life.

When the Spanish invaded in 1519, the cultivation of this grain was forbidden along with the Aztecs’ religion. This was a way of forcing Christianity onto the civilization, and anyone who did not abide by the rules was punished severely.^[1]

9 Artichokes

Before we learned to dip these beauties in cheese sauce, artichokes were thought to have a variety of medicinal powers. We can find mention of artichokes as far back as Greek mythology.

Cynara was a beautiful mortal girl whom Zeus came across during a trip to see his brother Poseidon. Zeus took her to Olympus and made her a goddess. Then in typical Zeus fashion, he became enraged when Cynara sneaked home for a weekend visit with her mother. He threw her off Olympus and turned her into an artichoke.

Fast-forward to the first-century Romans, and they believed that parts of the artichoke could help to cure baldness and even aid with the conception of boys.

Artichokes were also rumored to be an aphrodisiac. This gossip was given a lot of steam when the French queen, Catherine de Medici, was said to have consumed a great quantity of them. At this time, women were banned from eating artichokes due to their sexual power.^[2]

8 Chives

These little babies are more than just a flavor of a chip. Some people have also produced different flavors of this plant’s magical history. Today, we know that chives are native to certain areas of Asia, Europe, and North America. However, there are at least two different stories about their first appearance in Europe and how they were once believed to be magic.

In one version, chives first appeared in Europe in the 13th century when Marco Polo brought them over from China. From there, the British created a tradition that hanging chives from the rafters and above doorways would provide protection against evil spirits.

However, a conflicting story says that chives were in Europe before Marco Polo. In this version, the ancient Romans used chives in their diets because they believed that the plant’s strong taste would bring greater strength. Racehorses, workers, and wrestlers ate chives regularly to enhance their strength. Chives were also a Roman remedy for sore throats and sunburns.^[3]

7 Cucumbers

Today, one of the most notable varieties of this refreshing vegetable is the English cucumber. However, they actually originated in India and have been grown for approximately 3,000 years.

One of the most unexpected uses of cucumbers goes all the way back to the Roman Empire. According to Pliny the Elder, these vegetables were used to promote fertility. Women would wear them around their waists, and midwives would carry them around and then dispose of them once a child was born.^[4]

In ancient Rome, cucumbers were also used to scare away mice, cure bad eyesight, and soothe scorpion bites.

6 Onions

This seemingly ordinary piece of produce was once anything but. Long before onions were bringing us to tears, they were objects of worship. In fact, onions are found throughout historical Egyptian art in a variety of shapes and sizes. These vegetables are painted into scenes of pyramids and the altars of certain gods.

The Egyptians related onions to eternal life due to their concentric layers and would bury their pharaohs with them. Onions have also been found in various body parts of mummies, such as the thorax and the pelvis.

So, why was the onion such a revered food to the Egyptians, especially when exploring the theme of death?

According to experts, it was a common belief that these beautiful bulbs could bring breath back to the deceased. Others say that the antiseptic properties may have been thought to be magical and therefore useful in the afterlife.^[5]

5 Apples

An apple a day keeps the doctor away—or so “they” say.

The belief that apples can cure all diseases or at least keep you healthier has been around for centuries. In fact, it is a common thread connecting multiple cultures.

But the apple is more than just a healer; it is a symbol that appears in folklore all the way back to Greek mythology. According to Irish folklore, heroes would eat apples to stay young and strong. In historical Chinese culture, the apple was given as a gift of peace.^[6]

The apple also represents love. The Balkans believed that when a woman accepted an apple from a man, she was engaged to him. In some Italian cultures, when a man was in love with a woman, he would present her with an apple to show and solidify his affection for her.

4 Corn

Today, corn is used for more than we even realize. Whether it is the buttery, fluffy movie snack or feed for countless types of livestock, corn is everywhere.

To the Aztecs, corn (or maize) was more than just a food source. They believed that the growth and harvest process was synced with the cycle of life: birth, regeneration, and death. They even had three female deities of maize to represent each cycle, and they were worshiped and thanked heavily throughout the cycle of the crop.

The deity Xilonen, representing the first or earliest crop of the summer, was worshiped with an elaborate festival. A young female slave was made to dress up as Xilonen during the eight days leading up to the festival. Men and women would dance, and the people were fed maize-focused foods.

On the last night of celebrations, the Xilonen impersonator was sacrificed as a way to show gratitude to Mother Earth for the life-sustaining crop and to ensure that the cycle of crops and life would keep coexisting harmoniously.^[7]

3 Dill

Dill is another herb that is plentiful in gardens today. However, before dill was a welcomed weed, it was thought in old folklore to bring people both love and happiness. Specifically, in Germany and Belgium, sprigs of dill would be attached to the bride’s dress or floral bouquet to bring the new couple blessings on their marriage.

Dill also has a grim side in mythology and old beliefs. European monks believed that dill could cause infertility and had the power to drive away male demons with an appetite for sexually preying on women.

Dill did find its place in witchcraft, too. Ironically, it had two uses, one on each of the extreme ends of the spectrum. Many believed that drinking a glass of dill water could reverse the effects of a spell cast on you and hanging sprigs around a home could protect from any impending spells. But others believed that witches used dill in their potions and while casting spells.^[8]

2 Figs

Figs appear as far back as the Bible and were considered to be highly spiritual. However, it isn’t just this beautiful fruit itself that is used for spiritual and magical purposes. The Kikuyu women in Africa took the sap from fig trees and spread it on themselves to increase fertility.^[9]

But not every belief surrounding the fig is as wonderful and welcomed as fertility. In Bolivia, people thought that evil spirits stayed in the canopies of fig trees and that walking under a fig tree could cause grave illness. In Papua New Guinea, figs are feared because they are believed to be haunted by evil spirits that will be released when the fruit is opened.

1 Poppy Seeds

Today, poppy seeds are famous in baked goods. Many are also aware of the relationship between poppy seeds and opium. But the magical history of the poppy seed predates what is common knowledge to us in the Western world.

