By Chinedu Jayhson

A lot of things you were taught way back in your primary school days are no longer true today. Though some of them were correct at some point, the world has since moved on. New discoveries are being made by scientists on a regularly basis and old theories are subsequently trashed. Historians are stumbling on new documents and evidences everyday and history is being rewritten. The world is simply moving on.

Here are 15 surprising historical and scientific “facts” that are no longer facts in the world today:

1. There are six classes of food: Everybody was taught – and some are still being ignorantly taught – that there are 6 classes of food, namely: proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, fats and oil, minerals and water. This used to be true until nutritionists decided to increase the number a little bit. Officially, there are now SEVEN classes of food: proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins (or vegetables), fibers, fats and oil, minerals and water. Newcomer, fiber, is the indigestible portion of the food we eat that is derived from plants. What it does in the body is simply to alter or modify the way other nutrients and chemicals are absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract.

2. There are nine planets in the solar system: Just as astronomers are discovering hundreds of planets all over the galaxy, the number of planets in our own solar system has been reduced from nine to eight. Pluto is no longer considered a planet. At 2006’s 26th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union held in Prague, Czech Republic, Pluto was demoted to the status of a dwarf planet. It turns out that it’s just a huge ball of ice and rock orbiting the sun in an area beyond the planet Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt. There are over 70,000 icy objects in this Kuiper Belt, Pluto being one of them. Eris, another dwarf planet within the Kuiper Belt, was discovered by a group of astronomers in 2005. Eris was found to be even larger than Pluto and has approximately 25% more mass.

3. There are four oceans: That was until 2000 when a fifth ocean, the Southern Ocean, was controversially added by the International Hydrographic Organization. Since then, however, hydographers are yet to agree on its exact geographical coordinates, but most sources will tell you that it borders Australia and New Zealand to the south, lies just south of the tip of South America and completely surrounds the uninhabited continent of Antarctica. So there are now five oceans: the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Arctic.

4. There are three states of matter: Old fashioned, not-so-enlightened teachers and university lecturers these days still teach that there are only three states of matter observable in everyday life: solid, liquid and gas. But according to physicists, plasma is another state of matter that is observable in everyday life. In fact, scientists claim that plasma is the most abundant form of matter in the universe, because most of the stars, including our own Sun, are in a plasma state. The neutron-degenerate matter, Bose-Einstein condensates, liquid crystals, superfluids, quark-gluon plasmas, quantum hall state, supersolid, string-net liquid, superglass and dark matter are some of the rare and theoretical forms of matter listed by physicists.

5. Humans have only five senses: Sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste are not the only sensory responses human beings exhibit. They can also have sensory receptors that detect and respond to pain (nociception), changes in temperature (thermoception), changes in balance (equilibrioception), position (proprioception), magnetic direction (magnetoception) and the passage of time (chronoception).

6. Humans evolved from apes: This is a great misconception that has stuck with us since the days of Charles Darwin and everyone has pretty much heard about it. According to his Theory of Evolution – which by the way is not generally accepted by scientists – humans and the modern-day apes evolved from a single now-extinct ancestor; in the course of time they began to evolve differently and eventually went their separate ways.

7. Mount Everest is the highest place on earth: Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world, but it’s not the part of the world closest to outer space. Here's the trick: the Earth does not have a perfectly round structure like the world globes you’ll find in most schools. Geographers call this anomaly an oblate spheroid, which means that the earth has a bulge towards the equator. As a result of this bulge, places that are close to the equator are higher up than places that are far away from it. Countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Gabon, Colombia and the Democratic Republic of Congo that straddle the equator are higher up and they are actually closer to outer space than places that lie towards the north and south poles, like the Scandinavia, Russia, Canada, the United States and Iceland. Going by this, the title of the highest spot on Earth belongs to a mountain in Ecuador you may not have heard of. The unspectacular Mount Chimborazo in the Andes of South America has been identified as the highest point on earth and its closest part to outer space. The peak is in reality 1.5 miles higher than Mount Everest, because it sits atop the Earth’s bulge though it only measures 20,564 ft from sea level while Everest measures 29,029 ft. For the records, Everest is still the highest mountain in the world from sea level but if you are coming from space you'll encounter Chimborazo first before you'll encounter Everest.

