When I was 5 or 6, someone told me that the Earth was spinning. I couldn't believe, so I performed an experiment: I drew a sign on the floor and went to sleep. The next morning I found the sign in the same place I had drawn it, so I thought that the Earth hadn't moved.

tunefultuna

I spent many frustrating hours believing that if i tried hard enough I could lift myself off the ground with no means of support. I also thought if a lift was plummeting down a shaft you would be perfectly alright if you gave a little jump just before it hit the floor.

Chris

I used to believe that the sun moved up and down in space and that's how we got seasons... then I discovered the tilt of the earth. I also believed that the North and South poles of the earth were due to a giant bar magnet with hte red end sticking out of the North pole and the blue end sticking out of the South pole.

Russ

When I was smaller I always thought that instead of the water filling the glass from the bottom up, it would fill from the top down.

Emily

My parents are religious fanatics, so of course they did not properly explain the "big bang" to me. I am now an atheist, but back then (when I was 7 or so) I thought the "big bang" theory was idiotic. Why? Well, because I thought that the BIG BANG meant that something went *kaboom* and *poof* there was the earth as I knew it! My parents also told me that the theory of evolution meant that humans evolved from monkeys! But then, many uninformed people make that mistake...

Rose

I used to believe that Electricity was chiped overseas in large thick rubber boxes on ships.

Anon

As a bit of backstory, my Dad, as a child, skipped Kindergarten. Until around 46, my dad thought that the primary colors were just a myth, and you could mix something like green and orange to get red. We still tease him about this.

Anon

My older brother told me when I was 3 or 4 that the reason ships float is because they are so light. In fact, they are so light I could lift an ocean liner with my little finger. I figured out the truth by the time I became an adult.

M.A. Stolz

There were train tracks just back of my grandmothers house. I was 5 or 6 and used to try to run too close. My grandmother told me that there was a vaccummm force and if I was too close when it whooshed by the force would suck me under and i would of course die. Hence I stayed away from all train tracks. In highschool science we learned of many different forces but I still beleievd this maybe was cintrifgal or the doppler effect with air ...Ok I didnt listen much in science, until the day i was visiting a friend in my twenties and ran like hell from the tracks becasue a train was coming. When I told them why they laughed themselves silly . I can't believe I still kept this idea for so long.

D

I used to lay on the ground looking up at the sky, watching the clouds go by. I thought that was evidence that the world was turning, as if the clouds were stationary, and the world moved beneath them.

Zen_Sorcere

It doesn't fit the vehicle categories, but I think this one's pretty good:
When we were kids a friend of mine thought a ten centimeter long propeller driven ship I had in my bathtub was exactly as fast as the ferrys from Norway to Denmark, because it was a copy of one of them. I disagreed even though I was two years younger. We got into a really long and tiresome argument about it, and I don't think we ever managed to agree. It's been years since I saw him, but if I run into him maybe I should ask if he still thinks it could be the case. He's 34 now.

Christer

After spinning around in a chair or just self-propelled, I thought the spinning environment was the earth rotating. I used to do it a lot cuz i thought it was the only way i could see the earth spinning.

tree

People said that the earth spinned but I never felt this "spin". I then swiftly came to the conclusion that the only way to feel the earth move was to spin around in circles and that your dizzyness was actually the enlightenment of feeling the earth move.

My science teacher told me I was wise for my age.

Anon

I used to believe that each people has their own perception of color, for example: I see color red as red, but when I was a kid I used to think that others may perceive different. I see red but they see other color, and we describe the same color because we are used to it since birth.

Anon

I used to believe that because jet airplanes went so fast, that if you held a large sheet of paper in front of them, they would go right through the paper without making a hole or tearing the paper.

Dave

When I was embarrassingly old--9 or so, I think--I used to believe that if you had half a glass of water and stuffed a washcloth into it, and the water rose to the top of the glass, you now had a full glass of water. My mother was unable to explain displacement in a way that satisfied me, so I held on to my belief persistently.

Ward Webber

I knew that the earth was spherical for as long as I can remember... but I do remember a time (until I was 4 or 5) that I believed that people on the other side had to hold on to these rungs when they moved from building to building to keep from falling out into space. I thought the houses were made so that the people walked on what we think of as the ceiling... with their feet facing the sky.

Rose

When I was six, I was obsessed with turning out the light and racing it to my bed as I ran and dove on to it.

I thought the after-image in my eyes was the light fading away because it wasn't powered any more by the light bulb.

Andrew

I used to think that lbs. stood for a form of measurement called labs. I felt like an idiot when I realized it meant pounds.

D

I used to believe that if you had this really big sheet of paper, and if a jet airplane flew through it fast enough, it wouldn't hurt the paper.

David E.