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Comment by mkmk | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure why, but this makes me think of the time before ubiquitous internet, when the answers to questions like this one were much harder to come by.

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What I did when I was a kid was swallow every gumball in a carton of gumballs to prove that they couldn't possibly be staying in my stomach for 7 years because nothing else would be getting through.

Science, b*tches!

Narrator: Urban legends say they're still in his stomach to this day.

Before the internet, everyone knew that if you swallowed a watermelon seed that it would grow in your belly. Ipsofacto, if you swallow gum, a gum tree would grow. It is known

Before the internet everything happened in periods of seven years. All the cells in your body would be replaced, your luck would recover from a broken mirror, the bankers would discharge your debt, and missing people would finally be declared dead. It was a much more elegant system than we have today.

Edit: And of course, the seven year itch.

laughs in 7 year data retention, then cries

When I heard the song about kookaburra and where they sit, I damn near shat.

("Kookaburra sits in the old gumtree, eating all the gum nut he can see...")

:- O

I was confusing kookaburra with chupacabra, and I also confused capybara with chupacabra too... and umpires with vampires... being a child was terrifying. LOL

I have had a low grade curiosity about this since the 1970s, so nice to have it definitively answered (tho I'm a bit sad gum is just plastic now). Next up: coke and Mentos, and swallowing sunflower seeds (although really this article answered that one implicitly).

Yes, although the New York Public Library has had you covered since the 1960's: https://qz.com/732086/the-new-york-public-librarys-little-kn...

Ditto

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