In ancient Greece, the poppy was representative of Hypnos, the god of sleep, and so it was thought to aid sleep. Hypnos was believed to bring about dreams of a prophetic nature while also soothing emotional trauma. While this sounds all warm and fuzzy, the poppy seed was also believed to be associated with Hades, representing an eternal sleep or death.

In the Middle Ages, poppy cake was used by young women to determine the direction from which their one true love would come. A young woman would throw a piece of poppy cake out the door and have a dog fetch it. The direction from which the dog returned would be the same as that from which her true love would appear.^[10]

Poppy seeds also played contradictory roles in fertility. For example, poppy seeds put in the bottom of a bride’s shoe would result in infertility. Alternatively, eating sweetbreads made with poppy seeds on New Year’s Eve was believed to aid in abundance for the year to come.

Halsey is a freelance writer splitting time between Canada and the US. Always curious.

Although people sometimes think of “art” as only or primarily the visual arts, fine arts are much more varied. According to The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, they include not only painting and drawing but also “sculpture, literature, architecture, drama, music, dance, opera, and television and movies.”

It is in this broad sense of the meaning of the term that the artists on this list are included. Each of them, whether a painter, a novelist, or a poet, is not only famous but also shares the rather surprising experience of having had one or more of their works inspired by a hallucination.

Related: Top 10 Frightening Facts About Hallucinations

10 Futuristic Images

Dr. Jean Kim believes Yayoi Kusama’s art teaches us how to live. The Japanese painter’s work features polka dots, the trademark theme she developed when she was 10 years old, and incorporates imagery from the hallucinations that the artist experiences.

Kim describes Kusama’s art as a mixture of abstract expressionism and conceptual art characterized by its graphic, colorful, and somewhat futuristic images. Kim cites the artist’s Infinity Rooms as an example: “These rooms are small self-contained mirror chambers, allowing the viewer to simultaneously lose one’s identity and sense of self in the infinity of a repeated image evoking the universe.” She adds the paintings capture the reality of selfies, which have become increasingly popular in recent years, as they’ve been distributed rapidly far and wide via social media.

Kusama’s art also helps the artist herself cope with, and even transcend, her mental illness. Kim points out that although not specifically diagnosed, it is consistent with psychosis and possible schizophrenia. While marked by hallucinations and “the disintegration of one’s sense of self and identity, leading to anxiety and paranoia.” Kusama’s art is therapeutic, allowing the painter to reconsolidate the fear of disintegration that the artist experiences.^[1]

9 Stalking Crustaceans and Bizarre Transformations

In 1935, French existential philosopher, novelist, and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) decided to take a trip—a very special kind of trip. He prevailed upon his friend, Daniel Lagache, a medical doctor, to punch his ticket, so to speak, by injecting his patient with mescaline, which was used at the time to treat alcoholism and depression.

As a result, Sartre experienced a “bad trip.” Writer Emily Zarevich describes some of the more salient features of Sartre’s mind-blowing adventure. Not only did bizarre, frightening crustaceans pursue him wherever he went, but ordinary objects transformed themselves into animals, “his clock [becoming] an owl, his umbrella to a vulture.”

Sartre’s adventure ended with a mental breakdown. Part of his campaign of redemption that followed included his consultation with famed psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. After that, Sartre understood that the crabs that had pursued him symbolized the philosopher’s fear of being alone. Although he was able to rid himself, intermittently, of the crustaceans that haunted him, the crabs reappeared in Sartre’s experimental and ground-breaking 1938 novel La Nausée (Nausea). In the book, readers are treated to a ludicrous sex scene in which the main character daydreams he’s trapped in a garden full of insects and animals walking crab-style.^[2]

8 Shapes on the Ceiling

Despite his eventual fame, Joan Miro (1893-1983) was once a starving artist. The surrealist painter himself explained the way that he conceived the subjects of his art. Janis Mink summarizes his process in her book, Miro. Upon returning to his Paris studio at night, he would go to bed sometimes without supper, where he would see things, including shapes on the ceiling, before jotting them down in a notebook. Sometimes, the sights were “remembered dreams” from his unrestful sleep; other times, they were images seen in “hallucinations caused by hunger.”

Although Miro might appear to have sufficient funds for necessities and “trips back and forth to Spain,” he was actually impoverished. His hunger, though, like the “ether, cocaine, alcohol, morphine, or sex” that his colleagues employed, helped him to get in touch with his subconscious. This worked out well for Miro, who was too deeply spiritual to destroy his own body and fully enjoyed his own connection to nature. His 1925 painting, The Birth of the World, quickly attained fame.^[3]

7 Blood Sky and Open Chest Wound

Edvard Munch (1863-1944), who, according to Dr. Albert Rothenberg, may have had bipolar disorder with psychosis, experienced visual and auditory hallucinations and received psychiatric hospitalization in 1908.

Munch himself explains the origin of his celebrated, if dark and disturbing, painting The Scream (1893): “I was walking along the road with two of my friends. Then the sun set. The sky suddenly turned into blood, and I felt something akin to a touch of melancholy. I stood still, leaned against the railing, dead tired. Above the blue black fjord and city hung clouds of dripping, rippling blood. My friends went on again. I stood, frightened, with an open wound in my breast. A great scream pierced through nature.”

The experience, clearly a visual hallucination, was creatively transformed by Munch in several phases over a period of eighteen months into a work of art. Five preliminary sketches in the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, show changes in the position of the painting’s lone figure, resulting in the subjects being turned to face the viewer and being visually integrated with the scene. The successive changes show how Munch’s artistry transformed his hallucination into a significant and meaningful portrait of an emotional state of mind and reflected the artist’s own healthy creative processes.^[4]

6 Autoscopic Hallucination

An autoscopic hallucination is the perception of one’s own body or a part of it as existing separately and externally to the self. This type of hallucination occurred in conjunction with meningitis, seizures, space-occupying lesions, brain tumors, migraine, delirium, and post-traumatic brain lesions.

