Do we use only 10% of our brains? Did iron maidens exist? Did everyone think the world was flat before Columbus made his famous voyage? Let’s bust more myths.
The list of household and historical myths only grows longer, the more we debunk them, so let’s have a go at another 10 of them.
- The War of the Worlds provoked mass panic
We all know the story. On the night of Halloween in 1938, the première of War of the Worlds, a dramatisation by a 23-year-old Orson Welles of H.G. Wells’s 1898 science fiction classic, was broadcast on radio.
Americans, being gullible idiots and unused to newfangled technology like the wireless, thought it was real. Millions panicked, thinking that they were being invaded by Martians.
The newspaper headlines of the time certainly support this narrative. Even the newspaper of record, the New York Times, led with the story: “Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact — Many Flee Homes to Escape ‘Gas Raid from Mars’ — Phone Calls Swamp Police at Broadcast of Wells Fantasy”.
Other newspapers denounced it as a “radio fake”. This seems an uncharitable way to describe a radio play, until you realise that the put-down was very much intended.
It isn’t the first time that print media has been under pressure from new media. Just as the internet threatens the advertising revenue of traditional media houses today, the television, and before that the radio, posed a serious challenge to the revenues of traditional newspapers. After all, if people can get their news effortlessly just by turning on the wireless, who is going to bother to buy and read the papers?
Warned Editor & Publisher, the trade journal of the newspaper industry:“The nation as a whole continues to face the danger of incomplete, misunderstood news over a medium which has yet to prove … that it is competent to perform the news job.”
Entire books were written that amplified the myth of widespread panic. Hadley Cantril, a psychologist from Princeton University, wrote that thousands fled into the streets, and a million people were “frightened”.
Yet the actual scale of the panic was grossly overstated. The audience for the show was small, it was aired in the usual slot for Mercury Theatre on the Air, and it was prefaced by an introduction. Sure, radio plays could “frighten” people, but the story is supposed to be scary.
Perhaps a few people were sufficiently taken aback to call their local police station to check if there was reason for concern, but most listeners weren’t idiots and were quite used to dramatic shows on radio.
If the terror was as widespread as first reported, one would have expected the newspapers to analyse it deeply over the next days and weeks, but the headlines came and went like an afternoon thundershower in Johannesburg.
Modern reviews of the event conclude: “The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast.”
2. Iron maidens were mediaeval torture devices
An iron maiden is a hinged sarcophagus-like cabinet made of iron, with spikes lining the interior. Miscreants, heretics, suspicious-looking herbalists, and uppity rascals who yanked the beards of the clergy or aristocracy would be enclosed in an iron maiden for hours or days, and the spikes would pierce their flesh whenever they tried to relax.
Torture has been used (and continues to be used) in almost all societies in history. It has been used as punishment, for deterrence or to terrorise a population, to force confessions out of people, or to compel people to provide information they’re rather not disclose.
Modern media depicts medieval torture as common, brutal, and inventive. In reality, it was considerably more rare than we’d imagine, and used only in serious cases, under fairly strict regulation.
Among the wide variety of alleged torture methods, only the rack, strappado, and waterboarding can be said to have been common. Even the rack was relatively rare.
Building elaborate torture devices was expensive and took time. Why build an elaborate device when a simple hammer, a hot poker or a pair of pliers could produce just as much fear and pain?
The oldest citation for “iron maiden” is from Johann Georg Keyssler’s Travels through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, and Lorrain 1756–1757. There is no evidence that any iron maiden actually existed until the early 19th century.
It isn’t the only torture device invented more to satisfy the morbid curiosity of a newly literate population, but the iron maiden is perhaps the most infamous.
3. Chameleons change colour for camouflage
That chameleons change colour is well-known. How they change colour is a fairly recent discovery, however.
The belief that they change colour to blend in with their environment is, however, mistaken. In their relaxed state, chameleons are usually green, which does happen to blend in with their environment.
However, the most common reasons for chameleons to change their colour are not for camouflage, but in response to mood, and to communicate with other chameleons, as in a mating display. Temperature, light, and the animal’s health can also cause colour changes.
4. Goldfish only have a three-second memory
A goldfish in a small bowl will be bored and stressed. They don’t have a three-second memory. In fact, their memories extend weeks, months and even years.
We’ve known this for sixty years or more. Goldfish trained to associate a signal with food, Pavlov’s dog style, demonstrated that they remembered the signal even after five months in the wild. Even a schoolboy of 15 has disproved the myth that goldfish have poor memories.
So, get your fish a larger aquarium, please.
5. Castles poured boiling oil off their battlements
In movies depicting medieval siege warfare, a common sight is defenders emptying cauldrons of boiling oil down murder holes (machicolations) onto enemies who tried to breach gates or climb the walls.
These holes were originally built into wooden battlements to enable defenders to douse fires set at the base of their walls. Inventive defenders naturally came to use these holes to throw missiles and other things down onto attackers.
However, the use of boiling oil would have been rare. Oil is expensive, difficult to handle, and takes long to heat. Saucepans of oil would have been more effective, provided the murder hole wasn’t too high above the attackers, so the oil didn’t have time to cool on the way down.
