OMG I'm thick as mince

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I was just doing an online trivia quiz and one of the answers mentioned that zebra crossings are so-called because the black and white stripes resemble a zebra's coat. I can't believe that not once in my 40-odd years on this planet did I twig the connection!

What else have I missed...?

Well mn is educational - only yesterday did I get a question right on Mastermind because I'd read on here that the name 'Alba' means Scotland!!!
So thanks, to whoever that was!

borntobequiet no, they're not pegs. Why would a peg go to market??

They're pigs. They look like piglets in a row feeding from their mother. The fattest pig being the one that goes to market.

Sorry but your misunderstanding has really made me smile 😃

Every time there’s one of these threads (and I’ve been on MN for a decade, so I’ve read a lot of them) I skim through them saying “yep, yep, no actually that’s a popular misconception, yep, yep, how the hell could you not know that?, yep, learned that from MN, yep.”

But there’s always one thing I learn that makes me smack my forehead, and this time it’s that Finisterre means Land’a End. Of course it does! How could I not have known that?

Mind you, I’d wondered for years why Pelican crossings were called that, and literally only happened to find out yesterday that it stood for PEdestrian LIght CONtrolled (misspelled) as per pp.

Me and my partner were watching man vs food once.
Was a buffalo hot wing challenge.
Five minutes in dp says " I never knew buffalo had wings"...
Now that's thick as mince!!
Imagine those tiny chicken wings on a buffalo... I howled!

Wait until you here about roundabouts!

I found out on MN that seaweed from the Chinese is actually cabbage, I was gutted, I thought I was being so adventurous eating seaweed

What?!?!

Conseulabananahammock my ex thought the same thing! He ordered buffalo wings at a restaurant and thought it would be beef. 😂

I've just found out what sugar plums are. They're a boiled sweet and not actual plums covered in sugar like I thought they were.

ARiverInEgypt

I know, it was a lightbulb moment for me, only been listening to the Shipping Forecast for 40+ years

In my head they all lived in 'the Arctic' - which is a big circular island at the top of earth, like the cartoons

Which cartoons?

My DS once came home and said that his teacher told them about the penguins in the Arctic. He said he didn't dare to correct her. I bet she watched those cartoons.

So what sort of pigs eat roast beef and why?
It’s a rhyme about opposites, go to market, stay at home, roast beef or none. And an opportunity for a tickle because of the odd number of toes. They’re always peggies to me. Your understanding has been informed by many years of fanciful illustrations in nursery rhyme books.

If you go to Waitrose and buy crispy seaweed you will find out that it is actually kale or some other cabbage (I think kale actually). I used to love when I first tried it (like ten years ago) but now it tastes sweet horrible.

I worked with someone who thought eggs were man made! I was eating an egg sandwich and said... aw this could have been a chick one day... she said ‘no, what do you mean, eggs are made in factories’ totally confused! I had to explain to her where eggs came from...

I used to think Ulster was another name for Northern Ireland and only recently discovered it’s just a province of Northern Ireland (a bit like the Holland/Netherlands confusion mentioned above). Then my mind exploded when it turned out that part of Ulster is in the Republic of Ireland, not in Northern Ireland at all!

I once got asked by a work colleague if you shaved all your hair off, would it grow back? After I wiped the tears of laughter from my cheeks I gave her a big hug. She was lovely 😊

Was curious about the piggie disagreement so Googled it. According to Wikipedia, the words originally referred to “little pigs”.

I know Wikipedia is not infallible by any means, but this reads like a reasonably authoritative entry compared to some.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Little_Piggy

They’re always peggies to me.

To you maybe. Look it up - they are piggies and have been since 1728 according to Wikipedia!

Cross-posted!

I always thought that Miami was an island. It isn't.

I only realised recently that ‘horizontal’ is linked to ‘horizon’

The nail file info is crazy.

Here is one that blew my mind recently. Alan Turing’s favourite film was Disney’s Snow White because the CGI were so advanced for the time. When he committed suicide he took cyanide concealed in an apple, recreating the scene from Snow White. A half eaten apple was discovered by his bed. When Steve Jobs needed a name and a logo for his company he choose the Apple with a bite out of it in homage to Turing, the father of modern computing.

That is fascinating!

I win ... I've only just found out about Spotify (from another post)

Teenage daughter's friend recently said "Just realised that only your bottom jaw moves!"

I remember a thread on here years ago where a poster said her DH had reached his thirties believing that all women have their periods at the same time, in a given week of each month. She was the one to set him straight.