The Russian novelist Feodor (also spelled “Fyodor” and “Fjodor”) Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was regarded as an abnormally high-strung personality and suffered from an unknown ailment that made him subject to hallucinations. Even as a child, he had auditory hallucinations. Once, while hiking through a forest, he heard a voice warn that a wolf was loose. As Joseph Frank recounts in Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt 1821-1849, as an adult, the novelist confided, he had become the victim of some sort of strange and unbearably torturing nervous illness that he called “mystic terror.” For a time, the novelist was convinced that someone who snored shared his bed. He had other hallucinations as well.

In fact, the second Mr. Golyadkin featured in the novel The Double may have been inspired by an autoscopic hallucination experienced by Dostoevsky himself. In any case, it is clear Dostoevsky’s “first-hand acquaintance with hallucinatory phenomena and his exceptional talent” allowed Dostoevsky to verbalize and analyze such experiences.^[5]

5 Hypnagogic Hallucinations

The English novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1879) experienced hypnagogic hallucinations, defined as fleeting perceptual experiences during the transition from wakefulness to sleep. Such incidents are often associated with involuntary and imagined experiences, hypnagogic hallucinations, and hypnopompic hallucinations (in the period from sleep to wakefulness). Dickens was also an insomniac.

His characters experience similar conditions and hallucinations, including insomnia, sleep promotion, hypnagogic hallucinations, perhaps the first report of restless legs syndrome, sleep paralysis, dreams, nightmares, terror, and drowsiness. One example of Dickens’s literary depiction of a hypnagogic hallucination appears in A Christmas Carol, as Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by four ghosts, leaving Scrooge unsure whether they are a dream or reality. A second example is that of Oliver Twist, who, when he falls asleep, “sees his enemies, Monks and Fagin, apparently in an episode of dream-reality confusion.”^[6]

4 Archangels and the Face of God

At age four, the poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake (1757-1827) saw God’s face through a window of the child’s house. About six years later, he said he saw a tree full of angels, their “bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.” Later, archangels would dictate poetry to him and infuse the themes of his visual art. Blake’s hallucinations, which occurred again and again throughout his life, also included audible voices—those of his dead brother, to whom he spoke every day, and of angels.

A retroactive diagnosis of Blake suggests that he may have suffered from bipolar disorder or temporal lobe epilepsy. This latter condition could explain his seeing “ecstatic aurae,” such as those that typically indicate the presence of deities or angels in paintings and drawings.^[7]

3 Brobdingnagian Hallucination

As Jan Dirk Blom points out in A Dictionary of Hallucinations, the Gulliverian hallucination, aka the brobdingnagian hallucination, refers to a macroptic hallucination in which a human figure or figures are seen as disproportionally large. Terms like “lilliputian hallucination,” which involves the perception of tiny human figures, were inspired by Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels.

Swift (1667-1745) experienced symptoms akin to those of Ménière’s disease, including cognitive changes, memory impairment, personality alterations, language disorder, and facial paralysis during the last three years of his life. And it is thought that the novel’s gigantic inhabitants of Brobdingnag and tiny people of Lilliput are based on Swift’s own visual hallucinations.^[8]

2 Hallucinations of the Sane

Whoever has seen The Garden of Earthly Delights must have wondered what, besides the fervent religious beliefs of Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450s-1516), inspired the paintings. To say that they are bizarre and perverse characterizes the triptych in relatively mild terms.

Strange architecture, part floral and part stone; hybrid creatures; nude men and women performing acrobatics or sexual acts or riding horses, camels, mules, boars, bulls, and unicorns; huge fruits; lovers trapped inside clam shells, transparent floral bodies, and glass tubes; flowers in strange places—these are only some of the surreal images in the central panel of the triptych, which shows scenes of an earthly paradise awash in lust, preceding the even-worse pictures reserved for the right panel’s depiction of hell.

Roger Blench, author of “The hallucinatory Hieronymus Bosch: Charles Bonnet syndrome?” briefly assesses the possibility that Bosch’s imagery is related to episodes of Charles Bonnet Syndrome [CBS], aka “hallucinations of the sane.” Although Blench dismisses attempts to pigeonhole Bosch according to any one interpretation, he also suggests that there is evidence to see the artist’s work as Bosch’s own hallucinations transferred to canvas framed in an iconography acceptable to his era. According to this interpretation, Bosch wanted to express his paintings’ themes in at least an ostensibly Roman Catholic worldview that could be viewed as doctrinal, if unusual.^[9]

1 Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven

In Dante Alighieri (c. 1265-1321), we meet a poet whose work is nearly as strange and surreal, if not as obscure, as Bosch’s Garden. It wouldn’t be surprising to find that Dante’s epic depiction of the poet’s journey through hell (The Inferno), purgatory (Purgatorio), and heaven (Paradiso) was based, at least in part, on the poet’s own hallucinations. Indeed, such may very well have been the case, as it has been theorized the author may have had narcolepsy.

In The Divine Comedy, the poet Dante references his fictional counterpart’s sleep, weariness, dreams, and, as Dante himself writes, “rested eyes.” These allusions are explained as indications that the actual Dante suffered from both narcolepsy and catalepsy. The former is a neurological disorder. It interferes with the body’s regulation of sleep-wake cycles, causing sleepiness during the day and the tendency to nap for brief periods during waking hours. The latter condition causes muscular rigidity and unresponsiveness to the stimuli of the objective world.

The fictional Dante’s entire journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven is marked by sudden wake-dreaming transitions, short and refreshing naps, visions and hallucinations, unconscious behaviors, episodes of muscle weakness, and falls which are always triggered by strong emotions. The evidence that Dante is writing from experience about the hallucinations implied by his poetry is there in The Divine Comedy itself, in the behavior of its protagonist, the fictional Dante.^[10]

It is surprisingly easy for historical myths to become historical facts because oftentimes people will prefer the version of a story that is the most entertaining or the easiest to remember rather than the one that is the most accurate. Sometimes, all it takes is for just one person to come up with a good lie, and, just like that, hundreds of years later it is still presented as fact.

