# You'd think everyone would know about
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [August 7, 2025, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800 "2025-08-07T06:44:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/41 "2025-08-07T16:47:08Z")
> [@SCAdian](#):
>
> Were those the ones with the guy flying through the airport terminal?
Jumping and running more than flying, but yeah
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqd_XZYkZ70)
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### Author:  [@ricepad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ricepad)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/42 "2025-08-07T17:07:15Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#):
>
> I don’t know how an adult at the times could miss _all_ of those
I would not be at all surprised if my in-laws didn’t know who OJ Simpson was. They’re both remarkably intelligent, but also utterly clueless when it comes to pop culture. They have no interest in professional sports of any kind, hardly watch TV or see movies, and it seems their sole source of recreation is (or was, until my FIL’s health prevented it) ballroom dancing. They both have advanced degrees, and I think he’s got two masters, but even in retirement, they pretty much stuck to their individual stovepipes. For him, it’s civil engineering. For her, accounting. Man, are they boring people.
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### Author:  [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/43 "2025-08-07T17:13:24Z")
How many technoparades can the average American name?
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### Author:  [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/44 "2025-08-07T17:14:41Z")
> [@Procrustus](#):
>
> When I was in college, I recall talking to a dormmate about one of my history classes and mentioned something about the American Revolution. He said he didn’t know much about that period, and asked “who won?”
Well, taking the long view Chou En Lai style, the jury’s still out on that one.😉
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### Author:  [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/45 "2025-08-07T17:22:27Z")
Back to the Hiroshima Day question - of course I know about Hiroshima, but haven’t been aware that the anniversary was treated as a specifically commemorative Day. But then, the further away we get from historical events, the more formalised and solemnised the commemorative events become. I don’t always keep up - and as for pop culture, I consciously stopped trying thirty years ago.
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### Author:  [@abcdefghij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abcdefghij)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/46 "2025-08-07T17:22:45Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#):
>
> “Acorns come from oaks?”
Then you can really blow his mind when you tell him “oaks come from acorns”
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### Author:  [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/47 "2025-08-07T17:25:46Z")
I’m generally really not very good at identifying plants and trees, but oaks also have such characteristic leaves that I can identify them immediately.
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### Author:  [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/48 "2025-08-07T17:25:49Z")
An oak is just an acorn’s way of making another acorn.
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### Author:  [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/49 "2025-08-07T17:35:32Z")
> [@Shoeless](#):
>
> Then I added “And it was in Topeka, so of course the Phelpses were there protesting too.” He had no idea what I was talking about. They’re not nearly as prominent these days as they were 10 or 20 years ago, but I thought pretty much everyone knew about Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church.
I know about WBC but I would be clueless with your reference to “the Phelpses”.
\* Not in Kansas so maybe he isn’t as big of a name here.
> [@madmonk28](#):
>
> Autocorrect, alas.
Are you ~~Sullying~~ sulking over otter corrupt?
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/50 "2025-08-07T17:40:11Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> trying to pick one and only one “ultimate American band” strikes me as impossible; at least for me.
You kidding? It’s the Grateful Dead, of course!
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7qHzRjg31o)
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/51 "2025-08-07T17:40:55Z")
My boss thought of me as the company’s botanical expert. Once someone sent her flowers and she asked me (in front of a co-worker) to identify them. “Roses,carnations, alstroemeria, and baby’s breath.” She proudly declared that she knew I could do it!
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### Author:  [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/52 "2025-08-07T17:52:09Z")
I’m always amazed by how many folks have never heard of the Spanish Flu—the 1918 influenza pandemic. An event that swept through the world in three brutal waves, infecting ~1/3 of the planet and killing tens of millions (50–100 million: more than WWI; possibly more than WII). And yet, it barely gets a footnote in most history books.
Some say it faded from memory due to psychological repression—it was simply too horrible to remember. It hit during the final stretch of World War I, when people were already grieving, exhausted, and shattered by loss.
And unlike war, there were no heroes, no medals, no noble cause. The Spanish flu was an invisible, indiscriminate killer that killed in a matter of hours or days. No villains, like Hilter or Stalin. No battlefields. Just mourning. Something societies chose to forget, I suppose.
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### Author:  [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/53 "2025-08-07T17:54:02Z")
Many high school students have never heard of The Holocaust? How? Just how?
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### Author:  [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/54 "2025-08-07T17:57:30Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#):
>
> To be fair the movie made up its villains - no one at the NTSB was interested in villifying Sully
I never saw the movie. But she was telling me about this incident she just learned about in which a pilot landed on the Hudson River.
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### Author:  [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/55 "2025-08-07T18:06:12Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#):
>
> “Roses,carnations, alstroemeria, and baby’s breath.”
Those (maybe not alstromeria, although everyone has _SEEN_ it, if not knowing the name) otherwise have gotta be the easiest in Western florist bouquets to identify.
Who TF can’t point to a rose, and say, “That’s a rose!”?
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### Author:  [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/56 "2025-08-07T18:08:06Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#):
>
> My oldest nephew was 20 in 2019, and I’m 100% sure he doesn’t know any of those bands. Why should he? He’s a member of the first native digital generation and has very different channels for information, including music, than the generation of his parents.
Well, I believe you. But is there anything wrong with him or the hair stylist or anyone saying, “Whoa, you’re losing me! What’s ‘Creedence’?” and then listening to the answer?
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### Author:  [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/57 "2025-08-07T18:11:02Z")
> [@teelabrown](#):
>
> This is a big part of history for us Californians, and _The Grapes Of Wrath_ is a major work of literature, widely read in school. The person I was talking to was my age, and a native to the city of San Jose.
_The Grapes of Wrath_, _East of Eden_, and _Travels With Charley_ are all stock on standard reading lists for high school and introductory college literature courses and yet you’d be shocked at the number of people who have no earthly idea who John Steinbeck was or why he should be celebrated in the history of American literature. Despite the relevance to the current economic and environmental state of things, I would bet that no more than three out of ten people could accurately summarize the plot of _Grapes of Wrath_ even at the blurb level.
The United States of America is a largely collection of [Celebrity Jeopardy contestants](https://youtu.be/bEghu90QJH4?si=ImERF6jW0_thlvGS) who have little comprehension of their own history much a broader context of world events.
Stranger
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### Author:  [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/58 "2025-08-07T18:12:20Z")
Understood. Amazing that she hadn’t heard of that
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/59 "2025-08-07T18:13:49Z")
Easy. Too much to cover and too little time to fit it all in. You really have to prune to be able to get to the 20th century, and everybody thinks their particular fetish should be Required By All. Add to that the rather too common feeling in people that if it didn’t happen to their monkey-sphere, it didn’t happen at all or isn’t important if it did.
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### Author:  [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youd-think-everyone-would-know-about/1021800/60 "2025-08-07T18:15:57Z")
> [@Tibby](#):
>
> I’m always amazed by how many folks have never heard of the Spanish Flu—the 1918 influenza pandemic.
During covid I would mention it was exactly like 100 years ago, even the 6 foot rule. People had no clue what I was referencing.
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