‘What’s the worst bit of general knowledge you’ve heard someone get wrong?’ – 21 stupidly confident people

The architects of the internet must have believed that everyone having literally all the knowledge in the world at their fingertips would have produced a global population of incredibly intelligent people. And yet, somehow, we all seem to be getting stupider.

They’ve been mulling this over on the AskUK subreddit after user darkel2001 posted this:

What’s the worst bit of general knowledge you’ve heard someone confidently get wrong?

Me and some colleagues were talking about that popular content creator on Instagram/TikTok/YouTube who goes around asking people (usually Gen Z) general knowledge questions like ‘Name a country in Africa’ or ‘What’s the biggest planet in our solar system?’

The answers are always completely wrong and pretty left-field. Obviously he’s interviewing loads of people and only stitching together the worst/funniest responses for the final video.

One of my colleagues flat out refuses to watch him because he genuinely believes no one in the UK can be that dumb.

It got me thinking though – what’s the worst bit of general knowledge you’ve heard someone confidently get wrong? For me, I once knew a girl who genuinely believed strawberry milk came from cows that ate strawberries, and she absolutely refused to believe otherwise.

And people were queuing up to add their own experiences, like these…

1.

‘Team building thing at work. Get a category and a letter of the alphabet and name as many things in the category as you can in 30 seconds. Colleague 1 gets pop stars/bands and the letter ‘I’

‘Right, er er, INXS, er Ice Cube, Ice T, Iron Maiden ..er ..umm .. shit ..er..Isaac Newton??’

Colleague 2 pissing themselves laughing ‘Hahaha Isaac Newton! Jesus Christ!! Ha ha ha. You’re an idiot. He was an American president!”
–quicksilverjack

2.

‘My very, very smart husband thought the capital of Brazil was Rio Ferdinand.’
–cowboysted

3.

‘My primary school teacher told us you need a passport to go to Wales, and that your lungs are roughly level with your navel.’
–smoulderstoat

4.

‘I found out I was pregnant when I was 22. After birth my friend of the same age asked me if it felt weird when the umbilical cord went back in…kinda like an extendable tape measure! I really don’t know what my face looked like but she just looked at me an said quietly, ‘Oh does it not do that?”
–Agitated_Strain_6260

5.

‘I had a friend who though IKEA was a country famous for making furniture.’
–frankchester

6.

‘Mike Graham confidently insisting that you can grow concrete is pretty high on my list.’
–ember_eb

7.

‘My brother, who has a masters in chemistry, believed until only a couple of months ago that cous cous grew on a bush.’
–Garxgarb

8.

‘Someone in the pub quiz got really insistent that the main language of Argentina is Portuguese, because Google AI on his phone said so (this was after the quiz had ended, so confirming answers on your phone was fine). He managed to convince half the pub that he was right (‘He’s looked it up!’), and they convinced the question master to accept it as a valid answer, even though it isn’t.

I started arguing, realised it was pointless, drank up and walked home in a huff.’
–theevildjinn

9.

‘All said by the same friend:

NASA is one singular man.

Central London is the centre of the UK.

There’s no point me renewing my passport before my wedding this year because I’ll need a new birth certificate.’
–Ok-Engine7401

10.

‘I was at a pub quiz with my boyfriend a couple of years ago, one question was: which organ in the body produces insulin?. My boyfriend confidently and quickly answered: ‘THE PLACENTA’.’
–suzzhotfuzz

11.

‘Worked with a girl, she must have only been 18?, that thought Timbuktu was on the moon.

Bearing in mind that we both worked for a Language Service Provider at the time you’d have expected ones georaphical knowledge to be OK.’
–Leader_Bee