There are a lot of things we believe which we have been told, which just aren’t true. One of the reasons we believe them is we have been told them so many times. Other reasons may be because they were passed down to us as truths. One example of this is something many of us have been told to be dangerous and it is waking up a sleepwalker. I know I’ve heard several times waking up a sleepwalker can harm them, but this is not true. Well I guess it could be true if they were standing on a ledge and you woke them up and they fell off. One organization claims there is a certain way to wake a sleepwalker safely, here is what they say. Before I get into that I want to note the same organization states it is dangerous to wake a sleepwalker and one of the reasons is they may attack YOU! They claim before you wake the sleepwalker you should try and take them back to their bed without waking them, but if you must wake them you should use loud sharp noises from a distance. The idea is to startle the walker into waking and it is claimed it is better than shaking the person from close range.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you were told never to swallow chewing gum, because it takes years to digest it? Well you don’t have to worry if you do swallow chewing gum, because what you were told was wrong. If one swallows chewing gum look forward for it to exit within the next day. If you ask the Mayo Clinic if chewing gum is dangerous to swallow they will tell you the same thing I said, but they will also say on rare occasions large amounts of swallowed gum combined with constipation have blocked the intestines of children. They go on to say for this reason parents should be discouraging children from the habit of frequently swallowing gum.

Sometimes people believe things which seem to be obvious which really aren’t true. If you ask most people which city is further west, Reno Nevada or Los Angeles California most people will say Los Angeles California and will be wrong. Looking at a map we see Reno Nevada is further west than Los Angeles. This misconception is caused by the fact that California curves to the east and the state of Nevada has several cities and other areas which are west of many places in California, including places like Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oceanside and others. This would probably make a good question on a quiz show.

We all know some animals hibernate, but there are those who think humans could be capable of hibernation. If you would tell somebody humans could hibernate they would probably look at you like you were crazy, what they wouldn’t realize is there are cases of human hibernation. A thirty-five-year-old man was rescued on a very snowy mountainside in Japan after he disappeared twenty-four days before that. The reason he survived was he was in the state of hibernation. His organs had shut down and his body temperature had dropped to 71°, his metabolism was almost standing still. The man had made a full recovery. He is not the only one to have been found to have hibernated. Recently many scientists have come to believe we have the late ability to hibernate and scientists are looking into what is known as suspended animation in humans.

There are many stories about chickens running around after the head is been cut off, but they don’t do it for very long, Usually! One chicken broke the rule. The story goes a farmer cut a chicken’s head off, but missed his jugular vein. The chicken lived without his head and not only lived, but the farmer fed him a mixture of milk and water to keep them alive and he lasted for eighteen months. The milk and water was said to be put into his esophagus with an eyedropper. The chicken was turned into a sideshow attraction and people were charged twenty-five cents to see it. The farmer earned $4,500 a month which is equivalent to $47,500 a month today.

The country of Russia is a big place. I guess this statement is no surprise to anybody. Russia has a total area of 6,592,735 square miles and covers about one eighth of the world’s land surface. We all know how big Canada is and Russia is 60% larger. To give you an idea of how big Russia really is, it was thought to be bigger than the dwarf planet Pluto. Recent measurements by the New Horizons mission show Russia and Pluto are practically the same size with the area of Pluto having a slight edge.

It is no surprise the world’s biggest navy belongs to the United States. When they measure navies they do it in tons and the United States Navy has 3,415,893 tons of ships. It’s composed of aircraft carriers, cruisers, dozens of destroyers, a large modern submarine fleet and many other support ships. The second biggest Navy is the Russian Navy which is composed of 845,730 tons and though many of its ships went to waste after the collapse the Soviet Union, the Russian Navy is making a comeback. One of the most surprising countries which have navies are the landlocked nations which have navies. Paraguay has twelve naval bases, 34 ships and patrol planes and attack helicopters and a Marine Corps which has eight hundred men and has no way to get to the ocean. So what does it do with all these ships? It sails the nations inland waterways and major rivers. The United States has only one commissioned ship left in service which has sunk an enemy vessel in action and that ship is the USS Constitution which took part in the War of 1812.

We in the United States routinely celebrate Independence Day on July 4th. If you were to ask someone in this country when we achieved independence from Great Britain they would say it WAS on July 4th. The truth of the matter is we actually received our independence from Great Britain on July 2nd. This was the day the Continental Congress voted for independence. Two days later a revised version of the Declaration of Independence was adopted, but it wasn’t signed until the month of August. John Adams wrote the 2nd of July, 1776 would be the most memorable Epocha in the history of America.