The Myth About Wedding Rings You Can Stop Believing

According to Est. 1897, ancient Egyptians asserted that there was a blood vessel that ran from the third finger on one's left hand all the way to the heart. However, this is anatomically false, in the sense that every finger contains vessels that stream blood to the heart, not just the ring finger (via Africa Check). While the sentiment is well-intentioned, you could theoretically get away with placing your spouse's ring on any one of their fingers and still establish the same symbolic medium between the pretty little jewel and their beating heart. 

The Roman philosopher Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius reaffirmed the finger-heart misconception when he said, "Because of this nerve [vein], the newly betrothed places the ring on this finger of his spouse, as though it were a representation of the heart" (per The Ring of Truth: And Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry). Unfortunately, despite all his merits and acclaim (per Britannica), Macrobius was wrong about this. Even the ancient Greeks bought into this fallacy, as Diamond Heaven reports. The plain (and utterly unromantic) fact of the matter is, there's nothing distinctly special about any one of our fingers as far as the heart is concerned.