Debunked science

Before science got it right: 10 wild misconceptions that misled everyone

Image: Philippe BONTEMPS

Before modern science lifted the veil on some of nature’s most baffling phenomena, people relied on what they knew—and when that failed, they invented explanations that now seem spectacularly bizarre. But even if these early ideas now seem strange or even foolish, they helped pave the way for modern science. Each flawed theory pushed curious minds to investigate further and refine how we understand the world. From spontaneous generation to the theory of miasma, here are 10 examples of what people believed not so long ago.

Image: Glenn Carstens-Peters

For centuries, people believed the Earth was a flat disc floating on water. Ancient maps depicted oceans surrounding a flat plane, and falling objects supposedly plummeted straight down to the abyss.

While Aristotle was among the first to argue for Earth’s true shape—observing ships vanishing hull-first over the horizon and the round shadow cast during lunar eclipses—and Eratosthenes later refined these intuitions to calculate the planet’s circumference with remarkable accuracy, the flat-Earth concept still persisted well into the Middle Ages.

Image: Adrian Lange

During the Middle Ages, and for long before, it was believed that maggots, mice, and other creatures could arise spontaneously from mud, rotting meat, or grain.

It wasn’t until the 17th century that Francesco Redi’s experiments disproved this idea: maggots appeared only when flies had access to lay their eggs. Later, Pasteur confirmed that microbes also do not arise spontaneously.

Image: Ganapathy Kumar

Early natural philosophers suspected the tides followed the Moon’s cycle, but without a concept of gravity, they proposed more imaginative mechanisms. One widely repeated idea described the Moon as "breathing" or exhaling a kind of pneumatic force that pulled the seas upward, much like winds or vapors moving through the air.

It wasn’t until Newton’s work in the 17th century that a clear physical explanation emerged, showing that the tides are driven by the gravitational pull of the Moon and Sun acting on Earth’s oceans.

Image: Karl Callwood

Some early natural philosophers suggested earthquakes were caused by giant underground worms or serpent-like creatures shifting through the Earth. The analogy came from observing how smaller burrowing animals disturbed soil and assuming larger unseen versions could shake the ground itself.

As geological science progressed, however, these notions gave way to evidence showing that earthquakes result from the movement and fracturing of Earth’s crust along fault lines.

Image: Lightscape

Early explanations for the northern lights often described them as fires or glowing vapors igniting high in the atmosphere. Some natural philosophers proposed that luminous gases rose from Earth’s surface and caught fire in the upper air, while others compared the lights to reflections from vast, distant flames.

With improved observations, scientists showed that auroras are caused by charged particles from the solar wind interacting with Earth’s magnetic field and energizing atmospheric gases.

Image: Javier Miranda

Some early astronomers—including Jesuit priest Christoph Scheiner—argued that sunspots were actually small planets or satellites orbiting the Sun, preserving the idea of a "perfect" Sun untouched by blemishes.

Galileo, however, tracked their shapes and motions and noticed they transformed and changed irregularly, which meant they were on or very close to the Sun’s surface—so they couldn’t be planets.

Image: Ruvim Noga

People once believed diseases like cholera, plague, and malaria spread through "miasma," or poisonous bad air rising from decaying matter. The theory shaped public health for centuries and even informed major sanitation reforms in the 19th century.

It wasn’t until the work of Snow, Pasteur, and Koch that germ theory replaced miasma, showing that infectious diseases are caused by specific microorganisms—not foul-smelling air.

Image: Kubo Mičuch

Early hydrologists often believed springs were fed by vast underground rivers flowing through hollow channels in the Earth. The idea came from observing surface rivers disappearing into caves and reappearing elsewhere, leading to the assumption that similar large waterways existed everywhere below ground.

Modern hydrogeology shows that most groundwater doesn’t travel in rivers but moves slowly through porous soil and rock, driven by pressure and permeability rather than hidden subterranean channels.

