Now that’s the trick, isn’t it.
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In the spirit of the OP, yesterday I took some company training, and it was done in the style of a 40s pi noir film. Each lesson “chapter” was typed out across the screen in old font, accompanied by the “clackity-clack-clack ding zip” sounds of an old typewriter. Who under 60, 50 even, recognizes that?
Indeed so. But we hurtle big metal death machines at 60mph every day with relatively few issues, so it can be done!
And we hurdle bigger metal death machines propelled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the sky at mutli-mach speeds, and they never never never well hardly ever blow up. 
A buxom brunette stepped into my office. My mind immediately went to computing the circumference of her …
Your response is irrational, but at least it ended.
I was thinking along those lines when seeing the save icon in Word. Older millenials are still old enough to have used floppies themselves, but a lot of modern iconography is built on tech that no longer exists.
Even the ‘phone’ icon is a stylized representation of the type of phone that few people, especially under 50, even have anymore and fewer and fewer will have ever used or seen. Or the stylized cassette tape sometimes used for ‘voicemail’.
Yet such uses as ‘universally recognized’ icons will likely far outlast their actual physical use.
A millennial, born in 1990, may or may not know about something that was big news (but not of great historical importance) 53 years before 1990.
I had to look back at what made the news 53 years before my birth to see how I fared in comparison. Not great, actually.
Previous thread on this subject:
I looked back to 1910, 53 years before I was born. I recognized one actual event - the end of the shirtwaist factory strike (which is not a coincidence) but aside from that , I only recognized things that had to have happened at some point. For example, I knew construction on the Met Life tower had to end at some point but until a few minutes ago, I couldn’t have told you if it was 1910 or 1950.
If not for the Seinfeld episode I don’t think many people would have even heard of the sinking of the Andrea Doria.
I know about the sinking of the Andrea Doria, but nothing about the Seinfeld episode.
Heard of the Andrea Doria. Learned from Seinfeld that all passengers and crew were rescued within a few hours. Rather remarkable rescue effort I suppose, but hardly compares to the Titanic or a reason to give someone preferential choice over an apartment availability.
I was so familiar with the Hindenburg disaster and with the famous radio broadcast associated with it that I’m finding it hard to believe that a millennial would never have heard about it at all. It was not only a significant tragedy, but a pivotal moment in the development of airships and consequently in the history of aviation.
It makes me wonder whether disinterested millennials would have heard about the Titanic, either, were it not for its status in popular culture. It was also big news when the wreck was finally discovered, but the oldest millennial (by most common definitions of the group) would have been about four at the time, so I imagine it’s movies, books, and museum exhibits that are keeping the story alive, plus contemporary stories like the Titan disaster. It certainly doesn’t appear to be any knowledge of history, or interest in it, that informs the knowledge of many millennials.
There was also a eighth-season episode of The Office where half of the staff went on an off-site to the battlefield. That may be the reference that Millenials engage with.
If I am right, a significant number of them, if asked to name another battle of the Civil War, would answer “The Battle of Schrute Farms.”
The irony component is probably a significant factor in the Titanic story’s cultural impact (at least before the movie).
The Hindenburg doesn’t really have that mythic component to it.
To the former, sure, but the latter?
Airships were already on the way out by the late 30s for the same reasons passenger ocean liners aren’t really a thing anymore (though you can still book passage on some vessels).
Airlines were already carrying vastly more passengers by airplane than airships by the time the Hindenburg went down, since they were considerably both faster and less expensive, though still very expensive compared to today and not especially comfortable - lack of cabin pressurization and all that noise not making for a good experience.
Airships were definitely marketing to the luxury crowd by that point and not seen as the future of mass commercial aviation even before the crash. There’s no reason to really teach about the Hindenburg in history books for aviation except as an interesting digression. As a matter of how news media has evolved, though, there’s possibly a good lesson in there.
In Middle school, we had to memorize it. I can still get thru the first part. We also had to pass the US citizenship test.
Right, and fixed wing non seaplane aircraft were not up to the challenge of trans atlantic regular passenger service yet.
I dont remember that episode (not a fan) but I do know the sinking. I am a bit of a history buff.
I was born in 1981. 53 years earlier was 1928. Without googling, the only things I could think of that happened in 1928 specifically were the election of Hoover, the beginnings of Stalin’s first five-year plan, and the release of the first Mickey Mouse cartoon.
And I hold both a BA and MA in American history.
Conventional airlines also marketed to the luxury crowd (and later the luxury crowd plus business travelers) for the next 40 years. It wasn’t until the 1970s that lower fares and then deregulation made air travel cheap enough to be commonplace.
Meanwhile at the time of the Hindenburg accident, the German Zeppelin Airline Company was already operating scheduled Zeppelin routes, including Atlantic crossings. I’m not saying that if not for the Hindenburg accident airships would have dominated commercial air travel, but it did put an abrupt end to the golden age of commercial airships in Europe due to the lack of availability of helium as a safer alternative to hydrogen.
Focusing on individual battles was part of the rewriting of American history to create the lost cause narrative. What is important is how slavery and systemic racism remains the root from which almost all of America’s problems grow and a lot mor millennials seem to understand that than does previous generations.