fact-check friday.

one claim goes up each friday. bring your verdict monday — with sources.

verdict options: confirmed · debunked · misleading · unproven. the notes stay shut until we've argued it.

• week 01

  "The average person swallows eight spiders a year in their sleep."

  after we've argued it +

  Debunked — and beautifully: the "fact" is often traced to a piece written about how easily fake facts spread. The perfect week-one claim.

• week 02

  "The Great Wall of China is visible from space with the naked eye."

  after we've argued it +

  Debunked — astronauts, including Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei, report it is not. Cities at night, however, are.

• week 03

  "A penny dropped from the Empire State Building could kill a pedestrian."

  after we've argued it +

  Debunked — terminal velocity of a penny is too low. Physics does the fact-checking here.

• week 04

  "The CIA once spent millions training a cat to eavesdrop on the Soviets."

  after we've argued it +

  Confirmed — Acoustic Kitty, declassified 2001. The lesson: absurd does not mean false. Verify, then laugh.

• week 05

  "Humans only use 10% of their brains."

  after we've argued it +

  Debunked — imaging shows nearly all of the brain is active over a day. A myth with a century of staying power.

• week 06

  "Napoleon was unusually short."

  after we've argued it +

  Misleading — he was average height for his era; the confusion mixes French and English units, plus British propaganda did the rest.

• week 07

  "The US government seriously proposed nuking the Moon."

  after we've argued it +

  Confirmed — Project A119, a Cold War-era study. Documented by physicists who worked on it.

• week 08

  "Goldfish have a three-second memory."

  after we've argued it +

  Debunked — they can be trained and remember for months. Sorry to everyone who used this excuse.

• week 09

  "Einstein failed math class."

  after we've argued it +

  Debunked — he mastered calculus by his early teens and said so himself when shown the claim. Check the primary source: his transcript.

• week 10

  "Sugar makes kids hyperactive."

  after we've argued it +

  Debunked — double-blind studies find no effect; parents rate kids as hyper when TOLD they had sugar. A lesson in expectation bias.

• week 11

  "The FBI kept a file on Albert Einstein."

  after we've argued it +

  Confirmed — over 1,400 pages, released under FOIA. He was watched for his political views for decades.

• week 12

  "Medieval people believed the Earth was flat."

  after we've argued it +

  Debunked — scholars knew it was round since antiquity. The myth was largely invented by 19th-century writers.

• week 13

  "Lemmings follow each other off cliffs."

  after we've argued it +

  Debunked — the famous 1958 documentary footage was staged; the crew drove them. The camera can be the conspiracy.

• week 14

  "The Pentagon has acknowledged videos of objects it cannot identify."

  after we've argued it +

  Confirmed — but watch the leap: unidentified means unidentified. Where the claim goes next is where the grading starts.

• week 15

  "You can see the exact moment the Berlin Wall "fell" — one official announcement did it."

  after we've argued it +

  Confirmed, roughly — a botched press conference answer ("immediately, without delay") opened the gates that night. Accidents make history too.

• week 16

  "Water drains the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere."

  after we've argued it +

  Misleading — the Coriolis effect is real at hurricane scale, negligible in your sink. True physics, false application.

• week 17

  "A Michigan town once elected a dog as mayor."

  after we've argued it +

  Verdict for the class to run down — several US towns have had honorary animal mayors (Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, famously). Michigan? Investigate.

• week 18

  "This class made you harder to fool."

  after we've argued it +

  Unproven — until you cash in your day-one exit ticket this week. Let’s check the evidence.