Image: Forsaken Films

For centuries, comets were thought to be atmospheric phenomena—fiery vapors or clouds igniting high in the sky. Even Aristotle’s model placed them in the upper atmosphere, and this view persisted well into the Renaissance.

Until Tycho Brahe’s observations in the 1570s showed that comets had no measurable parallax, it hadn’t been realized that they were actually far beyond the Moon. This helped establish comets as true celestial bodies orbiting the Sun.

Image: Chris Nagahama

Early explanations for magnetism often invoked a "living force" within lodestones, suggesting they possessed a kind of spirit or soul that allowed them to attract iron. Others claimed magnets emitted invisible _effluvia_—mysterious vapors that pulled metals toward them.

William Gilbert’s De Magnete (1600) replaced these ideas with a physical model, showing that magnetism was a natural property of matter and that Earth itself acted like a giant magnet.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT

Stranger Than Fiction: 10 Unbelievable Events That Actually Happened

Image: Diana van Ormondt

They say truth is stranger than fiction, and some of these historical events are living proof of this old adage.

Brace yourself for a rollercoaster ride through history, where the strange and unexpected take center stage in the theater of reality. From absurd battles to mysterious weather phenomena, these 10 astonishing tales will leave you thinking long and hard about the complexities of human history.

Image: Sharon Co Images

Wars are typically waged between nations, but in 1932, Australia faced an unusual adversary: emus. After large numbers of these flightless birds invaded crucial farmland within Western Australia’s Wheatbelt, the government decided to intervene by sending soldiers armed with machine guns to reduce the emu population in the area. However, most attempts were ineffective at most, killing very few birds and costing thousands of dollars in supplies and ammunition.

As soon as the first shot was fired, the seemingly tame emu dispersed way beyond the range of the machine guns, and apparently switched to guerrilla tactics of sorts, avoiding all further military ambushes and frontal attacks while still feasting on the farmer’s crops. The government’s futile attempts were ridiculed and physical barrier methods to manage wildlife were preferred from then on. Sadly, they give no medals for having endured the Great Emu War.

Image: Hannah Skelly

In 1518, the town of Strasbourg, France, was gripped by a strange and inexplicable phenomenon - people suddenly began dancing uncontrollably in the streets. The dancing madness persisted for weeks, with some of the affected succumbing to exhaustion or even death. The authorities at the time did not know how to react, and some people even joined the dancers voluntarily, as they feared it was a punishment from Saint Vitus (and presumably wanted to stay on the safe side).

After many efforts to fight the strange epidemic, the dancing eventually subsided and people in the town could resume their normal lives. While theories range from mass hysteria to hallucinogenic substances and neurological disorders like Sydenham's chorea, the event remains a historical enigma that challenges our understanding of the human mind and collective behavior.

Image: Nima Sarram

In 1908, a massive explosion flattened over 80 million trees in the remote Tunguska region of Siberia. The cause? A mysterious airburst, likely caused by the explosion of a meteoroid or comet in Earth's atmosphere. It is now estimated that the event had an explosive energy of 3 to 5 megatons, equivalent to over a thousand Hiroshima bombs. The resulting shockwave broke windows, and knocked people down hundreds of miles away, reaching an equivalent of an earthquake of 5.0 on the Richter scale in some areas.

A bright glow was observed in night skies in Asia and Europe for days after the event due to high-altitude ice particles that formed as a result of the explosion. For all its magnitude, the explosion left no visible crater and minimal debris beside the devastated forest. The Tunguska Event serves as a stark reminder of the potential cosmic threats that lurk in the darkness of space.

Image: British Library

Miscommunication can often lead to chaos, but rarely on the scale witnessed in the Battle of Karánsebes in 1788. The Austrian army, at the time facing the Ottoman Empire, descended into total anarchy when two different scouting parties mistook one another for the enemy, fired on each other, and raised the alarm.

