Things you didn't know were real until you were an adult

[Isilder]

@Flywheel

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that “Episcopalian” was a real word. For years, I always misread it as “Escopalian” and assumed that people said “E-piss-copalian” as a cutesy affectation. (Like when Homer Simpson calls Lisa’s instrument a “sax-o-ma-phone.”)

You can tell their skepticism in the voice, there really no such thing,
The true name is “the King Henry VIII skism of the Catholic Church”.

[Bonnienclyde]

L999ooj 4

[Nava]

@Chronos

In general, vegetables comprise a lot fewer species than you’d think. If two vegetables seem even vaguely similar (and often even if they don’t), they’re probably the same species. Most of what we think of as related vegetables are just different varieties of the same species. Not only are the bell peppers all the same species, for instance, the same species also includes the cayenne, paprika, and jalapeno, among others.

My mother has three books about orchids in Navarre. A place smaller than Massachuttes and there are enough orchids there to fill three (slim, pocket-wide but long) books. All those years of hearing that orchids are “tropical flowers” and it turns out that tropical my ass.

Also, according to those books any different coloring/shape of orchid gets called a different “species”, although the immense majority of them can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, which will get called a hybrid or a different species depending on which option gets the breeder more money/published papers.

[clairobscur]

@LC_Strawhouse

I didn’t know until embarrassingly late that green and red bell peppers were the same thing, only harvested at different times.

The other way around for me : until some years ago, I believed limes and lemons were the same fruit, only harvested at different times (to my defence, limes are called “green lemons” in French).

[clairobscur]

@Bumbershoot

Until I moved to New Mexico I didn’t know that roadrunners can fly.

Roadrunners exist outside of cartoons?

[Nava]

I had that same reaction when I saw some in a documentary

[Lucas_Jackson]

@KRC

That Led Zeppelin was singing about an actual historical event in “When the Levee Breaks.” I had to buy a couple books on the 1927 Mississippi flood to explain the situation.

Another co-opted Zep tune. It was first recorded in 1929.

[Annie-Xmas]

I always thought “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was a song about some event in past history. I was shocked when I found out it happened in my lifetime–November 10, 1975.

[CalMeacham]

@Thudlow_Boink

I thought a wolverine was a cross between a wolf and a tangerine.

They’re hell to peel, but well worth it, because they’re delicious.
But the hairs get caught in your teeth.

[Nobody]

@clairobscur

Roadrunners exist outside of cartoons?

It was only a few years ago I learned that about Tasmanian Devils.

[Colophon]

@Nava

My mother has three books about orchids in Navarre. A place smaller than Massachuttes and there are enough orchids there to fill three (slim, pocket-wide but long) books. All those years of hearing that orchids are “tropical flowers” and it turns out that tropical my ass.

Also, according to those books any different coloring/shape of orchid gets called a different “species”, although the immense majority of them can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, which will get called a hybrid or a different species depending on which option gets the breeder more money/published papers.

You even get orchids in Britain!

Something I just learned from this thread: wolverines. I’m not sure what I thought they were; inasmuch as I’d ever thought about them at all I assumed they were female wolves, perhaps, or a literary/archaic name for wolves.

I just Googled it and find it’s some kind of big minky weaselly thing. WTF? Why would a superhero name himself after a giant stoat?

[Lemur866]

@clairobscur

Roadrunners exist outside of cartoons?

Yep.

Greater roadrunner

[Tread]

@Annie-Xmas

I always thought “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was a song about some event in past history. I was shocked when I found out it happened in my lifetime–November 10, 1975.

Yeah, Yeah!! Me too. The Song came within a year of the wreck. I always thought it was late 1800’s

[GreenElf]

I always thought the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald happened in the 1800s.

[usedtobe]

Luckily, this wasn’t me, but I find it amazing:
Woman in her thirties thought a “stillborn” was a baby asleep at birth.

For my own ignorance (hey, I don’t have one - how the hell am I supposed to know?) was that the uterus is a muscle - and a voluntary one at that…
And I thought the prostate was strange - a muscle which acts as a gland.

[susan]

I didn’t put it together until I was about 20 that chopped liver was made of liver.

I didn’t know about the US’s role in bombing/mining Cambodia or what the Khmer Rouge was and did until I was in my 40s and about to go to Cambodia.

I was teaching a freshman class a few weeks ago and asked how many students had a high school social studies class that talked at all about the war in Vietnam. Out of 23, none raised their hands.

[Hello_Again]

@Colophon

I just Googled it and find it’s some kind of big minky weaselly thing. WTF? Why would a superhero name himself after a giant stoat?

Wolverines are very muscular and strong for their size. Combined with their naturally aggressive nature, they can fuck up animals much larger than themselves. Wolverines have been observed to hunt and kill, for instance, deer, elk, and adult moose.

Wolverine, of Xmen fame, was also uncommonly short of stature, yet dangerous.

I wonder if the pictures you saw gave a misleading sense of scale. A Wolverine resembles a small bear more than a large weasel, in terms of size.

[Domesticated_Primate]

@Marion_Wormer

I was an adult (in my thirties) before I found out the Giants were both a football and a baseball team. I just had (and have) zero interest in any sports. Stuff would come on the radio or TV and I’d just zone it out.

Why there’s not a basketball team called the Giants, seems a missed PR opportunity.

They’re both? News to me. I had the impression they were football.

I’m also uninterested in sports.

[Bellhorn]

When I was a kid, in the 60s, I did get some sex-education. I was told that intercourse could lead to pregnancy and contracting venereal diseases, and that to prevent this a man could use protection, described to me as “like a plastic bag” over his penis. At 13, I envisioned it was like a baggie, with some kind of tape at the top. The whole thing was irrelevant since not many of had sex in High School back in the sixties, but…

When I arrived at college in the fall of 1969, I hit it off with an adorable young coed, and within a month, she informed that she was okay with going all the way. At that instant, I realized I had no idea where to get these specific baggies and whether they came with their own tape or if I’d have to buy a roll of tape as well.

(Could someone help me out? It’s been 44 years and my girlfriend is getting really tired of waiting.)