10 Things That Occur Where You Think

By and large, most people have curious minds. Most of us like mysteries. Maybe not a complete Sherlock Holmes mystery, but we like to understand why things happen and where they come from. Language can often help us do this, by giving clues about where things come from. But language and common knowledge, and even not-so-common knowledge, can sometimes mislead us. Sometimes the things we think we know, including where they come from, are completely wrong.

10. Mongolian Beef Taiwanese

In a normal world, if you name something after a place, it should be the place it came from. Canadian bacon comes from Canada. German shepherds come from Germany. Mongolian beef comes from Mongolia. Except the world is often built on deception and misdirection, and these days you can't trust a name. For example, this popular dish at all not mongolian .

Mongolian beef, prepared from the flank and coated in a sweet ginger, soy sauce and garlic marinade, is a staple in most Chinese restaurants. It is actually a Taiwanese dish, not Mongolian at all. So why the confusing name?

The dish gets its name not from where it comes from, but from what it is cooked in. In this case, it is mongolian brazier Mongolian barbecue is popular in Taiwan, and it was there that the dish was first created, cooked in braziers, and then gained popularity.

9. German chocolate cake is not German

Chocolate cake is popular, and for good reason: it's delicious! Five percent people in one survey said it was the only cake they had ever eaten, while 84% people generally liked it and only 6% were not fans. Of course, there are many different types of chocolate cake, from lava cake to fudge cake to chocolate truffle cake and more. And then there's German chocolate cake. It's a multi-layered cake topped with pecan and coconut frosting, making it very different from your average chocolate cake.

In another case of tricky words that don't really indicate where something came from, the German Chocolate Cake at 100% isn't German. It's an American creation. Pecans and coconut aren't particularly German in terms of ingredients, so perhaps that's not surprising. Why the name, then? Thanks to the inventor of the sweet chocolate who inspired it,To Sam Herman .

In 1852, a German invented a new kind of baking chocolate. For a long time, it was called German chocolate. In 1957 A Texas woman published a recipe for her homemade cake using German chocolate in a Dallas newspaper, and suddenly the chocolate became famous, as did the cake made from it.

When reissued, the recipe changed over the years from German to German, and the rest is delicious history.

8. The wet dog smell doesn't come from the dogs themselves.

There's a reason dogs are called man's best friend. The human-canine bond goes back thousands of years. From big, beefy St. Bernards to tiny Chihuahuas, dogs are great, right? Well, except for the ones that bark a lot. And cleaning up their mess is no fun. And wet dog smell, that's gross, right? Not so fast! That last one isn't the dog's fault, because wet dog smell technically doesn't come from dogs.

Any dog owner can attest that a wet dog smells much more pungent than a dry dog. It's literally its own brand of stink, and it's easy to spot. Since it happens to dogs, we assume it's the dog itself, but it's actually a stinky mix of yeast and bacteria found in dog hair. More specifically, waste, left behind by these tiny organisms. They poop in your dog's fur; the hair gets wet and re-wets the poop, the poop stinks.

Because bad odor is caused by bacteria and yeast, some dog breeds smell worse than others. If you have a wrinkled dog like pug or shar pei , it will hold more odor than a sleeker, smoother dog, so keep that in mind.

7. Angora wool is obtained from rabbits.

If you want a beautiful sweater, consider an angora sweater. It is a little more expensive than regular wool, but it is very warm and luxurious and worth the money if you want a beautiful garment.

Most wool comes from sheep, and there is a variety Angora goat , which is bred specifically for wool, so it all looks surprisingly trim and dry. However, it's not that simple. Angora goats produce mohair, not angora wool. Angora wool actually comes from angora rabbits .

Unlike sheep, goats, or even alpacas, which can be raised for their wool, sheared, and then sheared again later while they live relatively happy lives, things aren't so pleasant with rabbits. If you're the type of person who wants ethically sourced, cruelty-free clothing, you'll probably want to avoid angora wool entirely, as it's up to 90% comes in from Chinese farms where animals are often treated very cruelly.

6. Oil and gas didn't actually come from dinosaurs.

Fossil fuels have become the subject of much debate in recent years. Our reliance on them has led to increased pollution and climate change, and the world desperately needs a solution. And plenty of ideas have been proposed, solar power is certainly a big one, but fossil fuels like coal and oil seem to be here to stay, even though we are on track to run out by 2052 or so. Togo . And we can't do more than that because it all comes from dinosaurs, right? Well, not exactly.

