97 Fun Facts About Old Wives' Tales

In the phrase 'old wives' tale', what did the word 'wife' originally mean?

Woman was the plain meaning of Old English wīf; the sense survives in 'midwife', literally the 'with-woman' who stays beside a mother during the birth.

The King James Bible's warning against 'old wives' fables' comes in a letter traditionally credited to which apostle?

Paul is the traditional author of 1 Timothy, where the 1611 text says to 'refuse profane and old wives' fables'; most scholars now think a later follower wrote the letter in his name.

What makes the popping sound when you crack your knuckles, a habit wrongly blamed for arthritis?

Gas bubbles in the joint fluid make the pop. One doctor cracked the knuckles of only his left hand every day for decades, found no arthritis in either hand, and won an Ig Nobel Prize for it.

The 'sit too close to the TV' warning began with 1967 X-ray leaks from whose sets?

General Electric had to recall and repair large colour sets in 1967 after they were found to leak X-rays; the fault was fixed long ago, but the warning to sit back outlived it.

The old tale claims that swallowed chewing gum sits in your stomach for how long?

Seven years, says the tale, but gum base is merely indigestible: it moves through the gut at the same pace as everything else and leaves the usual way.

The wartime carrots-help-you-see-in-the-dark story was propaganda hiding which technology?

Radar, newly fitted to RAF night fighters, was the real secret: wartime propaganda credited aces such as John 'Cat's Eyes' Cunningham with eyesight sharpened by eating carrots.

Carrots sharpen night vision only in people who are short of which nutrient?

Vitamin A is made in the body from the beta-carotene in carrots, and a lack of it harms eyesight; once you have enough, eating more carrots adds nothing to your night vision.

What actually causes the common cold, long blamed on wet hair and winter chills?

Viruses cause every cold, rhinoviruses most often, and more than 200 different ones can do it, one reason there is still no vaccine.

'An apple a day' was first recorded in 1866 as a proverb from Pembrokeshire, in which country?

Wales: the 1866 Pembrokeshire rhyme ran 'Eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread'; the snappier 'apple a day' wording only appeared decades later.

What really causes warts, which folklore says you catch from handling toads?

A papillomavirus (HPV) causes warts and is known to infect only humans, so toads are innocent; their bumps are skin glands that merely look like warts.

Why does regrowth feel coarser after shaving, wrongly said to make hair grow back thicker?

The cut end is blunt, not tapered like the fine tip of an uncut hair, so stubble feels coarse and can look darker; shaving changes neither the thickness nor the growth rate.

In a 1994 study, mothers rated their sons as hyperactive after a 'sugar' drink that actually contained what?

An artificial sweetener, aspartame, was all the boys drank, yet mothers told it was sugar rated them as more hyperactive; double-blind trials find that sugar itself makes no difference.

How long does the old poolside rule usually tell you to wait after eating before you swim?

An hour is the usual telling, half an hour in others, but digestion does not draw enough blood from your arms and legs to stop them working, and eating first has not been shown to raise the risk of drowning.

Turkey's tryptophan gets the blame for Thanksgiving drowsiness, but what is the likelier culprit?

A big, carb-heavy meal is the likelier culprit, dessert above all: carbohydrates trigger insulin, which clears rival amino acids from the blood and lets more tryptophan reach the brain.

Which of these foods contains more tryptophan, gram for gram, than Thanksgiving turkey?

Cheddar cheese beats turkey for tryptophan, as does pork; turkey holds about the same amount as chicken or beef, so the bird's sleepy reputation is undeserved.

What do eye doctors say reading in dim light actually causes?

Temporary eye strain is the only effect: poor light makes focusing harder work and tires the eyes sooner, but the discomfort passes with rest and leaves no lasting damage.

A US Army manual once claimed that 40 to 45 percent of body heat is lost through which body part?

The head, it said, but the figure is thought to come from 1950s tests on volunteers in Arctic suits with only their heads bare; the head is about a tenth of the body's skin and sheds heat like the rest.

Milk doesn't make your body produce more mucus, so what creates the feeling that it does?

It briefly coats the throat: milk mixes with saliva into a thickish film that lingers and feels like phlegm, yet volunteers given a cold virus made no more mucus however much milk they drank.

The official advice thought to lie behind 'eight glasses of water a day' said most of that water comes from what?

