What school do they teach that at? If we take the 2 most famous rivers then the Nile flows from south to north pretty much straight, and the Amazon flows from west to east by north east. It might have been a long time since I was in elementary school but I never heard of "rivers flowing south", could be a US thing since most of the large rivers in the US do flow southish.

I have no idea where I heard that fact - only remember "trivia" from friends in elementary school telling me that the Nile is the only river that flows north, daddy-longlegs are the most poisonous spiders but their mouths are too small to bite humans, etc.

I'm not sure if the anecdote in the beginning is a true one but it says it takes place in Hefei, so I'm not sure it's a particularly American piece of misinformation.

Don't know never heard that fact, especially considering that rivers that flow north in Europe are quite common since the norther part of Europe is still rebounding from the last large ice age and it's overall at a lower elevation than southern Europe where you also get the large mountain ranges.

So famous rivers like the Sine, Elbe, Oder etc. all flow "north".

Vistula too. It might actually be harder to find major rivers that flow "south".

Aside: ages back I asked an arachnologist friend about the origin of this myth.

As far as he could determine, some researcher was once asked on some random TV interview what the most poisonous spider was, and responded that no one knew, and that it may well be the daddy long legs. From that an entire generation of internet consumers now believe they are.

I was taught that rivers flowed south. When I asked my 3rd grade teacher why the Nile flowed North, she said that's impossible.

What school was that at?

You knew about the Nile in 3rd grade, in a school in the US of A. Wow!

it does seem a US thing http://geography.about.com/b/2006/06/28/do-all-rivers-flow-s...

Probably not at a North Dakota school since we have a north running river (The Red River) and the continental divide which gives a nice rivers going every which way demonstration.

Made for a whole mess with the flooding of Devils Lake which put a south town[1] in danger and forced the planners to deal with Canada because of overflow.

1) they literally had security while they built a concrete damn for fear someone would create their own outlet.

Heat flows from a warm system to a cold system.

That was random thought lol. But, I thought they thought it flowed backwards because their direction was backwards. Similar to how electron charge is negative so it flows backwards cnceptually.

Looking at the Wikipedia list of longest rivers, the largest ones flowing northward are Yenisei, Ob, Lena, and Mackenzie. Then there's a bunch in central Europe, but they are smaller.

Apart from the Nile, that is.

> rivers flow don't flow south, they flow downhill

At least in North America though glaciers usually melt from South to North, so downhill isn't necessarily evenly distributed.

Are there a lot of major rivers with 9/lots of distributaries that flow North?

Rivers don't actually flow at all. It's the water.

No, you're confusing a river with the river bed.