history

I heard that Martin Luther King had a dream and that he was dead. I thought he had this dream when he was lying in his coffin.

Anon

When I was litle I thought Andrew Jackson was a famous historic black man, since his last name was Jackson, and Michael Jackson was black.

persephone

when i was younger my mom told me that there tvs were black and white, so for about 3 years i thought that meant the tvs were spotted like cows.

Cassie S.

my 10 year old granddaughter was looking at black and white picture book at the dr office and said "was it still b&w when you were born?" she thought the whole world was like that.

shauna

I thought Bonnie and Clyde were fictional characters.

Anon

I used to believe (when I was 8) that Hitler was description for famous singer, because of "hit"

esesman

This is really the opposite of a silly belief but amusing anyways. I was a very skeptical little kid (and am now a skeptical adult). In addition to realizing by the age of 4 or so that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny weren't real, I went further and refused to believe that dinosaurs had ever actually existed. I had seen pictures of them in books and on TV, but my cynical little self already knew that not everything you read or saw was true, so I figured that dinosaurs were made up. I persisted in this until I was 7 and we went to the Smithsonian museum of natural history, and they had a bunch of dinosaur skeletons. I felt ok about believing them after that because if you acutally observed something for yourself, it was ok to believe in it. As you might imagine, I did well in science classes but had a tough time with CCD...

-the little cynic

When I was little I had heard that the Roman Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. So I thought that he litterarally just sat around playing his fiddle while Rome was destroyed.

I think it's because of several cartoons that portrayed Nero as a fiddler that I developed this belief.

Glowworm

I thought that FDR was an government organization during the Great Depression, not a president.

Anon

When I was about 7, I saw part of a screening of "King Lear" on TV. The part I saw took place in the darkness and rain. My dad told me the play was set during the Dark Ages, so for many years afterward I always thought of the Dark Ages as centuries of unrelenting darkness and rain.

Daividh

I used to believe Ab Lincon and Martin Luther King Jr. worked together becuase they both wanted to help African Americans.

Jessica

At some point between the ages of 3 and 6, when I first learned about slavery, I thought that black people were still slaves. This belief was compounded by the fact that I live in a suburban Minnesota neighborhood where there were basically no black people to tell me I was wrong. Fortunately, I found out when I told my mom that I thought that making black people be slaves was mean, and that they should stop. She set the story straight before I ran into any trouble, because Minnesota is so white that the only black people I had ever seen at that point were on television. I was kinda embarassed, seeing as how I just asked her if she remembered back when the dinosaurs were still around.

BBQ Platypus

My younger brother just three seconds ago asked me what A.D. means. He thought it meant after democracy!!! i about died laughing and told him it meant Anno Domani. He claims our mom told him that but I'm not so sure...

C

My friend was an army brat, and went to a school for American children in Germany. One day the teacher asked the class to draw a "German Scene", so my friend drew Adolf Hitler, not knowing who he was (she was only 12). She only new him from history books, etc. The teacher explained, kindly, that he was "a bad man" and told her to draw another picture.

Chelsea Changa

I was a young kid at the time of the Berlin Airlift. I heard at the time how pro-Russian forces had built the Berlin Wall to isolate East Berlin. I was still vague at the time as to where and what some placenames applied to. I had Berlin and Brooklyn confused at the time, so I thought the Russians had actually occupied a portion of New York city!

Harriet

When i was a kid i watched lots of shows about history of kings and queens. Because kings and queens are often fat and unfit, i thought a logical explination for this would be that they stayed in they're thrones and never EVER got out!

HistoryluvR

I used to think kings and queens couldnt leave their thrones.Food,drinks,and everything were brought to them,and there was a toilet in the throne.

sam

I thought that "medieval" times were called "men evil" times, and felt bad for anybody who had to live back then, if everyone was so evil.

Anon

I used to believe that Clint Eastwood actually lived in the old west, but I also knew that he was still alive in the present day (this was around 2009 or so), so you can imagine how old he must've been if that was the case. I probably believed this because the main place I learned about him from was Back to the Future.

Anon

When I was 5 or 6, my mom and my aunt would watch the Watergate hearings with me in the room, and they loved making fun of Sen. Lowell Weicker because he would move his eyebrows up and down. They called him Wacky Weicker. So for years I thought there was a U.S. senator actually named Wacky Weicker.

Oh, and I used to believe Watergate was about a gate that held back water. I had no idea it was the name of an office building until I was in my early teens.

Anon