6.5% fewer new cars were registered in 2019 compared to the previous year. Should we expect a higher percentage in 2020? There are some factors to consider – the used car market and the arrival of the 201 plates, the rise of the electric fleet, and the best times throughout the year for making an investment.

In other words, Brexit may lower the used car market revenues (restricting the import of used cars) and give the new car market a perfect opportunity to shine. However, it’s not about gasoline and diesel anymore – as the electric fleet is slowly rising.

The Best Time to Make a Purchase

If new car sales are falling, this is actually good news for the buyers. The year has been split into two halves, and there are three key dates to buy a new car: January 31st – when dealers are trying to hit their first month’s sales targets March 31st – the end of the first quarter June 30th – the switchover to the 202 plates when some dealers could decide to put 201 plates on the excess stock to boost sales

Diesel, Gas, Hybrid, or Electric?

Diesel was the leader in this category just until recently. With the new NOx, emissions-based tax system, the Department of Finance expects a double tax for diesel engines compared to a gas engine car.

Consumers are aware of and looking for alternatives, but only around 7.5% of surveyed consumers say they would consider just the gas hybrid option.

What about going full electric?

The biggest advantage is that electric cars are cheaper to run. Approximately 4 times cheaper. Another pro is that electric engines accelerate much faster than gas engines and are also easier to maintain.

However, electric cars can travel shorter distances, and it takes longer to recharge them than refueling gas/diesel. Considering that there are not as many charging stations (yet), this might be an issue. Another con to keep in mind is that electric cars are usually more expensive to buy in the first place.

So, to determine the best time to buy a car, and the best kind of car for you to buy, think of how you will use it. If you can charge your electric car at home and don’t usually do long trips, it will definitely pay off. However, if you are into long-distance road trips, the gas/diesel engines are still an option in 2020.

There’s a lot of information out there that some people call facts. Some of these we may have no idea where we heard them, but we know they are facts. The funny thing about that is there are plenty of those “facts” that are just not true. So, we thought it would be pretty interesting and maybe a little funny to look at some of the widely accepted facts we all know are wrong but just can’t help and share anyway. Keep reading to see the ones we thought were the best.

It may sound gross, and a little disturbing but many of us have heard the rumor that we all eat eight spiders a year when in a deep sleep. This sounds like something from a horror film, and in truth, is one of those rumors that belong in the cinemas.

There’s no proof, although it may have happened — who knows? Most people will wake up if there’s a sensation that’s unfamiliar to them, especially when it comes to a sensitive area like their mouth.

Recycling is a great idea but just taking your plastic bottles to the recycling center is not nearly enough. You need to make sure that this plastic has been cleaned of any residue that may exist on it.

If there is any residue left, it could render a whole batch useless. Oh yeah — recycling recycled plastic often results in those bottles or containers ending up in the dump. This is because plastic breaks down every time it’s recycled.

Sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell are the five basic senses, but they are by no means the only senses we have — though as we have all grown up, this is what we were taught. The truth is that those senses are just the tip of the iceberg.

Some research has shown that humans could have up to 20 different senses. It’s just that these five are the most prevalent.

Have you ever looked at older windows and noticed that they are thicker on the bottom? Many people say that this is because glass is a slow-flowing liquid that cools slowly as it’s poured. But, this is not at all accurate.

In fact, the reason old windows are thicker on the bottom is because of the way they were designed. Why windows with thicker glass at the bottom were installed then, no one can be sure…

Certain parts of the tongue taste different things. This fact is not true, yet we still hold on to it and share it with friends and family. A scientist who studies human organs refuted this fact quite some time ago actually.

Taste buds do have different receptors, but they’re not all distributed in one area of the tongue. Rather they are dispersed all over. So, you can stop trying to eat certain foods in a certain way.

If someone loses their eyesight, then the other senses heighten to accommodate for the loss. This is something we’ve all heard, but this occurrence is very rare. The senses don’t heighten — they just have to be used differently, and this may appear to some as an elevated sense.

The impairment causes these senses to acquire different skills like spatial mapping so that they can function properly.

Ohhhhh! That guy just snuck up and knocked that other guy out with a rag and some chloroform. In the movies, this takes mere seconds. False! False! In reality, this would take minutes to actually occur.

