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the world

2,714 beliefs in this area

After looking at a world map which had Mercator cylindrical projection (the type of maps where the lines of longitude are parallel with each other) in one of my early years in school, I thought that Greenland was more than twice the size as Australia because Greenland is at a high latitude and has been severely stretched out (Australia is actually about three and a half times the size of Greenland). It took me a long time to realise that on those kinds of maps, the distance between the lines of longitude decreases with latitude.

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i used to think that alaska was an island, since it was always inserted at the bottom left on every map of the usa...

I used to think that you can get as much money as you like at a bank for free. I could not understand why shops could not give things away for free, but required one to visit a bank first.

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When I watched a curling game on the movie newsreel, I thought it was played on a waxed floor rather than on ice.

when i was little i thought that Asia was a little country not a whole continiet (i thought that part of the world was part of europe)...........you can imagin my surprise in 10TH GRADE GEOGRAPHY when i finally learned the truth

— silly bee-owch!the world : places

I enjoyed watching NFL Football and was amazed that there was a game in New England. I thought the NFL was playing a special game over seas in England. What solidified it for me was that I always heard that it rained a lot in England and this game was being played in the rain. I'm still a little unsure what all makes up "New England" since it's not one of the 50 states.

— Still a bit confusedthe world : places

When I was 5 Jimmy Carter was running for reelction against Reagan. My parents were devoted Democrats, and somehow I got the idea in my head that if REagan won he would send all of the people who voted for Carter to Alaska to live with the Eskimos. I kept this to myself for a while, petrified, before finally breaking down and telling my mother, who assured me I would not need a parka no matter how the election turned out!

so public schools have yearly standardized testing where i grew up. and there was always the section to fill in basic information about yourself. like name, age, grade, etc...

one of those was also for ethnicity. all the standard choices, african american, hispanic, asian, pacific islander/eskimo/native american/other and caucasian.

only i didn't know that caucasian meant "all white folks" (tha’d be me) so i marked the eskimo pacific islander one until middle school.

Once I asked my mum what she would do if she won the lottery... she said she would faint. I didn't want her to faint and every week i wished and hoped like crazy we wouldn't win.

When I was little my family and i were going to Miami, Florida. I would always here my mom saying "Miami" thinking she was saying "My ami." So i asked her, "why are we going to your ami? when can we go to my ami?"

I used to believe that other countries are in the sky.
Because i thought air planes are going to the sky, and never come back.

— Isuru and Hisashithe world : places

When I'd hear the announcer on the news report what the Dow Jones average was each day, I thought he was saying 'chairs' instead of 'shares.' So if the market was down, say, forty shares, I imagined a game of musical chairs, with someone taking away all these gray folding chairs in a big room.

— queenevethe world : money

I used to believe that when someone won "a trip around the world" (like on a game show) it would take the rest of their life because there were so many places they would be visiting and the world was so big...so I thought.

When I was a preschool kid, I used to believe that kings and queens only existed in fairy tales, like the other characters (dragons, fairies and things like that) that Mom had said were "just make-believe". Seeing news stories from England on TV impressed and confused me at the same time: "Mommy, is that Elizabeth lady real?"

— Ingeborg S. Nordénthe world : politics

I used to believe…

That the leader of each country was the smartest person in that country and that they were also the richest people in the country. Except for in America where i thought astronauts were richer and England where i thought the Queen was richer.

— Tim Fawcettthe world : politics

I used to think that the United Kingdom was the world's biggest amusement park--a whole island! I figured that since the *Magic* Kingdom had the same word in the name, they must be the same thing.

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