It is not just random people who think that the District of Columbia must be Colombia. My sister-in-law was born in Washington, DC. When she applied for a passport, she put “District of Columbia” as her birthplace. The passport came back, saying that she was born in Colombia.
We were working on the admission of grad students to the department, and someone brought up a student from Puerto Rico, whom they wanted to see admitted. The prof in charge said that we were reviewing the applications from American citizens first!
I have two stories, one funny, one disturbing, both from fourth grade classrooms.
Here is the funny one:
This reminds me of once when I was a principal and walked into a fourth grade classroom. The teacher was teaching about the 13 original colonies and a map showing the outlines of the colonies was displayed in the front of the room. She pointed to the map and announced to the students that she had a trick to help them remember North and South Carolina. “They are shaped almost the same, like mirror images of each other,” she said, showing two states on the map.
“Except that that’s not North Carolina and South Carolina. That’s Virginia and North Carolina,” I pointed out.
This was funny because the teacher laughed and accepted the correction (good modeling for her students that it is okay to be wrong and we all can learn).
Here is the disturbing one:
My son was in fourth grade when his teacher made a geography error. I forgot what it was, but I remember what happened next. My son, who had spent most of his days since age three playing on a giant puzzle mat which was a map of the world, raised his hand and gave the correct information. She told him he was wrong. He is a very polite boy, but he was bothered by the class’s learning incorrect information, so he persisted. I am sure he said it nicely, because I have never heard him handle anything less than nicely. He repeated the correct information, and asked if she wanted to get out a map so she could check it. She started yelling at him that she is a teacher and so she is right and he should not question her.
My husband and I were in favor of calling the teacher, but my son was opposed to parental involvement in his school issues even back then. He thought it was best to let it go, and so we did.
That reminds me of when I was in 4th grade and my teacher corrected me when I read aloud the words “Yosemite National Park”. My pronunciation was correct, but she announced to the class that the first word was, in fact, pronounced “Yo-suh-MITE”. I was too afraid to correct her.
I wonder how many of my former classmates still say it that way.
Also, it is bad flag etiquette to fly one national flag above another on the same flagpole.
Speaking of Confederate flags, there are probably many people would have trouble finding the two US states that have Confederate flags in their state flags.
Do kids still spend time on geography in grade school? I know I did and my kids did, in 3rd or 4th grade. Do people not learn things like states and capitols, continents and foreign countries or do they just forget it?
In one of my places of employment, we had some material that was filed by state by the admin. I was new and I looking for something in W. Virginia and couldn’t find the WV file so asked the secretary. She had no idea that there was even a state called West Virginia. She was filing all the West Virginia stuff in the Virginia file as she though it was the western part of that state.
Flying one national flag above another on the same flagpole is conventionally a way of indicating a wartime victory (the higher flag representing the victor). For example, paintings of War of 1812 sometimes show captured ships flying the flag of the victor over the flag of the defeated.
Regarding two national flags on the same flagpole…
Here is a page showing a photo from World War 2 after the US Navy captured the German submarine U-505, showing the US flag over the German naval ensign, indicating a wartime victory by the US over Germany:
I took a couple of carpets from Iran into the US through LAX some years ago (yes, perfectly legal). Because of the value, I declared them to the customs guy. He asked where they were from, so I said “they are Persian carpets”. he ran his finger up and down his list of countries for a few minutes looking for Persia, couldn’t find it, and waved me through.
Not a country but dealing with customs. Deploying back from Somalia back in the last century. When we, the unit, flies back we were expecting to land in Ireland as a stopover to refuel before we go back to the states.
During our briefing, we were told not to buy things from the duty free store as they, the command, didn’t want to have a problem with customs.
It reinforced once again that i had deployed with a chain of command that were idiots.
That is not the point of the story.