what stunningly obvious pieces of knowledge escaped you for years and years?

[thewomanwhothoughtshewasahat]

I managed 25 years of life without knowing who Pele was. I managed 36 years without knowing a dodge was a kind of american car. dh managed 25 years without realising that the name The Beatles was a play on the word beat. how do educated well-read people manage stuff like this? and don't you love it when you learn something like that?

Say no more Caboose.
Special Branch will come knocking.
My parents live in Saudi and one of their friends blew up his house with his home made still.
He picked his passport and spare underpants out of the smoking wreckage and made straight for the airport.

hmmm you get into a whole lot of trouble for alcohol and a whole lot of trouble for explsions. wouldn't like to combine the 2.

LOL Moondog!

Thank you Jackie ... but how do you find out if it's there without dismantling your hot water tank?

that all Tennessee whiskies and bourbons are sour mash whisky.

Actually, my local railway station is up a hill...

No idea, sorry. There might be a switch for it, or a light marked 'immersion' (I'm not really helping here am I)...

Expat,what can I say?????

moondog

No problem, just idle curiosity sparked by Tutter's post...

there will be a metal cylindrical lump on the top of your hot water tank if an immersion heater is there - wired up to a socket if connected.
It is usually blue. same shape as a can of tuna.

Right, off to investigate the horrors that lurk within my airing cupboard ... this has to be the wierdest thing I've ever done as a result of MNing.

If there is a tin of tuna there though edam, I would be more than a little concerned.

PS fish is not a good conductor of electricity, therefore no use as a heating element.
And it makes your airing cupboard stink.

Lol at this thread

Ah, but someone was killed by a lightening strike on a lake recently. So a fish in water would presumably be a good conductor...

no, it must have been the fishing rod. They should have worn rubber boots. (What a terrible way to go though!)

Until I was about 25 I thought that Brussel Sprouts grew in the ground, and that little cross in the bottom was where they were anchored to the soil in some way

Miaou, the other jilarious John Lennon post was someone on here who was absolutely gutted because they thought it was John Craven who had died....

lol - lucy5 - I didn't even realise that until I read your post.

I used to think that appoximately meant exact. (Until I was 19).

I thought the 'skin contact' things I foundhad been stuck on me after giving birth were because I had requested 'skin on skin contact' after delivery and the midwives had 'labelled me' But then I was totally out of it.

I used to call the control key on a keyboard the 'sit-ral' key until secondary school.

There a lots more, I'm sure.

I didn't realise until recently that Axl Rose is an anagram...

Blimey, we do have an immersion heater! Black, not blue, though, but label on top deffo says immersion heater copper.

Wow. That's the wonder of MN, or summink.

Wonder what I do with it now I know we've got it though? Do I have to find a switch and do I turn it off when we don't need hot water, or what?

Axl Rose! Never realised that either.

Neena, I once told DH that I'd been talking to someone's Dad....he told me it was the same person, but with a pair of glasses on

It should have a wire connected to a switch - something, somewhere?
(OOh, lucky you - black tin = caviar?)

Immersion heater useful if ever the boiler packs in. - you still can heat the hot water (more expensively though)

that XP was a complete and utter toss bag! for somehow that eluded me for 6 years!