the world: places

For along time I thought the Middle East and Eastern Europe were just different names for the same place!

I remember riding in the car with my mom and having an epiphany. I randomly said out loud " Oh my God. Alaska is attached!" She was confused, so I explained that I had never realized that Alaska is attached to Canada. On maps of the U.S, Alaska and Hawaii are drawn out in the middle of the ocean in their own little boxes. I seriously thought Alaska was and island.
I was 13 when I realized this!

I thought when someone gets the key to the city it's like a master key that opens any lock in the city. I figured it was to show how much they trusted them because they could possibly use it to break into places. I also thought that a skeleton key was a key made out of human and animal bones and wondered why they would do such a thing.

For some reason when I was a kid I figured since the White House was so big they couldn't paint it by hand so when they had to repaint it I thought they would have these 4 helicopters with chains carry this HUGE tub of white paint and then dump it out right on top of the White House!

I used to believe that the White House was in Washington state, and always imagined the president residing at the top of the country like he was looking out over everyone.

I used to believe we lived IN the earth rather than ON it.

I live in the United States, and when I was four I didn't know where that was on a map. I got a little toy globe that showed the names of all the continents but not the countries. I knew I lived in "America", but on the globe I saw North America and South America and I didn't know which one I lived in. I decided South America was cooler because it had the Amazon Rainforest, so I chose to think I lived there, but was corrected by my parents soon after.

When I was a kid, I thought that the people that lived on the south pole had to hold onto the grass, or they'd fall forever since they were upside down. And I thought the houses were somehow attached to the Earth by the ceilings.

I live in Scotland, on the mouth of the River Fourth, and for years I thought that Edinburgh (on the other side of the river) was the rest of Europe because my parents used to say that Germany was just across the water.

When I was about 3 my parents would take me to a Christmas light show every year. (I called this "Light Move Land".) Every time we were driving at night and were going towards a city, I saw the dots of light (from the buildings) in the distance and thought we were going to "Light Move Land". Even once I realized what it really was, I still called it that.

I thought that Loch Ness was actually Loch Nest because it was like the monster's nest

I used to believe Las Vegas is the capital city of Alaska since they sound alike. To make things worse, my officemate started to think the same way right after I told him my misconception.

When I was a child, I believed Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota was actually New York city. I thought anytime my mom or dad took me there, we were going to New York.

I used to believe that if you went to the bottom of the world (Antartica) you would be upside down,and eventually fall off.

I thought that all US state borders were rivers because my hometown was near a river that served as the border between my state and another. I never considered that perfectly straight rivers don't exist in nature.

I used to believe the whole world before 1960 was all in black & white, because old television shows were never in color.