h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

what an idea! hmmm, maybe if this really takes off, they'll make a page for it. ahhh.

ok. i'll start.

grammatically speaking, it should of course be "common misconceptions" and not "popular misconceptions."

i thank you.

doesn't it depend how popular they are? Personally, the misconception that women can parallel park is my favourite...
*ducks feminists*

ok ive got one........the 'wherefore' in 'wherefore art thou romeo' does not mean 'where' it means 'why'. juliet is saying 'why do you have to be called romeo montague. if you were called anything else i could marry you'...that links in with a 'rose by any other name would still smell as sweet'. she wants him to 'deny thy father and refuse thy name' so she can marry him. i hope im not stating the obvious and people are just gonna say 'duh! we knew that already' lol

That Engerland should be allowed to host the World Cup in the future because the fans are generally well behaved at home, and anyway it's only a small minority who spoilit for the rest, and whatsmore they aren't really football fans anyway they just use that as an excuse - you only have to look at the terrible riots at the recent US Open Golf Championship when no-one English won, and the trouble we always have at the cricket Test matches with all the nazi-yobs who follow the team around the world.

oooh, Calvin, that leads me to another one.

is it a popular misconception that it was a "small minority" causing the trouble at Euro 2000? it was, sadly, a large minority...

How about "Beware Greeks bearing gifts"

The original Latin, from Virgil's Aeneid is

"timeo Danaos et dona ferentes" as spoken by Laocoon

and it means

"I fear the Greeks even when they are bringing gifts"

ok heres another shakespeare one...........its all that glisters is not gold not all that glitters...........my mum tells me that all the time

in Casablanca Bogart never says 'play it again, Sam' and in Star Trek the original series, Captain Kirk never says 'beam me up, Scotty' and in that dirty harry flim 'its do i feel lucky? well do ya, punk?' not 'do you feel lucky punk?'

thats me done for now

Eskimos have (insert large number here) words for snow.

Nonsense - they may have different words for different types and effects of snow - but whay would they want different words for snow?

sherlock holmes never said "elementary, my dear watson."

tom selleck did not turn down the role of indiana jones in raiders of the lost ark but was unable to get out of the contractual obligations of magnum p.i.

also, in tom selleck's three men and a baby, it is not a ghost of a child that can be seen through a window but a cardboard cut-out of ted dansen.

I have one- that all sci-fi fans are looney (grrr...)
or that all irish women have red hair...sorry..I don't know that many..
or...uh..i'll come back when I think of more

I like this idea - why doesn't one of you make a page out of this? It is suitable we could feature it on teh front page.

New Zealand is overrun by sheep.

Although my high school *did* have a working sheepfarm and everybody in 3rd Form had to take Agriculture.

That the county of Lincolnshire is flat - as you can see from http://www.h2g2.com/A311572 , the most prominent thing about Lincoln, its capital, is that it is on a very steep hill

True, but the rest of the place is flat .

Misconception: All Yorkshire men wear flat caps and own whippets.

(I don't own a whippet )

As someone who had to walk up that hill on copious occasions

What brought you to be walking up "steep hill"? Not the quest for a rare second hand book or decent whisky, methinks?

Oh - as well as Lincoln, the Wolds aren't flat...

OK, you win The whisky shop is pretty good, and I liked the cathedral too.

Its very boring I'm afraid.

I was a member of the East and West Midlands Team for the Heritage Lottery Fund - we were studying the progress of the conservation plan for the cathedral.

East Anglia - now that's flat! (OK - all of Lincolnshire below Newark is pretty flat too....)

So's Cambridge. Well - actually it does have a "hill", though that's just the ramp to get into the multi-storey carpark...