That Pluto is a planet.
For a long time, i thought that people thinking that the pyramids were made by aliens was a joke and that the number of people who truly believed it was 0
Traffic lights were hand operated.
The small town where I grew up had one pedestrian traffic light for crossing the main road. There was a small brick shed next to that traffic light with no windows and a little door. When I was little I was convinced that was an operation’s center where someone worked to turn the lights red or green.
In reality it was a power substation for the neighborhood, but I was seriously convinced that behind that door was a man looking at a TV screen and operating the traffic light at the right moment.
When we went to a larger town nearby, where there were traffic lights without a convenient mysterious building nearby, I told myself that the traffic light people were most likely working under ground, peeping through the drains.I… was good at making up answers for myself instead of just asking my parents.
City Planner: Hey, I’m just reviewing the plans for the traffic light control shed and that there’s no way for the guy inside to see what the traffic’s doing outside.
Architect, who forgot that windows exist: Err… that’s for … well… it’s to ensure the safety of the operator during road rage incidents … They’ll be using CCTV to watch everything. Of course I know about windows haha…
That Africa was largely unexplored by humans and mostly unpopulated
My mom told me that Dad went to work to make money, and I actually expected to see money making machines when I visited him at the office.
Plot twist: OPs father actually works at the United States Mint (but in an office job)
I used to think the poles holding up traffic lights were hollow, and there was a person sitting inside throwing switches to change the lights while looking at a watch to keep the timing fair.
Well you got the hollow part right, at least on some of them.
I thought there was a little room under ground with people watching cameras underneath each intersection to control the lights
That the Gulf War was in the Gulf of Mexico. It was the only one I knew!
That our blood was blue, but turned red when exposed to air and light. All because a teacher told us so.
I heard this one from a teacher as well when I was very young! And it may well have been the same teacher telling us that blood was made of white blood cells and red blood cells, and I knew from my deep work in relevant fields (paints and crayons) that this combination did not result in blue.
Oh yeah I had a few.
- That the moon you see during daytime is actually Mars (I then repeated that to my big sister and she believed it for an embarrassingly long amount of time)
- That the “up” arrows on traffic lights were for planes
Me in the middle of my flight when my plane pauses in midair to wait for a traffic light
That all large salty bodies of water were called “the mediterranean sea.”
That my grandma’s name was “grandma”.
The big stereo speakers in my living room contained tiny orchestras
That Europe is a separate country where all the politicians live
To be faaaaaaaaiir. They might as well
That Everyone the Police arrest is a bad person.
I thought chocolate was a color