history

When I was in school and read history books I used to believe that "past people" like the pilgrims and stuff were still alive they were just on another part of the world!

a window in time

My sister is three years older, so i always asked her questions. When i was seven and she was ten, she learned about Pangea. I asked her to tell me about it and she said that the world was one piece of land and then it seperated into what we know today. So i thought that the earth was just a small ball of sand adn then it seperated and water just magically appeared.

poisen

I used to think President Gerald Ford was "General Ford". I couldn't understand why a general wouldn't wear a uniform and look like Patton. I believed this right into Jr. High, nobody ever corrected me. It wasn't until I read his name in a text book that I figured out my mistake.

Bill

When I was in elementary school we were learning about history and our ancestors. I misheard the teacher and instead of ancestors I thought she said "aunt sisters." This baffeled me. So I raised my hand and ask what happened to the "uncle brothers."

Alicia

When i was a kid i watched lots of shows about history of kings and queens. Because kings and queens are often fat and unfit, i thought a logical explination for this would be that they stayed in they're thrones and never EVER got out!

HistoryluvR

When I was little, Mum took me to a mueseum and I saw a picture of Pangea on the wall.
Mum explained about it, but I misunderstood and thought that when she was young, Pangea broke up and she was very cross about it, because she would have to fly overseas to see relatives.

Fliss

I remember having a heated argument with my family, contending that the declaration of independence was signed in 1767.

Anon

I don't seem to do a good job explaining things in an understandable fashion to small children. When my first child at the age of 4, watched Jerrassic Park with his father (while I was not present, obviously) and was quite shaken up by it, I tried to explain "extinct," while silently cursing my ex-husband for having been such a nimrod to let him watch it and leave me to deal with the trauma. After many failed attempts, I broke out the paleoentology book showing a Mammoth skeleton and explained that scientists dug up the bones from the ground and put them back together and from there they GUESS how the animal looked. This discussion led into how movie makers created animatronic dinosaurs for the movie and they didn't use real dinosaurs.
At bed time every night my son would run down his usual list of fears, seeking reassurance from me about each by stating, for example, "No thunder?" I would assure him who slept like a log, "no thunder." But I noticed, his list now included, "No dinosaurs in our yard?" I wasn't sure what he was afraid of but assumed none of my explanations had made any sense to him what-so-ever and just assured him, "No dinosaurs in our yard."

Years later, my son found a drawing I had done of a window with a gigantic dinosaur eye looking in at you, the viewer. He asked me what it was about. I told him about his "no dinosaurs in our yard," fear. He laughed and said that my attempts to explain paleoentology and animatronics to him, had him believing that dinosaurs were buried all over, everywhere, including our yard and could come up out of the ground at any moment in that T-Rex skeleton pose and materialize into the kind of dinosaurs Steven Spielburg caught and trained for his movie.

Go figure...

Phooie

i used to think che guevera was a venazualen vegitarian.dunno why becuse of the name

peter,california

I used to believe the Elgin marbles were actual huge round marbles ... as opposed to carvings from antiquity. This was until fairly recently.

Kathryn

When I was litle I thought Andrew Jackson was a famous historic black man, since his last name was Jackson, and Michael Jackson was black.

persephone

I thought I had found real dinosaur bones in my grandmothers backyard. I had 5 or 6 put away in a drawer that was only for dinosaur bones. I felt privilaged because I had things that museums would have.

Really I was just finding steak bones my grandmom put out there for me to find.

persephone

I used to believe that the dinosaurs died out a year before i was born so I would always ask older people what the dinosaurs were like. I think they were offended

Tanner

When I was little I had heard that the Roman Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. So I thought that he litterarally just sat around playing his fiddle while Rome was destroyed.

I think it's because of several cartoons that portrayed Nero as a fiddler that I developed this belief.

Glowworm

I used to think that Sinn Fein was just one person. When i read history books i used to think that this man called Sinn Fein must be really fit for his age cause he had been around for a long time.

Charlotte

when i was around 4 i used to believe that at some times in history and in some countries music would suddenly start playing out of nowhere and for because that's what always happened on films and tv programmes.

Heather