Welcome to False Facts about the 1960s Month! Groovy!
1. Eric Clapton once forgot the ending of "Layla" and played it for seven and a half hours until he passed out.
2. If you didn't say the word "Groovy" at least three times every minute, your pot allocation ID card was revoked.
3. Woodstock was the name of a dyspeptic seahorse in the comic The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers...
4. The campaign to end Vietnam would succeed in the 1970s, when the country was renamed Puffin Agongo...
5. The US committed to going to the moon because President Kennedy wanted to see how a golf ball travelled at 1/6 Earth's gravity...
6. The Bed-in for Peace started because Yoko Ono hated listening to Quebecois speak French.
7. When moon golf immediately proved not to be very interesting, another reason for traveling there had to be found...
8. It was spelled Haight-Ashbury, but it was pronounced, "Why don't you dirty hippies get a real job!"
9. By 1967, women had achieved full equality with men; protests after that were mainly out of habit...
10. When Sherriff Jim Clark ordered deputies to attack civil rights marchers crossing the Pettis Bridge, he was being satiric...
11. Masters and Johnson explored 127 different gender identities, but they only wrote about three of them...
12. David Bowie and Mick Jagger were actually the same person for several years...
13. Superbowl XXXIII ended in tragedy when the Goodyear Blimp crashed into the Browns' bench, killing the entire team.
14. Only three people in North America understood Marshall McLuhan, but 67% of the population agreed with him...
15. Richard Nixon became President in 1968 because of his bubbly personality and compassion...
16. Historians agree that the 1960s didn't actually end until 1974...
17. People wanted king fu; they got yoga...
18. Many viewers of 2001: A Space Odyssey shrugged and said, "I've seen better light shows in my lava lamp!"
19. In China, the Gang of Four started a bridge league...
20. An informed populace was so important that even towns that contained less than 300 people had 17 newspapers...
21. R. Crumb's "Keep on Truckin!" poster was part of a campaign to make people more aware of scoliosis.
22. Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe at the UN due to a Vodka-induced hallucination it was infested with cockroaches...
23. Pet fish sales exploded because kids half-deaf from rock concerts thought it was the "Age of Aquariums..."
24. The 1963 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Iggy Bratwurski for getting his divorcing parents to reconcile...
25. James Bond made spies cool...until the Profumo Scandal made them uncool again five minutes later...
26. Warhol originally painted borscht bottles, but was advised that they were "too ethnic," so he switched to soup cans..."
27. The American Indian Movement succeeded in convincing people that they were not responsible for butter chicken...
28. At least 2,703 families went missing, presumably going into bomb shelters and never coming out...
29. In France, students looked at Kent State and thought, "Why should Americans have all the fun?"
30. People became aware of the Earth; before the 60s, they thought they had been floating in space...
31. If you can remember the 60s, you've probably seen the Ken Burns documentary...
To muddy our international reputation further, this is False Facts about Canada Month!
1. The national anthem was originally sung "our home and natives' land," but that was deemed insensitive...
2. Canada's eighth Prime Minister was actually a cow.
3. Newfoundland only joined Confederation last week, but it was backdated by the Harper government to 1949.
4. Canada's national sport is not hockey - it's bear tickling...
5. Canada boasts more fresh water salespeople than any other country in the world...
6. The tampon was NOT invented in Canada, but a majority of the country's gynecologists wish it had been...
7. Canadians no longer sacrifice goats to ensure their good health. Government bureaucrats do it for them...
This is False Facts about Canada Month! Share with your non-Canadian friends and enjoy their confusion!
8. Everybody who lives in Vancouver believes that Etobicoke is a figment of their imagination...
9. Everybody who lives in Vancouver is right (except for Marlene Fanshawe)...
10. Movie stars named Ryan are cloned in a secret Canadian laboratory in Moncton, New Brunswick...
11. The Rockies are actually only three feet high - they were Photoshopped for promotional purposes!
12. The first man to nuke his own head in a microwave was Canadian. Nobody can explain why we're proud of that fact...
13. Canada has a thriving porn industry - why do you think the nation's cops are called the Royal Canadian MOUNTED Police?
14. The favourite font of a majority of Canadians is Courier, preferably set in white against a white background...
15. Canadians really need to get over their inferiority complex - Luxembourg isn't that impressive!
16. Canadians vote for governments by going into small booths and sticking straws up either their right or left nostrils...
17. Hockey was invented to mediate tensions between French and English to keep the country together - and, it worked!
18. No, but, seriously, what keeps Canada together is a love of poutine and a hatred of Justin Bieber...
19. Scrod testicles in a white wine sauce are a delicacy in Nova Scotia...
20. Canadian Jonas Bland invented the safety canoe...
21. Only three Canadians say, "Eh;" the rest of us are embarrassed by that part of the country's international reputation...
This is False Facts about Canada Month - 27% less boring than the actual facts!
22. The Inuit do not have 37 words for snow, but southern Ontarians do have 237 words for beer...
23. A Canadian invented the idea of taking credit for inventions made by people from other countries...
24. If Margaret Atwood hadn't existed, William Gibson's would have had to create her. Or, possibly vice versa...
25. Everybody knows the difference between St. John and St. John's, but they like to pretend they don't just to get a reaction...
26. The only reason the Canadian health care system works is that nobody in the country ever gets sick (it's something in the beer)...
27. The CBC was patterned after the BBC (the Belarus Broadcasting System)...
28. The Alberta tar sands are good for the environment because...umm...sorry, some false facts are just impossible to write...
This is False Facts about Canada Month...because we're too self-effacing to tell the truth!
29. The Stephen Leacock Award, named after a famous barber, is given annually to the Canadian author with the longest beard...
30. Spats didn't go out of style in Canada until 2007...
31. Rush is a way of inculcating the world's young males with Canadian values...now we just have to figure out what they are...