Natural gas, coal, and oil all come from dead biomatter, but that dead matter is by no means a herd of velociraptors. Instead, it comes from things like phytoplankton and other aquatic microorganisms that died long ago. Many millions of years before the dinosaurs came along. Even coal predates the dinosaurs by about 75 million years .

Most of the fossil fuels we rely on were formed between 419.2 and 358.9 million years ago. This was long before giant lizards started walking around. You might have some soft dinosaur tissue left, but not much.

5. English muffins aren't English, they're American.

An English muffin relies on two words to describe to you the nature of what it is. It’s a muffin, and it’s from England. Somehow, in real life, things aren’t quite like that. They’re the basis for the wildly popular egg muffin, and people have been enjoying them for breakfast for years, even though they seem a little closer to a cookie in nature than what most people think of as a muffin. But beyond that, it’s English part , which is completely false.

The closest English muffins came to Britain was Samuel Bath Thomas, their inventor. He was British, but he lived in America and invented them in America. His first bakery was in New York and exists before still.

4. Pork butt is pork shoulder

Sometimes we change the name of something to make it sound more appealing. Like how Chilean sea bass became known as a more popular name for Patagonian toothfish because Patagonian toothfish doesn't sound very appetizing.

Somehow, the opposite happened with pork butt. It's from a pig, so the pork part makes sense. But it's not butt. And while there are other, less immature meanings for butt in English, it's still the first thing most people think of. But fear not. If you like pork butt, you're not eating the back end of a pig. A pig's butt is actually her shoulder .

Why call it a butt when it's a shoulder? That annoying language again. Butt is a word used to describe a larger the thick end of something . This is how it came to refer to the rear end of a living creature, but for the same reason a gun has a butt or something else that has a thick, fat part. So the thick shoulders of a pig became known as a butt.

3. Himalayan salt from Pakistan

Salt has been a hot commodity for centuries. It’s much easier to get today, and less of a status symbol than it once was, but it’s the one condiment that no chef in the world can live without. And in recent years, it’s developed its own snooty artisanal subculture. It’s not enough to just have plain salt. Sure, you can get sea salt, but you can also get gourmet salt. Red sea salt from Hawaii, pink Peruvian salt, smoked alder salt, and sulfurous black salt. The most popular, perhaps, is Himalayan salt. You can go at Walmart and buy a shaker right now.

You'll notice something interesting if you buy Himalayan salt at Walmart, which is where it comes from. It comes from Pakistan. And to be fair, the Himalayas run through Pakistan, but for some reason the two are rarely associated with each other when it comes to the world of salt. And salt they don't mine nowhere near these mountains. On the contrary, it comes from different mountains, from the ancient seabed, from the place called Khevra .

2. Diamonds do not come from coal.

We all know that Superman is the strongest hero in DC comics (except when he isn't), and to show how strong he is, the Man of Steel can even turn coal into diamond with his bare hand. He did it even in the movies. This makes sense to us as viewers because we know that diamonds are created when carbon is subjected to extreme pressure, which transforms it into a perfect diamond from the mostly featureless black coal it was before.

The flip side of this scenario is that diamonds don't come from coal at all. They never have. It's true that both diamonds and coal are made of carbon, but then so are many things made of carbon.

Coal comes from biomaterial. Plants and animals that died millions of years ago, buried and compressed for millions of years, become coal. But diamonds are older than most life on Earth and are formed long before formed most of the coal .

Diamonds are formed in Earth's mantle under incredibly high volcanic temperatures and pressures, and then rise closer to the surface over time. So while coal and diamonds are cousins, that's where the relationship ends.

1. Most vodka is not made from potatoes.

You can ferment almost anything in the world to make alcohol. Fruits and grains are obviously the most popular choices, but the sky is the limit if you want to get creative. And when it comes to vodka, there are strong And common the opinion that the humble potato is best suited for its preparation.

This belief doesn’t come out of nowhere. Evidence suggests that the potato, which didn’t reach Europe until the 1500s, was held in low regard for many years. As a result, when governments began to clamp down on alcohol production, the potato became a reliable option for new products because it was cheap and no one wanted it.

But vodka was made before potatoes, and it is still made, and very little of it uses potatoes. Vodka can be made from rice, corn, wheat, sorghum, molasses, beets, and just about anything else that grows. Potato vodka is actually much harder to come by, and only about 3% of all vodka made from potatoes.