10 MISCONCEPTIONS: Amazing Facts

If you eat less food, your stomach will shrink

Dieters are often advised to decrease their intake of food in order to shrink the 

size of their stomach. However, while smaller portions will obviously help with 

weight-loss, the size of your stomach has nothing to do with the process. On 

average, the organ will maintain a constant volume throughout life, regardless of 

the amount of food that passes through it.

Banknotes are made out of paper

Despite being known as “paper money”, the billion or so British banknotes that are 

printed every year are in fact made from cotton. The fabric is beaten to form the 

very thin, tightly-bonded fibres of our durable "paper" notes. This explains why 

money can survive an accidental whizz in the washing-machine, whereas plain paper 

cannot.

Wild goldfish are gold

In their natural habitat, goldfish are actually green and subsist on weeds and 

small invertebrates. It is only domestic goldfish that are carefully selected and 

bred to maintain their characteristic golden-red colour. If domestic goldfish 

escape to a less-protected environment, the species will usually revert to an 

olive green hue.

Mr Crapper invented the flushing toilet

As appropriate as his name may be, Thomas Crapper did not invent the flushing 

toilet. Crapper was a famous Victorian plumber whose achievements included 

installing the drains at Westminster Abbey, but it was Edward Jennings who, in 

1852, first took out a patent for the flush-out toilet and forever improved the 

sanitary world.

You can only fold a piece of paper in half seven times

If you pick up a piece of paper and try to fold it in half more than seven times, 

it is highly unlikely that you will succeed. No matter how large or small the 

sheet, it was universally believed to be an unachievable act. However, in 2002, 

the feat was proved possible by an American university student, who studied the 

maths behind the folds. After producing a formula and testing it first on a sheet 

of gold foil, Britney Gallivan succeeded in folding a 1,220-m (4,000-ft) long piece of toilet paper in half 12 times.

Columbus believed the Earth was flat

Christopher Columbus’s legendary status is often magnified with the story that 

when he began his voyage in 1492, he bravely defied the contemporary belief that 

the Earth was flat. However, Columbus’s map, which is typical of its time, 

survives and although it shows that he thought that the Earth was much smaller 

than it is, he clearly knew the Earth was round. (In fact, the circumference of 

the Earth was calculated by the ancient Greek mathematician Eratosthenes as early 

as 240 BC.)

Hair and nails continue to grow after death

While we are alive, hair and fingernails are among the fastest growing cells on 

our body (nails average about a tenth of a millimetre a day). A discomforting and 

commonly reported occurrence is that even after death these cells continue to 

grow. This potentially supernatural phenomenon is, however, all an optical 

illusion. In reality, the body begins to dehydrate after death and the loss of 

moisture causes the skin to retract. This shrinking of skin cells makes hair and 

nails jut out more prominently, giving the illusion that they have grown.

Pencils are made with lead 

Pencils contain no lead, so there is no risk of lead poisoning if you stab 

yourself with one. Instead they are made up of a mixture of graphite and clay. 

Graphite, a crystallized form of carbon, was discovered near Keswick in the mid-

16th century and was named from the Greek “graphein”, meaning “to write”. 

White chocolate is chocolate

White chocolate is a relatively new invention—it was first produced in the 1930s, 

almost 90 years after the introduction of the first solid dark chocolate bar. 

Despite being named white chocolate, it is officially not recognized as chocolate 

because it does not contain cocoa liquor. Cocoa liquor, a substance with a 

slightly ‘bitter’ quality that is a necessary ingredient for both milk and dark 

chocolates, is replaced entirely in white chocolate with cocoa butter.

Screw-caps equal cheap wine

It is not true to say that screw caps (or stelvin enclosures as they are more 

formally known) on wine bottles indicate that its contents are cheap. In fact, 

although screw caps are not as aesthetically pleasing as the traditional cork, 

many upmarket winemakers are now recognizing and implementing the benefits of 

screw caps over corks. Corks, occasionally liable to becoming mouldy, can cause a 

chemical compound