According to my unscientific survey.
I was out with my 30 year old friend and I referenced it and she had no idea what I was talking about. I was surprised because she’s a very knowledgeable person. When she read about it she was equally surprised that it was a hole in her knowledge.
So we started polling her and my Millennial friends and my nieces and nephew and around half of them had never heard of it. Kind of crazy how common knowledge changes.
If 90% of your available brain space is taken up with ‘TikTok dances to a musical setting of Trump’s ‘eating cats and dogs’ comments,’ then you don’t have room for any human history.
Just because it’s something old people know about, doesn’t make it more important than something younger people know about. It was an aviation disaster from the last century.
Meh.
Things that seem important fade away after a few decades.
How many people know about the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse?
Or, the plane that crashed into the Empire State Building?
Or WWI?
Or, the richest athlete in history? Gaius Appuleius Diocles - Wikipedia
Or, the death toll from the Spanish Flu?
The Titanic had a blockbuster movie made about it, which is still widely watched today. It follows that many millennials (mainly first-world ones) would know the basic story of a disaster that happened in real life a long time ago.
There was a Hindenburg movie but it’s less well known today. General awareness about events of the past is basically tied to how much current publicity is available for the uninformed to absorb.
Oh, so we’re not talking about the guy who put Hitler in charge of Germany?
That must have been some chimney.
Hah, ha. I was able to fix it…
I teach human geography (which includes, of course, a ton of history) to Midwestern undergrads. I can sympathize with the OP.
However, I was impressed that my then-12-year-old son and his friend di know about the Hindenburg – such that, when those astronauts were going to splash down last year, they were watching it on TV and started chanting “Hin-den-burg! Hin-den-burg!” – they were jocularly “hoping” the parachutes wouldn’t open (or it would burn up in the atmopshere), and there’d be a disaster.
You’re thinking of Zoomers.
In the grand scheme of things, I don’t know how important the Hindenburg disaster really was. It’s importance mainly stems from the live coverage on the radio as well as the film of the disaster that made the newsreels. You’re right, it was an aviation disaster from the last century, and while it was spectacular, it wasn’t even all that devastating. The Texas City disaster in 1947 killed nearly 600 people and I bet more people know about the Hindenberg with its 35 casualties.
Yeah, what made it unique was the memorable radio reporting of the event and the film. Since then, there have been many spectacular disasters that have been broadcast. And as you say, the event wasn’t of great historical importance.
Yeah, but did anyone come up with a catchphrase as catchy as “Oh, the humanity” to talk about the Texas City Disaster?
Who can forget “Oh, the humanity!” once they’ve heard it?
Wasn’t this disaster the end of hydrogen(?)-filled dirigibles, having been exposed as just too dangerous? Who knows what kind of role these airships might have played in the years following, if they had not been so dangerous?
Is there a poll for older folk and what they know about modern history?
I’m pleasantly surprised half of American Millennials have heard of The Hindenburg.
Unless they’re paying attention to History Channel type shows that continue to try to determine how the airship caught fire there’s no relevance to their lives. Millennials didn’t grow up with television and movies focused on WWI and WWII and the rise of militaristic Germany to provide context. In the life of a millennial the greatest manmade catastrophe of all time occurred this century and fears of even greater catastrophes they may face don’t involve ancient flying technology.
Unless they think it’s just a sad story and not based on an actual event.
I don’t know what’s taught in history classes today, but my memories are of memorizing dates of battles. Granted, I didn’t like those classes - probably because of the focus on conflicts and conquests. I’ve learned so much more from documentaries on TV than I ever got out of textbooks.
Can you even imagine trying to learn everything we learned, everything they experienced and everything that happened in between those two periods?
The Sultana exploded and sank in 1865 taking with it about 1,500 people. To be honest, I had to look it up to make sure I got the name right, but I suspect most people have no idea it even happened.
It’s possible that more know “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”