The Rumor: The Leaning Tower of Pisa will eventually topple over.

The Truth: It seems inevitable that the tilting medieval bell tower will take a dive someday. But the structure, which developed its famous wonky posture when its foundation settled into the soft ground beneath it, is actually on surprisingly solid footing. About 10 years ago, the base of the tower was reinforced with a combination of concrete and other bracing methods, decreasing the lean by 17 inches to 13 feet 6 inches. “It was the culmination of years of work and planning — the new foundation will last indefinitely,” says Donald Friedman, a structural engineer at Old Structures Engineering, in New York City. “It is not going to tip. Now it has the heaviest foundation of anything in that whole city!”

The Rumor: In Russia, locally made vodka is cheaper than water.

The Truth: The answer is a flat-out nyet, says Paul Richardson, who has visited the country more than 20 times and is the publisher of Russian Life magazine. While locally made vodka can be nearly half as cheap in Russia as the imported stuff we buy here — prices start at around $2 a bottle in Moscow — it still outprices water by a long shot.

The Rumor: If you dug a hole straight through the earth, you would probably make it to China.

The Truth: “It depends on where you start out,” says author Michael Goodchild. “If you dug through the center of the earth, you would emerge at a point opposite to where you started,” he says. “Most of the time, if you started from land, you would end in water. But you would end up in China if you started digging in northern Chile.” Oh yeah, there is one more little catch. Says Goodchild, “You would need a machine that could form a tunnel through liquid metal at a temperature of around 5,000 degrees.” Um, try eBay?