Today we examine 10 of these myths, all about famous historical people who aren’t around anymore to clear the air themselves.

10. Lady Godiva and the Naked Ride

The story of Lady Godiva’s naked ride has been around for over 700 years. As the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, she pleaded with her husband to lower taxes, which he said he would do if she would ride around town naked in the middle of the day. Godiva agreed to do this and, out of respect for her, all the peasants averted their gaze during her naked ride, except for one perv named Thomas who became known as Peeping Tom.

That’s the story. The existence of Lady Godiva (or Godifu, as was her real name) is well-attested. She lived during the mid-11th century and was married to Leofric, one of the richest men in Anglo-Saxon England. Everything else, however, seems to be fiction which was steadily added to the legend over the centuries. The first to mention it was the chronicler, Roger of Wendover, 200 years later, but he only made reference to Leofric’s challenge. He never said that Godiva actually went through with it. The “Peeping Tom” bit wasn’t even added until the 17th century, so there is no historical evidence that the naked ride ever took place.

9. Walter Raleigh and the Tobacco Craze

Staying in England, we take a look at one of the country’s leading adventurers – Sir Walter Raleigh. He explored and colonized the New World, fought the Spanish Armada, and even led an expedition to search for the fabled El Dorado. He is also credited with introducing tobacco to England. In fact, according to legend, the concept of smoking was so alien to Englishmen that when Raleigh’s servant first saw him smoke, he threw a bucket of water on him, thinking that his master was on fire.

So is any of this true? The story about the servant is obviously fiction, but Raleigh does deserve some partial credit because he played a role in popularizing tobacco, especially after supposedly convincing Queen Elizabeth I to try it. Everyone else copied the queen, so smoking became the new hip thing to do.

But Raleigh definitely did not introduce it because the Spanish had brought tobacco to Europe decades earlier. John Frampton had already published an English translation of the book “Of the Tabaco and of His Greate Vertues” by Spanish physician Nicolas Monardes, promoting the plant’s many medicinal qualities. So the English were aware of tobacco, they just weren’t interested in smoking it.

8. Guillotin and the Guillotine

You can probably guess by his name what Joseph-Ignace Guillotin is famous for but, contrary to myth, he did not invent the guillotine, arguably the most notorious execution method in history. In fact, the 18th-century French physician was a staunch abolitionist who did not believe in the death penalty at all. However, since getting rid of it completely was unrealistic, he advocated for a more humane method of execution, one which was quick, painless, and didn’t involve torture.

Ultimately, he got his wish, but he had no hand in the design or manufacture of the killing device. Several people were involved in its development, but the actual construction was done by a German harpsichord maker named Tobias Schmidt. 

The name “guillotine” stuck mainly due to a song published in a popular French journal, mocking the physician. Guillotin “bitterly regretted to the latest moment of his existence” this connection. There is another myth involving him that says that he died by guillotine which, again, is not true. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin died of old age at 75 years old. Afterward, his family petitioned the French government to change the name of the killing device, but it refused so the family changed their name instead.

7. Mussolini and His Trains

“Say what you want about Mussolini, but at least he made the trains run on time.” Or, at least, that’s what people bring up whenever they try to promote the virtues of an autocratic regime, or when they try to see the positives even in a worst-case scenario. Regardless of the motivation behind it, they should probably stop saying it simply because it is not true.

The whole “trains running on time” idea was propaganda used by Mussolini to advance the notion of fascist efficiency. Pretty much every biography on Mussolini comes with testimonies from people who lived or visited Italy during his reign and knew firsthand that the legendary precision and punctuality of Italian trains was more myth than reality. Not to mention the fact that many repairs and improvements on Italy’s railway system were done in the early 1920s before Mussolini even came to power, and he simply took the credit for them.

6. George Washington and the Cherry Tree

One day in 1738, Augustine Washington Sr. was walking around his plantation when he noticed that someone had cut down his favorite cherry tree. He suspected his young son, George, who had just received a hatchet for his sixth birthday. When Augustine confronted his son, George Washington admitted to the deed, saying that he “can not tell a lie.” Impressed with his bravery and honesty, Augustine Washington immediately forgave and embraced his son. 

It is a nice story that makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but it was completely made up by a man named Mason Locke Weems. After George Washington’s death, Weems became one of the first people to write a biography about the Founding Father. Titled simply The Life of Washington, it was published in 1800 and became a bestseller. 

It contained a lot of fictional stories, especially from Washington’s early years, since Weems’s main interest (besides making money, of course) was to turn Washington into a beloved role model for Americans rather than any kind of historical accuracy. The “cherry tree” story became the most popular myth associated with Washington, even though it didn’t actually appear until the book’s fifth edition in 1806.

5. Napoleon and the Sphinx’s Nose

The Great Sphinx of Giza is one of the most famous landmarks in the world. It is instantly recognizable and, strangely enough, one of its most defining features is something that is missing – the nose. Today, we probably couldn’t even picture the Sphinx with a nose but, obviously, it did have one at some point so… that begs the question: what happened to it?

Weirdly enough, the person who often gets the blame for the missing nose is Napoleon. In 1798, he led a campaign into Egypt and Syria, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and the story goes that an errant cannonball hit the Sphinx’s nose and smashed it to bits.

We can safely let Napoleon off the hook for this act of vandalism since there is pretty strong evidence that the Sphinx had already lost its nose before his time. Sketches by Danish explorer Frederic Louis Norden dated to 1737, decades before the French ruler was even born, show the Sphinx as we know it today. Going even further back, 15th-century historian Al-Maqrizi not only documented the loss of the nose but also blamed it on a man named Muhammad Sa’im al-Dahr, who intentionally defaced the Sphinx as an act of iconoclasm.

