Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I like it for Chinese recipes, especially anything with chicken and pork, but it's great for soups and greens dishes too

It's a bit like bay leaves - it's hard to quantify what it does but you can tell when it's missing

I hate white pepper so much I never have a problem identifying gruner veltliner in blind tastings because it's one of the possible identifying notes.

I saw on some clickbait the other day that quartering potatoes isn't best way of making roasties. It recommended slicing them into long diagonal thirds instead, with the main gist of it being - that the more surface area on the potatoes the better. I just tried it earlier and and it is definitely some very sound advice.

Sounds nice, but aren't you just making chunky potato gratin?

more like "big slow-cooked chips" really, but there is definitely some good science to it!

That St. Louis in America is pronounced "Saint Lewis".

People do say “Saint Louie” sometimes, but it’s as a joke

How do you folks say Louis Armstrong?

loo-ey, but would probably be otherwise had he not been from new orleans

Yeah Joe Louis and Louis Brandeis and Louis Sullivan get the terminal S. Louis the Fourteenth and Louis Armstrong don't.

If it's spelt 'Louis' it's always loo-ee to me, unless I've been specifically told otherwise.

i believe Satchmo always referred to himself as "Lou-ISS," so that's how i say it.

(I could be wrong!)

apparently i was going by his hit single of "Hello, Dolly!"

ban lewis j

sort of indeterminate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Armstrong#Pronunciation_of_name

not really on the theme of the thread, but a Top Fact in a similar vein is that dionne warwick's real name is dionne warrick, but she changed it after it was misspelled on an early record. that means in the UK her last name is pronounced just like her real name, but because in the US they pronounce the name of the town wrong, they also pronounce her name wrong.

Ella definitely calls him "Louie" in their recording of "A Fine Romance."

And that settles it for me.

Or, a compromise: his given name was Lew-is; he was often called Lew-ie as a nickname. It makes as much sense as someone whose official name Richard and is nicknamed Richie. Or William nn Willie.

Louie vs Lucky Louie vs Louis Székely

Velma Middleton calls him Louie on St Louis Blues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2TUlUwa3_o

Guys there is a reddit version of this thread and it is a gift from the gods: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2yhxa9/what_fact_did_you_learn_at_an_embarrassingly_late/

That the birds and the other animals roaming around Disneyland were not robots ... I was almost starting 9th grade

I always thought I was uncircumcised, because I thought a circumcision meant cutting off the mushroom tip... which I still had
I was 18.

Last year I was in a retro arcade. That day I realised that in Tetris you have to build full rows to destroy the bricks. Till then I thought you just have to hit hard into a gap with a long brick. Always wondered why I was so bad in that game.
So that night I was drunk playin' Tetris for hours, because it was such fun.
I'm twentyeight years old.

I was a few months away from turning 17 and The Dark Knight was coming out. I checked IMDB to see what actors and characters would be in it, and that's when I learned that Harvey Dent's evil nickname is Two-Face, not Toothpaste as I had always thought. I never saw the name written down, in the animated series half his face was white and the other half was blue, and I just never really questioned it.

LMFAO @ 'Toothpaste'

didn't the tetris guy notice that lines were being removed even when he wasn't sliding long bricks into gaps?

man when you're sliding long bricks into gaps, the world fades away

from that reddit thread

That est. 19xx actually meant established. I always thought it was estimated because they forgot the exact date and just said the year.

I definitely remember thinking this as a kid and actually thinking it was weird that they only had an approximate year for something that was only 50 years ago or whatever.

we rented Tetris for the NES and I remember thinking that the goal was to build a castle or something, because the title screen was the Taj Mahal. I remember getting frustrated that the lines kept going away.

this is a good thread

So I saw signs everywhere that said "no littering. $200 fine." I thought it meant "you can't litter. But if you feel like leaving $200, that's fine." And I thought, "who the fuck would do that?" I was probably in fifth grade before the lightbulb went off.

I wonder if they've learned yet that lightbulbs go on, not off, when you realise something.

we rented Tetris for the NES and I remember thinking that the goal was to build a castle or something, because the title screen was the Taj Mahal

today you learn that it's St. Basil's Cathedral

Ha ha.

i'm going to pull an alba here and suggest that "lightbulb going off" is meant in the same sense that sirens go off, or alarms go off

dying @ toothpaste

No way can a lightbulb go off like a siren or alarm goes off.

Can't remember how old I was, or work out whether it was shockingly old, but there was very much an event that happened, twice, involving the words which seeing written I had thought pronounced 'pinney apple' and 'vee-hi-kyool' and hadn't clocked them with the spoken words

misled

just now - K9 = canine.

Oh, for pete's sake.

same as cardamom, I had heard para-dyme and seen paradigm and it took one incident to get schooled

Wait till you see what my ilx username is!

Parahttp://www.hungrydads.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/dig-em.jpg

I went so long without knowing that when one of the co-hosts of Polka Dot Door said "Polkaroo was here? I missed him again!" was meant to be a joke

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/27545366_10155494320098869_3311944330077119182_n.jpg?efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&oh=0b6ab9894d22602314fb4d718b126163&oe=5AE2611E

I can't remember exactly when I learnt this but for a long time I didn't realise Grant Hart sang songs in Husker Du. I knew he wrote songs but I thought Bob always sang them

Same

pathetic

lol

i don't get the tongue one

I suppose people didnt think that they were eating somethings actual tongue.

who eats tongues

to be fair people have some funny ideas about tacos de cabeza and headcheese, so it's fair to think people would hear tongue and think "nah, it can't actually be"

typically both of those don't include eye or brain, but people are like "omg beef brain tacos"

tacos de lengua are good, flappy

if a little chewy sometimes