places

As I child I used to wonder how letters could be sent from one country to another when one only paid postage in one country. Who paid for the letter being forwarded in its destination country? So I imagined all the post offices all over the world meticulously keeping track of how many letters from each country they transported, and then at the end of the year they would bill each other.

The Pi

Peter Pan was one of my favourite children's stories. And because of that I was always interested in people talking about the Netherlands even if they insisted on using the abbreviated name for the Never Never lands.

fubar

I used to be certain that the carving of the 3 presidents in the USA was natural and that it was just a coincidence that they bore a resemblence to real presidents. I was 20 and studying for a degree before i was informed that this was not the case.

hellen

When I was little I believed that all countries and continents were actually floating on the water and not attached to the earth. I could never work out why they didnt float around all over the place though!

london

my boyfriend's daughter when she was about 5 or 6, everytime they drove by the ABC store (Alcoholic Beverage Stores in the States) she would beg her dad to take her into the "toy" store. She refused to believe that they didn't sell toys until he took her in and showed her that all they had was bottles!!

andrea

As the child of a Baptist minister and sheltered from "things of the world", I was a college student when I learned that a package store is not where you go to buy packages to wrap your gifts in!

Anon

Until I was about 9 I believe that we used to go to "Corvall" for our holidays... wasn't until I actually bothered to look at a postcard and wondered where Cornwall was...???

Boo

When I was little, I was convinced that Europe was pronounced like "your rope", and "Yurip (how Europe actually IS pronounced)" was a country within Europe.

Bunny

Someone told me if you dug and dug and dug you'd eventually reach Australia!!!

Anon

My big sister was told by my older brother that our home county of the Isle Of Wight, England was the designated target for three nuclear warheads, should war be declared. She realised he was lying when she was 20 years old. Studying for a degree.

she's very special

I grew up in Seattle, Washington. I use to think that it rained everywhere in the world like it rained in Seattle... Every where BUT Hawaii.

Jennifer Wallis

I used to believe that ScotLand was on an airplane. My grandma would always go to the airport to go to ScotLand so I just assumed Scotland was on an Airplane.

RyanisGay

when i was younger i used to believe that space was near spain! so i imagined spain to be just a bull ring! and that if you looked up into the sky you could see space!

caroline

up until about 6 years ago i thought everton was in london!

Anon

because of the song "we, the three kings of orient are", a coworker thought "orientar" was a place until recently.

JP

When my brother and I were young we lived in an apartment complex with our mom called "Pheasant Ridge." Well one time during class in grade school my brother proudly announced to the class during a presentation that we lived at "Peasant Ridge!"

Anon

When i was young i used to hear the term 'Midlands' on the local news and imagine it was a vast, sprawling desert area somewhere the other side of the world. Little did i realise it was simply the name for my local area.

Nick Price

As a boy living in Brazil, I used to believe that in Portugal there were no cows. They didn't have there any of our animals: the araras, the crocodiles, the jaguars...

Rodrigo

I'm terrible with recognizing accents, and until I was 16, I was convinced Newcastle was in Scotland. I knew loads of people from Newcastle and whenever they told me where they were from I used to say 'Oh, your Scottish then?!' Not one person corrected me on that! I took 6 different people and three different atlases to prove to me where Newcastle is. And I still think they must have moved the border!

Danni