Literally true but…

What are some things you know to be literally true but sound absurd, or if not absurd then are wildly misleading?

I know, for instance, that Jimmy Carter isn’t dead like everyone says. He is quite alive, and still doing what everyone remembers him for. Also alive is John F Kennedy, who lives not too far from here. But I don’t know him so don’t know how he’s doing.

I have walked many times all around this earth. I have even walked up to Heaven and back. It is a very beautiful place. Out of thin air, any food you can imagine can be conjured and there are grapevines which ramble on and on where one can pick to their heart’s content and to the fulfillment of their desire. The clouds are all spread out below and then when they clear you can see the earth. It looks as if there is much more forest than you can see from down below, as if the world is all wilderness and mountains. In addition, there are beings who regularly come in bringing corn for the inhabitants. Perennial heavenly-cornstalks grow in great fields and tower far above one’s head, and their kernels are much bigger than ordinary garden corn.

Well that sound absurd to me.  

Maybe you know someone who is named Jimmy carter though is he the Jimmy carter that everyone says is dead?  was he a US President?

Maybe someone named John F Kennedy lives near you though was he a US president?

Lyndon Johnson lived in the Hill Country, just like me and I think he died a long time ago.  Are there other folks named Lyndon Johnson in this world?

I just found out recently that Lady Bird Johns was really Claudia Alta Taylor.  Who knew?  BTW, a nurse said she was as pretty “as a lady bird.” The nickname stuck.

Did you know that Christopher Walken was a lion tamer in the circus?

Did you know ...

Alaska is the only U.S. state whose name is typed using one row of the keyboard.

Queen Elizabeth II is a trained auto mechanic.

The chicken came before the egg. ...

Peanuts are used to make dynamite ...

These are all literally true but ...

Dis you know the word but is interesting?

https://permies.com/t/6148

Well chickens are a type of bird.

And birds are just dragons dinosaurs with feathers, which are insulative so they could survive better when the temperature fell while the rest of the dinosaurs died out.

And all dinosaurs laid eggs.

So I think eggs must have come before chickens...

Yes, there are people around with those names. I agree that the Jimmy Carter one was a little over the edge into not suggesting the literal truth.

As for heaven, I mean to say the heavens, ie the sky, or the top of the nearest mountain. It’s hard to go anywhere without touching the sky so everyone has been to “heaven”. The perennial cornstalks of heaven are oak trees whose corns rain down at an interval. Conjuring food out of thin air is what photosynthesis does.

Edit: “This earth” also refers, literally, to this soil, this land, this earth.

Did you know that bananas are berries.

Strawberries are not berries.

Tomatoes are a fruit and so are pumpkins, squash, eggplants and peppers, though they may actually be berries, too.

These things are not absurd to me, but they may sound odd or unusual to most North Americans. I lived in China for about 2 years and was sometimes surprised at the "backwards" way they do some things:

Addresses are written starting with the biggest place it has to get to (the country) and going down to the smallest (the person), which makes way more sense to me than the way we do it in the US! So, an address would be:
USA, Texas, Dallas,
Armadillo Road, 678
Smith, Marty
 
If the bathroom stalls are full, they don't form a line so that the first person gets the next open stall. They choose a stall to stand in front of and wait. If there are 6 full stalls and 6 people waiting (one at each), every person is next! I love thinking of it that way!

Servers in restaurants do not have specific tables. They all attend to whoever needs something, working as a team. No tips. If you leave a dollar on the table they will probably chase you down the street saying you forgot it.

Boys and men are affectionate with each other. They will hold hands crossing a busy street (everyone does), they will put their arms around each other as they walk & talk & laugh, they will sit on each others lap on a crowded bus if they're tired and there's only one seat (assuming they're friends, lol, not strangers)

They don't form lines to buy things like tickets. I was at a museum and it was basically a crowd around the ticket window; you couldn't even see the person inside the booth. And all the ticket taker saw inside was a bunch of arms reaching in with money in their hands. They take out the money and put tickets in the  hand and it goes away. You have to be assertive, though people are kind and if there was an older person or someone having trouble getting in there, someone would surely help them, or yell "Hey! There's an old person here!!" and people would part to let them in.