Who can forget the impact the American T34s had?
When I first learned about the birds and bees, I thought every act of intercourse would result in a baby. I could never figure out why the people on TV always acted surprised when they found out they were pregnant; surely they would know if they had had sex.
I didn’t understand what the Mongol Hordes were. I thought it was just an expression my mother used when we were being particularly rambunctious as kids, or when my brothers’ friends would all descend on the house to watch movies.
Then, one day in college, I realized that Mongol was the root of Mongolia, and finally looked it up. I was amazed and thrilled to fill this void in my history knowledge. I’ve been trying to fill such voids ever since. I’ve still got a long way to go.
I’m not trying to be a jerk here, but I truly, honestly didn’t realize that people really believed in religion until I was a (young) adult. As a kid, I understood that religion was really important to some people, but so were lots of fictional things–some people really got into Shakespeare, for instance. I understood that ritual was really important, even when it didn’t really seem to have a reason behind it. And I understood a lot of the other bits and pieces of religion, like people wanting to hear a leader speak to them, or dress up in nice clothes, or have something to do on Sunday, or get moral instruction, or have a place to send kids to get out of their hair, etc.
But it wasn’t until much later that I realized people really, really believed that stuff, even the parts that made no sense at all. That when an adult said “Jesus rose from the dead”, that it wasn’t the same as saying “Harry Potter waved his magic wand” where you’re really stating a fact about a fictional thing.
Heh. I live in Washington state. I used to work with a woman whose favorite team was the Redskins. She explained that, when she was a little girl, she thought they were from Washington state, so rooted for them because they were the “home” team. Can’t remember if she said how old she was when she found out they’re from the other end of the country.
Likewise, Hungary being the place where Attila the Hun and his crowd set up shop. I was never really “into” history when I was young, but I’ve taken a strong interest in it now that I’m in my 40s and I’m learning all sorts of things. Like the fact that the word “slave” comes from “Slav”, i.e. the Slavic people. The Slavs lived in small communities and had little contact with other communities, and so had nothing in the way of an army. They were easy prey for Roman slave traders.
I don’t think the Romans enslaved Slavs as much as the people of the middle ages did, especially in the Arab slave trade.
This happened to me too. I treated Bible study like formal literature analysis (or at least as much as a kid/young teen can do literature analysis), and I always got confused when people got mad at me joking about contradictions and questioning why Baal is bad and such. Except my pastor, he was pretty cool and liked answering my questions, even if his arguments were fluffy nonsense in hindsight.
I think the point it hit me was when I was at a church camp. One of the people there was agnostic, a term I hadn’t heard before. When I learned what it was at first I was (privately) kind of… miffed. Not at him being agnostic, but in the sort of way where it’s like “why are you even here if you don’t want to be part of the book club?” And it took a few days after that to dawn on me that, no, all these cute songs and rituals aren’t just hardcore LARPing.
I think I always kind of knew, judging by the reactions and how people really seemed to think hell was a thing, but the sheer magnitude of what that really meant didn’t hit me until that moment.
Though some of them flunked flank.
These.
I think even now that I don’t fully believe this. I mean, I know intellectually that people believe in religious stuff, but emotionally? To believe something with all your heart not only when there’s no evidence one way or the other (understandable), but fully in the teeth of contrary factual evidence? I still have a hard time grasping that.
Hospitals for the Criminally Insane. :dubious: :eek:
There’s apparently one in California. I assumed, at best, this was some archaic holdover for sloppy fiction writers.
…until I was listening to some news show and it was mentioned. I learned that THIS year. I’m almost 45 years old. :smack:
Nitpick: The name “Hungary” derives ultimately from the Onogur people (esp. the Magyars), distinct from the Huns (although the Wikipedia article implies an early connection to the Huns).
The ‘H’ may have been prefixed to ‘Ungarii’ as a back-formation due to the early association of the country with Huns.
I had no idea Cat Scratch Fever was anything but a Ted Nugent song until, oh, about five years ago.
Just thought of another one, and this one is pretty embarrassing…but it had to be proven to me about two weeks ago that a Narwhal was a real animal. I thought it was like a unicorn.
I even quoted the Simpsons. “Haha, oh sure. A wonderful, maaaagical animal!”
I had to prove to my parents that a Narwhal was a real animal after we saw Elf.
All right, here’s one I’m not sure of: Bronies. I think I’ve even seen people here on the SDMB who claim to be adult males that are huge fans of My Little Pony. An NPR story yesterday referenced slowing sales of MLP collectibles to “Bronies”.
But are they real? I honestly have no idea if it’s all a big joke that I don’t get, or if there really are men that buy purple toy ponies.
ETA: I’m not judging and I’ve never seen the show, so please feel free to educate me.
Dear me, I was worse, I had the idea that adults ‘slept together’ and therefore didn’t know they had sex because it happened when they were asleep. I was 7, cut me some slack. I learned about the birds and the bees by finding my mom’s ‘secret marriage book’. But, that’s OT, I figured things out before I was an adult.
I was probably about 12 or 14 before I realized boarding schools were real. I thought it was just something parents threatened their children into behaving with, like the bogeyman will get you or Santa Claus will bring you a lump of coal or your face will get stuck that way.
I cried laughing reading this blog post about someone else’s similar discovery. NSFW language.
I wasn’t laughing at the realization, but how hilariously the author put it.
I had the opposite notion to jebert’s. I was under the impression that a couple needed only to have sex once; after which the woman would give birth, over the succeeding years, to however many or few babies happened to come along until the family was completed. It wasn’t until my mid-teens, that I came to accurately understand what the deal was.