Which piece of common knowledge did you genuinely have no idea about? – 17 facts that passed people by

There’s a lot you need to know in this crazy world, which means certain pieces of information are always going to fall through the cracks.

Usually you can style out your ignorance, but every now and then a popular fact will blow your mind. LowKeyIegend wanted to learn more, so they put the following question to r/AskReddit:

‘What’s a “common knowledge” fact that you genuinely had no idea about?’

You may just learn something from these top replies…

1.

‘Not me but my ex, at 25 years old, mentioned something about wanting to scuba dive under an island. After I said that islands don’t float and they’re the tops of underwater mountains, the realization hit and she looked mortified that she hadn’t realized that before.’
-mrsquareguy

2.

‘Stripper poles spin.

‘I had no idea. I thought the dancers just had some crazy gravity defying skills.’
-nicolekay

3.

‘I hate this one, but here we are: when I was a kid, like 8 or 9, I thought that the sound cicadas make actually came from the sun because, in ever cartoon in the 90s, if it was hot in the show, they’d zoom in on the sun shining and that sound would go with it.’
-theguyfromtheweb7

4.

‘I just found out today that casualty doesn’t always equal fatality. Casualty can include injuries, sickness or other reasons for not being able to continue in a military conflict.’
-atlaus

5.

‘That pineapples grow on bushes on the ground, not on trees.

‘I always pictured them hanging from some sort of tropical palm tree like coconuts. I was watching a random travel vlog in my twenties and saw a massive field of pineapples growing right out of the dirt on prickly bushes. My brain completely froze. I felt like my whole childhood was a lie.’
-sincerely_prasanna

6.

‘Apparently you need to clean the filter in your dishwasher regularly or it gets gross. Also, there’s a filter in your dishwasher.’
-30phil1

7.

‘I was probably in my 20s before I learned that ponies are not baby horses.’
-BricksFriend

8.

‘A friend of mine once said how crazy it was that the earth was only 2008 years old. It was the year 2008 at the time, so this 21 year old high school graduate thought the whole damn planet was 2008 years old.

‘I stopped my car in the middle of the parking lot and made sure I understood what she meant before trying to explain how that’s just crazy. It eventually lead to me yelling “dinosaurs, Brandi, HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE FUCKING DINOSAURS?”‘
-Wolf_Mama

9.

‘I grew up in CA, so I never saw fireflies until I moved to the east coast. I literally thought they were a thing from movies because an adorable, glowing bug that doesn’t bite must be fictitious.’
-PoochedEEggs