Making matters worse, the Austrian army was made of men of different nationalities who more often than not could not understand each other. All attempts to end confusion and the ensuing friendly fire on the part of the Austrian emperor himself were in vain, and after a while - deeply demoralized - he was forced to give the order of retreat. When the Ottoman army arrived two days later, they found an empty battlefield and were able to take the city of Karánsebes without any resistance.

Image: Aswathy N

In 1807, eight years before Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte had a humiliating defeat at the hands of a strange opponent - a horde of rabbits. During the celebrations that followed the Treaties of Tilsit - which effectively ended the war between the French and Imperial Russia - Napoleon’s chief of staff Alexandre Berthier had the idea of organizing a rabbit hunt to entertain its guests.

So far, nothing out of the ordinary for the time, but when the rabbits were simultaneously freed along the edges of a grassy field, instead of scattering as expected, all these fluffy beasts began running toward their amused hunters. But the fits of laughter didn’t last long, as the now-hunted hunters realized that there was nothing they could do to stop the relentless animals as they swarmed their positions and had no other choice than to flee. Some accounts state that Berthier had gathered around 3000 rabbits, so not even mighty Napoleon was a match for this unexpected army.

Apparently, the chief of staff's mistake was buying tame rabbits from local farmers, accustomed to being fed by humans, instead of trapping wild hares for the hunt. If we learned anything from the Great Emu War, the lesson is clear: never underestimate animals!

Image: Mitsuo Komoriya

In the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia - the largest in at least 1,300 years - 1816 became known as the "Year Without a Summer." The volcanic ash floating in the atmosphere led to climate abnormalities worldwide, resulting in crop failures and widespread famine in the most affected areas.

In Europe and North America temperatures plummeted, and most crops suffered irreparable damage due to the persistent frost. In the United States, a "dry fog" was observed in the eastern regions, dimming sunlight so much that sunspots were visible to the naked eye. Also, the high level of volcanic particles present in the atmosphere caused strange optical effects in the following years, such as strong red hues during sunsets, which can be observed in many paintings produced at the time.

Image: Tiana Attride

It seems that wars against unusual adversaries are a fashionable trend in human history because the Roman Emperor Caligula declared war in the year 40 AD on no one other than the god Neptune himself, king of the raging seas.

Known for his eccentricity, Caligula allegedly ordered his legionnaires to "attack" the sea with swords and spears, after which he declared victory against the powerful god and told the men to gather seashells as trophies of war. One can only imagine that the soldiers had a fun -albeit puzzling- day.

Image: Tim Mossholder

In the late 1980s, Pepsi briefly possessed the sixth-largest navy in the world. In exchange for commercializing Pepsi products in the Soviet Union, the company received 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer.

However, the fleet was composed of obsolete and unseaworthy vessels that were destined to be turned into scrap almost immediately. The payment was made in the only resources the USSR could gather easily at the time, and it provided a way to establish profitable international relations - and open up to the world.

Image: Garry T

The American Civil War started and concluded with a curious connection to Wilmer McLean, an American wholesale grocer from Virginia. The conflict's first major battle, the First Battle of Bull Run, took place in McLean's farm in 1861. A cannonball fell directly through the kitchen fireplace of the McLean’s house, which was being used as headquarters for the Confederate Army, destroying the dinner that was being prepared by the stationed officers - something that was noted not without humor by the Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard.

The McLean family moved to Appomattox, Virginia trying to escape the war, but just four years later, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant in McLean's parlor, marking the conclusion of the Civil War. Unintentionally, McLean was a prime witness of one of America’s most defining conflicts. Later, he said of this: "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor."

Image: Snowscat

Genghis Khan's vast empire and brutal military campaigns had an unexpected impact on the Earth's climate. A recent study suggests that the Mongol invasions in the 13th century led to a significant reduction in global carbon dioxide levels, as large areas of cultivated land returned to forests.

This had the unintentional effect of scrubbing as much as 700 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere, roughly equivalent to the global annual consumption of gasoline today. This drastic ecological shift highlights the effect that land use, and particularly deforestation can have on our planet at a large scale.