Misconceptions

in Misconceptions

Fallacious yet widespread and documented beliefs courtesy of Wikipedia.
Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet; it was invented by Sir John Harrington in 1596. Crapper, however, did much to increase its popularity and came up with some related inventions, such as the ballcock mechanism used to fill toilet tanks. He was noted for the quality of his products and received several Royal Warrants. He was not the origin of the word crap, but his name may have helped popularize it.

in Misconceptions

Fallacious yet widespread and documented beliefs courtesy of Wikipedia.
Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb. He did, however, develop the first practical light bulb in 1880 (employing a carbonized bamboo filament), shortly prior to Joseph Swan, who invented an even more efficient bulb in 1881 (which used a cellulose filament).

in Misconceptions

Fallacious yet widespread and documented beliefs courtesy of Wikipedia.
Henry Ford did not invent either the automobile or the assembly line. He did help to develop the assembly line substantially, sometimes through his own engineering but more often through sponsoring the work of his employees. [page needed]

in Misconceptions

Fallacious yet widespread and documented beliefs courtesy of Wikipedia.
Guglielmo Marconi did not invent radio, but only modernized it for public broadcasting and communication. No single person was responsible for the invention of radio.

in Misconceptions

Fallacious yet widespread and documented beliefs courtesy of Wikipedia.
Robert Fulton did not invent the steamboat. John Fitch, James Rumsey, William Symington, and Samuel Morey each operated steamboats prior to Fulton.

in Misconceptions

Fallacious yet widespread and documented beliefs courtesy of Wikipedia.
Al Gore never said that he "invented" the Internet; Gore actually said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Gore was the original drafter of the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991, which provided significant funding for supercomputing centers, and this in turn led to upgrades of a major part of the already existing, early 1990s Internet backbone, the NSFNet, and development of NCSA Mosaic, the browser that popularized the World Wide Web; see Al Gore and information technology.

in Misconceptions

Fallacious yet widespread and documented beliefs courtesy of Wikipedia.
The United States Interstate Highway System was not designed with airplane landings in mind. A common urban legend states that one out of every five (or ten) miles of highway must be straight and flat to allow emergency (or military) airplane landings, but this is not the case. However, several parts of the German and later the Swiss Autobahn system were indeed designed to be auxiliary military air strips, both during World War II and the Cold War. Additionally, the Swedish Air Force built landing strips into their highway system starting in the 1950s with some expansion continuing into the 1990s. Poland also contains highway strips for landing and takeoff, as do Finland, Singapore and Bulgaria. The Eyre Highway, which crosses the Nullarbor Plain in Australia, has four allocated areas for Flying Doctor aircraft to land.

in Misconceptions

Fallacious yet widespread and documented beliefs courtesy of Wikipedia.
Toilet waste is never intentionally dumped overboard from an aircraft. All waste is collected in tanks which are emptied on the ground by special toilet waste vehicles. A vacuum is used to allow the toilet to be flushed with less water and because plumbing cannot rely on gravity alone in an aircraft in motion. The infamous blue ice is caused by accidental leakages from the waste tank. Passenger trains, on the other hand, have historically flushed onto the tracks; however, modern trains usually have retention tanks on board the train.

in Misconceptions

Fallacious yet widespread and documented beliefs courtesy of Wikipedia.
A fatwa is a non-binding legal opinion issued by an Islamic scholar under Islamic law. The popular misconception that the word means a death sentence probably stems from the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran in 1989 regarding the author Salman Rushdie, who he stated had earned a death sentence for blasphemy. This event led to fatwas gaining widespread media attention in the West.

in Misconceptions

Fallacious yet widespread and documented beliefs courtesy of Wikipedia.
The word "jihad" does not always mean "holy war"; literally, the word in Arabic means "struggle". While there is such a thing as "jihad bil saif", or jihad "by the sword", many modern Islamic scholars usually say that it implies an effort or struggle of a spiritual kind. Scholar Louay Safi asserts that "misconceptions and misunderstandings regarding the nature of war and peace in Islam are widespread in both the Muslim societies and the West", as much following 9/11 as before.