Ridiculous things you've only recently realised you've been wrong about your entire life

[Seasidedolly]

I genuinely thought if you pulled the reverse cord on ceiling fans, it would circulate warm air.

My friend thought the yellow average speed cameras on motorways were there to look for missing children.

I had another recent revelation but I can't remember it now

I thought The Hague was just one building somewhere in the Netherlands.

my friend once asked me what Chunnel meant, and when I said it was short hand for the channel tunnel he looked confused and said, "who has short hands?"

PMSL at 'hand gliding' and water polo (sorry).

As a child I assumed that the first line of the well-known Christmas Carol was 'Good King Wences last looked out. I learned my lesson one day at school when for some reason people were picked to read things out and the sadist teacher made me SING it (horror upon horror as I was excruciatingly shy and near-phobic about singing in public).

Teacher duly corrected me loudly and patronisingly and the entire class guffawed, leaving me scarred for life not joking

I thought that donkeys were infertile horses. I'm pretty sure that a teacher in my crap primary school told me this.

It's probably been covered already but I found out recently that the numbers on your toaster dial are actually how many minutes you want it done for....that blew my mind that I'd got through four decades without knowing that.

Lucia, mules are infertile (crossbreed from a female horse & a male donkey)

I love party liners .

I was 20, in the second year of my Classics degree before I realised what the Elgin Marbles were...

I thought they were big glass balls the rolled on the top of the Parthenon's roof which also says a lot for my ancient architecture knowledge and when my coursemate asked me what they hell would they be doing up there, I responded that I thought it was an Ancient Greek way of honouring the gods by giving them a game of marbles to play...

I am now starting my Classics PhD and plan to never let anyone I work with know this.

I only recently found out after watching 'Martian' in the cinema that a martian is someone from Mars, not an alien. Cue hysterical laughter from boyfriend.

And this is really embarrassing...

I thought that when you go on a train and there's the barriers that check your ticket, that there was a little man inside who took your ticket and looked at it.

On the way to York one day, I had a bag of Opal Fruits. I thought I'd be nice and share them, so once I did my ticket and really quickly shoved a few into the slot.

On the way back home in the afternoon that machine was out of order. I remember worrying that maybe the little man wasn't allowed to eat sweets and that I'd lost him his job. I felt guilty for MONTHS after that.

Mermaid36 "I knew a lovely lady in her 40s (seemingly of normal intelligence) who genuinely didn't realise that you had to kill pigs to get bacon and sausages..."

I can't work out how it is possible not to realise that. She can't have been of normal intelligence if she didn't.

Maybe she thought you shaved it off the pig the way you get wool off a sheep

JammyGem I think yours is the most extreme of all! You seriously thought there are little man inside the ticket barriers!

I only very recently, thanks to a MN thread, realised that foghorns are located on lighthouses not on ships. I always thought it's something ships have to warn other ships that they are there. Now that episode of Peppa Pig with Grampy Rabbit as lighthouse keeper make a lot more sense.

I told DH about this thread and mentioned the Elgin Marbles. He looked a bit sheepish and asked, "What are they anyway?"

Jammy, good luck with that PhD

Ships have foghorns too

m.youtube.com/watch?v=NbmAs1pFQM0

Jammy how on earth did you get opal fruits into the thin ticket slot?. You should've tried a wham bar ir curly wurly

I didn't know until recently that emperor penguins aren't as big as people, I thought they were about 6 feet tall!

I also thought the Elgin marbles were little round marbles and so did my mum until she saw them in real life. That explains why we haven't given them back - they're too big!

Yes the Galapagos is right on the equator. Above that there are no original penguins native to the areas.

Someone once thought dragons exited and she had seen it in the zoo. We later found out after questioning her that she was talking about Komodo dragons. She thought they were the same thing and why people would say they don't exit like unicorns.

Before this thread I always imagined people on horse in a pool with polo sticks play water polo. Now I will have to YouTube it.

Jammygem am gobsmacked at the ticket machine thing.

I am actually going red writing this.

I worked for the BBC, organised interview with nice kindly man at the British Museum about latest threat to British ownership of a much loved playground game. Obv interview was only granted due to BBC name.

All bright and smart and sparkly with my ewer (sp?)

He Sussed out immediately that I had no clue. He then, with extraordinary kindness, took me on a personal guided tour of the Elgin Marbles. They are actually sort of carved pictures.

That particular package was not aired.

I was reading this with tears rolling down my cheeks, feeling smug, until some bastard moved Suriname from its natural place on the West Coast of Africa (near Nigeria and Liberia) to the East Coast of South America DH did say that I'd obviously been thinking of where it had been attached during Pangaea

DFIL was born and brought up in Kenya. It was only a few years ago that he finally believed that there were penguins in Africa.

I thought wing mirrors were wind mirrors... Wasn't until last month when I knocked one of mine off and the man at the garage that replaced it told me it was actually a wing mirror