A childhood belief about spelling

I was confused by words with similar pronunciation or spelling.

- cavalry vs. Calvary (Did they take Jesus to a horse? And what did Jesus have to do with war and the armed forces? I was baffled.)
- prostate vs. prostrate (When I read sentences about men lying prostrate on the floor, I thought that one of their organs had been dismembered and tossed to the floor. Horrifying!)
- Andes vs. Alps vs. Appalachians vs. Adirondacks (Were these different names for the same mountain range? Then I thought maybe all mountain ranges started with the letter 'A'.)
- Mozart vs. Michelangelo (With so many similarities, I didn't realize they were different people. Both were men, and long dead, and European, and artistic.)
- Einstein vs. Edison (Hmmm. Both scientists of a sort...but it didn't help that one made discoveries about the speed of _light_ and the other invented _light_ bulbs.)