What stupid things have you believed/said/assumed before finding out to your embarrassment you were wrong?

notmydog - galoshes are the wellie-type things you wear over your shoes. I think.

Just asked 10 year old DS and he knows about ligers and tigons and which way around they are too! I didn't know

Lunatic, x-post.
Clark Gable could never be an innocent, no matter what he exactly said [drool]

Tom Bowler, arf - took me a while to get it, too

notcitrus, you are going straight to that Hot Place, aren't you, but you know that .

LRD And I really got it from one of Colin Dexter's Morse books: didn't believe it, looked it up et voila. I shall henceforth use the phrase at every opportune or inopportune occasion and irritate educate everybody with my superior knowledge .
Oh, oh, I could post it in Pedant's Corner, couldn't I?!

I always thought wellies are boots you wear OVER your normal shoes, kind of like raincoats for your feet. That was until I got my first pair a few years back. I'm 41.

More religion - somehow, despite primary school assemblies and 3 years of Sunday School, I thought belief in gods and religions had died out with the Victorians and now it was just nice tradition.

So then I was interviewed for a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school - never done an interview in my life. I find the first teacher - I only have her name, not subject.

She confirms who I am and her name. Then she leans over and says "Now, dear, what does God mean to you?"
Totally blank, eventually I mutter "Er... not much really, why?"
She tries again. "Well, what sort of people believe in God?"
Phew - I think I know the answer to this one. I've seen Blue Peter go to Ethiopia and stuff.
"People in third world countries who don't know any better."

At this point the RE teacher had an asthma attack and had to be taken to hospital.

Pacific that is awesome. And makes so much more sense.

On the theme of religion, when I was a child I thought Jesus was born at Christmas, grew up really really fast and died at Easter, in the same year!

We had a supply teacher for our history class when we were about to take our mock GCSE's. The teacher was a bit quirky and different to our other strict teachers. Anyway we were learning about Florence Nightingale and he said 'Did you know what she was gay?'.

So when a question came up in our mocks - What was the one thing no one knew about Florence Nightingale?' I immediately wrote what I believed to be true! When our real teacher came back and handed back our papers she brought this question up as she could not believe what someone had written, yes i was the only one! She named and shamed me!

Similar to the "chester draws" above, I receive an email at work inviting me to a summer fair with a "Tom Bowler".

Me neither - I am stupidly pleased with this factoid . I shall use that expression henceforth all the time, whether appropriate or not, smug in the knowledge that it is Not Rude

:o Well I never knew that (obviously)

Here
And here

at '...as it has been misquoted for the last 70 years there is probably no point in correcting...'

See, that's the point, it's NOT a damn, it's a dam, not as in the blocked river, but a coin. Honest, 'tis true Colin Dexter says so

damning? I know I don't give a damn is damn - not sure about the river

You must have heard of damming a river!

Until v recently like last week I used to think that the phrase 'I don't give a dam" was rude as it contained a Bad Word .
Well, dear Reader, it doesn't.
A 'dam' is a small Indian coin. Not giving a dam means you are not prepared to pay anything for it. Not rude at all

lemon, I always call it Bishy Porkland. I don't know why :o

When I was young I had lots of books of amazing facts, and was particularly fond of ones about the human body. I was very impressed that your body temperature inside is 98 degrees.

I was in the upper sixth and had place at uni to study biology when got into an argument with a friend and the biology teacher that it would be fine to put my hand into water that had been boiling a few minutes earlier as it must be below 98 degrees by now.

At that point it finally dawned on me that American books use Fahrenheit and while the human body is amazing, it isn't two degrees off boiling...

When I was about 13 I did a Science test at school which was mulpile choice. I remember that I wasn't very good at Science but thought I might be able to eliminate answers that were obviously not the right ones and hope for the best. One of the questions was about the tide and what rules it. I eliminated the clearly most ridiculous answer very quickly - that the moon had anything to do with it. I mean, come on! As if the moon would have anything to do with how the tides work...

Of course I was wrong and my DP has laughed at me ever since I told him about it. In fact it is now used as household response to anything vaguely stupid or naive.

There's a town in County Durham called Bishop Auckland - I was in my 20's when I spotted it on a road sign and realised it wasn't called 'Bishaborkland' (and I had been there several times!)

I still remember going to my first cocktail bar aged 19 and asking for a 'strawberry dye keery'. Oh, the shame.

My Mum grew up in the Norfolk contryside where there are lots of tiny roads which had signs saying By Road on them. After she'd been driving around for a number of years with my Dad she asked him where 'By Road' was and how come she'd never been there as it must be massive to have so many signs.

Aww gorieonine - I would have told you. I have a friend from abroad who used to pronounce the word for a local food slightly incorrectly, which unfortunately made it a local word for poo! I told her straight away whilst rolling on the floor laughing.

Don't worry, she got her revenge, laughing at me lots when she started teaching me her language