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Some things in life are such truisms, so self-evident, that we accept them unconditionally. They are settled matters. No need to revisit them.

For example, we learned as children that bulls are enraged by the color red; and that Vikings wore horned helmets; and that Twinkies have an infinite shelf life.

Most truisms are, indeed, true. The sun really does rise in the east and set in the west. You really shouldn’t stick a fork in an electrical outlet.

But many truisms are not true at all. They’re more akin to urban myths, misunderstandings, or misinformation.

To illustrate, here are 10 common, but erroneous beliefs — beginning with bulls, Vikings, and Twinkies.

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Bulls are enraged by the color red. Not so. To a bull, red doesn’t even stand out as an especially bright color. (Bovine vision is much more limited than ours in the perception of color. It has to do with the number and type of color receptors in the critter’s retina.)

The bull is not enraged by the matador’s red cape; he simply perceives the matador, correctly, as a threat.

Vikings wore horns on their helmets. Horned helmets are part of the popular image of the fierce Viking raiders of old, but it’s a fallacy. Archeologists have never uncovered a Viking helmet with horns, antlers, wings, or any such adornment.

The stereotype seems to have originated in Munich in 1870, at the debut of Wagner’s opera Die Walküre. For whatever reason, the costume designer created horned helmets for the Viking characters, and the idea has persisted.

Twinkies have an infinite shelf life. So do Pop-Tarts. That claim, which is mostly facetious and sarcastic, probably was intended to zing products thought to be made largely of preservatives. In reality, the official shelf life is 45 days for Twinkies and 365 days for Pop-Tarts. As long as the packaging remains sealed, of course.

In 1492, people believed the earth was flat, and Columbus would sail off the edge. Not really. Regardless of what superstitious peasants thought, Europe’s intelligentsia had understood for 2,000 years, since the time of Plato, that the earth is round. The biggest worry about the Columbus expedition was they would run out of supplies and starve before reaching the East Indies. Luckily for them, America was in the way.

Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern and caused the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The fire did, indeed, start somewhere near the O’Leary barn. The blaze destroyed three square miles of the city, killed 300 people, and left 100,000 homeless. But the lantern story was fabricated by a Chicago Tribune reporter. Years later, he admitted reporting the cow rumor as fact because it made good copy.

Napoleon Bonaparte was short. That’s why he was called the Little Corporal. Napoleon was 5′ 7″, taller than most Frenchmen of his time. And his troops gave him the Little Corporal nickname because Napoleon wasn’t above doing menial tasks, such as checking the cannon sights for accuracy. The men of his imperial guard were selected for their height, so maybe the boss seemed short by comparison.

Fortune cookies are an ancient Chinese tradition. Nope. It isn’t clear who invented fortune cookies, but it happened in California shortly before World War I. One story says they were created by a Japanese gardener in San Francisco. Another attributes them to a Chinese shopkeeper in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, in China, fortune cookies are considered an exotic American thing.

Searing meat seals in the moisture. Wrong. Searing is a wonderful thing, creating a nice, brown, flavorful crust. But the higher heat required to do the searing actually causes a loss of moisture. Simple physics.

Abner Doubleday invented baseball. And it happened in a cow pasture in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. No evidence supports that. Doubleday was a Civil War general and hero who wrote extensively, and his letters and papers make zero mention of baseball.

The story can be traced to a Mr. Abner Graves, who said in 1905 he remembered seeing sketches by Doubleday of a playing field. FYI, Mr. Graves later killed his wife and was committed to an institution for the criminally insane.

After you eat, you can’t go swimming for an hour, or you’ll get stomach cramps and drown. Poppycock. No drowning or near drowning has ever been associated with swimming before your food is properly digested. The myth lives on because most parents don’t want to take a chance, fearing it might be true.

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Fascinating stuff, eh? In my next post, another batch of interesting misconceptions.