There are a great many attestations of the use of rocks, missiles, hot water, hot sand, sewerage, and even dead bodies being thrown down upon attackers during a siege, but there are only four cases in history where hot oil is mentioned.
The earliest case is from 47CE, when the Jewish defenders of Yodfat (modern-day Jotapata) were reported to have used hot oil against Vespasian’s army. Later cases include the siege of Orléans in 1428/29, the siege of Malta in 1565, and the siege of Sommières in 1573.
So, the use of boiling oil isn’t entirely unheard of, but it was relatively rare.
6. Leaving appliances plugged in consumes a significant amount of energy
“Vampire power” was a moderately significant issue about 25 years ago, when various devices, such as televisions, could draw up to 25W while in standby mode. Various estimates concluded that the share of electricity consumption wasted on such devices was in the single-digit percentages of total use.
This problem has largely been solved, however, and modern devices almost universally draw less than 1W if they are left plugged in while not in use. In the case of chargers, it is hard to even measure their no-load electricity consumption.
Manufacturers have reduced no-load power use in external power supplies from 3W to less than 0.2W, and the standby power use of a television fell from 15W to 0.5W.
Compared to water heaters, space heaters, air conditioners, ovens and stoves, devices that draw standby power now draw so little, that policy research is considering the establishment of a zero-Watt standard.
Frankly, that’s becoming absurd, and the combined research and development resources of the world are better spent on improving the efficiency of devices when they do draw substantial power.
7. Most people are either left- or right-brained
The idea of left-brain and right-brain dominance is a pop-psychology version of split-brain experiments in the 20th century and attempts to localise where in the brain various processes took place.
According to the popular version, right-brained people are more emotive and creative, while left-brained people are more reserved, analytical, and logical. Since each half of the brain controls the opposite side of the body, this theory extended to handedness: if you were left-handed, you were thought to be creative, and if you were right-handed, you’d be more rational.
It was believed that dichotomy should inform how people learn and teach.
This is, of course, nonsense. The brain is far more complicated than that, and brain plasticity means that even functions that usually occur in one hemisphere can be learned by the opposite hemisphere, should the need arise.
People are not easily pigeonholed into binary categories. (This is one reason why Myers-Briggs personality tests are nonsense.)
The idea of left-brain versus right-brain is a false dichotomy. So is the distinction between cognitive and affective thought processes, or rational versus emotional behaviour, or science versus art. They are often two sides of the same coin, and usually occur simultaneously.
When we make decisions, we base them on both rational thought and emotional feelings. Science, mathematics, and engineering can be highly creative and aesthetically pleasing, and art can be perfectly rational and analytical.
It is useful, sometimes, to consider different aspects of knowledge or thought or behaviour, but that doesn’t mean that these aspects are in opposition to each other or mutually exclusive. They’re complementary, and act synergistically.
8. We only use 10% of our brains
While we’re on the subject of brains, you’ll be pleased to learn that you likely use most of your brain, most of the time.
That doesn’t mean that everyone fulfils their ultimate mental potential, but there isn’t a large part of the brain that remains unused in all but the smartest people, and that can be unlocked by various techniques or drugs.
About two-thirds of Americans believe in the 10% brain use myth. It is often misattributed to physicist Albert Einstein, but it likely originated with the “father of American psychology”, William James, and a misinterpretation of his concept of “reserve energy” in a 1907 article in Science, and a 1926 book, both entitled The Energies of Men.
It was popularised by Dale Carnegie, in his highly influential 1936 book How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Sorry to say, but there isn’t a savant lurking in the 90% of your brain that you just haven’t unlocked yet, although there are things you can do to improve your brain power.
9. Before Columbus, everyone thought the world was flat
Christopher Columbus (who never discovered North America, by the way) did not set out on his voyages of exploration to prove that the Earth was round. It was widely known, even back in antiquity, that the Earth was round.
Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián Elcano’s circumnavigation of the globe predated Columbus’s voyages by some 70 years, which would have provided practical proof of the shape of the Earth.
Three hundred years earlier, the English scholar John of Holywood, writing under the pen name Sacrobosco, argued that the fact that one can spot land from a crow’s nest before sailors on deck can see it proves that the Earth is round.
Ancient Greek and ancient Indian scholars separately established that the Earth was a globe, and even calculated its circumference with a remarkable level of accuracy. This knowledge persisted throughout the Hindu, Islamic, and Christian civilisations that followed, and was widely accepted in the Middle Ages.
What Columbus set out to do was to find a route to the Indies by sailing westwards. The only thing of which he was unaware was that his progress would be halted by inconvenient continents we now call the Americas.
10. Bulls get angry when they see red
The image of a matador waving a muleta, a small red cape, in front of an angry bull has given us the expression, “like a red rag to a bull”.
The colour of the rag has nothing to do with it, however. Cattle are colourblind to red, and bulls will charge anything they don’t like.
The Mythbusters conducted three separate experiments that demonstrated that it isn’t the colour that enrages the bull, but movement.
The real reason why the muleta is red is more practical: it masks the colour of the bull’s blood when the matador eventually kills it.
And on that brutal note, we’ll leave it for today. We’ll meet again next week, same time, same place, for more myth debunking.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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Image: Newspaper headlines after the broadcast of Orson Welles’ radio performance of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Collage from public domain images