Were you ever told (or even taught) that water spirals down a drain in different directions in the northern and southern hemispheres due to the Coriolis effect? Weird how those things stick in your mind, isn’t it? Unfortunately that is not true. Water drains in both directions in each hemisphere.
The source of the above paragraph is Snopes.com, officially the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a website covering urban legends, Internet rumors, e-mail forwards, and other stories of unknown or questionable origin. It is a well-known resource for validating and debunking such stories in American popular culture, receiving 300,000 visits a day. I wish more people would look up things on Snopes before sharing them on Facebook or circulating them via email.
I totally agree with you – I hate the number of hoaxes I see being shared on Facebook… I’m not perfect by any means, but I do generally try to check before sharing the scaremongering rubbish that is out there.