8. Europeans brought Christianity to Africa: The world’s largest religion, Christianity, was brought to Africa around the same time it was brought to Europe. Mark, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ, is credited by historians with bringing Christianity to Africa in 42 AD, about 12 years after the crucifixion of Christ.. There he founded the first church in Africa, the Church of Alexandria in Egypt. Here is a fun fact: Jesus Himself was recorded in the Bible to have been taken away to Egypt by Mary and Joseph as an infant during Herod the Great’s Massacre of the Innocents in Palestine where Jesus was born. Philip, another apostle of Christ, was documented in the Acts of the Apostles to have baptised an Ethiopian eunuch on the road leading to Gaza from Jerusalem in around AD 30, about two years after the crucifixion. It's not clear to historians and Bible scholars when Christianity was first preached in what is now Europe. Antioch, reputed to be the first place the followers of Christ were called Christians, is in modern day Turkey, the Asian part of Turkey.

9. The Bible and the Church believed that the Earth was flat: The idea that the Church in the Middle Ages believed that the earth was flat has been ignorantly taught in schools and published in many books. According to the notion, it was not until Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus had “sailed round the world” without "falling of the earth's cliff" and discovered what he believed to be South East Asia (which turned out to be North America) that the Church leaders came to believe that the Earth is indeed spherical. Contrary to this, Greek astronomers and pretty much everyone else then had known long before the birth of Christ that the Earth was spherical. The early Greeks were renowned astronomers who made predictions that are still correct today. The Bible also believed in a round earth. A quote found in Isaiah 40:22 says that “He (God) sits enthroned above the circle of the earth.” It was only a few scholars in the Middle Ages claiming to represent the whole Church that believed in a flat Earth.

10. Michael Faraday invented electricity: No-one actually invented electricity. It has been there since the beginning of the world. Electricity as a form of energy occurs in nature. A lightning bolt, for example, produces electricity.

11. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb: It is not clear who invented light bulbs, but they were being used as electric lights more than 50 years before Thomas Edison patented his famous invention in 1879. Edison only invented what became the world's first commercially viable incandescent light bulb.

12. Sugar causes diabetes: Sugar doesn’t directly cause diabetes, but consuming sugary foods can predispose you to diabetes. Sugar increases the quantity of calories in the body; too many body calories lead to weight gain and weight gain significantly increases a person’s likelihood to develop type 2 diabetes.

13. The Whites kidnapped Africans and sold them into slavery: This is not entirely true. Most slaves that were shipped into the Americas were actually captured by their own kinsmen and sold to the Europeans. At first, the Europeans organized abduction raids to capture slaves, but in no time they realized that it was too dangerous a venture since they were not familiar with the inland terrains. They subsequently found people that will do their dirty jobs. Local chiefs and merchants were given passed this responsibility in exchange for money and other privileges. At the height of the slave trade, this practice became a lucrative business along Nigeria’s Atlantic coast.

14. The United States of America is the world’s largest economy: That was until 2014. The US is still the richest country when measured by reserves and national wealth, but it no longer has the world's largest economy. To be precise, the United States officially lost its status as the world’s number one economy to China in October 2014, according to the International Monetary Fund. In the IMF's indices, China’s GDP is now worth $17.61 trillion compared with the US’ $17.4 trillion. The IMF’s calculation is based on purchasing power parity, which adjusts the GDP for inflation based on the fact that the prices of goods and services and cost of living vary from country to country. To make this simpler, assuming the economies of the US and Nigeria are both worth $100 currently, the Nigerian economy will be higher when measured based on the purchasing power parity, because you can buy a lot more things over here in Nigeria with a $100 bill than it the US. The purchasing power parity method of calculating GDP is preferred to the nominal method that does not adjust for inflation by most economists. However, when not adjusted for inflation, the US is still the world’s largest economy with a GDP worth $16.8 compared with China’s $10.3 trillion.

15. China has always been a poor country: For most parts of the last 2000 years, the Chinese Empire was one of the three richest States in the world along with the Holy Roman Empire and India. But following the weakening of the Holy Roman Empire by several bloody and costly wars, and the British invasion of India, it became the richest. It was only in the middle of the 19th century that things began to downhill for China. Its economy tanked and was overtaken by the newly-industrialized Britain and the United States. The cause of this downfall has often been linked to overpopulation, leadership crisis and conflicts with the Japanese Empire. China was then plunged into poverty and hunger, but that would only last for less than two centuries. Today, China has again become the world’s largest economy, though a great number of its population still live in poverty.

