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 did suggest that you must have been 6 at the time given the Opal Fruits clue Jammy! Now what's the excuse for the poster who didn't think dinosaurs ever really existed....

Yes I've seen guinea pigs in Peruvian houses! This is such an interesting thread.

That's shocking re Argentina and the Falklands though !

Not a since childhood one... I uses to drive up the A9 regularly and would pass the sign for the Grassic Gibbon centre and was desperate to take the kids there to see the monkeys. Then one morning on the radio they were talking about Grassic Gibbon, turns out he was an author. How bloody disappointed would the kids have been??

Fancy some time off in Looe anyone? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looe

This is really bad.. But when I was younger, I genuinely thought you had to have sex whilst ON your period go get pregnant
I suppose I had just heard about sex and periods are to do with pregnancy!!

I didn't know you're supposed to pull the paper folds on McDonald's sauce pots to make them bigger.

I had no idea!

As a Scot I suppose I should be pleased that the English were so keen to defend us from the Argentines!

In my defence , I was about 2 when the Falklands happened, so my confused childhood brain obviously picked up anniversaries etc and placed it 'far away but part of our country '

When I had my dd I carried her in her car seat for more than five months not knowing that it had a cover. I looked everywhere on the Internet. Mine was the maxi cosi. I remember coming across a post talking about a similar issue. I could not believe it when someone said that I should pull the side and there it was.

I am amazed at the MacDonald one, sadly excited about trying that out when I next go!

I have never heard of Suriname, so couldn't tell you where it was

For the McDonalds paper sauce pots, you roll up the rim (so it's unrolled) and then the folds expand so you have easier access to the sauce for dipping.

Did everyone except me know how to crumble an oxo cube? You open up the folds on the cube, then press it flat, then you tear along the side seam and voila crumbled oxo comes out? I've been spending YEARS swearing at my hand getting steamy over the pan/the oxo all sticking to my warm hand/it not crumbling properly/my fingers dislocating while crumbling and then I was told I was doing it all wrong.

No, em, I learned about Oxo cubes from Mumsnet a few years ago. I can only assume the client forgot to tell the ad agency about this, as they could have saved us a lot of sticky fingers by having the character do it right!

I've never known that about oxo cubes

Me neither re Oxo cubes...

I thought Anne Robinson was Tony Robinson's mother...

I used to think this too! I remember him saying it in an interview on the telly in the late 80s. Obviously he was joking but I didn't get that... I told my BF and his friends and they were and I was

I thought, until last weekend actually, that the little button on my iphone earphones made a voice-activated thingy work. I was pressing the button and muttering 'Play' to play my podcasts. It was only when I was showing off to DH that it dawned on me there was no microphone there...

Loving this thread

I don't think you're 'supposed' to expand the McDonald's sauce cups as it makes them pretty unstable (and also why wouldn't they just make them bigger in the first place if it requires the same amount of paper!?) but pulling the ridges out does work fairly well.

I only recently realised that the sizing of tights (S, M, L, etc) was the length rather than waist size. I always bought medium or large and ended up with them round my arse but now I buy small and suddenly I have no problems with them falling down!

I learnt the oxo cube thing on here but I find it doesn't always work as some cubes are almost as hard as rock.

I'm sure I read somewhere that all the lakes in the Lake District are man made and was very insistent of this at dh's work party on a boat on lake Windermere. A quick Google to 'prove my point' soon shut me up!

I thought caveat was pronounced ca-veet until quite recently. But that's surely sensible!?

Fascinating thread.

Suriname used to be known as Dutch Guyana/Guiana and was one of the three Guianas. (Disclaimer - ILs are Guyanese).

Until 2 years ago (I am 40), I thought that moles were the same size as badgers.

I also mistakenly thought that Centre Parcs was under a dome.

In my youth I thought that Portugal was an island.

I knew about the immaculate conception thing (found out from MN a couple of years ago), but I went to a RC primary school and was brought up Catholic and it was never mentioned.

I only recently found out that a pony is not a baby horse grew up in London and never met anyone who knew anything about horse, or had even sat on one

Edgar - it's lifted straight from Latin, as in caveat emptor, so for those who know Latin the pronunciation makes sense, but obviously that's not much help if you come across it in written English.

Deux - I was amused by your disclaimer, as if you might be accused of being biased in promoting facts about Guyana because of a personal interest...

I thought, until last weekend actually, that the little button on my iphone earphones made a voice-activated thingy work

It does. You need to press and hold. There is a microphone, that's how come you can make hands free calls using it.

Ann, get your iPhone headphones and turn them over, you'll see a microphone symbol. Then call you DH a tool.