Prepared foods, said the US Food and Nutrition Board, already hold most of the water it advised; that sentence was overlooked, and real needs vary with body size, activity and climate.

Coffee is said to dehydrate you, but caffeine's mild diuretic effect shows up in which drinkers?

Only occasional drinkers notice it: regular coffee and tea drinkers build a strong tolerance to caffeine's diuretic effect, and a normal cup supplies more fluid than it costs.

Despite the tale that brandy warms you, what does alcohol do to core body temperature in the cold?

It can lower it: alcohol widens the blood vessels near the skin, so you feel warm while your body sheds heat faster, which is why first-aiders never give a drink to someone with hypothermia.

A 2019 trial of the hangover rule 'grape or grain but never the twain' gave volunteers which two drinks in turn?

Beer and wine: 90 volunteers drank beer then wine, wine then beer, or only one of the two, and the order changed nothing about the morning after; how drunk they felt was the better warning.

Dirty skin and greasy food get the blame for acne, but changes in what are a common real trigger?

Hormone levels shift at puberty and around periods and pregnancy, making the skin's glands pump out more oil that blocks hair follicles; scrubbing harder only irritates the skin.

Why do hair and fingernails seem to keep growing after death, as the old tale claims?

The skin dries and shrinks back as the body dehydrates, exposing more of each nail and hair; real growth needs hormones and a blood supply that stop at death.

A widely repeated but baseless 'fact' says the average person swallows how many spiders a year while asleep?

Eight is the figure everyone quotes, yet no study backs it: a sleeper's breathing and heartbeat send out vibrations that warn spiders to keep well away.

Which nutrient, taken as tablets, is widely believed to prevent colds despite the evidence?

Vitamin C, championed by Linus Pauling in a 1970 book, does not stop people catching colds; taken daily it shortens them only slightly, and starting once symptoms appear does nothing.

Chicken soup for a cold is nicknamed what?

Chicken soup is nicknamed 'Jewish penicillin'; a 2000 University of Nebraska study found it slowed the migration of neutrophils in the lab, though no trial shows it cures a cold.

A fever from infection is widely feared for causing what, which it does not do by itself?

Brain damage: a fever from infection seldom passes 41°C and does not harm the brain by itself; only extreme hyperthermia above about 42°C, as in heatstroke, can.

A much-told story blames spinach's inflated reputation for iron on a scientist misplacing what?

A decimal point, the tale runs, made spinach's iron look ten times higher; the slip itself may be a legend, but spinach really does supply only modest iron, which the body absorbs poorly.

In the German Candlemas lore behind Groundhog Day, which animal did Germans usually watch?

The badger was the usual German Candlemas forecaster (a bear in some regions): if it met sunshine on emerging, more winter was coming, and German settlers in Pennsylvania handed the job to the local groundhog.

'Red sky at morning, sailor's warning' works at middle latitudes because prevailing winds blow which way?

Mid-latitude weather moves west to east on the prevailing westerlies, so a red dawn lights clear sky already passed to the east while the next system approaches from the west; Matthew 16 quotes the saying.

Which ancient writer probably popularised the tale of ostriches burying their heads in sand?

Pliny the Elder wrote that ostriches hide head and neck in a bush and think themselves unseen; in fact a threatened ostrich lies flat with its neck pressed to the ground, so from afar it looks half-buried.

A popular myth says a goldfish's memory lasts only how long?

Three seconds is the myth; real goldfish remember things for months and can be trained with food rewards to respond to coloured lights and perform tricks.

Which New York skyscraper is hit by lightning more than 20 times a year, disproving 'never strikes twice'?

The Empire State Building's mast takes roughly two dozen strikes a year, because lightning favours tall, pointed, isolated objects and will hit the same one again and again.

Cartoon mice crave cheese, but what do real mice actually prefer to eat?

Sweet, sugary foods such as fruit and even chocolate tempt mice far more than strong-smelling cheese; the myth may date from days when cheese sat unrefrigerated on open shelves, easy to raid.

Which dogs tend to live longest, one reason the 'one dog year equals seven human years' rule fails?

Small breeds usually outlive giant ones, and no dog ages at a steady seven to one: by the usual rule of thumb a dog's first year alone equals about fifteen human years.

