It’s funny that the Hindenburg is the specific example given. About 15 years or so ago we had to drive a bunch of Army trucks to a central location to turn them in. I mentioned the Hindenburg and the two guys with me had no idea what I was talking about. The subject didn’t come up randomly. At the time we were about a hundred feet from the crash site on Lakehurst Naval Airstation.
For a millennial born in 1994, the Hindenburg disaster is as remote to their lives as the 1890 Asiatic Flu pandemic is to a boomer born in 1950.
I’ve always heard it as:
This is not too surprising or terrible. I mean it was a disaster that happened almost a century ago where 35 people died. Its only a big deal because of the film (and commentary)
You mean when a Led Zep song comes up on their Spotify shuffle and there’s a tiny little thumbnail? Probably that it’s a weird stock photo.
What are you telling me? That millennial hipsters aren’t listening to vinyl albums on their vintage hi-fis?
No one thinks that it’s terrible and it doesn’t matter why it’s a big deal. It’s just interesting (to me) that it has ceased to be a big deal in the last twenty years.
I’m working my ways through early episodes of Archer and recently watched the one about Excelsior, a new helium airship. Sorta funny.
My favorite episode.
For a long time, the Hindenburg was the most spectacular manned flight disaster on film. It and all other 20th Century aircraft disasters pale to insignificance for anyone who has seen news footage of 9/11.
Some things become historical curiosities, while others remain important. The Hindenburg disaster was remembered mainly because of the live news report, which was a new thing at the time. Gaius Appuleius Diocles is of interest mainly to historians.
But the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse is still relevant to engineers. The 1918 flu pandemic got a lot of attention in recent years because of Covid. WWI has a lot of relevance today, especially with how the draconian Treaty of Versailles helped lead to WWII and the holocaust.
There are probably people today who don’t know who Saddam Hussein was. Some people care only about what’s directly in front of their faces. But I would expect an intelligent, informed adult to know important historical facts. I think you could argue that the Hindenburg wasn’t really important, but there are some things that people should know even though they happened more than a few decades ago.
Heavier-than-air aircraft were able to supplant lighter-than-air aircraft after the Hindenburg (and the British R101, the US Akron and Macon) clearly demonstrated their lack of feasibility by being more dependable. But only because six years earlier Knute Rockney had been killed in a rotten wooden Fokker trimotor. The public outrage spurred development of aluminum unibody planes.
I’m well aware of it because I studied mechanical engineering. I don’t think that most people outside of the field were aware of it even 35 years ago when I watched the footage.
That’s Gen Xers. Millennials don’t have time for your old timey music stored in linear access format that you can’t access via smartphone or even query with a clip search.
“God, who’d want to put a bomb on that…some broad gets on there with a static-y sweater and BOOM, it’s ‘Ohhh, the humanity!’”
Stranger
Aren’t you making a pretty big assumption there that the Boomers would generally know what the Hindenberg was?
Hmm. Fair point. I have asked a few people around my age who are late boomers/Generation Jones/early GenX and they have all heard of it.
Yeah, putting World War I on a list of forgotten historical trivialities seems very odd. Anyone who’s taken high school world history or American history would have at least heard of World War I. It set the course of the rest of the 20th century and is foundational to understanding the current world order.
How soon will the common touchstone that was the Dancing Itos be forgotten and lost from the cultural memory? It’s been 29 years and perhaps not of the same significance but I remember.
This is the kind of crap I hate. Millennials and younger (because millennials are not the youth of today) are not stupid and their interests are no more shallow or trivial than younger people in the 1960s. Or most older people.
One I’d wager most older adults think was far worse than it actually was (I did, just from impressions).
Exactly.
While I was taught that version in school, I thought that modern historians did not believe the Treaty of Versailles led to WWII. Oh, and don’t get me started on the out of context interpretation of the “armistice for 20 years” (as I understand it, Foch thought the treaty too lenient, not too harsh)
Not quite Hindenburg level, but a few years ago I was eating lunch with 9 or 10 co-workers. I referenced Johnny Carson in the conversation and not a single one of them had a clue who he was.
Sigh.
mmm