Geomagnetic reversal

I didn't know, until I heard it from Alexi Filippenko, and read it in Wikipedia that :

"A geomagnetic reversal is a change in the orientation of Earth's magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south become interchanged."  It really does happen.

Why didn't someone tell me this before?  Why did I have to wait 63 years to find it out?  I suppose there's a bunch of other stuff out there I don't know.