Which Disney film staged the 'lemmings jump off cliffs' myth by shoving the animals over the edge?

White Wilderness (1958) staged the scene in landlocked Alberta, where the crew tipped lemmings brought in from another province off a river cliff, as a Canadian TV investigation revealed in the 1980s.

What is the correct response to someone having a seizure?

Lay them gently on their side so the airway stays clear, cushion the head and time the seizure; putting anything in the mouth risks broken teeth and choking.

What do doctors advise you to do first when you find someone sleepwalking?

Guide them back to bed: despite the old tale, waking a sleepwalker is not dangerous, but one woken suddenly may be confused or upset, and the real risk is a fall or other accident.

In which country did many people long believe that sleeping in a closed room with an electric fan running could kill?

South Korea: 'fan death' was so widely believed that fans there were long sold with timers to switch off overnight, and in 2006 the Korea Consumer Protection Board listed fan asphyxiation among summer hazards.

Tetanus comes not from rust but from bacteria whose spores are found mainly where?

In soil and manure: the spores enter through a cut or puncture, and a rusty nail is risky only because it is dirty and drives them deep into flesh where there is little oxygen.

Which bird's call was long said to produce no echo, until acoustics researchers disproved the claim in 2003?

A duck called Daisy quacked for acousticians at Salford University, and her quack did echo; the long, fading tail of the call simply masks the faint reflection that comes back.

Which bitter herb flavours absinthe and was long blamed for making its drinkers hallucinate?

Wormwood contains thujone, the chemical once blamed for the convulsions and visions of heavy absinthe drinkers; that theory was disproved in the late 1990s, and the old bans on the drink were lifted.

Which philosopher was traditionally credited with naming the five senses?

Aristotle described sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, and his list stuck so firmly that people still speak of five senses; science now adds balance, pain and the sense of where your limbs are.

What does a camel's hump actually hold, despite the old belief that it stores water?

Fatty tissue fills the hump as a food reserve for lean times; a camel that goes hungry for long burns it up, and the hump shrinks and droops until the animal can feed again.

Why do veins look blue from the outside if the blood inside is actually red?

Light scatters beneath the surface: a vein absorbs red wavelengths more than the surrounding tissue does, so by contrast less red and relatively more blue returns to the eye, though the blood is dark red.

Long before Thomas Crapper, Sir John Harington built an early flush toilet for which queen, his godmother?

Elizabeth I had one of her godson's flushing closets fitted at Richmond Palace; he wrote the invention up in a bawdy 1596 book, The Metamorphosis of Ajax, a pun on 'a jakes', slang for a privy.

'Hair of the dog', the hangover cure, began as a folk remedy for a bite that carried which disease?

Rabies was the fear: a few hairs from the dog that bit you were pressed into the bite itself, a like-cures-like idea later borrowed for the morning-after drink.

Beach folklore says to urinate on which sea creature's sting, though that can make the pain worse?

Jellyfish stings are best rinsed in salt water straight away; urine does nothing to ease them and may even sharpen the pain.

Pope Gregory I is said to have ordered a blessing for people doing what during a plague in 590?

Sneezing was taken as an early sign of the plague, so a short prayer for the sneezer became the custom, the story most often told to explain 'bless you'.

Superstition says to cancel the bad luck of spilled salt by throwing a pinch where?

Over the left shoulder is where the Devil was said to lurk, so the pinch of salt lands square in his face.

Which Christmas plant is wrongly feared as deadly, thanks to a 1919 tale of a child eating one leaf?

Poinsettia is mildly irritating at worst: researchers trying to find a poisonous dose for rats gave up at the equivalent of 500 leaves.

Insincere tears are named after which reptile, once believed to weep while devouring its prey?

Crocodile tears are real enough: the animals do weep, typically to moisten eyes that have dried out after a long spell out of the water.

Which animals does a common saying call blind, though all have eyes and most navigate by sound?

Bats all have eyes that can see, and roughly three species in ten do not use sonar to find their way at all.

The ring finger got the wedding band because a vein was once thought to run from it to where?

The heart was the supposed end of the 'vena amoris', or vein of love, a phrase first found in a 1686 treatise on marriage by the lawyer Henry Swinburne.

An old rule says which shellfish should only be eaten in months spelled with the letter R?

