Seriously Nitpicky Pedantry Quiz

It's actually somewhere between 14 and 20 (depending on how you count it), not five like you might have learned in elementary school.

The movement of the cloth gets them excited, not the color. In fact, bulls can't even see red.

The banana plant is technically an herb, though at up to 25 feet (8 meters) tall, it looks a lot like a tree.

He invented a lot of uses for the peanut, but peanut butter wasn't actually one of them.

Black holes are made up of a whole bunch of matter packed densely into a relatively small region. So they're basically the opposite of the empty hole the name "black hole" implies.

While it may sound like a guess, a theory is actually a thoroughly tested explanation for a phenomenon like evolution.

The Bible doesn't actually specify how many wise men there were, the song and countless Nativity scenes notwithstanding.

At 5 feet 6.5 inches (169 centimeters) tall, Napoleon was technically average height for a Frenchman of the time. His reputation for being short may have come from the height listed on his death certificate: 5 feet 2 inches in French units, which were slightly bigger units than the English-based units used in the United States today.

That's almost certainly false. Scholars don't actually agree on when Jesus was born, but most doubt it was winter.

Alexander Joy Cartwright actually came up with the rules in 1845, though Abner Doubleday is sometimes given credit for inventing the sport in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839.

Viking Leif Eriksson landed in Newfoundland, Canada, around 1000 C.E., almost 500 years before Christopher Columbus. And yet the Italian latecomer still has his own holiday. Go figure.

The teeth were made of ivory and a lot of other things, but wood wasn't one of them.

The vote happened on July 2. The final language of the Declaration of Independence was approved on July 4, and the document wasn't signed until Aug. 2.

While there is such a hotline, it's never involved red telephones. It started off with a teletype machine, then a fax machine, and now it's a secure email link.

It's caused by compression of the atmosphere in front of the object, even though friction often seems to get the credit. In fact, friction is only responsible for less than 1 percent of the heat.

Some species will regenerate the front half only; none can actually regenerate both halves.

Newly sliced hair ends are simply wider than the tapered end on hair that's never been cut before. Shaving doesn't make it grow faster, thicker, coarser or darker.

Studies show it might shorten the duration but not cure it.

It's the bacteria Clostridium tetani, which can live on rusty metal. But that corroded nail itself isn't the cause.

Don't give him too much credit: Edison just invented the first practical lightbulb using a carbonized bamboo filament.

That's technically false: Earth and the sun revolve around the center of the mass between them.

Al Gore drafted the High Performance Computing Act of 1991, which provided funding for internet infrastructure. Contrary to popular belief, he never actually said he invented the internet. His exact words were: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

It's technically white; the atmosphere makes it look yellow, orange or red.

It was Elcano and the 17 survivors of Magellan's 1519 expedition. Magellan was killed in the Philippines, so he didn't actually complete the trip.

It's actually 365.256 days, which is why we have to add a leap day in every four years.

Technically, that is Mauna Kea, which rises 33,497 feet (10,210 meters) from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Everest is the tallest mountain if you measure from sea level, and Chimborazo is the tallest if you measure from the center of Earth.

A botanist will tell you a string bean is a fruit. That's because it develops from a flower.

It's a legume, despite the fact that the word "nut" is in the name.

Coffee comes from the seed of a cherrylike plant. There's really no such thing as a coffee bean!

Henry Ford made some improvements to the assembly line but mostly paid his employees to improve it.