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

Never heard of the Elgin marbles...

Elgin marbles are no big deal but might be safer here?
I was picturing some sort of 'It's an Ancient Knockout' scenario.

Elgin, also love the mental picture of you turning up to record the Marbles with a ewer rather than a Uher (nowadays they barely have any machine to record with, just a microphone on a little handheld digital device - no more backache from lugging a hefty 'portable' reel-to-reel!)

Pronounced Ewer.

The ewer would have been more appropriate. Unless you are now going to tell me that I mean an urn.

Thanks for the lovely mental image of someone turning up with a massive jug to record a package about playground marbles.

TBF I didn't realise what the EMs were until I was actually face to face with them. But then, when on earth do we use the word "marbles" to describe things made of marble any other time?! If it's any help, some people call them the Parthenon Sculptures!

My eldest daughter plays Water Polo - I love the fact that such a high proportion of people think it involves horses...!

Frith2013

I can assure you that the giant fans you see in windfarms are indeed driven by surplus electricity.

You can verify that their purpose is to create wind quite easily. If you look at some when they are spinning fast, the wind will be quite strong. When their speed is turned down, the wind drops. When they are switched off, there is no wind at all.

I used to work in a large Post Office. We had a stamp vending machine set into the outside wall so people could buy books of stamps when we were closed/ busy - bit like an ATM.
If things were quiet in the room on the other side of this wall we would sometimes talk to people through the machine "That's right, put your money in, no that's not enough" etc etc

No one ever pushed me an Opal Fruit through though

Tourist - that's brilliant!!

One of the in laws (40+) has recently been to Italy. She'd never heard anything about Pompeii before visiting and just thought it was where they'd filmed a Carry On film.

Love the stamp atm story

It was a few pages back, but the bible does say Mary and Joseph didn't have sex until Jesus was born (Matthew 1:25- But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son.(NIV)) But as far as I know only catholics say they never had sex.

I thought it was 'stable under the tree' too.

I lit the real fire last weekend, which I don't do very often as it is in the sitting room we don't use much. DD (14) spent most of the evening in there though and when she wanted to go to bed she asked me how to turn it off.

... forgot to add that after I had explained about "fire" and what it actually, you know, is she suggested putting it out by throwing water on it. I had to then explain that I didn't want a load of ashy wet gunge all over my fire place thank you very much, and that it's quite all right to let the fire die down and burn itself out overnight behind its fireguard.

Ballonslayer I know this does not apply to your fire. But seeing that she knows very little did you explain to her why people use extinguishers instead of water first on open fires? It's a basic thing that every child and adult needs to know.

You don't want her to be cooking and the oil or food goes up in flames and she gets a jug of water to pour straight over it.

It also took me until well into my 20s to pair up the pronunciation and spelling of the words segue and superfluous.

I was the same with 'fatigue'. I actually said something about 'fat-ee-goo' to my DH when I was at Uni (completing an English degree, no less!). I have never lived that down.

Most embarrassingly, when I was picked (as the g&t one) to read a poem aloud in History lesson in Year 9: 'Drunk with fat-ee-guoo' (fatigue)

Posted before I saw this!! I'm not the only one! Hooray.

Dessifer is my contribution! I knew how to spell decipher but had never heard it said out loud.

I spent a very long Tim pronouncing albeit as al-beet. I had only read it!

Long Tim. Fnar. Time, natch.

Debbriana yes you are right, given her staggering ignorance I think I'd better!

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

Holy fuck, I thought it was 'Good King Wences last' until I read this. Just had to google what it actually is...

Dp was quite old already when he realised that it was "thanks be to God" and not "thanks, Peter God"

My dad used to think 'I am the lord of the dance, said he,' was, 'I am the lord of the dance settee.'