History NonIndicativeName / RealLife

** ''Pentaceratops'' ("five-horned face") in reality only had three horns. The other two are actually its large epijugals (those bumps on the side of its head, at the base of the frill) which in older pictures were made to look like genuine pointy horns.

** ''Micropachicephalosaurus'' turned out to be a basal ceratopsian.
** ''Therizinosaurus cheloniformis'' is a large theropod dinosaur species whose scientific name translates to the rather confusing "scythe lizard turtle-formed". The specific name comes from the early theory that the dinosaur's huge claws were those of a gigantic turtle-like reptile before later fossil evidence placed it in ''Dinosauria.''

** ''Gallimimus'' ("chicken mimic") follows the ThemeNaming of most orinthomimossurs ("bird mimics") of being named after a bird, but why exactly "chicken" when it didn't look at all like one (its family is popularly called the ostrich-dinosaurs after all) is anybody's guess.

** Similarly, ''Hyaenodon'' (meaning "hyena tooth") is a genus that includes a large number of Eocene-Oligocene species (ranging from the weasel-sized H. ''microdon'' to the tiger-sized H. ''gigas''), and is also the type genus of its own family, the ''hyaenodonts''. But other than being mammalian predators, they are in no way related to hyenas, who are carnivorans (most closely related to mongooses and viverrids, and more distantly cats), while hyaenodonts are creodonts (whose placement in the placental mammal family tree is highly debated).

* The intimidating name of ''Gigantiops Destructor'' belongs to... a species of totally harmless not-particularly-larger-than-usual ant. (The "gigantiops" actually refers to its large eyes.)

* There is a modern Hispanic idiom translating as "the conquest was performed by the Indians and the independence by the Spaniards" (''la conquista la hicieron los indios y la independencia los españoles''), reflecting how the Spanish Conquest of America was primarily carried on by indigenous armies recruited by the conquistadors through diplomacy, while conversely, the wars of independance against the Spanish Empire were instigated and led by criollos (ethnic Spaniards born in the Indies), with the indigenous being more often in the royalist side. Historiography calls it the UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfTheAztecEmpire because the conquest was officially done in the name of King [[UsefulNotes/CharlesV Charles I]] of Spain, but otherwise it would be more proper to call it the "Spanish-Tlaxcaltec-Totonac-Texcocan-Chalcan-etc. Conquest of the Aztec Empire".

* Game 5 of the NBA Finals is known as the "Flu Game" after UsefulNotes/MichaelJordan led all players with 38 points and led the Chicago Bulls to a 90-88 victory [[WorkingThroughTheCold despite being sick]] -- with food poisoning. His symptoms looked more like influenza, hence the name despite being the wrong ilness.

* Game 5 of the NBA Finals is known as the "Flu Game" after Creator/MichaelJordan led all players with 38 points and led the Chicago Bulls to a 90-88 victory [[WorkingThroughTheCold despite being sick]] -- with food poisoning. His symptoms looked more like influenza, hence the name despite being the wrong ilness.

** UsefulNotes/{{London}} Gatwick, Luton, Southend and Stansted Airports are not in London, but in West Sussex (Gatwick), Bedfordshire (Luton) and Essex (both Southend and Stansted).

* Nitrogen is sometimes also called Azote, from the Ancient Greek: ἀζωτικός "no life", as pure N2 is an asphyxiant gas; this name is used particularly in languages as French, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Portuguese and Turkish, and appears in the English names of some nitrogen compounds such as hydrazine, azides and azo compounds. However, nitrogen is one of the key components of amino acids and nucleic acids; that is, the exact opposite of "no life". The fact that pure N[[subscript:2]] is asphyxiant is due to the lack of oxygen and not the presence of nitrogen, as it is actually an inert gas -- to the point that plants, even though they "breathe" carbon dioxide and extract oxygen from it, can't use atmospheric nitrogen and must rely on lightning sundering the molecules or special soil bacteria that perform a process called nitrogen fixation.[[note]]This same asphyxiant/inert gas property has made pure N[[subscript:2]] of interest to certain American states looking for a new way to execute persons sentenced to death now that the drugs needed for the "traditional" lethal-injection protocol have become hard to find. However, as yet no state has been able to actually create an N[[subscript:2]]-asphyxiation-based exection protocol, so this use remains theoretical.[[/note]]

* Many dishes named after Italian city\regions were actually made by immigrants from that place, such as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neapolitan_ice_cream Neapolitan ice cream]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmigiana#International_variations chicken\veal\meat parmigiana]]. Brazil has it even worse, with things such as the Calabrese pepper (no pepper is native to Europe).

** Not all the Germans fighting for the British were this kind of rent-a-regiments. A sizable contingent of the Germans that fought for the British in America were the loyal subjects of one Georg, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Elector of Hannover,[[note]]If you want to go full German: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Herzog von Braunschweig und Lüneburg, Erzschatzmeister und Kurfürst des Heiligen Römischen Reiches--George William Frederick, Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg, Arch-Treasurer and Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire.[[/note]] whom the British Government did not need to ask, let alone pay off, to get his participation in this particular fight. The Duke-Elector's great-grandfather had inherited [[UsefulNotes/UnitedKingdom some islands off the coast of France]] when [[UsefulNotes/BritishPoliticalSystem the islands' council of nobles and leading commoners]] decided, [[UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar after much deliberation]], to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_Settlement_1701 prune the family tree]] of their royal family. As a result, Duke Georg was rather in the habit of calling himself "[[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfHanover George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland]]..."

* While Col. Harland Sanders did invent the KFC original recipe at his restaurant[=/=]motel in Kentucky (though Sanders was actually born and raised across the Ohio River in southern Indiana), the first franchised location was in Utah, and the name Kentucky Fried Chicken was coined there as well.

* Ginger beer, root beer, birch beer, ginger ale and butterbeer are all non-alcoholic drinks, though the first four were actually fermented like their more grown-up namesakes, and the last coincidentally shares its name with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Jgq-VQE-o an actual Tudor-era drink based on heated up beer and butter]]. Now, most beverages sold as these drinks are made like any other soda-pop/fizzy drink these days; a flavored syrup dissolved in carbonated water. Finding these beverages in the original, brewed and fermented form is rare, although some places do make it and are gaining in popularity (e.g. Small Town Brewery's "Not Your Father's Root Beer," an alcoholic root beer that became popular in the United States c. 2015).

* ''Fucking hell'', a beer from UsefulNotes/TheBerlinRepublic, is not a "Helles" but a pilsener, nor does it have anything to do with the Austrian village it was named after.

* Malaria is a contraction of "mala aria", which is Italian for "bad air." Scientists originally believed that it was caused by the foul-smelling air around swamps and marshlands. Nowadays, we know that swamps and marshlands are often breeding grounds for [[MosquitoMiscreants mosquitoes]]; it's mosquito bites that cause malaria, not so-called bad air.

* "Stomach flu" has nothing to do with influenza.