Factoid
The word appears in the Oxford English Dictionary as "something which becomes accepted as fact, although it may not be true." However, the word can sometimes mean, instead, an insignificant but true piece of information. In either formulation, factoids are potentially factual, just not self-evidently so.
Factoid was coined by Norman Mailer in his 1973 biography of Marilyn Monroe.
Mailer described a factoid as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper", and created the word by combining the word fact and the ending -oid to mean "similar but not the same". The Washington Times described Mailer's new word as referring to "something that looks like a fact, could be a fact, but in fact is not a fact".
Factoids may give rise to, or arise from, common misconceptions and urban legends.
Examples
Many residents of the Australian city of Mount Isa believe that their city, in terms of its area, is the world's largest city by surface area or second largest.
In reality, Mount Isa is the second largest city in Australia; there are several cities around the world with larger incorporated areas. Their own local council web site incorrectly suggests it is the second largest city on earth.
One belief associated with the Australian property bubble is that real estate doubles every 7 years.
However, “Take the city of Sydney - the Mecca of property investing. Some astronauts have reported seeing the Great Wall from low earth orbit, among a number of man-made structures.
It is often thought that chameleons change colour to match their surroundings as camouflage.
They are mostly well camouflaged and they can change colour, but they do not change colour to match their surroundings. The colour changes as its physical status changes and as a form of communication.
Octopuses seem to change colour as a form of camouflage (but also as a way of communicating).
Dogs and cats are often thought to be completely colour-blind and see the world in scales of grey. They do have colour vision, dichromate, but not nearly as good as that of humans, trichromate i.e.