I’m thinking of things like heliocentrism where there was some modern discovery or revelation by science that invalidated a common assumption prior.
My understanding is that flat earth is more a recent phenomena but I’d love to hear some ancient ideas people now miss. Did people think trees weren’t alive? Did people think evaporation was where things simply disappeared?
I’d would love to hear these ideas.
“‘There was some wonderful stuff about [railway trains] too in the U.S., that women’s bodies were not designed to go at 50 miles an hour. Our uteruses would fly out of our bodies as they were accelerated to that speed.’” From: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-TEB-2814
There were (and are) a ton of utterly ridiculous beliefs about what can cause harm to women, but I find this one particularly amusing in an age where millions of women fly on planes. Imagine the plane takes off, leaving all those wayward uteri spinning in the dust at the gate…
Like… they did realize any acceleration strong enough to cause your uterus to go flying out would also be strong enough to make all your other internal organs fly out too? And that men, in fact, have internal organs?
In my mental image, the spinning uteri danced before feinting dramatically. Unexpected.
“The Uterine Dance” was after the Spanish chocolate but before the Bon-Bons, right? Been a while since I’ve seen The Nutcracker.
uterusly ridiculous
Some beliefs along these lines have been used more recently in extremely religious places like Saudi Arabia.
From 2013, a cleric’s arguments to deny Saudi women the right to drive
Thankfully the ban on women drivers in Saudi Arabia was lifted in June 2018, but it took a lot to get there.