Real Facts That "Feel Wrong"

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In this thread, we talk about facts that "feel wrong" but are actually true.

Some parts of the South American Pacific coast are further east than New York City. Seriously. Look at a map of the world if you don't believe me.

I think the main reason that fact ''feels wrong" is the widespread use of map projections which make North America and Europe look a lot larger than they are compared with South America and Africa.

I don't know if this one is true or not but apparently the lighter was invented before matches.

That there are thousands of millions of billions of orders a pack of cards can be shuffled.

Can't think of any more at present but I know there are LOADS of facts that just throw me.

the 10th president has grandchildren that are still living.

there are still some people in the US collecting civil war - era pensions.

the gene(s) for five fingers is recessive

nintendo, starry night and hitler came to existence on the same year

All the planets of the solar system would fit side-to-side between the earth and the moon.

^WTF

Additionally, South America isn't really south of North America. It's really southeast.

There is enough space between the Earth and the Moon to line up all of the 7 remaining planets between them.

Color does not actually exist. Its simply a manifestation of the way in which the nervous system interprets the data sent to it by the cells of the eye in terms of different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation in the "visual light" range (called this only because our eyes are responsive to it).

The solid state does not actually exist in the sense that most people think it does. For atom based matter, the atoms are mostly empty. Atomic nuclei orbited by electrons, but if you blew up an atom so the nucleus was the size of an orange the electron orbits would be hundreds of yards away.

What we perceive as the "solid" state is not material through and through. It is in fact atoms bonded in such a fashion that the nuclei can only vibrate relative to each other. But they are still mostly empty space, orbited by their electrons. The illusion of solid is achieved because all matter is composed of electrons orbiting atomic nuclei, and all electrons, having a negative charge, repel each other.

Cold does not actually exist. Our perception of cold is entirely a product of the nervous system. There is no such thing as a quantity of cold however, just varying amounts of heat.

Why is the moon that far?

The moon is receding from the Earth at a measurable rate. The Apollo astronauts put a reflector up there, and we can very precisely measure the distance between the two by shooting a laser at the reflector and observing the amount of time it takes for the reflected photons to reach their point of origin, of course adjusting for the speed of light in the atmosphere vs space.

There are about 6,500 different languages. Wow. I thought there was only about 40.

1 in 3 people get cancer at some point in their lives. Gulp.

Only 6500? Says who? I think the actual number is likely much higher. As for the cancer figure, that I do believe. I had a Biology professor who said that if you live long enough, you will get cancer. The only reason its not the number one cause of death in the West is because our diet causes so many problems with our cardiovascular system.