4. Ben Franklin and His Turkeys

We’ve already covered one Founding Father, so let’s mention another one: Benjamin Franklin and his staunch admiration for turkeys, which supposedly prompted him to propose the turkey as America’s national symbol instead of the bald eagle.

There are a few kernels of truth in there, which is probably why this myth is so enduring. It is true that Franklin was part of the committee to select the national seal of America, alongside John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, so he would have had the opportunity to advocate for the turkey if he so desired but he did not do it. Instead, Franklin suggested a biblical scene showing Moses parting the Red Sea.

It is also true that Franklin preferred the turkey over the bald eagle. He thought the eagle was a lazy animal of “bad moral character” who lived by stealing food from other birds, whereas the turkey was more respectable and a “true original native of America.” However, he only shared these opinions in a private letter to his daughter. He never publicized them and he wasn’t even talking about the eagle from the Great Seal, but rather the eagle used by a club called the Society of Cincinnati, which some people thought looked more like a turkey than an eagle. The whole thing was just a joke that people didn’t get and that’s how the myth was born.

3. Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth

Juan Ponce de Leon was a 16th-century Spanish explorer and conquistador who led the first European expedition to Florida and served as the first Governor of Puerto Rico. However, the main thing he is remembered for today is his search for the mythical Fountain of Youth, a legendary spring capable of de-aging anyone who swam in its waters. 

Here’s the thing, though. Ponce de Leon never did that. The Fountain of Youth is not mentioned once in any of his letters or documents. His goal was something far more common and mundane – money. Specifically, he was searching for another island like Puerto Rico where he could enjoy another profitable governorship. 

The connection with the Fountain of Youth appeared after the explorer’s death and it was actually an attempt by a writer named Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés to discredit him. Oviedo disliked Ponce de Leon, so he wrote how the conquistador was tricked by the Native Americans to set off in pursuit of the Fountain of Youth. It was meant to make Ponce de Leon look like a gullible fool and the rest of the world bought it hook, line and sinker.

2. William Howard Taft and the Big Bathtub

William Howard Taft served as the 27th President of the United States, but people mainly remember him today for being so fat that he once got stuck in the White House bathtub and that it took six strong men to get him out.

It’s true that Taft was a large man. He stood almost six feet tall and weighed almost 350 pounds by the end of his presidency. He wasn’t called “Big Bill” for nothing, but even he wasn’t big enough to get stuck in the bathtub that had been installed in the White House especially for him. Yes, Taft had the forethought to order a custom-made tub that was seven feet long, three-and-a-half feet wide, and could easily accommodate four regular men. Weighing over a ton, it was at the time the largest bathtub built for one individual, so there was no way for Big Bill to get stuck inside it.

To top it all off, this story was never reported in the papers during Taft’s presidency. The first mention of it seems to appear in the memoir of an usher named Ike Hoover who worked in the White House for 42 years and published a book with all kinds of quirky and seedy stories from his time spent there.

1. Magellan and His Circumnavigation

Being the first to do something is almost a sure-fire way to make it into the history books. Some people even get lucky enough to become remembered for something they never actually did. Take, for example, 16th-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. If there is one thing that most people know about Magellan, it is that he was the first person to circumnavigate the globe in 1519.

Some places are more careful with their wording and say that Magellan led or “masterminded” the expedition that completed the first circumnavigation. This is more accurate, but still omits the fact that Magellan himself never finished the voyage. He was killed in the Philippines in 1521, and Juan Sebastian Elcano became the new captain, who saw the voyage to its completion.

Curiously, historians think that the person who probably deserves this accolade the most was a Malaysian slave named Enrique. Ten years earlier, Magellan picked him up in Malacca to serve as his interpreter. Enrique then traveled west with Magellan from Asia to Europe. Then, he set off in 1519 on Magellan’s fatal expedition, going from Europe to Asia. However, he left the ship after Magellan’s death in the Philippines, just a few hundred miles short of his point of origin in Malacca. We don’t know what happened to Enrique after that but, assuming he made it home, he would have completed the circumnavigation he had unwittingly started a decade earlier.

Even if you’re prone to superstition, you might find the idea of a cursed film laughable. Yet some productions have been so wrought with bad luck it has seemed like the only logical explanation to some. But whether or not you are a believer, you might want to count yourself lucky for not being involved in the following ten movies.

10 The Exorcist (1973)

The 1973 horror classic The Exorcist caused quite a stir amongst cinemagoers upon release based on its merits alone. But the strange incidents surrounding the film, including several on-set injuries, a fire, a motorcycle accident, and a lightning strike on a church, have also led to many labeling it as cursed.

People have also linked the film to several deaths, the most notable being that of actors Jack MacGowran and Vasiliki Maliaros, who both passed away before the film hit the big screen. In addition, several cast members would also report losing family members around the time of the film’s shooting.^[1]

9 Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

This 1955 coming-of-age drama explored the so-called moral decay of America’s youth. However, there was seemingly just as much delinquency behind the scenes of Rebel Without a Cause as anything that made it to the screen, including a real-life fight between acting hopefuls perpetrated by the director Nicholas Ray and a love triangle between Ray, Natalie Wood, and William Hooper.

However, rumors of a curse linked to this film didn’t spring up due to shenanigans, but tragedy, with each of the movie’s three leads suffering an early grave. First, James Dean passed away at 24 due to a car crash only weeks before the film arrived in theaters. Then, years later, a 37-year-old Sal Mineo was murdered outside his apartment, and Natalie Wood mysteriously drowned in the waters off Santa Catalina Island at 43. Also, supporting actor Nick Adams who went on to achieve a degree of fame, died young due to a drug overdose.^[2]

8 The Crow (1994)

The Crow was to be the launching pad for the career of Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee’s son. But unfortunately, the film would be his last, following a now infamous fatal accident on set, which saw Lee shot by a real bullet instead of a blank. However, while Lee’s death was the most tragic event linked with the film, it was not the only bad luck the cast and crew suffered.

