Pineapples don't grow on trees and other misconceptions that MN has revealed over the years

[DadDadDad]

To celebrate that Chat threads will no longer disappear after 90 days, I thought I'd honour that with something that's been a MN staple over the years: curious facts that apparently came as a surprise to some people.

Sad person that I am , I've kept a note of some of these over the years. I won't paste them all into this first post, but feed them in over time assuming anyone shows the slightest interest. Please add your own...

The following are all TRUE. In some cases, you may think "so what?", but remember each one has come up because a MNetter found it surprising or even BELIEVED SOMETHING CONTRADICTORY

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Places

The Channel Tunnel passes through the bedrock underneath the sea, it's not sitting in a tube resting on the seabed.

Edinburgh is further west than Liverpool and Bristol.

Portsmouth is on an island off the British mainland. Gibraltar is not an island.

Casablanca is in North Africa (Morocco).

Timbuktu is a real place (in Mali, Africa).

Dunkirk is in France (not Scotland) - maybe the film will now have got everyone up to speed on that one .

Budapest and Bucharest are different cities.

County Durham is in NE England (County Down is in N Ireland).

Tripoli is in Libya.

The place you hear as 'Arkinsaw' is written 'Arkansas'.

That Walkers swapped the colour of their crisps packets round some time in the 1980s (no they didn’t)

Except scores of people from far and wide personally remember the switch. Is everyone linked by some telepathic field in some way that they all have the same memory?

Walkers are gaslighting fuckers IMO.

There are more stars in the observable universe (observable = telescopes including Hubble) than there are grains of sand on all the world’s beaches. Proven scientifically.

@tinyrick do you mean that they leave the dysfunctional kidney in? They do on lots of cases, but often they are an infection risk so they remove them.

@NotDavidTennant I was always told santaclaus was a corruption of St Nicholas.
Could have been wrong though my mum had an answer for everything.

Tasmania does get snow 🤨

“And Dunkirk in Scotland because it's similar to Dunfermline/Falkirk???“

Dun is a fort and Kirk is a church... in loads of Scottish placenames... and also apparently in Flemish, so in fairness, it does sound Scottish.

Till I was in my teens I thought Penrith was in Wales, no particular reason - it just sounded it, lol

goodnessgrace
Is bologne the sandwich meat that's pronounced baloney?? Lol.

Close, its bologna.

The myth about horses dying if they lie down is from the fact that if a horse gets colic (stomach cramps) you don't let them lie down, as they can roll in agony and twist their own gut, which will kill them.

My favourite one is that "blood is thicker than water" actually means the opposite of how we use it.

The full thing is actually "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb".

A covenant is a promise/ contract. Like when people (on tv and films!) cut their palms and shake hands.

So the next time someone says blood is thicker than water, they're actually saying the opposite of what they're meaning!

Also, text messaging was originally designed for deaf people as they obviously couldn't make phone calls

I thought Aberystwyth was in Scotland living in Wales for the last 20 years has cured that.

I know they used Welsh speakers in the war as no one knew how to translate them.

Guyana is not in Africa, but South America. Not to be confused with Ghana which is in Africa.

This thread appears to be on a roll now, so I'll just drop in the last of my collection:

Misc

"Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side" - some claim that this is a reference to death, but this is just a clever reinterpretation, not the original intention of being a silly joke. (See the Wikipedia article, complete with a photograph of a chicken crossing the road! ).

You can repeatedly fold a piece of paper in half twelve times - and it was a schoolgirl who proved it. Her name is Britney Gallivan if you want to google it.

If you want more amusement / education, check out these:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_classics/2513449-Ridiculous-things-youve-only-recently-realised-youve-been-wrong-about-your-entire-life

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_classics/a1288326-What-stupid-things-have-you-believed-said-assumed-before-finding-out-to-your-embarrassment-you-were-wrong

Walkers cheese and onion crisp packets have always been the colour they are.

www.walkers.co.uk/faq/brands-flavours

Never mind Dunkirk, it's Dungeness that should be in Scotland!

Pineapples do not grow on bushes and they don't grow in groves either.

The sticky up part? That crown gets planted and the pineapple grows inside that.

Penrith isn’t in Wales? 😳

I thought some of the pineapple lovers might be interested in this old but interesting piece from one of my favourite places near me.

www.heligan.com/explore/news/the-story-of-the-10000-pineapple

Love these threads. Nobody knows everything learning is fun (and no I'm not admitting my own cock ups! )

"It’s actually ‘fine-toothed comb’, not ‘fine toothcomb’. I don’t care how fine it is, why would anyone need a comb for their teeth??" Erm I'm assuming you know the teeth are on the comb? As in they're the spiky things that together form the comb? Not sure I've explained that very well.

What actually catches me out is dd not knowing a thing that really I should've taught her

The Watford gap isn’t in Watford, it’s in Northamptonshire.

Leeds castle isn’t in Leeds, it is Kent.

Wtf about Portsmouth being an island?! Please explain!

Um, I think we might be getting our Portsmouth's mixed up?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth,Northh_Carolina

Nope, Portsmouth lies on the island of Portsea.

www.visitportsmouth.co.uk/visitor-information/faqs

"It’s actually ‘fine-toothed comb’, not ‘fine toothcomb’. I don’t care how fine it is, why would anyone need a comb for their teeth??" Erm I'm assuming you know the teeth are on the comb? As in they're the spiky things that together form the comb? Not sure I've explained that very well.

Graphista - I think you've misunderstood Bendydick's point. She knows it's fine-toothed because it describes the teeth on the comb, that's why her question is mocking those who say "fine tooth-comb" because that would suggest the ridiculous idea of a comb for your teeth. I hope that explanation makes sense!