I thought Mount Rushmore was a natural phenomenon. It made sense to me that we'd elected those guys because we saw their faces on the side of a mountain. When I learned it was man-made, I wondered what was so great about it.

Jelly

I used to believe that if you touched a map, you would actually touch that place in the world--there would just be this huge finger descending from the sky, and you might kill people! So I never touched anyplace on a map until I was 8!

Kimberly

I misread Vatican City when I was younger and thought it was Vacation City. I believed that it was a really pretty place where people liked to go on vacation.

C

last week on a train i had a conversation with one of my best friends only to discover that at 18years old she still thought that timbuktoo was imaginary yet gotham city where batman lived was real!!

hilary

I used to believe that Paradise was the capital of France, and that when we died, we would all go to Paris.......just a tiny mix-up.

Marit Hadland

I lived in Suva and I thought 'suva-neers' (souvenirs) only came from Suva.

Caroline

When I was a kid, I thought the words on maps existed in the real world--for example, in the United States, the words UNITED STATES were actually carved into the ground. (A giant "U" in California, an "N" in Nevada, and so forth...)

Gregor

i used to believe that at Picadilly Circus, there was actually a circus. i persuaded my mum to take me there when I was five, and i was so upset that the circus was not there, i refused to speak to my mum for a week, cos i was convinced that she had told the circus to go away.

Anon

I thought Alaska was an island since it always appears in a box next to Hawaii on a map of the US. I didn't figure it out until high school when my friend said her dad was going on a road trip to Alaska. When I asked her if her dad didn't need to go on a boat, she thought I was kidding.

Jessica

Until age seven, I thought a certain red-brick building down the street was Florida. Turned out it was a funeral home.

Anon

When I was little I had a very short attention span (still do, actually) and when we were going somewhere a few miles away in the car, I'd start asking where we were going even though I'd been told a few minutes ago. Just to shut me up my parents would tell me we were going to Texas. For years I didn't believe Texas was a real place. My parents told me the truth when I got in an argument with my Kiddie Gymnastics instructor because she'd said she was going to visit her relatives in Texas and I knew there was no such place.

Geographically Challenged

When I was 6 I went to an exhibition with my friend Nicholas and we saw a map on the wall and neither of us could read all of the words, and for years after I thought Egypt was pronounced Eggyput.

Debs

I moved here from New York, and on our way down to North Carolina, my parents thought it would be funny to scare us. My mom told us that NC didn't have ketchup and they had blue milk. At the age of 8 that was almost like the end of the world.

A Rose

I used to believe that when I touched a certain spot on a map or globe, that I was in fact pushing that place and squishing people.

I felt bad about it, but at the same time couldn't help pushing.

BoycottShampoo

I had a friend who thougt the Mount Rushmore national monument was a natural rock formation.

Anon

On the first day back at school after the summer break, my cousin was asked where he had been on holiday. "Chicken" he answered. He meant Turkey.

Trixie

I used to believe that people were spelling Taj Mahal wrong. I was sure it was Tajma Hall after some guy named Tajma.

Anon

My Dad once told me that if all the people in china jumped at the same time we would feel it as they landed. I used to imagine it happening and then getting all the people in Europe to jump and respond. One day I hope to organise this.

WPD

I used to believe that America was actually the entire world and that people from every state spoke a different language. People from Ohio (where I grew up, of course) spoke English. I was always confused as to why my grandparents who lived in Illinois spoke English...I guess I figured that they moved from Ohio.

Nick L.

When I was a kid I overheard my mother's friend say that her husband had gone to work in the Gulf. At the time I imagined that this involved playing golf on a massive golf course in the desert.

Bunker bound