Things arguably started to go wrong after the pre-production crew received an anonymous voicemail telling them not to make the film because ‘bad things would happen.’ Sure enough, on the first day of shooting, a crew member suffered severe burns and later lost his ears when his crane hit a power line. Then the “Storm of the Century” hit the southeastern U.S., causing complications, delays, discontent, and sickness for the cast and crew. All in all, the fact the movie made it to the screen is perhaps nothing short of a minor miracle.^[3]

7 The Poltergeist Trilogy (1982-1988)

If this list is going to teach you anything, it is that horror films are seemingly the most susceptible to apparent curses. And here we don’t just have one classic of the genre, but a whole trilogy that people claim to be cursed. And again, a series of deaths, two of which were unexpected, in this case, involving no less than four cast members, lies at the heart of the matter.

Dominique Dunne, who portrayed Dana Freeling, was the first to meet a tragic fate after her former partner murdered her on her driveway in 1982. Then, Julian Beck, who played the evil preacher Kane in Poltergeist II, took his own life in 1983 after a long battle with stomach cancer. Next, Will Sampson, who played the Native American shaman Taylor, passed away during surgery in ’87. Finally, Heather O’Rourke, who played Carol Anne, the focal point of the Poltergeist series, tragically passed away at the age of twelve from an intestinal abnormality.^[4]

6 The Wizard of Oz (1939)

There’s no denying that The Wizard of Oz will live on as a landmark moment in cinema history. But despite its commercial success, some believe the film is cursed, due to the number of serious accidents that occurred on set, from an exploding broomstick injuring a stunt double to broken wires causing the actors playing the winged monkeys to come crashing to the ground.

Elsewhere, Margeret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch, experienced second and third-degree burns to her face and hands after fire used for special effects caught on to her. Meanwhile, Buddy Ebsen, the original tin man, suffered poisoning due to costume designers using pure aluminum dust to create his makeup. And that scene where Dorothy and her friends fall asleep while snow falls from the sky? That was mineral asbestos falling on the actors.

According to Judy Garland, who played Dorothy and later struggled with depression and substance abuse, there was plenty of mental and psychological abuse on and off the set too. And then there are the urban legends, such as the false claim that a munchkin hanged himself during filming. But in reality, the curse behind The Wizard of Oz was nothing supernatural but a combination of neglect and ignorance on the studio’s part.^[5]

5 The Omen (1976)

This horror classic tells the story of a couple who adopt a child that, as it turns out, might be the son of the Devil. But while it is beloved by some, some would argue that making a film about such a story was tempting fate. And they might have the evidence to back this up.

The bad luck began a month before filming commenced when lead star Gregory Peck’s son ended his own life. Later, when Peck was heading to London for the film, his plane was struck by lighting. Amazingly, the same thing happened to executive producer Mace Neufeld only a week later. And that wouldn’t be the only aviation problem, as a plane that many of the crew were originally meant to board ended up crashing.

Other events connected to the film include the director’s hotel being bombed by the IRA, lions killing a zookeeper in a safari park the day after footage for The Omen was shot there, and a rottweiler attacking a stunt performer. However, perhaps the most shocking incident allegedly connected to the curse would occur to special effects director John Richardson and his assistant Liz Moore when they were involved in a car crash. John, the man behind The Omen’s infamous decapitation scene, survived. Unfortunately, however, his assistant was herself decapitated.^[6]

4 Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Another film that plays upon the concept of an (in this case, unborn) antichrist and is supposedly cursed is Rosemary’s Baby. And rumors of said curse arguably began with the murder of director Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, at the hands of the Manson family in 1969. Her murder followed the death of composer Krzysztof Komeda, who suffered a tragic fall from a rock encampment. Years later, John Lennon was shot outside of the Dakota, where Rosemary’s Baby was filmed, which some have also attributed to the curse.

Beyond these deaths, others have linked the film’s “curse” to the downward spiral of those involved backstage. For some, such as producer William Castle and original novelist Ira Levin, the stress of being involved with such a controversial film wreaked havoc on their personal lives and mental health. Elsewhere, producer Robert Evans was not only convicted of cocaine trafficking but became linked to the high-profile murder of Roy Radin. And then, of course, there is Polanski’s fall from grace that, in the wake of his wife’s murder, saw him indulge in substance abuse and become linked to multiple acts of depravity.^[7]

3 The Superman Franchise (1948– )

The superman curse is a hex so strong that it seemingly cursed an entire franchise. And if we’re going by the number of people affected, it’s clearly one of the most potent. The Superman curse has, if believed, been proven liable to jinx anyone even remotely involved in the Superman movies, from backstage staff to actors to producers. However, if one particular group is at high risk, it is the actors who play the title character.

The curse seemingly began with the first live-action Superman, Kirk Alyn, who struggled to find work after taking on the role. Then George Reeves, who portrayed the capped hero in the 1951 film, died just days before he was set to be married. Next, Lee Quigley, who played the baby Superman in the 1978 film, died of a heart attack at fourteen. And Christopher Reeves became the most high-profile victim of the alleged curse following a horse-riding accident that left him paralyzed.^[8]

2 Atuk

Now for a film so cursed that it never got made. Based on the book The Incomparable Atuk, Atuk tells a “fish out of water” story about an Inuit living in New York. But whenever someone tries to make the film, they keep running into the same problem: the actor tipped for the lead role suddenly dies.

John Belushi was the first name to be attached to the movie before dying due to drug intoxication, with the script lying on his coffee table. Sam Kinison actually made it on to set to play the lead before production was shut down. He later died tragically when a drunk driver hit his car. Next, John Candy got hold of the script and showed interest before dying of a supposed heart attack. Finally, Chris Farley showed an interest before dying after a four-day, drug-fueled bender at 33.^[9]

1 A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces seems to be suffering from the same curse behind Atuk. It’s another movie based on a book that tragedy and bad luck have prevented from being made. First, John Belushi signed up to play the lead role before dying of a drug overdose. Then John Candy and Chris Farley suffered the same fate.

