Yeah, I had no idea that only 35 people died.
When 90% of your brain is taken up with old newsreels about nazi air crashes and quoting movies from the last century, I guess you don’t have any room left over for current events.
That’s nothing. I was at lunch with coworkers where the discussion turned to TV detectives and I referred to Jim Rockford to blank faces. “You know; James Garner? The Great Escape? Gran Prix? The Americanization of Emily? Maverick?”
“Oh, you mean that old film with Mel Gibson?”
I weep for a generation whose only conception of Magnum, p.i. is Jay Hernandez and a fawning Perdita Weeks as Higgins. Fortunately, at least we have Archer Season 7:
Stranger
You don’t need to know that “oh, the humanity” was coined to describe the Hindenburg to be familiar with the saying.
I’m 64, and I’ve never heard of that.
I met him while working Security at the studio. Not a friendly guy, but also not stuck up.
Kid Cheesesteak (16, Zoomer) knew what it was, that it was on a Led Zeppelin album, and got real annoyed that I asked. I could hear his eyes rolling over the phone.
Next up… Johnny Carson.
And I saw a film of the collapse in my “Physics for Dummies” class. Hey, you need to have something for us poor Humanities majors to look at if you want us to pay attention to physics.
Yeah, I’ve seen that film at least two times. I suspect it’s still shown, as it’s a very dramatic demonstration of physics
They’re not getting past the age quiz in Leisure Suit Larry, that’s for sure.
Why, yes, they showed it in one or two of my engineering classes. If nothing else, it’s a powerful, humbling, cautionary rite of passage.
It always struck me that he didn’t just sit there filming everything and enjoying the show. He went for the dog.
“Simple Harmonic Motion.”
I remember that, and the poor fool trying to drive a car across the bridge right before it collapses. He finally decides to get out of the car and run like hell until the movement of the bridge overcomes him so he falls, then he crawls the rest of the way.
Little stuff like that help make the film clip quite memorable.
~VOW
This is getting very meta as knowledge of that is also an age quiz.
Yes. It’s not just an “exercise” to analyze.
My father died ten years ago on Sept 12. I tend to remember it as “the day after 9/11” Maybe in seventy or eighty years the sound of those four syllables, 9/11, won’t automatically mean to people what it does now.
That might be another name the yutes of America don’t recognize. I’ll never forget an older guy who was angry a lot of people my age didn’t know who James Cagney was. This was shorty after I graduated from high school, so the mid-1990s, and by then Cagney had been dead for almost 10 years, his biggest movies were made decades before I was born, his last theatrical role was before I was born, and the only reason I knew about him was from Looney Tunes or others doing bad impressions of him. “You dirty rat!”
I’m 62 and I’m pretty sure the only reason I know about the Hindenburg is because of references in movies and TV shows. I might have learned about it way back in 7th or 8th grade. Maybe.
I’m actually surprised that half of the Millennials polled have heard of it - people often think that “common knowledge” is what they know but many facts aren’t really common knowledge as they will be different for everyone. People talk about what it was like to fly before 9/11 and expect me to understand because it’s “common knowledge”. I’m old enough to have flown before 9/11 and I did fly a few times before 9/11 but only once under normal circumstances *. I’ve been told airline tickets could be used by anyone , not just the person they were bought for and that you could go to the gate without a ticket but I only learned that once people started talking about “what flying was like pre 9/11” which I guess started around 10 -15 years ago.
If asked 100 people my age about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire , I bet half of them wouldn’t know what it was. And 146 people died in that. Doesn’t mean they have a hole in their knowledge- just means I’ve had a different life than they did.
* Every flight pre-9/11 except one was work-related. And even pre-9/11 flying for my job involved interacting with security/police depending on the airport so I had no idea what it was like for normal people.
I recognise the name (video game, right?) but have no idea what the reference means. An I am not a yute.
It’s just a computer game— we can get into the background and context— but when you start to play, it asks you a number of… I suppose mostly American pop-culture questions, the idea being that little kids would not be able to answer them correctly, or whatever. It may be amusing to peruse the collection of questions: LSL1 Age Quiz - Al Lowe's Humor Site
There are far more egregious examples of ignorance of history.
Ms. J. was working as a university reference librarian when the following exchange occurred:
Graduate student in Communications: “Are you a history buff?”
Mrs. J. “I used to be.”
Grad student: “What war was going on in 1942?”
Note: this conversation occurred in the 1980s.