"Our eyes are just REALLY good"

Explanation: In WW2, Britain spread word that carrots improved night-time vision, and that its pilots were eating lots of carrots, in order to 'explain' why they were intercepting Nazi planes over Britain so reliably at night.

In reality, they'd figured out how to fit radar on their fighter planes, and wanted to keep that a secret for as long as they could. The hope was that Nazis keeping tabs on civilian British news would fall for the ruse, and buy the UK a little more time undetected.

Carrots may prevent nutritional deficiencies that lead to poor night-time vision, but they aren't going to make your MK1 eyeballs into NODs.

But eat enough of em and you'll get carotenemia (skin turns orange), so maybe trump thought this too

One of my favorite historical "old wives tales" readily disproven, like cracking your knuckles causing arthritis or sitting too close to the TV (which definitely used to be a problem).

You know, I've heard that story a bunch of times, but nobody ever says the conclusion. How long did the ruse work?

I don't think the Brits ever figured out if it was successful OR unsuccessful. Propaganda can be funny like that. XD

There's evidence that the nazis at least knew about the claim, but everything I've ever found backs you up 100%, there's no evidence that the nazis ever fell for or or dismissed it. I can't imagine anyone gave it more than a minute's thought though, like even back then it was pretty transparently silly.

there are creatures who have never seen the light of day who eat more veg than trump.

How well do you know Trumps diet, and would you be able to slip something in there?

German who grew up in the 21st century here. The myth that eating lots of carrots will improve your eyesight/nightvision significantly is still more or less alive and well here. I sort of believed it until I saw a variation on this meme for the first time.

I'd say it seems to have worked pretty well.

If I could slip something in his food, theoretically it would have been done already.

Way to get out hopes up

Wait, cracking knuckles is unproblematic?

It's actually a common myth that rabbits eat a lot of carrots. The plain truth is that they have radar, so they simply don't need to.

This lie was repeated for years in American pop culture, so I think then and future generations of Americans fell for it more than the Germans did.

It'd be nice if we could go one post without seeing the fuckwad's name.

That's what you get for listening to a dumbass, dumbass.

That's also kinda why tanks are called tanks today.

When the British were building the Mark I Landship (world's first "tank") it was a top secret project. However there were hundreds of civilian workers working on the assembly lines. Expecting that workers would start questioning about what they were building, the British war department told the workers that they were building "water carrying tanks".

Then since no popular formal name was given to the new armoured vehicles, the name "tank" stuck.

The myth was that it caused arthritis. A chap called Donald Unger decided to test it by only cracking the knuckles in one hand and never the other, for decades. There was no difference between the two hands.

Mmmm true to be fair