A version of the film set for release in 2005, starring Will Ferrell, was moving ahead nicely. But while Ferrell survived the alleged curse, the production didn’t. Not only was one of the film’s financers murdered by her husband, but Hurricane Katrina rolled in to destroy many of the film’s needed locations.^[10]

It is time, once again, to take 10 well-known persons from the past and explore the things that everyone thinks they did, that they didn’t actually do. In other words, 10 more myths about historical figures.

10. Ben Franklin and Daylight Saving Time

Undoubtedly, Benjamin Franklin was a pretty smart guy. In fact, there is a long list of useful things that he either invented or helped improve, but because he was such a prolific inventor, he is often also credited with things he had no business with. One such example is daylight saving time, the practice of setting the clocks forward by one hour during spring to make full use of the sunshine and then setting them back during the fall.

The notion that this idea came from the Founding Father dates back to 1784. At that time, the 78-year-old Franklin was living in Paris, where he was serving as an American envoy. He published an essay in the April 26 edition of the Journal de Paris where he wrote that Parisians would save a fortune on candles if they got up with the sunrise.

Here’s the thing, though. Franklin’s essay was clearly satire. He wrote how he was the first person in Paris to discover that the sun rises so early after being mistakenly woken up at six in the morning by a random noise and finding his room bathed in sunlight. He also wrote how he told his friends and they refused to believe that such a thing was possible.

Furthermore, Franklin made no mention of setting the clocks forward. Instead, the solutions he proposed (again, as satire) were to tax windows that had shutters and kept out the light, to limit the sale of candles to one pound per week per family, to ring the church bells every morning at six, and last, but not least, to fire cannons in the street to wake everyone up.

9. Fidel Castro and Baseball

Fidel Castro wore many hats in his lifetime: activist, revolutionary, political radical, guerrilla leader, ruthless dictator… And according to one enduring myth, he almost donned another hat – that of a New York Yankee.

There is no denying that Fidel Castro was a big fan of baseball. He was also decent at it, having played the sport during his college years in Havana. However, there’s a very big gap between “decent” and becoming a Yankee. At no point was Castro good enough to turn pro, but the popular story claims that he was once a prospect with the Yankees during the 1950s, occasionally changed to the Washington Senators. 

As with many good myths, this one might’ve had a seed of truth that helped it take form. It is possible, although by no means certain, that Castro could have taken part in a mass tryout staged in Cuba by Joe Cambria, a famed baseball scout who was responsible for bringing scores of Cuban players to America. Even if this happened, Castro would have never been seriously considered, but he liked the story and he certainly never made any efforts to discourage it.

8. Charles Lindbergh and the Transatlantic Flight

Charles Lindbergh might be the most famous aviator in history, but if you were to ask people what made him so famous, a lot of them would probably give you the wrong answer. They might say that Lindbergh performed the first transatlantic flight, back in May 1927, when he boarded the Spirit of St. Louis and flew from New York to Paris.

There is no denying that Lindbergh’s flight was a landmark moment in aviation history and even human history, for that matter, but it came with two important caveats that people tend to leave out – it was the first solo and nonstop transatlantic flight. That meant that Lindbergh flew straight from point A to point B without any stops along the way and he did it all alone. It’s still a remarkable feat, but it detracts from the fact that dozens of other people flew across the Atlantic before him.

If we are looking for the first nonstop transatlantic flight, then that honor belongs to John Alcock and Arthur Brown, who successfully finished their journey in June 1919, eight years before Lindbergh. And if we are looking for the first transatlantic flight ever, we only have to go back a few weeks earlier, to May 1919, when the crew of the Curtiss NC-4 flying boat commanded by Rear Admiral Albert Cushing Read did the flight in 19 days, after making multiple stops for repairs.

7. Cass Elliot and the Ham Sandwich

As grim as it may be, celebrity deaths are always a rich source of myths and urban legends. For example, did you know that Cass Elliot, better known as Mama Cass from her time with the Mamas & the Papas choked to death on a ham sandwich? Well, it’s not true, but the story appeared soon after her untimely death in London on July 29, 1974, and has stuck around ever since.

Who exactly was responsible for this idea is still uncertain. Some point the finger at a careless Met officer who opened his mouth to the press. Others say the first physician on site was to blame, as he, too, spoke to the media when he shouldn’t have, and mentioned that a half-eaten ham sandwich was present next to the body and could have been relevant to the cause of death. Since Cass Elliot’s weight had long been the subject of jokes in the media, this was all that some unscrupulous journalists needed in order to fashion a cruel but compelling demise for the singer.

A third alternative source for the rumor was Elliot’s manager, Allan Carr, who intentionally planted the story, although he had nobler intentions in mind. Besides her weight, Cass Elliot also had a pretty serious drug habit, so as soon as Carr heard that she had died suddenly, he assumed it was an overdose and thought that the ham sandwich story was a less shameful way to go. 

Eventually, British pathologist Keith Simpson performed the autopsy and found that the cause of death was a heart attack. No drugs or ham sandwiches were presented in Elliot’s system, but by then, the rumor had already become fact.

6. Ronald Reagan and Casablanca

Most people know that Ronald Reagan was an actor before turning to politics and, eventually, becoming President of the United States, but did you also know that, during his film career, Reagan almost played the lead in Casablanca?

This little piece of movie trivia is often presented as a fun “what if” of Hollywood history. What if Humphrey Bogart missed out on his most iconic role? Would Casablanca still have become a hit without him? Would the success of the movie deter Ronald Reagan from entering politics?

