Things you assumed and were astonished to find out you were completely wrong

[Cattery]

For example: The Elgin Marbles. Heard these mentioned from time to time over the years. Always pictured marbles; kids’ marbles. Then I heard they were something to do with Greece and I’ve always thought Elgin was there. Got it all completely wrong

When my dd was 14, she told her then 13 yo friend that when she said she was going skiing at the weekend she didn’t mean to the local snowdome but to a resort, in our private jet. She believed her. I put the friend straight about 6 months later when she came to our house… I think she’d worked it out by then.

I thought one of the lines from “Don’t know much about history” was “Don’t know much about the French-Eyed Took,” which I assumed was a type of bird,

Well this an educational thread!

Slightly connected - my son phoned me excitedly from Calais as soon as they arrived for a school trip to say that he'd seen the Eiffel tower, and proceeded to send me a photo of a pylon.

I thought Birmingham was in the north. Only realised it wasn't once I'd accepted a job there, oopsies

Have been watching the Paddington Bear cartoon with my dc here in Canada and we sing along to the opening theme song:
He's a very resi-lent bear....
(Because of the tragedies left behind in Peru and having travelled all the way to London by himself, of course. And pronouncing resilient as the British do...)

The real lyric is:
He's a very rare sort of bear...
Thanks, Google.

I'm guessing Brits say resilient as re-zil-yent much like we Canucks do, too. 🤔

🤭 That is too gorgeous!

Same!

When I was a kid, I thought that AD stood for After David. I was a bit puzzled, as, even with my rather limited knowledge of the Bible, I was vaguely aware that David came quite a bit before Christ,

I used to think that a shadow is this fairly hard to understand phenomenon that requires complex physics to explain it. It was only a few years ago (in my forties!!) that I suddenly realised that a shadow is simply formed by the path of light being blocked by something. I'm still in awe every time I think of it.

I might just start calling it that, I like your interpretation better!

That Joan Armatrading was American. I also pictured George Ezra as an older black man, and I have to remind myself periodically that Robert De Niro and Danny DeVito are different people.

Belgian coast.

Adorable!! 😂

Oh good lord I am only ever going to hear "life's a custard cream " from now on .
That's proper made me laugh

There’s always one…🙄

Have you never made an assumption, mis-heard something, believed a story or tall tale as a youngster or guessed wrongly at something?

It is surely part of the human learning process to keep collecting information, learning new stuff, finding out the ‘correct way’ of things, right up to our last years on earth.

No one person knows everything!

From this thread alone, we’re all still learning things.

That Jimi Hendrix wasn't.

That yellow dandelions and fluffy dandelions are the same flower, just at different points in their life cycle. Blew my mind.

Me too, always saw in my head knights on white horses with white floaty tabardy things like the crusaders, galloping in time to the music.

The County Durham one, I made that mistake working in a call cente when I was young, when I asked the caller how the weather was in Ireland today.

Which reminds me, slightly off topic of when another customer rang and he confirmed his address as Elgar Court. I replied, "Ooh, like the racehorse?". The man said, "No, like the composer... "

I said, "Yeah, I know the composer. But I thought of the racehorse with the same name first!".

Then there was a pause, and I muttered, "Oh, sorry. I was thinking of Shergar."

I could have died from embarrassment. I'm pretty intelligent most of the time. 😂

Posting on behalf of a friend who shall remain nameless… she knew milk came from cows, but she was absolutely convinced that milkshake came from what you fed cows….

So if you want banana milkshake… feed a cow a banana! And chocolate and so on… I met her at university, she was studying a much brainier topic than me.

I thought the film director Steve McQueen that directed Hunger and 12 Years a Slave was the same Steve McQueen that was in Papillon and Thomas Crown Affair in the 60s. It was only as I was watching the Small Axe movies that I thought why is an American man in his 90s making movies about black people in Ladbroke Grove? I Googled it and yep, totally different guy. And also dead.

There could be a whole thread, (and maybe there actually is/was one), to do with mis-heard song lyrics.
Mine was the Abba "Souper Trouper" song......."I was sick and tired of everything, when I called you last night from Tesco"......
I should be in bed, but this thread has hooked me in🙄

Is she not, then??