I think TriPolar was saying that he’d already mentioned the Oakland/Auckland guy 100 posts and four years ago.
The incident really did happen. The story went viral (or whatever they called “going viral” back in '85) – “Wrong Way Mike” appeared on talk shows all over the country, got a bunch of movie offers, and ultimately had a nervous breakdown from all the attention. For what it’s worth, his mistake came at the tail end of a long Air New Zealand flight from London to L.A., where he was supposed to change planes, but he said that “Auckland” spoken in a New Zealand accent sounds exactly like “Oakland” spoken in an American accent. I think he also said his ticket stub was smudged, so you could only clearly read the “-kland” part.
Couldn’t find a YouTube link, but I did watch his Tonight Show interview way back in the day. As I recall, Mike came across as not the brightest bulb in the box.
Not quite the same thing but an elderly Australian who lived here in Thailand told me a young Thai whippersnapper once said to him, very slowly: “Your English is very good.” He figures the guy mistook him for Austrian.
To the OP, I’ll bet that happens a lot more than reported. People try to cover up when they’ve been immensely ignorant.
When my wife and I went to Puerto Rico flying into San Juan, my niece (39 at the time) said we absolutely should visit San Juan Hill where Franklin Roosevelt rode up with the Tough Riders.
Assuming she had the capacity to be embarrassed, she would have been even more so upon learning it ended up being a foot charge, because Teddy was too impatient to wait for the horses to be unloaded (one story I’ve read) or the boat the horses were on hadn’t arrived yet (another story).
There’s a Wyoming Correctional Facility in western New York (it’s named after Wyoming County). I knew prisoners who thought they were in the state of Wyoming. They couldn’t believe they were still in New York after a six hour drive from New York City.
Dominica and the Dominican Republic have vaguely similar names, and are both in the Caribbean. They have virtually nothing else in common.
I have seen it mentioned on a couple of TV shows that people have booked trips to Dominica thinking they were headed for DR. You don’t want to do that. The former is not your typical Caribbean destination.
When I was in international logistics, having documents mailed to Dominica from our various offices around the world was at least a monthly occurrence. Our office was in the DR.
In Virginia, it’s common for roads to be named after a place that they go to. For example, Columbia Pike goes to the District of Columbia, Leesburg Pike goes to Leesburg, and Richmond Highway goes to Richmond. In most of these cases, the road changes names once it arrives at the destination, and sometimes will even be reverse-named for the place on the other end of the road! Confusing at first, perhaps, but it’s actually a neat way to tell people how to get places. Need to get to Bumtown? Just look for signs for a Bumtown Road.
