Almost all of us have, at some time, been chided by a parent or grandparent who has been mislead by an old wives’ tale. Their intentions are always good, but unfortunately they are misguided. There are thousands of old wives’ tales - ranging from the seemingly logical to the outright bizarre.

This is a list of ten of the most common old wives’ tales which are, in fact, bunkum! Feel free to use the comments to tell us about some of the more unusual tales you have come across in your life.

In fact, both colds and fevers cause dehydration - so liquids are essential when suffering from either. In addition, missing out on food when you are sick is never a good idea as food provides the body with the sustenance it needs to get healthy. So, you should feed a fever and feed a cold. This, of course, does not mean to overeat - it means to eat healthy balanced meals.

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The science of weather is a fascinating one; but even more so are the flukes and irregularities that can occur within our world. This is a list of 20 of the most amazing and unusual of those anomalies.

A rainbow is caused by the Sun shining on moisture droplets, most commonly in a post-rain atmosphere. A moon bow is much rarer, only seen at night when the moon is low and full to almost full. One popular place to see moon bows is at Cumberland Falls in Kentucky, as pictured above.

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James Randi is a stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. In this list we see 10 of his best psychic debunking (and have a bonus clip of a lecture of his). These are all extremely damning to the practitioners of these magic arts and Randi makes no apologies for his tough approach; in fact he is offering a reward of $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event, under test conditions agreed to by both parties. As of this time, no one has claimed this prize.

According to Randi, a large number of European businesses uses graphology (the ability to determine a person’s traits by their handwriting) to help in their hiring process. In this clip, Randi tests a professional graphologist to determine whether they actually do have the ability to recognize certain traits, or whether their results are determined entirely by chance.

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A lot of fame and money can be made by scientists who make amazing or unique discoveries, and while this generally provides a motivation for good research, it is occasionally abused. This is a list of 10 cases of scientific fraud that fooled many people. Perhaps this can serve as a reminder that some scientific “discoveries” need be taken with a grain of globally warmed salt.

Jan Henrik Schön (pictured on the left), a researcher at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, had five papers published in Nature and seven in the journal Science between 1998 and 2001, dealing with advanced aspects of electronics. The discoveries were abstruse, but he was seen by many of his peers as a rising star.

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