Just like before, the story of Reagan and Casablanca simply isn’t true, but on this occasion, we actually know exactly how the myth got started. It was the result of a press release put out by the Warner Bros. publicity office in early 1942, which stated that the movie would feature Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan. But this was so early in pre-production that work on the screenplay hadn’t even started yet and no casting decisions had been made. These kinds of press releases that didn’t convey any concrete information were relatively common back then, and they were simply intended to garner some extra publicity for the studio’s stars. 

The man who had the final say on the casting, producer Hal Wallis, later stated that he never seriously considered anyone other than Bogie for the role, although it is true that he initially wanted Ann Sheridan instead of Ingrid Bergman.

5. Albert Einstein and School Math

The name “Einstein” has become synonymous with “genius,” and given his larger-than-life presence, it is no wonder that multiple myths have spawned regarding him. The most famous one of all was, of course, that Einstein failed math in grade school. It’s a popular story because it makes us all feel better about our own mistakes and failures, and gives us hope that one day we can turn it all around.

While that last part is certainly possible, the bit about Einstein isn’t, although there is a kernel of truth in there. Albert Einstein was gifted in geometry, physics, and algebra from a young age, and by the time he was 11, he was already studying them at a college level. It is true that he failed an exam, although it wasn’t in grade school, it was the entrance exam to the Zurich Polytechnic. Einstein first took it when he was only 16, and he failed because the tests were in French, and that was a subject that young Albert did struggle with. He still nailed all the maths questions, though.

Another possible source of the myth was a reversal in the grading system of his school. Anyone going through Einstein’s academic record would notice that, at one point, he started getting loads of 6s, which should have been the lowest mark whereas 1 was the highest. However, Einstein didn’t suddenly get dumb. The school simply reversed the order of the grades, making 6 the highest. So sorry, but any way you slice it, Einstein has always been a child prodigy.

4. Gene Simmons and the Cow Tongue

The band KISS is known for several things: rock and rolling all night, partying every day, and staging outrageous and theatrical live performances. There are rockets, pyrotechnics, smoking guitars, fire-breathing, and, of course, makeup. On top of all that, bassist Gene Simmons became well-known for his prodigious tongue, which he proudly showed off at every opportunity. In fact, his tongue became so famous that people started having doubts that it was completely genuine. The rumor soon appeared that Simmons had enhanced his look by surgically replacing his own appendage with a cow tongue.

This is absurd, of course, for multiple reasons. Besides the fact that tongue transplants were medically impossible back when KISS first made it big in the early 70s, a cow’s tongue is almost 20 times larger than that of a human’s, so the difference would have been quite noticeable. Furthermore, although Simmons’ tongue is large, it’s not like it’s the largest ever or anything like that. It is simply larger than normal.

Lastly, the myth was debunked by the man himself. He referred to this story as his “favorite KISS rumor,” but confirmed that his tongue was 100 percent Gene Simmons.

3. George Washington Carver and Peanut Butter

George Washington Carver was a scientist whose efforts were integral to the agricultural economics of the United States, particularly the South which was entirely too reliant on cotton crops. And yet, he is mainly remembered as the “peanut butter guy,” which not only belittles his accomplishments, but it’s not even true.

Born into slavery, Carver wanted to help black sharecroppers who were perpetually indebted to white plantation owners by making their farms more productive. Cotton was, by far, America’s most profitable crop, but it was also very demanding on the soil. Since most black farmers barely scraped by on paper-thin profit margins, they had no choice but to plant the most valuable crop. But growing cotton season after season depleted the soil of nutrients, which was why Carver wanted them to practice crop rotation and alternate between crops to give the soil time to heal. But farmers were only willing to do this if they could actually profit off those other crops, which was why Carver started coming up with hundreds and hundreds of uses for soybeans, sweet potatoes, and, of course, peanuts.

Carver came up with over 300 uses for peanuts alone, ranging from shaving cream to glue to shampoo to all sorts of foodstuffs. And yet, peanut butter was not one of them because it already existed. The Aztecs and the Incas both made a paste out of roasted peanuts centuries earlier, and in modern times, several people applied for patents related to peanut butter, including Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.

2. George Crum and the Potato Chip

The story of how one of the world’s most popular snacks came to be is one of spite and happenstance. One day in 1853, a man visited Moon’s Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York, and ordered fried potatoes. When his food arrived, the man promptly sent it back, complaining that the fries were too thick and not salty or crispy enough. 

The chef at the restaurant was a man of Native and African American descent named George Crum aka George Speck and he didn’t take kindly to fussy eaters. His potatoes were too thick? Fine, he sliced them as thinly as possible. They weren’t crispy or salty enough? Fine, he cooked them until they became crunchy and bathed them in salt. To his surprise, the patron loved them, and that’s how potato chips, or Saratoga chips, as Crum called them, were born.

To make the story even more fantastical, some versions claim that the patron was none other than railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt. Unfortunately, there’s nothing to suggest that any part of the story is true. Crum was considered one of America’s master chefs of his day, and yet nobody hailed him as the inventor of the potato chip in his lifetime, not even Crum himself. This was a story that spread after his death, and the true inventor remains up for debate.

1. Walt Disney and the Frozen Head

Cryonics is the practice of freezing a human body soon after death, in the belief that future medical advances would allow us to bring it back to life. Sometimes, the entire body isn’t even needed; just the head. Surely, by the time medical science has advanced enough that resurrections have become possible, we would have overcome our need for a body and would be able to stick our brain into a computer, an android, a smart toaster, or something like that. There are plenty of people who have placed their hopes for a long-lasting life in cryonics including, if the myth is to be believed, its most famous patron, Walt Disney.

According to a popular urban legend, the head of the Head of the Disney Company is currently on ice, waiting for science to bypass the whole “death” thing. Some even say that it is stored in a freezer underneath Disneyland’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride.

There is no evidence to suggest that Walt Disney had any interest in cryonics, let alone that he froze himself. His own daughter debunked the myth, and records show that Disney had his body cremated after death. Some say that the rumor was started by a few rascally Disney employees, while others pin the blame on a reporter for an old tabloid called The National Spotlite.