By @ChineduJayhson
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[size=38pt]YOUR RIGHT[/size]

Hmmm, I hear

16: Nigeria will be better: this is what i ve been hearing from my childhood but uptill now its getting worse

Nice post..

That lizards and lions come to teach on Saturdays

a round of applause....

Running to get my jotting pad and pen.

Hmmmm. Interesting

Waoh!

I was taught am the leader of tomorrow when Bujari was head of state,since then Buhari has been contesting till now.

Maybe the tomorrow has not come,or my teacher is lying.

Nice one op.

No. 13 reconfirms d evil in us all- man & d dark side of commerce, africans enthusiastically gave an opening/crack the traders later eagerly widened Good one OP

I was taught the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, but I was later taught the sun neither rises nor sets, it's the earth that rotates.

still reading[size=15pt]17 the bible never said the earth was flat. you will understand this better in the book of job when Gos was asking them if they knew where the earth's pillar is
we were also told that God had no child but when you ask who was anabi Isa's father they will say nobody that it was God that initiate mary pregnancy
So why is it hard to accept that God is his father.

we were told that jesus was just another prophet.
then i ask why do you then call him a messiah and why was he taken up and why will he be the one to save the world from dajjal the antichrist.

When Jesus said he will send the comforter,
they said he was talking about mohhamed.
so i asked how has mohammed brought comfort to the world if not pain and promise of orggy in heaven. a heaven he is not even sire he will make.

solomon used demons to build the temple.
the bible clearty state how it was built and even went as far as naming the contractors. but they told us solomon used jinns to build the temple.that was supposed to be the house of God
the list goes on.

am glad i found the light

[/size]still reading

Make i just say na try..bcoz it's true....

Funny enough. They still teach ds olden things in Nigerian schools today

cool.
change is the only constant thing in life

brilliant writeup, only people like you are permitted to blog.

Nice writeup. It's so educating.

WOW! All true.

kekakuz:
still reading[size=30pt]17 the bible never said the earth was flat. you will understand this better in the book of job when Gos was asking them if they knew where the pillar was
.....
the list goes on.
am glad i found the light
[/size]still reading

Abeg, what is the light?
In the Light of Truth: The Grail Message?

True

Now This Is A Front Page Material. Seun please move this to front page

Quite educative and excellently presented.

kekakuz:
still reading[size=30pt]17 the bible never said the earth was flat. you will understand this better in the book of job when Gos was asking them if they knew where the pillar was
we were also told that God had no child but when you ask who was anabi Isa's father they will say nobody that it was God that initiate mary pregnancy.So why is it hard to accept that God was his father.

we were told that jesus was just another prophet.
then i ask why do you then call him a messiah and why was he taken up and why will he be the one to save the world from dajjal the antichrist.

When Jesus said he will send the comforter,he was talking about mohhamed.
so i asked how has mohammed brought to the world if not pain and promise of orgy in heaven. a heaven he is not even sire he will make.

solomon used demons to builf the temple.
the bible clearty state how it was built and even went as far as naming the contractors. but they told us solomon used jinns to build the temple.that was supposed to be the house of God is just ************
the list goes on.

am glad i found the light

[/size]still reading

there re lots of sense in ur post. 100 likes

CHILDREN ARE THE LEADEBS OF TOMORROW- big lie, its those politicians that were there then, that are still ruling now. They even put thier children.

kekakuz:
still reading[size=30pt]17 the bible never said the earth was flat. you will understand this better in the book of job when Gos was asking them if they knew where the pillar was
we were also told that God had no child but when you ask who was anabi Isa's father they will say nobody that it was God that initiate mary pregnancy.So why is it hard to accept that God was his father.
we were told that jesus was just another prophet.
then i ask why do you then call him a messiah and why was he taken up and why will he be the one to save the world from dajjal the antichrist.
When Jesus said he will send the comforter,he was talking about mohhamed.
so i asked how has mohammed brought to the world if not pain and promise of orgy in heaven. a heaven he is not even sire he will make.
solomon used demons to builf the temple.
the bible clearty state how it was built and even went as far as naming the contractors. but they told us solomon used jinns to build the temple.that was supposed to be the house of God is just ************
the list goes on.
am glad i found the light
[/size]still reading

who ask you for all the long story wey you dey write so?

9ce read

Educating cos I learnt something new from it. Thanks @op!
I think the school curriculum should be updated to reflect modern changes so that we don't continue in our archaic teaching.

Paroman:
who ask you for all the long story wey you dey write so?

your barber