Oysters really are far more likely to spoil from May to August in the Northern Hemisphere, so the old rule about R months had some truth in it.

Which disease takes its name from an old Italian belief that foul marsh vapours caused it?

Malaria comes from the Italian 'mala aria', and the same tie to swamps gave it the older names marsh fever and paludism.

Besides vampires, which shape-shifters did Central European folk belief say garlic would keep away?

Werewolves and demons shared the list with vampires, which is why garlic was worn, hung in windows and rubbed on chimneys and keyholes.

Which insect's name is popularly tied to the tale that it burrows into sleepers' heads to lay eggs?

Earwig joins the Old English words for ear and insect, though entomologists suspect the name really describes hindwings that look like a human ear when unfolded.

Which animals are wrongly said to fire their spines at attackers, when in fact they back into them?

Porcupines cannot launch a quill, but the quills come away easily, so the animals deliberately back into an attacker and leave them embedded.

Legend says the Crown will fall, and Britain with it, if which birds ever leave the Tower of London?

Ravens are kept there with clipped wings, a tradition one legend credits to Charles II, who is said to have ordered six birds to stay.

Folklore said which root screamed when pulled up, killing all who heard, so a dog was tied to it?

Mandrake carried a second threat in one version of the superstition: whoever pulled it up was condemned to hell, one more reason to hand the job to an animal.

In the nursery rhyme Jack and Jill, Jack mends his head with brown paper and which household liquid?

Vinegar and brown paper made a common home cure for bruises, so Jack's bedtime remedy was one the rhyme's first listeners would have known well.

Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner spread the idea that killing which seabird dooms a ship?

Albatross lore owes a great deal to the 1798 poem: real sailors regularly caught and ate the birds, as James Cook reported in 1772.

Hair turning white overnight is named after which queen, said to have greyed after a failed escape?

Marie Antoinette is said to have gone stark white overnight after her capture on the royal family's flight to Varennes during the French Revolution.

Many buildings in China and Japan skip which floor number because it sounds like the word for death?

Floor 4 goes missing because four and death sound identical in Japanese and almost alike in Chinese, a habit known as tetraphobia.

Which supposedly unlucky animal did sailors want aboard ship, and fishermen's wives keep at home?

A black cat crossing your path is good luck in England and the Celtic nations, the reverse of the American omen, and a black ship's cat was prized at sea.

Which vegetable is the classic 'negative-calorie' food, said to cost more to digest than it gives?

Celery takes only about 8% of its calories to digest, nowhere near the 100% a truly negative-calorie food would require.

Pale flecks on fingernails are often blamed on a lack of which mineral, though knocks cause most?

Calcium gets the blame, but research does not back that up: the commonest cause is a minor injury to the base of the nail, where it forms.

Stomach ulcers were blamed on stress and spice until Warren and Marshall traced most to what?

A bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, was the culprit Barry Marshall and Robin Warren identified, a discovery that won them the Nobel Prize in 2005.

Chemist Justus von Liebig spread the myth that which cooking step seals the juices into meat?

Searing in fact costs meat more moisture than cooking it to the same temperature without; cooks keep doing it because the browning builds flavour.

Folklore wrongly claims a poisonous mushroom will blacken a spoon made of which metal?

Silver does not react with any known mushroom toxin, so the spoon test passes deadly species as readily as safe ones.

Putting what on a table is bad luck in a British superstition tied to miners' deaths?

Shoes on the table, by one North of England account, recall the pits: a dead miner's pair was placed there as a mark of respect.

The counting rhyme One for Sorrow tells your fortune by the number of which birds you see?

Magpies have been counted this way since at least 1780, when a four-line version of the rhyme was printed; later versions keep counting well past that.

Which house spider does a myth call the world's most venomous, but with fangs too small to bite?

Daddy longlegs spiders can in fact bite people, but their tiny dose of venom causes only a mild burning feeling for a few seconds.

Which tree's bark, an old folk remedy for fevers and aches, set chemists on the path to aspirin?

Willow bark was tried against fevers by Edward Stone in 1763, and salicin, purified from it in 1828, pointed chemists toward the salicylates behind aspirin.

The bridal rhyme listing something old, new, borrowed and blue ends by adding which coin?

