Actually I think I have a few..
It was not generally believed that the Earth was flat during the Middle Ages. It's just a myth propagated during the Enlightment to make the contemporaries seem smarter than the previous generations.
Greek and Roman warships were generally rowed by professional seaman rather than slaves, at least during early antiquity. The most common types, triremes and biremes, had one oar per rower, and even one guy goofing off (let alone trying to sagotage every else's efforts) could get them all killed. The larger kinds of ships with less oars with many men per each were actually developed because they were running out of competent rowers, and needed a type of propulsion where pure muscle could compensate for individual skill.
The guys at the Shaolin monastery were only placed there by the Chinese government after a Bruce Lee movie made the name super-popular. The original monks were all driven away or killed, and the current guys have no lineage with the "masters of old". Not that they couldn't still kick my ass of course.
The Okinawan martial arts (early karate etc.) were not developed by peasants, but the nobility. Peasants simply didn't have time to do anything except farm, while the nobility found it a "good and noble" thing to do. Build character, defend the honour of your clan and blah. Weapons were never outlawed by the Japanese occupiers, who themselves numbered only a few dozen at a time, as they were expected to fend off any pirates and other invaders by themselves.
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