There are factors that play a role in how fast chloroform acts. Things like weight, the strength of the chloroform, and breathing rate. Sure, you’ll be knocked out eventually, but definitely not like they show us in the movies.

Was it aliens? More than likely, you probably think it was slaves. After all, this is one of the things we learned in school, and they wouldn’t tell us something untrue. But they did because slaves didn’t build the pyramids.

The men that built the pyramid were paid laborers or men that volunteered as it was a great honor to work on the eternal home of the living god.

A coliseum full of screaming fans and two men fighting to the death — this is the image we instantly think of when we talk about gladiators. But, that perception of fighting to the death is not accurate at all.

Sure…there was the occasional deathmatch, but on the whole, the matches were civil in which they would even bring in a referee for most of them. It was too expensive, and these men became too big of stars for the Roman rulers to waste their investment.

Remember that case where the woman sued McDonald’s for the scalding hot coffee that landed in her lap? How many people have used that case as proof that Americans are a little sue-happy? Many have used the case as crazy or invalid, but the woman actually had valid reasons.

In fact, the court that heard the case found McDonald’s offer of $800 grossly under what was fair and tacked on an extra million. It seems her case was valid and not just another American trying to get a quick buck.

How many times have you heard someone talking about how humans are the only self-aware animal on the planet? In order to test this research, researchers put a dot on a mirror and placed hay in front of an animal.

Whichever animal checked it out was considered to have self-awareness. This method showed that more than a few animals — including elephants, orangutans, and gorillas among several others — have just as much and possibly more self-awareness than humans.

Who is who? Many people have seen the Frankenstein movies or read the books (some have done both). But, there is a common misconception that the title of the book refers to the monster. This is actually wrong — as in the book, the monster really doesn’t have a name.

The name Frankenstein refers to the scientist that created the monster. Now, even though some of us know this, we all tend to talk about the piece of fiction as if that name belongs to the monster.

We know that fish are small, which may lead some to believe they have less brain function and even memory. In fact, many people have been told for decades that goldfish only have a five-second memory.

This is not true, and though they don’t have a huge memory bank to fill, they are able to remember things for months. They can even recognize their humans and can tell other goldfish apart from each other.

If you ever watched any television show or movie, you’ve probably heard that you have to wait 24 hours to report someone missing. The truth is that there is no such law that makes anyone wait that long before calling the police to report a loved one that can’t be found.

In fact, the police highly suggest you do this as soon as you can. By making sure to get them involved as early as possible, you will save them from wasting some very precious time.

When you read tips for emergencies, there’s often a section that suggests you memorize your blood type. This is so that you can tell the doctors your blood type when you get to the hospital. This is actually incorrect.

In fact, most emergency room doctors will take a test to ensure that they are using the proper blood. Many of them will not trust that you know your type. The only time they don’t take the time to do this is when it is an emergency, in which case they simply use the universal donor type, O negative.

We have all been told for years that we have a longer lifespan than people who lived in the medieval ages. This may be true, but the number given to us for their life expectancy is not quite right. The number often provided is that most people only lived to be 32 years of age.

This is an average, and in fact, there were plenty of people that lived to be much older. The advent of modern medical practices, medicine, and technology has certainly expanded life expectancy but not the average.

Many of us have been told that if we touch baby birds or other animals, the parents will kill or abandon the baby. This is just not true. In fact, even if you help a baby bird back into its nest, the parents aren’t going to turn their backs on the little one.

In particular, birds don’t recognize their babies by smell, so even if the birds smell like humans, it won’t affect them whatsoever.

When we all learn about dental hygiene, we learn the dos and don’ts. For instance, we were told that we need to rinse out the mouth after brushing.

This is actually not right. You should spit out the excess toothpaste and leave it in your mouth for at last 30 minutes. Letting the toothpaste sit is the best way to guarantee that it does what it’s supposed to.

We have all seen those space pens that go for a pretty penny, and we have all heard the origin stories behind it. NASA spent tons of cash to develop it. On top of that, it was a one-up game against the Russians who had to write in space with a pencil.

The fact is that the pen was developed in 1965 — and then in 1967, NASA decided it would be a good investment to buy some. The Russians had the same pen just two years later.

