80 years from now even fewer people will remember who Lindbergh was. Get over it!
Who was the most famous artist or traveler in 400 B.C.? Huh? What don't remember? You must be illiterate!
In the UK they recently did a poll and a significant percentage of people thought that Winston Churchill was a fictional character. When you lose Winston, you lose a lot.
I think we've gone too far in the direction which Andy Warhol pointed out -- everyone is famous for 15 minutes. What that means (for many young people) is that nothing is really worth paying attention to. However, there are some intellectually curious people who have some drive to grab a topic and delve into it and learn about it. The particular topic (Artists from 400 BC, Charles Lindbergh, Winston Churchill, etc.) does not matter. Merely having the ability to be interested can set one apart today.
College is where those people belong. The rest of the crowd? Not so much.
You missed the point of the article. Knowledge of who Lindy was correlated highly with literacy (as indicated by the results of other placement tests.) Knowledge of the most famous artist or traveler in 400 B.C. did not.
Not knowing those answers is not illiteracy. Not having the curiosity to search for the answers is (per Goldblatt -- with whom I agree) the root of illiteracy.
BTW, a 30-second search revealed that significant artistic activity ca 400 BC was occurring within the Olmec, the Greek, and the Slovenian "Este" cultures. If I wanted to spend a bit more time, (rather than writing this) I expect I could unearth some actual artists' names (among the Greeks, at least).
Storage of facts is not equal to "literacy". Wanting to know, knowing where to look, and having the inner drive to do so are the rootstocks of literacy...