A sixpence was a later Victorian addition to the rhyme, a token of prosperity for the marriage or a guard against ill-wishing rivals.

In an old English and New England custom, which creatures had to be told of a family death?

Bees at Buckingham Palace were told of Queen Elizabeth II's death in 2022 by the Royal Beekeeper, who knocked on each hive in turn.

Medieval lore said which birds grew from shellfish on timber, so clergy ate them on fast days?

Geese of the barnacle kind nest so far north that their breeding grounds went unseen, and Irish bishops ate them on fast days as 'not born of flesh'.

Which amphibian was long believed to live in fire and even put out the flames it touched?

Salamander lore even lent its name to fireproof asbestos cloth, which the medieval scholar Albertus Magnus described as salamander's plumage.

North American folklore reads the coming winter in the brown band of which caterpillar?

Woolly bear lore says a wide brown band means a mild winter and a narrow one a severe season; the larva gets through the cold by letting most of its body freeze solid.

English weather lore says rain on which saint's day, 15 July, means it will rain for forty days?

St Swithin, a bishop of Winchester, is said to have asked on his deathbed for a grave outdoors, where raindrops from the eaves could fall on it.

Dolbear's law of 1897 estimates the air temperature from how fast which insects chirp?

Crickets chirp faster as the air warms, and physicist Amos Dolbear set out the sums in an article called 'The Cricket as a Thermometer'.

English folklore says which spiced bake, made on Good Friday, will not go mouldy for twelve months?

Hot cross buns were also carried on sea voyages as protection against shipwreck, and a piece was given to the sick to help them recover.

Which garden flower, used in a folk remedy for dropsy, gave doctors the cardiac drug digitalis?

Foxglove was the active plant William Withering picked out of a traditional herbal mixture, and his 1785 account of it launched its medical use.

The sweltering 'dog days' of summer are named after which star, once blamed for fevers and mad dogs?

Sirius, the Dog Star, returns to the dawn sky at that season, and ancient astrology tied its rising to heat, drought, lethargy and bad luck.

In Spanish-speaking countries the unlucky 13th falls not on a Friday but on which day of the week?

Tuesday the 13th, 'martes trece', is the day to fear in Hispanic countries, and Greeks share the suspicion, linking the day to Ares, the god of war.

Which English novelist set his 1908 novel The Old Wives' Tale in Staffordshire and Paris?

Arnold Bennett followed two very different sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, from their mother's draper's shop into old age.

Legend says which blacksmith saint nailed a horseshoe to the Devil's own foot, not his horse's?

St Dunstan, a smith who rose to be Archbishop of Canterbury, pretended not to recognise his customer before driving the nails home.

Which birds carry the Latin name Caprimulgus, 'goat-milker', from a myth that they suckle goats?

Nightjars were blamed for more than theft: the old myth held that a goat they visited would cease to give milk.

Which English polymath wrote Pseudodoxia Epidemica, a 1646 attack on the superstitions of his age?

Thomas Browne's survey of common beliefs, better known as Vulgar Errors, went through five further editions, the last revised in 1672.

Which gemstone gained a reputation for bad luck after Walter Scott's 1829 novel Anne of Geierstein?

Opal sales across Europe are said to have halved within twelve months of the novel's publication and stayed low for the next two decades.

Which herbalist's 1652 self-help guide, The English Physitian, later became the Complete Herbal?

Nicholas Culpeper deliberately published in plain English so that the poor, who could not afford physicians, could treat themselves.

English and French monarchs were long believed to cure which disease, the 'King's Evil', by touch?

Scrofula, a tuberculous swelling of the neck glands, was the only ailment English monarchs touched for from the reign of Elizabeth I onward.

Which Harvard psychologist's 1942 book spread the false 'tongue map' of separate taste zones?

Edwin Boring redrew the graphs of a 1901 German study of taste thresholds and the map was born, though every region can in fact sense every taste.

'Halcyon days' recalls a mythical bird nesting on calm seas, identified with which real bird?

Kingfisher is the bird meant: the original halcyon days were fourteen calm days at the winter solstice, when it was said to hatch its young in a floating nest.

Which apostle has knocked over the salt cellar in Leonardo da Vinci's painting The Last Supper?

Judas spilling the salt is one widespread explanation of why the accident counts as unlucky, though it is often doubted because the omen is older than the painting.