95
votes
Are cadavers normally embalmed with "butt plugs" before burial?
Yes, that device is used for that purpose, but the claim is somewhat misleading, including about its frequency of use.
The device is called an "A/V Closure". A/V stands for Anus/Vagina. Here ...
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70
votes
Accepted
Did the Smithsonian publish this infographic about 'whiteness'?
Yes, the graphic did appear on a Smithsonian web page titled Whiteness.
Thanks to Wikipedia, we have a date and location for the graphic, allowing me to locate it in an Archive.org snapshot of the ...
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43
votes
Did the single motherhood rate among black Americans jump from 20% to 70% since the 1960s?
I'm just providing the numbers. No claim about the cause can be made.
Shapiro is claiming an increase from a low rate (by today's standards) in the early sixties up to a high rate today, while MLK ...
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39
votes
Accepted
Is slime mold eaten in Mexico as a dish called "feces of the moon"?
Enteridium lycoperdon, a slime mold, is consumed by certain populations in Mexico and has the common name "caca de luna." Fuligo septica, another slime mold, is also consumed in Mexico.
(...
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33
votes
Accepted
Did the single motherhood rate among black Americans jump from 20% to 70% since the 1960s?
I'm looking for a brief historical analysis on the "illegitimacy rates" in the black community
Tldr; The rate for non-whites was ~21% in 1960 and 72% for blacks in 1998. The figures and ...
- 426
24
votes
Accepted
Do any people in South Africa traditionally spend two days together praising wrong-doers to help them?
The story in question was originally attributed not to an anthropologist, but to a childhood memory!
Consider the Babemba tribes of southern Africa, where the social structure includes only an ...
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20
votes
Accepted
Is this gorilla joke from 1897?
The font in the image is Times New Roman, which was created in the 1930s, and the word "zookeeper" was rare before c.1920 according to Google Ngrams.
The image was posted in 2020 on the blog ...
- 3,553
12
votes
Accepted
Were giant liver flukes (Fascioloides magna) ever consumed by humans?
Yes, according to Parasitism: Diversity of and Ecology of Animal Parasites (2001):
In the southeastern United States , local residents refer to F. magna as 'swamp butterflies' and are said to deep-...
- 109k
12
votes
Did the single motherhood rate among black Americans jump from 20% to 70% since the 1960s?
Just to complement @Schwern's excellent answer, and similarly not attempting make any claims about cause, I note that Shapiro is talking about single parents (which @Schwern's answer addresses), ...
- 221
11
votes
Did the French Revolution cause people to give the Ace (in a deck of cards) rank above a King?
For a primary source:
The game of whist is an ancestor of bridge, and is a trick-taking game where aces rank above kings. In 1742 or thereabouts, Edmond Hoyle published A Short Treatise on the Game ...
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6
votes
Do any people in South Africa traditionally spend two days together praising wrong-doers to help them?
Short answer: This is most likely nonsense. Ubuntu roughly denotes "a quality that includes the essential human virtues: compassion and humanity"(1), and while it is sometimes opposed to victimisation ...
- 1,176
4
votes
Did the single motherhood rate among black Americans jump from 20% to 70% since the 1960s?
Something notably absent from other answers (so far) has been data on the ratio of cohabiting parents. This Pew Research article using 2017 data (not long after Shapiro's comments) shows a total ...
- 149
4
votes
Accepted
Do babies from the United States cry more then babies in other parts of the world?
According to THE CRYING PATTERN OF KOREAN INFANTS AND RELATED FACTORS Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, volume 36, pages 565–658 (July 1994):
Compared with Western studies, the duration ...
- 109k
3
votes
Accepted
Is this claim about Turkey's restriction on Zorok TV accurate?
No, only 20% needs to be Turkish for children's cartoons, 40% is for something other than children's cartoons (maybe someone who reads Turkish can translate exactly what the 40% is for, either non-...
- 109k
2
votes
Do a third of Italian men live with their parents?
The claim is false, because it underestimates the number!
From 25-34 years of age the percent of men living at home with their parents it's not a third, it's nearly 60%:
Source: Eurostat Data ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible