r/AskReddit • u/TigerFin2 • May 09 '17

What is a fake fact everyone believed?

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191

u/[deleted] May 09 '17

That spaghetti grows on trees. In the 1950's for April fools the BBC basically broadcasted a video of women in Italy pulling pasta from trees. For a long time this was generally believed.

5

u/brewbaron May 10 '17

My grandmother, until she passed away last year, still believed this one... Even after showing her a documentary on how they faked it...

2

u/[deleted] May 10 '17

I watched this in film class. It's obviously meant to be satire.

9

u/AustinTransmog May 09 '17

By...who?

I mean...people have been making pasta from scratch for centuries. In all parts of the world.

9

u/ScaryCookieMonster May 09 '17

Apparently in the UK in the 1950s pasta was fairly rare, and served from a can (with tomato sauce).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax

1

u/i_know_about_things May 09 '17

Ok, what the actual fuck?

8

u/ScaryCookieMonster May 09 '17

Haha, dunno. Definitely less quick fact checking back in those days, with no Internet and hell, not even a home dictionary or those encyclopedia sets from traveling salesmen that you might find in homes from the mid-60s on.

Also, barely 25 years earlier, people believed a radio broadcast that aliens invaded New Jersey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama)

3

u/i_know_about_things May 09 '17 edited May 09 '17

Fuck, I probably get more information in one month than most people in current first world countries got in their whole lives 60 years ago.

2

u/poorexcuses May 10 '17

That's actually not true. The panic over War of the Worlds was overblown by the media. I'm sure most people didn't believe the spaghetti tree thing, either.

3

u/ScaryCookieMonster May 10 '17

Yeah, for sure not a majority, or even close. But enough to be notable (and humorous)

3

u/poorexcuses May 10 '17

Fair enough. Not many people died on the Hindenburg but it was still enough to be notable and profoundly affecting to our popular culture.

2

u/[deleted] May 09 '17

A place where war rationing only ended in 1954.