There is a crisis going on right now, and there are false facts released all the time. Probably the most egregious of these is that the Covid-19 virus only fatally affects old people.

Older folks are more susceptible and can easily find themselves in a bad place. But, the virus is affecting people at a fast rate no matter how old they are, which means that it can wind up taking loved ones of any age from us.

For decades, sci-fi writers have used the notion that humans only use 10% of their brains to concoct amazing tales of extrasensory perception and other fantastic abilities. The fact has been so ingrained in our minds that we seem to continue to spout the disinformation.

Most neurologists have found that this is not the case. In fact, humans fully use their brain every day. There are even some parts of it that are active while sleeping.

Schizophrenia is a major mental health issue, but it has some info that’s just not true, and yet we still keep passing these myths along. The biggest of these is that if you have this mental illness, you have multiple personalities. This may be because the word used to describe it actually means split, but it’s not true.

There is a disorder called DID that does show signs of multiple personalities, but schizophrenics do not suffer from this malady.

When someone starts having a seizure, how many of us reach for something to put in their mouth or attempt to hold them down? That’s probably because this is something that we’ve seen or been told.

This is actually the wrong step to ensure the person’s safety. The only thing we should do is lay them on their side with a pillow under their head and help them breathe.

How many of us learned that the great explorers who found the Americas were sent off assuming they would fall off the edge of the Earth? That’s right — the people of that time thought the world was flat.

That theory was debunked way before Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It was back in the fifth century when the world was theorized to be round and not flat. In truth, travelers’ concern was that they would run out of food and supplies before they reached Asia.

The Spanish Flu epidemic in the early 20h century was one of the worst ones to hit the global community in a long time. But because of the name, many people believed it originated in Spain.

On the contrary, though, Spain was not the source of the outbreak at all. The country was just the first to report the flu and its symptoms to the global community. The outbreak’s source is still unknown, though the first case was reported in the US. With that, many people think it started there and spread out to encompass the globe.

Chimps and humans are kissing cousins, right? Actually, most scientists say that the last common ancestor we had existed millions and millions of years ago. We share a common ancestor that much is true, but that’s about where it pretty much stops.

We humans are more related to lesser apes like gibbons. This part of the family tree actually sprang to life in the Miocene epoch.

It was a running joke for the longest time that people from the UK had bad teeth, especially when compared to their American cousins. But, dentists have refuted this claim. In fact, the British have fewer missing teeth than individuals from the US.

The big difference and one reason why this may have become a “fact” is because the tint that our teeth naturally have is acceptable in the UK. On the other hand, the US likes pearly whites (which is not natural).

If you use a razor with replaceable blades, you probably have been told millions of times that you should change that blade every two weeks. This is meant to keep the blade sharp, but the razors don’t dull because of use.

The big culprit is rust. So, if you dry your blades completely after each use, you can use that blade for a lot longer than two weeks.

The Great Wall of China is so large that you can see it from space. That would be really cool if it were true, but like everything else on this list, it isn’t. NASA says that unless you use a telescope, you will not be able to see the Wall at all from the space station.

The myth was busted by a Chinese astronaut. When a reporter asked if he could see it, he said no and that, my friends, is the end of that “fact.”

Grab yourself some OJ and some vitamin C tablets, and we are sure your cold will be gone in no time flat. This was a theory by just one scientist that spread like wildfire. Unfortunately for him, later studies proved his hypotheses were weak at best.

If you take vitamin C daily, you will be able to lessen the symptoms very little. The study that proved this showed that you could reduce the symptoms and end up trimming one day of the cold cycle.

As kids, we all swallowed our gum at one point or another. Then inevitably, your mom or another adult would chastise you by saying that gum stays in your stomach for seven years, so you shouldn’t do that.

Seven was right, but it isn’t years — it’s days. It goes through your system, just like everything else. The bad thing about swallowing gum is that it can lead to constipation, gas, or diarrhea, to name a few things. So, it’s still not good to swallow, but for wholly different reasons than we have been told.

Einstein may well have been one of the most brilliant people in history, but we have all heard the rumor that he was actually a poor student. This is magnified by people repeating that he actually failed math.

