You don't have to be young to have the wrong idea about the 1980s. Some of us who lived through them only found out the real story later, or else got our timelines mixed up. At the time, it was just the way the world was: stranger danger, mullets, and the ozone layer. Those thing can even be related. The ozone layer was being destroyed by chlorofluorocarbons in aerosol sprays, right? And it took a lot of hair spray to get those big hairdos to fluff up just right, right? So it was vanity that destroyed the atmosphere, right? Wrong. While most of the publicity over the ozone layer was in the 1980s, scientists were way ahead of us, and CFCs were already banned in most aerosol cans in the 1970s. So you can blame the Aquanet, but you can't blame the big hairstyles of the '80s. And that's just one thing that makes sense to us now, but just wasn't so. Read the busting of seven misconceptions about the '80s at Mental Floss. You can also listen to it in video form.