The phrase ‘common knowledge’ refers to facts, ideas and norms that are usually known by nearly everyone, perhaps not explicitly taught but learned by a kind of cultural osmosis.

However, it turns out that not everyone has received this kind of invisible education, often with highly comical results.

Over on the AskReddit page, user LowKeyIegend posed this question:

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

And lots of people chipped in with the things they didn’t realise everyone knew apart from them…

‘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

‘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 realisation hit and she looked mortified that she hadn’t realised that before.’
–mrsquareguy

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

‘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

‘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

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

‘Until a few weeks ago I had no idea the liquor part of “liquor in the front, poker in the rear” was also double entendre.’
–Brad_Brace

‘I don’t know if it is common knowledge, but the other day I noticed that consonants from d to l are all in sequence on the keyboard. ‘
–Dzingel43

‘I just learned that honey practically never spoils! Can you even imagine finding a jar of ancient honey and realising it’s still good to eat?’
–LuckSignificant7507

‘When I was a kid, I watched Back to the Future and was telling my friends about it at school the next day.

‘My child brain remembered the Libyan terrorists as lesbian terrorists. I had clearly heard the word lesbian at some point and clocked it as a nationality, which is adorable in retrospect.

‘My teacher was like, ‘I don’t think that’s right,’ and I confidently doubled down. Good times.’
–PrinceAdamsPinkVest

‘I thought every country was an island. I’m from Hawaii.’
–B1TCA5H

‘At 42-that the written word “epitome” was not pronounced as eh-PIT-tome but as eh-PIT-uh-mee – a word that I had heard and used 10000 times.’
–remesabo

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