There is no proof that this was the case. Maybe he was distracted in school, as many people who have a high IQ often feel less challenged in traditional classrooms. That may have been where this fake fact originated from.

We all have used the phrase “Napoleon Complex” to describe a short man who seems to think he’s bigger than everyone else in the room. This saying, though, has no basis. Napoleon was actually not short in comparison to other men of his time.

This was actually a clever propaganda campaign by the British. Through cartoons, the nation poked fun at the leader in the hopes of making him mad to the point that he would make a mistake. Unfortunately for the French leader, the propaganda worked all the way to the present day.

There is someone in your life that is anti-GMO, and though they have their reasons, the fact that the food is dangerous or bad may be blown out of proportion. There is no clear proof that this is the case.

On the other hand, there is no proof that they aren’t dangerous, so this is one of those facts that depends more on your personal beliefs. The decision as to whether it’s real or not is left up to you.

Your teacher always told you to write in pencil so you could erase it. But, you still wrote in pen and then when you had to erase, someone told you that the blue part of an eraser was intended to erase the pen, right?

Well, that’s not true. All it does is tear the paper and still leaves that mistake for everyone to see. So, if you are prone to making mistakes, write in pencil!

It’s cold outside, put a hat on, so you keep all your warmth in your body. This is one of those facts that we’ve all heard, but it’s not true. Our heads do not lose any more heat than the rest of our body.

Heat leaves our body at the same rate, no matter what limb is exposed. Though wearing a hat when it’s cold outside does keep you warmer, that has nothing to do with the loss of heat.

“Luke, I am your father!” How many times have you heard this quote in your everyday life or other forms of entertainment? The problem is that this is a misquote and not actually what was said.

However, it has been repeated so often that many people will argue the point. All you have to do is watch the film, and you will see that we have all been misquoting the moment for decades.

“You are so right-brained!” “You’re not creative because you are more of a left-brain thinker.” This is another of these old school tropes that we all just kind of keep repeating. But, is it accurate?

There’s no real proof that this is the case — in which an individual leans to one side of the brain or the other, so maybe we should stop adopting the stereotypes that come with this wrong understanding!

If you have ever cracked your knuckles in front of anyone, this next one may sound very familiar to you. You probably have heard that cracking your knuckles causes arthritis. These joints between the bones of your hands are delicate for sure, but cracking them will not increase your risk of arthritis.

Orthopedic professionals have said there is no proof of this statement, but they do warn that it could lead to soreness of the joints.

This urban legend has been touted for decades — you know the one where the daddy long leg spider is the most venomous spider in the world? They just can’t seem to break the skin due to their fang’s size.

But, this same rumor is told about other insects as well, and none of them are true. There are many contenders for the most venomous spider, but the Guinness Book of Records says that this moniker belongs to the Brazilian wandering spider.

Oil comes from dinosaur bones. Is that true? Though it’s a fun fact to spew when you’re having a good time, it’s not true. Oil is created from the remains of animals, but it’s not solely dinosaurs.

In fact, most oil consists of the remains of algae and plankton from where there used to be seas a long time ago. These areas of marine life were there long before the time of dinosaurs.

Many people have been told that if you get close to cows, they will attack you. But, this is not the case. Cows are actually very gentle creatures and only charge or attack when they feel threatened or are startled.

So, the next time you want to pet a cow, just make sure you don’t run up from behind and try not to make loud noises. You’ll be fine.

You are an alpha male or female if you’re someone who takes charge and leads your groups. This saying comes from the notion that wolves have alphas. This theory was held to be true for years.

Eventually, though, scientists disproved it. Wolves do live in a pack, but there’s no one leader — they all share the duties. So, maybe we should take a note from this scientific study as humans.

Many people believe that NASA uses a bit of photoshop for all the images they release to the public. They do, in fact, composite their images, but not using photoshop.

Instead, they use multiple cameras and patch them together to give us a more comprehensive look at whatever we are looking at.

So, one of the most common misconceptions about mental illness is that it often leads to violence — that those suffering from these issues tend to explode more than other members of society. This is actually a false narrative and one that may be one of the reasons mental health is so hard to talk about.

The truth is that the opposite is actually true. There is a lot of misinformation, but scientific research has shown that the mentally ill are more likely to be victims than the assailant.