Sorry, but your mother and most movies totally lied to you about pretty much everything.
If a criminal confronts someone he suspects of being an undercover police officer, the incognito cop must come clean and admit it when asked. Otherwise, any crimes the criminal commits can be legally dismissed as “entrapment.”
That’s just on cop shows. Undercover cops can and do lie about their identities to protect themselves and their cases.
Defusing a bomb is as easy as cutting the correct wire.
It’s not like in the movies. A bomb is usually a sophisticated bit of scientific weaponry. There’s a lot more to it than just looking for the right color of wire to cut (if the wires are even colored).
Silencers silence the sound of a fired gun.
The gun industry prefers to call silencers the more accurate “suppressors.” They dampen the sound of a shot by around 30 percent.
If police arrest a suspect and don’t read them their Miranda rights, that’s a technicality that can get the case overturned.
Police have to give the Miranda warning only to suspects they’re taking into custody and then plan to interrogate. If they ask a bunch of questions without reading the suspect their rights, anything the suspect says cannot be used in court.
Police officers cannot operate outside their jurisdiction.
A court can grant exceptions, while many states freely allow police to work outside of their area—city cops may have the right to conduct law enforcement activities in a surrounding county, for example.
A caller has to be kept on the line for at least 60 seconds in order to trace the call.
This dramatic moment only happens in the movies. Authorities can trace a phone call as soon as it’s been placed.
Police let an arrested person make one phone call.
This is the law in a handful of states. Elsewhere, it’s merely a courtesy that police may or may not extend.
Half of all marriages end in divorce.
Love wins! That stat was taken from state of Nevada records, where getting a divorce is relatively fast and easy. In other states, people make it work. Statistics indicate that 70 to 75 percent of people who got married in the 1990s are still married to the same people.
Interpol is a worldwide police agency.
It’s an organization that allows law enforcement around the world to communicate and work together, but it’s not a standalone police force.
Every human is connected to every other human via six degrees of separation.
That’s the result of a 1967 study, but more recent ones find that the average rate of separation is nine.
Your permanent record will follow you around forever, and negative entries will affect your ability to find employment.
It’s permanent in that it lasts until you graduate high school. Even then, your disciplinary and attendance records can’t be shared with anyone except you.
Mailing a document to yourself is a minor but valid form of copyright protection.
This doesn’t provide any legal protection for work in the United States.
If you’re Jewish and get a tattoo, you can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery.
The Torah’s Book of Leviticus forbids tattoos, but Judaism itself doesn’t shut out adherents who got inked.
The Buddha is the overarching deity of Buddhism.
Various sects consider the Buddha to be a wise man or savior, but he’s not viewed as an omnipotent, supernatural being.
Immaculate Conception refers to the article of Christian faith that Jesus Christ was born to a virgin mother.
It refers to a bit of Catholic dogma—that Jesus’s mother, Mary, was without the taint of original sin from the moment of her conception.
The pope is infallible, and therefore always right.
Only in statements judged to be of divine proclamation.
Red cars get more speeding tickets than cars in any other shade.
Because sports cars are often red—and are made to be driven fast—there’s a misconception that all red cars get more than their fair share of tickets. They don’t.
The Koran guarantees that 72 virgins in heaven await religious martyrs.
The holy text of Islam promises houris, or companions, to everyone who makes it to heaven, but no specific number is given.
A fatwa is a death sentence handed down from a high-ranking Islamic official.
It’s a written opinion of a legal matter of any kind handed down by an Islamic scholar, and it’s not legally binding.
The average person swallows eight to 10 spiders a year while they’re sleeping.
It’s an urban legend. A sleeping body sends off several warning signs to the average skittish spider, such as snoring and a chest that heaves up and down with every breath.
You have to wait for a person to be gone for 24 hours before you file a missing persons report.
Not at all. In the event of an unexpected or sudden absence, police need to know right away.
The “Deep Web” is a lawless part of the Internet where criminals buy and sell drugs, bank account numbers, and pornography.
You can find all that stuff on the “Dark Web,” a tiny portion of the Deep Web. The Deep Web is just anything that search engines don’t index and thus make accessible—private stuff like databases and research libraries.
Browsing the Internet in “private” or “incognito” mode leaves no trace of your activities.
Websites you visit in private mode may not show up in your browser history, but there’s still a record of them with your Internet service provider.
Spam—unwanted, unsolicited email—is named after Spam, the polarizing canned meat product.
Early Internet users named it after the 1970 Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch set in a diner where every item on the menu has some form of Spam in it.
The “World Wide Web” and “the Internet” are the same thing.
The World Wide Web is a way to navigate the Internet. It’s a user-friendly tool to pore through all the information shared by computers.
If convicted of certain crimes, individuals can choose military service instead of prison.
No branch of the U.S. Armed Forces has allowed this since at least the 1980s.
The safest place to wait out an earthquake is in a doorway.
A widely distributed photograph of an earthquake in California decades ago pictured a person standing in a doorway, the only part of their adobe-style home left standing. But that’s because doorways in that style of house—and more or less only that style of house—are reinforced. In the average home, standing in a doorway isn’t safe at all, leaving you a target for falling or flying objects.
Municipal swimming pools employ a chemical that makes urine instantly visible.
That’s just something parents tell their kids so they won’t pee in the pool.
A building’s air ducts can be used as escape tunnels.
Air ducts are too small for adults to climb through.
You should change your car’s oil every 3,000 miles to ensure everything runs properly.
So say automotive service companies. Car manufacturers say it’s safe to go as many as 7,500 miles between oil changes.
Getting shot can send a person flying across the room.
A bullet is small, and a fired one doesn’t pack the force or velocity to propel a human being into the air.
Breathing chloroform will instantly cause a person to pass out.
It takes five minutes of constant inhalation for chloroform to put somebody to sleep.
A religious marriage ceremony is legally binding.
Nope. That’s why the bride and groom have to sign so many forms on their big day—those are for the government.
We say “God bless you” when others sneeze because it’s an old custom from the days when people thought sneezing involved your soul trying to escape.
In the 6th century, a plague hit Europe, and Pope Gregory instructed Christians to say “God bless you” when someone sneezed, a mini-prayer asking the heavens above to spare this poor, plague-stricken person.
Pouring sugar in a car’s gas tank is a nasty prank that can destroy the engine.
Sugar doesn’t dissolve in gasoline, which means it doesn’t turn into engine-clogging sludge.
To be a proper, safe driver, keep your hands on the steering wheel at the “10 and 2” positions.
Before the advent of power steering, placing the hands just above the middle of the wheel gave the driver the extra “oomph” and leverage it needed to turn well. Experts say “9 and 3” are the new “10 and 2.”
Men think about sex every seven seconds.
This is a facetious exaggeration gently mocking men’s lusty ways. According to the groundbreaking Kinsey Report on human sexuality, about half of men think about sex “several” times a day…not every seven seconds.
You have to let a battery (in a phone, or laptop computer, for example) completely drain before charging it again, or this will lead to diminished battery life over time.
That’s not how rechargeable lithium-ion batteries work. No matter where the percentage bar is at when you plug it in, the battery won’t weaken.