places

The first line of Canada's nation anthem is "O Canada our home and native land." When I was young I thought that every country in the world used Canada's national anthem but they'd just substitute "Canada" for whatever their country's name was.

Anon

I thought that wars and battles were the same thing, and that conflict between countries were all just settled with one big fight.

Mark

Me and my best friend used to think Warsaw was pronounced "War-sah" until one of our polish friends told us how it was really pronounced

Emily

I'm not quite sure when I realized the err of my thinking, but for awhile, I thought Pennsylvania (where I live) was pretty much the entire country, and the states that border us were really far away. Someone I knew was moving to Ohio and I was aghast at how "far" she'd be. I'm pretty embarrassed that I was like, eight or nine when I thought this. I knew that Santa Claus was fake & had a basic grasp of what sex was, but I really thought our state was so damn important that it was the whole country. Blame it on the state maps the teacher used! Not a full nation map, just our own. It certainly *looked* big to me.

Nisa

My grandpa was from Florida. When he would come to visit he would stay in a hotel in our town. My little brother, Davey, thought that when we would visit him there that we were going to Florida where he lives.

Christina098

I remember this magical place where the only thing that occurred was choosing winners in contests that you could enter. The contests were usually in promotion of some favorite kids' food like cereal. The name of the place was RANDOM. As in: the winner will be chosen at random. I never could find it on a map.

Kevin Clearwater

When I was a small child, my mother would tell me about her parents and my dad's parents coming to the United States "on the boat." I used to believe that ALL immigrants came to the U.S. on ONE boat. There were not many ships, making many trips. Just one boat. "THE" boat.

Ellie

For some reason I always thought Gibraltar was an island between Spain and Africa. I didn't know it was actually attached to Spain!

Anon

I used to think the world was a big hollow place and we all lived inside the world. I had heard people say "how in the world" what in the world and the man in the moon

joe R

I used to believe that Paris was the capital of London and Italy was the capital of France.

Anon

I remember as a small child I used to beleive that England was the whole world. I remember my brother looking at me bemused when I asked what that bit on the bottom of the map of England was.

Nicola

When I was little,I used to believe that if I dug deep enough into the ground that the hole would come out in China.

Sue.

Until very recently (I am 13), I thought "Islam" was a country - apologies to any Muslims reading this. I guess I got it confused with Iran. For those that don't know, Islam is a religion.

Rachel

My father took me on a bus past Blackwall Tunnel - a Victorian road tunnel under the river Thames with an imposing building above the entrance. "See that" he said "that takes people all the way under the river" For a long time I thought that the windows and doors were closed and the whole building slid down under the river, like some kind of submarine ferryboat.

Mike B. London

I grew up in Nova Scotia, Canada where a lot of places are named in Native Canadian (ie, tatamagouche, etc) and we used to drive by a place called Musquodobit Harbour on our way to Clam Harbour beach. I always thought it was called Mosquito Bite Harbour and thought I would never like to go there!!

Jude Horrocks

When I was 5, we drove from California to Pennsylvania to visit my grandparents. My parents must've shown me where we were going on a map, and I saw that the land ended near there, because I assumed that when we got there, the land would just drop off right after their house. I remember looking down the street to see where the end was when we got there.

Laurel

When I was four years old, my parents took a vacation to the Grand Canyon. From their description, I invisioned it to be an inky black hole in the middle of a motel parking lot. A few years later when I was old enough, we traveled there. Imagine my surprise when I saw that big hole in the ground for myself.

Geography Girl

I thought Oakland was in Oklahoma. I was a big Oakland Raiders fan, and when I was six I was really sad to hear we were moving to California from Pennsylvania, which was so far away from my favorite football team!

dubass

As a child in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, UK I couldn't quite understand why the capital of Poland was so near - I thought there was a geographical timewarp that confused Walsall with Warsaw!

Catherine

I remember being in the first grade and hearing the phrase "Red China." I translated this as to mean that everything in China was red, the sky, the grass, the people. I felt bad for the kids there because they didn't get to see the pretty colors I got to see. It wasn't until I was in college that I found out what "Red China" really was.

Anon