I didn’t know a cheesecake had cheese in it!

[CormoranStrike]

Okay, not these days, cos I’m a sophisticated and cultured woman now, but I can clearly remember being utterly astonished as a teenager to find out a cheesecake had cheese in it.

In my defence, the only cheese in my house till then had been blocks of cheddar, or cheese slices. I had no idea that cheese could be anything other than orange!

What were your WTF discoveries, which seem even more bizarre through the lens of time?

"But, I never realised til my early 40s that the letter W (a double U) was in fact only “a double U”

When I was learning cursive it wasn't written as w or W but as uu/UU iyswim.

@cariadlet

The original Gotham is in the UK (as in The Wise Men of Gotham) but it's also been a nickname for New York for a couple of hundred years. I think Washington Irving used it first. Gotham City is modeled on New York City.

And the Nottinghamshire is pronounced differently- Go-tham, not like the Batman’s Goth-am

(As we are endlessly lecturing by FIL because it’s his home town)

@diddl

"But, I never realised til my early 40s that the letter W (a double U) was in fact only “a double U”

When I was learning cursive it wasn't written as w or W but as uu/UU iyswim.

Oh my goodness @diddl how old are you? (Sorry to sound rude). Are you an Ecclesiastical monk? (I’m joking btw, I’ve already been told off)

I’ve just youtubed how cornflakes are made. I had no idea...

I don’t think it was a term that was previously used in the U.K., but they needed a word to describe the new coronavirus-related measure and picked that,

Furlough is very much an English word, it has been around for a LONG time and some of us used it all the time before Covid.

People who work overseas for a long time, often return to the Uk for a longer time slot, ie not a holiday. This applies to charity workers, missionaries, workers for NGOs etc.
So you are overseas for 2 years and come to the UK on furlough for 3-4 months, and then return to the field.

In the 'old days' missionaries went overseas for 4 years and then furlough for 1.

I also though originally they were made for farm food (for the animals not the farmers) go no idea how I came up with that

'Tis so. We used to pick the cornflakes out of the cattle food and eat them. There were also pellets, crushed oats, wheat or barley grains, and some dark stuff which might have been molasses. The cornflakes weren't as sweet as Kellogg's, but okay. I stopped eatting them after realising that rats probably also ate from the feed troughs, as well as the cows.

Rabbit food has stuff that looks a lot like cornflakes. I think I used to do the same E

I think it’s probably the combination of John ‘Don’t die of ignorance’ Hurt doing the voiceover and the slightly sinister music, but Center Parcs looks less like an idyllic holiday destination and more like a dystopian colony of the future in that clip. ‘The temperature is always 84 degrees. FOREVER.’

Older people ‘less techy’ people who used the DOS version of Word know all the shortcuts. The ones who don’t tend to be the ones who use a mouse or Apple products

^ This is true in my experience. I remember seeing a colleague faffing about with the mouse trying to do a simple copy and paste. It took several clicks and I said, "wouldn't control C, control V be easier?" She had no idea what I was talking about and was amazed when I showed her some of the shortcuts.

@EBearhug

On an iPhone the way to access the Ctrl+F equivalent is to pull down at the top to bring up the address or search bar and type in the word. The drop-down menu will say how often the word appears on the page and you can jump to each instance of it.

Does anyone know if there's an Android equivalent? I've often wanted to do Ctrl+F on my phone (though not quite enough that I've googled...)

My Samsung does it the same way as my iPhone.

Talking with which, I started a computing module at college as it included building a webpage which I’d never done. I gave up after the second class when the tutor told me off for using Ctlr+something and made me use the menu instead!

I was telling his now-partner this recently (16 years later) and she laughed. He is very set in his ways.

@longwayoff

I put some philly on a slice of toast and a spoonful of blackcurrant jam on top. Daughter 'what are you doing? How revolting. Ugh.' Me 'but you eat cheesecake. It's more or less the same.' Who's right? I think that's a perfectly reasonable thing to eat, she thinks I'm an unnatural creature.

I like cream cheese with honey on toast.

We went to a wedding when DD was about 9.
She loves cheesecake and was excited to be told that there would be a cheesecake later.
When the cheesecake was announced and people were invited to get some she happily went up there and came back with a disgusted look on her face to tell me “Mum, it’s a cake made of cheese”. It was one of those 3 layers of actual rounds of cheese wanky ones that were all the rage a few years ago. It was a London wedding and we are from Yorkshire so the concept hadn’t reached us yet

@MrsRonaldUlyssesSwanson

That people who had speedboats out on the water in summer had won them on Bullseye

I was an adult when I discovered that Llamas don't have two heads . I can never feel the same about Dr Doolittle That was a pushmi-pullyu though,