History Main / LittleKnownFacts

'''Linus''': Lucy, why is Charlie Brown [[WallBang banging his head against a tree]]?\\

*** Or adding adjectives. Ofcourse the Inuits have a language that's sentences are basically really long words, so technically you can have near-infinite numbers of "words" for snow, the same way you can have near-infinite number of sentences about snow in English, but the same applies to any given concept in existence.

->Wanda Gershwitz: Let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "every man for himself". The London Underground is not a political movement. Those are mistakes. I looked 'em up.

* http://undeniablefacts.com/ Unfortunaly, it hasn't updated in a while.

* It's not clear whether this is the case, but sir miur in {{harkovast}} could be using these. If not he is a {{cloudcuckoolander}}

* Calvin's dad was notorious for these in ''CalvinAndHobbes''. Thanks to him, Calvin learns about the world only turning color in the 1930's (and pretty grainy color for a while, too), the sun setting every night in Flagstaff, Arizona ([[DepthDeception Hold up a quarter, the sun's about the same size]]), wind being caused by [[EpilepticTrees trees sneezing]] (not really, but the real answer is much more complicated), and babies being bought at Sears, as a kit (Calvin was a Blue Light Special from K-Mart, however. "Much cheaper, and almost as good"). Calvin's mom is usually around to correct things, though.

*** (Which is actually essentially true, especially for older bridges...)
** What makes this even funnier is that Calvin's dad works as a patent lawyer, a job which requires a good deal of knowledge of technology and science, and as such could explain these things to Calvin if he really wanted to.
*** Not to mention the fact that Calvin is [[LittleProfessorDialog likely to understand it]].
** He won't tell you how a carburetor works, though. It's a secret.
** ...I actually used to believe his dad's story about how the world used to be black and white until the '30s.
*** Well, it is [[TruthInTelevision Truth]] [[IncrediblyLamePun in Television]]...

* The Reduced Shakespeare Company's ''The Complete Works of WilliamShakespeare (Abridged)'' starts out by mixing up the biography of Shakespeare's life with that of AdolfHitler.

* [[CalvinAndHobbes Calvin's dad]] is ''made'' of this trope.

** There's also one-off character Deuce Loosely, a one-off character who annoys Sifl And Olly with little known facts about [[PandaingToTheAudience pandas]] ("Like the shark, the panda has millions of teeth which it uses like a hacksaw to cut through bone, candy, and fences")

** There's also one-off character Deuce Loosely, a one-off character who annoys Sifl And Olly with little known facts about [[Panda-ingToTheAudience pandas]] ("Like the shark, the panda has millions of teeth which it uses like a hacksaw to cut through bone, candy, and fences")

* The phrase "LittleKnownFact" is used in a ''computer book'' of all things, where the author states that 0.6 times 3 is 1.799999999999998. [[JustifiedTrope It's justified]] in that he's pointing out a [=JavaScript=] math glitch.

* Scott Adams of ''{{Dilbert}}'', in his book ''The Joy of Work'', lists several to try out on TooDumbToLive co-workers, such as "In China, amazingly, no-one actually eats Chinese food".
** There may be some TruthInTelevision in that, at least by accident. Although I've never been to China, I've heard from several different people that very little of the dishes known in other countries as "Chinese food" is anything like what they actually eat there. This is a very common phenomenon when it comes to practically any food allegedly in style of countries foreign to the one in question.
*** The problem is that there are numerous different cooking traditions in different parts of China with very different types of dishes and seasonings. What is commonly known as Chinese food in the West comes from the Cantonese kitchen, and much of the original seasonings are left out because they supposedly don't match the Western tastes.
**** Chinese-Western is the little-known ninth great tradition of Chinese cooking, fullstop. Now chop suey is legitimately 'Chinese' but none of the major traditions have to claim it, and everyone's happy.

'''Linus''': Lucy, why is Charlie Brown banging his head against a tree?\\

* The "Rock Facts" the hosts of ''TheSiflAndOllyShow'' presented; examples [[http://www.sockheads.org/index.php/Rock_Facts here]]. (The actual on-screen text would debunk these, however.)

* In ''ShaunOfTheDead'', according to the [[TheFaceless unseen Big Al]], dogs can't look up. Obviously you don't believe this because it seems absurd for dogs to have never evolved that capability and Big Al is a fan of copious amounts of marijuana yet it's near impossible to form a sensible argument against.

* ''Snopes'' has a section of blatantly false "[[http://www.snopes.com/lost/lost.asp Lost Legends]]" (full title: [[FunWithAcronyms '''T'''he '''R'''epository '''O'''f '''L'''ost '''L'''egends]]); its [[http://www.snopes.com/lost/false.asp intention]] is to demonstrate the danger of relying on a single source without applying common sense. (Ironically, one of the legends was taken for fact by the TV show ''Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed''.)

* ''Snopes'' has a section of blatantly false "[[http://www.snopes.com/lost/lost.asp Lost Legends]]" (full title: '''T'''he '''R'''epository '''O'''f '''L'''ost '''L'''egends); its [[http://www.snopes.com/lost/false.asp intention]] is to demonstrate the danger of relying on a single source without applying common sense. (Ironically, one of the legends was taken for fact by the TV show ''Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed''.)

** Glass at room temperature and pressure is an amorphous (i.e. non-crystalline) solid, if anyone was wondering about that one. It's pretty tricky to shatter a liquid. In fact, sometimes amorphous solids are known generically as "glasses".

** Hold anything that may possibly have the slightest chance of being edible over a dog's head. He'll look up.
*** And jump for it. My dog, at least.

**** One fact that ''is'' little known is that the Eskimos actually have no word which means "snow" - only the words for specific types.
** Hey, I think I just heard the echo of a duck's quack. I don't know why...
*** Hell, I've heard a group of ducks where I could hear the ''echo'' over the ducks themselves.