I’m a football fan, college and pros. Not hardcore, but I watch it every weekend during the season. And I lived in Houston when QB Steve McNair, a huge star in college and an all-pro in the NFL, was drafted, so he was my home team QB for two years.
Today, I learned that he was shot and killed by his jealous girlfriend in 2009. And that the Titans all wore a black “9” on their helmets that whole season, in memory of him.
So even if I was camping or something when his murder happened, I had all season to hear somebody mention what the black “9” was for. And I’ve had 7 years to learn about it in some other way – it had to be mentioned many, many times on football broadcasts, or ESPN documentaries. But I never heard a word about it, until today.
Can anyone top that obliviousness? A big news story that happened when you were an adult, that was widely covered, that would probably have been mentioned several times for years afterward in media that you watch or read, and that you somehow completely missed for several years?
Not quite the same thing…but last night I just realized why Philadelphia is is called the city of brotherly love.:smack:
I always thought it a nickname like Windy City or Bean Town or Big Apple…but I wondered why “brotherly love?”
My stat professor had a good story…he was working hard on his PHD at the time…at some point he hears about president Ford. He was like “was there a coup or something?” He totally missed the WHOLE Watergate thing.
Whenever I miss a famous person’s death and then find out later, I get angry at whoever happens to be around me and ask them, “why was I not informed that so-and-so died?!”
Despite being a Math major for part of college,and a total nerd in general ,some how I missed that Fermat’s last theorem was solved for about 10 years after it happened.
I didn’t know they won a Super Bowl in the 1992 season…until years after the fact.
And I didn’t find out that they won the Super Bowl in the 1995 season as well, until years after the fact - didn’t the score or opponent yet until then, either (it was Cowboys 27, Steelers 17.)
Don’t know if this counts as “widely reported”, but when the singer Falco died from getting hit by a bus I didn’t learn about it until almost a decade later.
My brother didn’t know until today, when I mentioned it in passing.
Mrs. B. was working in a closed environment on 9/11, and after calling me in the early morning to say “something happened,” knew little else until that evening. She’s never seen most of the iconic footage of the towers burning, falling, people in the streets, etc.
A reasonably good friend and noted sff author was a year dead before I heard the news. That one threw me.
Most of these entries have been about missing that someone has died. But some of us hearing about a famous actor/actress dying in their 80s to 90s have the reaction: “I thought he/she died years ago”.
Kind of in reverse - a few years back, I was riding into DC with a coworker and we crossed the 14th Street Bridge. I commented how I’d been at the far end of that bridge when Air Florida flt 90 crashed into it, then into the Potomac. He had no idea what I was talking about. But it happened years before he was born (did I ever feel ancient…) so it really doesn’t count, does it?
