Bob Dylan has written his share of topical songs about events which might be forgotten today if not for the songs. Maybe the best example is “The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll”. Who would remember her murder and the name of her killer without the opening line “WIlliam Zanzinger killed pour Hattie Carroll”?
The success of the three novels by Nordhoff and Hall is the reason any films were made at all.
Mine as well.
Possibly this is my own low standards when it comes to knowledge of art and literature. But I had no idea either of those works were about the Dresden fire bombings but am well aware of the fire bombings as a historical event
I would disagree with that assessment. I came across the poem in several English classes, in a variety of poetry collections.
Now, poetry collections may not be best-sellers, but it was not forgotten.
“The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold /
His cohorts all gleaming in purple and gold…”
The 1982 film Fitzcarraldo is based on Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald’s 1893 attempt to have a disassembled steamboat transported over the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald by natives.
I have never heard of the Osage Indian Murders until the 2023 film Killers of The Flower Moon.
The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald comes to mind.
Same thing here.
Steven Spielberg’s epic WWII film brought attention to a little known battle of the war. I am, of course, referring to 1941 and the Battle of Los Angeles.
The Herero and Nama genocide gained newfound notoriety via Gravity’s Rainbow.
The Patriot is hardly a historically accurate film. But the Battle of Cowpens did occur. I think most people never heard of it. It’s all Lexington and Concord, Valley Forge, crossing the Delaware, Bunker Hill, Yorktown, etc.
I think it’s the whole thing really - including the fact the mutineers weren’t caught and established a community on a remote island that survives to this day. If it wasn’t true, you wouldn’t write it
I’m not sure about that. Wasn’t it the first major bombing of an urban center by massed bombers ? That’s a pretty important milestone in human conflict. So i think it would be well known even if was dwarfed by later WW2 bombing raids.
And the film Battleship Potemkin is only remembered because of the baby carriage scene in The Untouchables. Because if people couldn’t smugly say “The baby carriage scene is an homage to Battleship Potemkin”, no one would care about an old Russian silent film.
The Last of the Mohicans, and the Siege of Fort William Henry.
Alexandre Dumas’ novels are about as historically accurate as John Wayne’s portrayal of Genghis Khan, but The Three Musketeers does tell you that the French wars of religion existed, specifically the Siege of La Rochelle.
The Loudon demonic-possession scare is still pretty obscure, but Aldous Huxley’s book, the Devils of Loudon, John Whiting’s play The Devils, and Ken Russell’s movie The Devils bring it to mind.
The film Glory brought attention the the U.S. Army’s formation of African-American regiments, and the attack on Fort Wagner.
I can recall being astonished the first time I learned that the Three Musketeers (all four of them) were based on real people.
I had heard of the Osage Indian Murders a year or so ago while watching The FBI Story starring Jimmy Stewart. The investigation of the Osage Indian Murders was one of the cases shown.
Including Dumas’ own father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, who was a black (Haitien, though the country didn’t exist yet) commander under Napoleon.
The fact we’ve had five mutinies on the bounty but no big Hollywood movie about him is a travesty
Probably doesn’t count, as The Hindenburg disaster is pretty well known, but it did make a great album cover for Led Zep.
