I was at a birthday party last night, and the topic of urban legends came up more than once. I was then introduced to a popular Korean urban legend at dinner tonight.
The first urban legend discussed involves Walt Disney. I had always heard that he was cryogenically frozen, apparently so he could be brought back to life at some future date. There's a lot of variations on this myth, and my favorite is that his frozen body is under the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney Land, just waiting for the day it can be reanimated and start making Zombie Mickey Mouse cartoons. Anyway, it turns out he was actually... cremated. Bummer. Here's the Snopes article on Disney's remains.
Later in the evening, a friend pulled up this this article from Cracked on her smartphone, and it stimulated some lively discussion. "The 6 Most Frequently Quoted b.s. Statistics"
Here's the list:
6. You Accidentally Swallow About 8 Spiders a Year
5. You Only Use 10% of Your Brain
4. Men Think About Sex Every Seven Seconds
3. Spousal Abuse Skyrockets on Super Bowl Sunday
2. You Must Wait 30 Minutes After Eating Before Swimming
1. Christmas Causes Suicide
I don't know about spiders, but I definitely swallowed a mosquito a couple of weeks ago. I woke up coughing, and had a vague sense of what had happened.
Tonight I was eating dinner at a chicken restaurant in my neighborhood. A Korean friend saw the Pepsi logo on the wall behind us. You know the one, the classic logo from our youth.
She explained to me that Pepsi is an American company, but the product was named by a Korean. According to the story, they had this idea to make a cola, but had no idea what to call it. So they had an international competition to find the right name for their drink, and it was a Korean who had the best entry. They asked him what he wanted as a reward, and he said he wanted to design the logo. Like any patriotic Korean would, he designed the logo to represent the Korean Yin-Yang, or 태극 (taeguk). For a reference, here's the Korean flag, the taegukgi.
I had one of those "CANNOT UNSEE" moments... Once I realized what I was looking at, it was the most obvious thing in the world... the Pepsi logo is the same as the Korean flag!
Anyway, to finish the story, the Korean who named Pepsi said that the name didn't mean anything. It was onomatopoeia. The "pep" is the sound of popping the top off the bottle, and the "si" is the sound of the bubbles fizzing as soon as it's opened.
Great story! Unfortunately, it's 100% not true. Pepsi was introduced in 1902, and the name, PEPSI-COLA, comes from the two main ingredients, pepsin and kola. Here's the evolution of the Pepsi logo. As far as I can tell, the red, white and blue globe logo only dates to the 50s.
In conclusion, I would like to promise that I will do my best to perpetuate these urban myths. I'm definitely going to tell the Pepsi story whenever I have an opportunity. A good story is a good story, regardless of whether or not it's true.
