Recently, we shared 16 obvious things that people only realized later in their lives. Like this one:
That prompted many BuzzFeed readers to share their own "duh" moments, so here are 17 of them!
1.
"I realized that T-shirts are called that because they make the shape of a capital T."
[Editor's note: This is largely thought to be true, though there's some debate.]
2.
"I recently realized that when someone 'hangs up' the phone, it refers to how people used to hang up their old phones on the wall to end the call."
3.
"I’m truly not an idiot but just realized last week that sunflower seeds come from actual sunflowers. I’ve just never thought about it or seen them growing!"
4.
"I learned about a year ago that Macintosh is actually a type of apple...then I realized why Apple the company named their computers 'Macintosh' and it’s actually quite clever!"
5.
"Recently I realized that sit-com stands for situational comedy, and boy did I feel like the dumbass in a room full of people."
7.
"That air quotes are drawing little 'quotation marks' around the words. I thought it was just being sarcastic."
9.
"I had no idea that pickles were cucumbers. My dumb ass was so confused why you never see these mysterious vegetables called pickles on their own."
10.
"Still blown away by the fact that I only found out that a pony is its own thing and not a baby horse only a couple years ago. I'm almost 40."
11.
"I realized the other week that 24/7 means 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and it blew my mind, but according to my friends everyone already knew this. Oops."
12.
"I recently realized that cigarettes are called that because they are just small cigars. Get it? CIGAR-ettes."
13.
"I was probably 26 before I realized the 'second' hand on a clock referred to the amount of time it was counting. Up until then I thought it was the 'second' as in the one that comes after the 'first' hand."
14.
"When I was younger and in elementary school ('70s), they used to put Hawaii and Alaska in a little square next to each other just southwest of California. I always wondered how can Hawaii be so warm and Alaska be so cold when they are so close together? I had no idea until I was older and saw a correct map that they weren’t right next to each other."
16.
"Miles per hour. I used to just think it was a unit of speed. I was probably 18 before I realized it was because you were actually traveling that many miles within an hour of time. Facepalm."
17.
"For longer than I'd like to admit, I thought reindeer were just magical deer. I didnt realize they were real animals until I saw them in a zoo."
