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

In the Adrian Mole books, the Falklands are misplaced several times. Here are the references:

• Adrian wakes his father to tell him that Argentina has invaded the Falklands; his father rushes downstairs, because he thought they were off the coast of Scotland.
• Adrian cannot find the Falklands on the map at all; his mother finds them under a crumb of fruitcake.
• In "The Secret Diary of Margaret Hilda Roberts" (the teenage workaholic Margaret Thatcher), she spends a frustrating time doing her homework and searching the coast of Scotland, then happens to glance at the bottom left-hand corner of the map, and finds them off the coast of Argentina.

Speaking of Thatcher, as a child I was convinced that she was the Queen.

I had it the other way round with the Domesday Book: I learned about the Book before I knew the word "doomsday", or even the word "doom".

As a child, it was some time before I understood the connection between a camera being used, and a photo in an album. Oh, the days of cameras using film, and having to wait several weeks before actually seeing a photo!

Oh yes, and "queer" likewise. Everything out of the ordinary is "queer" in Enid Blyton's world.

Disclaimer: I blame my Dad for this !

Years ago , my Dad told me that Hitler "burnt himself to death"
Then also told me Hitler "burned himself alive"

So I thought he killed himself then resurrected himself with fire ( obviously didn't think through how he could actually do this )

I thought Brunei was in the Middle East too. DH told me it wasn't and I was sure he was wrong and looked on a map. I am still surprised by it being a tiny part of a small island of Malaysia. I keep meaning to read more about it.

When I left the leafy shires and went to rough tough Manchester as a student in the early 80's, I spotted some graffiti on Oxford Road that said 'Smash the PTA' in 4 foot letters. It was only a few years later that I realised that it wasn't someone with a huge and vengeful grievance about the local school's Parent Teacher Association - as I thought for ages - but about the Prevention of Terrorism Act. 😳

And following on from the Frank Sinatra and KC confusion earlier in the thread, as a child I imagined Ella Fitzgerald as a petite blonde when I heard her sing on the radio - boy was I surprised to see her on the TV!!

you were right the first time! 😃

Not everybody was born after the Falklands War, a lot of us were around for 20 years beforehand and it was the war that made me realise that they were in the South Atlantic not off the coast of Scotland.

I was in my twenties before I realised that the capital of Australia is not Sydney.

I thought Timbuktu was in India, until i saw a documentary on the library there.

I went to Newcastle Uni and had a flatmate from Croydon who was so disappointed to discover Newcastle was not in Scotland .

I was on a school trip to an aquarium when I found out that sea horses were real and not I the same category as unicorns. I was the teacher......

Similar problem but from the other side; growing up in Scotland I had never thought about the fact our money was different. It was all I knew. Went to Newcastle as a teenager and innocently asked in a shop if I could have my change in pound notes rather than coins as I didn't have a lot of space in my purse. The woman thought I was on a wind up and shouted at me for wasting her time, being a troublesome teenager and thinking I was oh so big and clever. I had no idea why she reacted like that to a simple request. Friends had to pull me away and explain.

That is excellent sue Townsend knowledge!

My grandma and her sisters and my mother used the phrase 'How queer!' often meaning ''How odd!'. No one thought it was unusual, we were just used to it.

@LuluBlakey1 I remember seeing a thread online where someone was berating Tolkien as homophobic because he kept burning gay people in his books. Throughout Lots of the Rings he says about throwing faggots on the fire. I was never really sure if the person who started the thread was winding people up though. It's not a commonly used phrase anymore

I was surprised to learn that Hamelin (as in the Pied Piper of Hamelin) is a real place: Hameln in Germany. There are lots of statues of rats and pied pipers there, and loads of events where people dress up as the legendary piper. It is believed that the legend of the Pied Piper is based on a historical event where lots of children disappeared.

Yes, pre the war they didn’t get a lot of airtime !

Not the Biology teacher, I hope!

Have we had 'capers aren't fish like anchovies' yet? That usually pops up on threads like this.

Also, Center Parcs aren't really under a giant plastic dome. I've never been to one and when they first started advertising in the UK a long time ago I'm sure they did have an advert that gave that impression. I was quite disappointed to learn that's not what they're like, but then how would they have got planning permission?

When I was little my Dad convinced me he could stop the rain. Driving down the motorway he'd shout 'stop' and it would stop for a second. It was quite a few journeys later that I realised we were going under a bridge.

But that was the school authorities demonstrating their own ignorance of a correct, if archaic, usage. It’s totally different to the general gist of misconceptions on the thread, which are absolutely excusable in childhood, but which you’d expect anyone of average intelligence to have corrected before adulthood.

We all had the mad childhood ones. It’s a (now old-fashioned and rural) figure of speech in my native part of the world to say ‘John buried his wife last year’ meaning ‘John was widowed last year’. As a child I thought that if your spouse died, you had to dig the grave yourself, by law, and was puzzled by meeting the gravediggers who dug my great-uncle’s grave.

Oh Centre Parcs
when they launched it the USP was "the holiday that the British Weather can't spoil"

I was peeved to find the dome only covered a part of it ( and we spent most of the holiday in raincoats ......British weather )

Is it not boots with a fur cuff? Well I’ll be… I thought apple bottom jeans were the jeans with the elasticated ankle

When I was a little kid in Ireland I thought Scottish people wore head scarves, so the first time I saw a woman with a hijab I presumed she must be Scottish. It occurred to me one day it was from ads in 80s for Scottish Widows insurers showing a woman in a black cloak. Thankfully the Muslim /Scottish confusion didn't last long enough to embarrass me.

I really can’t get my head round people thinking pipe cleaners were made for cleaning drainage pipes, (which are large and fairly labour intensive to clean with a tiny weeny pipe cleaner!) I mean size guys!