When I was in first grade there was a poster in my classroom of children of the world in cultural dress. For some reason, the children from Thailand had very long fingers. For years I believed that they were born that way.

Anon

When I was young I used to read a comic called The Dandy.

One strip was called the Jocks & The Geordies.

It was easy to see that the Jocks were Scots because they wore big Tam O' Shanters & liked to say stuff like "Jings" when they were surprised.

The Geordies all wore smart school uniforms & spoke plain English, so I assumed they were posh English kids & Geordie was a Scottish slang word for such a person.

My Dad was surprised when I started to use Geordie in this context & had to explain it actually meant someone from Newcastle, which is a fairly unposh place.

Richard Davies

remember the expression "dig a hole to china"? i took it the wrong way and thought that it meant China was buried underneath us..and everytime i took a step i was probaly stepping on some poor chinese' persons head

kisss_

When I was a kid, the Pittsburgh Steelers were in their "dynasty" years. We also collected food labels for the school library - Campbell's, Swanson, Franco-American. I always assumed that Franco-American was owned by Franco Harris and Swanson by Lynn Swann. Why not? When you're 7, the world doesn't extend very far from your hometown...

Heather Lodge

I used to have a stuffed globe I used as a pillow when I was first learning to read. Phonetically sounding out the countries, I used to believe that Niger and Nigeria, were pronounced with a hard G, and proudly announced their names to my mother as Nigger and Niggeria. She VERY quickly corrected me.

Anon

i thought that cartoons from other countries was how the people there looked ... like i thought japanese people had big eyes and pointy noses like anime

reh

For a very long time I thought that Germany's flag had a swastika on it ( I didn't realize it was exclusive to the Nazis). I imagined those citizens having very mixed feelings when raising it.

re

My mum, (who in fairness was told this by her mum) told me that Black people couldn't swim in their adult life. She said that their bones get heavier as they get older and that's why you don't see any Black people at the Olympic's (& other swimming comp's) etc. We all believed her, until I brought it up to my best friend when I was about 16, who happens to be mixed race... The sheer look of disbelief on her face.... "Man! My mum told me that!"

Jodie

When I was about 5 and just grasping the notion of there being other countries besides England, I somehow became convinced that France was the exact opposite of Germany. I don't know what I thought that meant though!

Maz

I used to believe that there were only two races in the world, black and white. I thought until I was like 11 or 12 that Chinese people were just white people with different eyes because the skin was more or less the same color to me. And someone told me that it was the constant wind that caused that. After watching cartoons like Aladdin I also thought Arabic people could find genies and have wishes and stuff, and that he was actually Italian.
And I also thought Irish people were all leprachauns. And that the whole world was one religion.

Andy

I used to believe Turkey day was a Turkish holiday. Then why are we celebrating it in America?

Lecia

I had beliefs about The Netherlands, even though I never had Dutch friends as a child. They stemmed from a traditional song that you might have sung yourself about a mouse wearing clogs in a windmill and from cartoons. I believed that all Dutch people wore clogs, lived in windmills, made cheese and grew tulips. I didn't think many of them had bikes nor horses and walked everywhere-It was flat so it didn't matter. I also thought when I was a bit older that hamsters came from Amsterdam and I imagined them around the streets (I knew that Dutch people didn't all live in windmills etc. by then :-). I thought they dropped the "h" to make the Amster- part sound a bit less like the cute critters. Oh and the age-old belief that all Egyptians “walked like an Egyptian” and still dressed as they did in the days of the Pharaohs. :)

Ocean-Sirius

up until the age of 19, i thought that spanish food consisted of tacos and burritos until i realized that spain has a culture and culinary world much separate from mexico and latin america

victor

I read in the Pippi Longstocking books that people in China walked on their hands all the time, and I believed that for years.

zoe

I thought Canadians came from Canadia.

Anon

All the people that lived in Scotland were girls

The Ice Cream Sandwich Monster

when i was four years old i used to believe that our planet earth had thousands and thousands of countries.afer a couple of years, when i got older i relised that earth was not as big as i thought it was. it came as a big surprise to me, i was so dissapointed

hrvoje

I have always believed that when Chinese were eating a meal, they showed their appreciation by burping.

It proved to be horribly wrong when I burped loudly after having dinner with a Chinese girl. Luckily she had a sense of humour.

Anon

When people would ask me what was my background, I would tell them 1/2 German and 1/2 Brooklyn!

Randy

Growing up in Sweden in the 1960's I wasn't exposed to a lot of foreign influence and didn't quite understand racial differences. Someone had told me that "negroes" (the proper term used in Sweden for black people) originated in Africa. So for me, this became a nationality rather than a race. I refused to see black people from any other continent as black. You could only be black if you came from Africa. My parents had also given my a black doll (Ada, my favorite) and it never occured to me that she was of a different race than my friends dolls. I just thought she was prettier then theirs because she had more colour and beautiful brown eyes.

Anneli