Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

by Herb Reich

In college, I remember alienating a few professors by frequently asking “How can we be sure?” or “Where is it written and by whom?”

Good questions which the author does not answer in this book. No footnotes or other references cited for his claims.

Thus, while George Washington was the first “president of the United States” under the Constitution, in actuality he was preceded by eight others who held that title.

There is a lot of difference between a president of a congress who has little or no executive power and a president who is the chief executive of the nation. I do not believe that those congressional presidents were referred to as president of the United States. I'll stick with George Washington as the first real president.

The word krasnaya meant “beautiful” in old Russian, and “red” only more recently,

??? The meaning of the word changed? Who changed it? Why?

Olympic stadium, a distance of 26 miles, 385 yards. The marathons run in the next few Olympics in other cities again covered differing distances, but in 1921 the London measure was adopted by the International

Amateur Athletic Commission as the official marathon length and was used in the next Olympic Games in 1924 in Paris.

That distance has now been formally established as the standard ...

course length of marathon races in and out of the Oly...

This is really nit picking. The type of rsce is named for Pheidippides’ run which was over 20 miles

John Wilkes Booth broke his leg leaping from the presidential box.

Actually he didn't. It appears that despite Booth's own claim, he broke his leg later in the evening, maybe when his horse fell.

Darwin liked Spencer’s term because it eliminated the troublesome implications in the word “selection,” and he adopted it in the 1869 fifth edition of Origin, wherein he wrote: “I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark its relation to man’s power of selection. But the expression used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival of the Fittest, is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.”

So Darwin did use the phrase. Just not in the first 4 editions.

The Eighteenth—or, as it was popularly known, the Prohibition Amendment—made no restriction on drinking or possessing liquor, or on serving it to friends, or even to mere acquaintances. Nor was the purchase of alcoholic beverages declared illegal. All it prohibited was “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” used for “beverage purposes.” Under the amendment, it was illegal to sell liquor but not against the law to buy it or own it.

Ok, that is exactly what I was taught. I have never heard anyone claim otherwise.