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Twitter Backlash for People Who Did Not Know ‘Titanic’ Was Real
news.yahoo.com ^ | April 13, 2012 | Melissa Knowles

Posted on 04/13/2012 9:56:24 PM PDT by grundle

The social news-sharing site Reddit has a knack for exposing people and situations. The latest topic of discussion to generate controversy is a series of tweets from people who did not know that the sinking of the Titanic was a real historical event.

Apparently, an entire generation of people associate "Titanic" with the Hollywood blockbuster starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Here is the disambiguation for you. The RMS Titanic sank April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg. The tragedy is considered one of the deadliest of peacetime maritime disasters. More than 1,500 people died.

"Titanic" the film was released December 19, 1997, and was an instant success. It became the highest-grossing film of all time for 12 years, until "Avatar" debuted in 2009.

For all the history buffs reading this, the next couple of sentences may be too painful to contemplate. A couple of the tweets from the uninformed read, "Nobody told me titanic was real? How am I just finding this out?" Another tweet read, "Guys, the Titanic was real! #mindblown."

Most people aware of the existence of the RMS Titanic are in disbelief. One such person tweeted, "The ignorance is astounding." Another person said he was "weeping for the future" at finding out that so many young people are unfamiliar with such a well-known fact.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: fail; wtf
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To: 21twelve

I too spent many an hour reading through our old World Books.
Ours was from 1957 so it was a bit outta date for the 70s but I loved reading them just the same.


41 posted on 04/14/2012 12:29:51 AM PDT by Mmogamer (I refudiate the lamestream media, leftists and their prevaricutions.)
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To: 21twelve

I believe it.

Simmilar story for me. Short version Daughter in HS. Report on Revolutionary war. Result, passed with high grade.

The report ENDED at Revere’s ride. I asked “Where’s the war?”

She replied...”That’s all they taught us.”

I taught her the rest.


42 posted on 04/14/2012 12:40:46 AM PDT by Norm Lenhart
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To: guinnessman
“Now this guy graduated with straight A’s in Accounting in the #1 Accounting school in the nation at the time. He received job offers from all of the big 8 Accounting firms after graduation.

He just never bothered to learn any Geography.”

Your roomie sounds like Sherlock Holmes (the following from “A Study in Scarlet”):

“My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
‘You appear to be astonished,’ he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. ‘Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.’
‘To forget it!’
‘You see,’ he explained, ‘I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.’
‘But the Solar System’ I protested.
‘What the deuce is it to me?’ he interrupted impatiently: ‘you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.’”

43 posted on 04/14/2012 12:56:01 AM PDT by decal (I'm not rude, I don't suffer fools is all.)
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To: lurk

My daughter incurred $600 in international charges on her cell phone bill for calling her friend in Panama. She said she didn’t know it was international. Publik skool steenks.


44 posted on 04/14/2012 1:06:30 AM PDT by rfreedom4u (Just because someone thinks it's a good idea doesn't make it legal.)
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To: Republican1795.
I was working late one night. As I was getting ready to go home, I chanced to have a conversation with a former employee who'd been hired back as a temp to help us out of a backlog.

She said, “Mind if I ask you a question?”

I said, “No, go ahead.”

“When we've talked in the past, you say things in such a ‘matter of fact’ voice and assumed I knew about them. Often, I've never even heard of these things. Where’d you learn all this?”

I was dumbfounded, but I said: “I've always been a reader and I've always been fascinated with history. Who are we as people? What kinds of things did other people do that we can learn from? Why are things today the way they are — cause and effect. Learning never stops. Just because you've graduated from school means your learning about life continues until you breathe your last. We live in a marvelous age of information, but there's a downside. The sum total of all human knowledge doubles every ten years! Think about that — then realize how much you have to learn about the world you live in.”

45 posted on 04/14/2012 1:07:03 AM PDT by MasterGunner01 (11)
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To: Norm Lenhart

History teacher here. I can only try to teach them what I can. *sigh*


46 posted on 04/14/2012 1:09:42 AM PDT by JCBreckenridge
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To: JCBreckenridge

Don’t get me wrong. I know there are still good teachers. And I personally know two that quit the system because ‘the system’ made them ‘not’ teach, just babysit. I do not envy you. To want to teach, to be able to teach and to have PC BS stop you has to be incredibly frustrating.

All I can say is thank you for trying.


47 posted on 04/14/2012 1:13:44 AM PDT by Norm Lenhart
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To: Norm Lenhart

You’re quite welcome. I really enjoy teaching. It’s nice to be able to put my degree to some use. :)

I have a wonderful boss, she lets me teach, just I have to deal with some of the other teachers wanting to put me in their box. It’s irritating to be working with those with so much more life experience that just don’t seem to get it.

It’s one thing with the kids, but ignorance in the teachers is something else.


48 posted on 04/14/2012 1:31:58 AM PDT by JCBreckenridge
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To: Talisker

A marketing thing? Come to Saturn! We have rings!

49 posted on 04/14/2012 1:33:59 AM PDT by xp38
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To: LS; All

Ping. You might be interested in the anecdotes on this thread. Then again, as I think about it, you’ve probably heard it all before, and then some.

For those who don’t know, FReeper LS is historian Larry Schweikart. His A Patriot’s History of the United States is required reading. See all of his books at his profile page:

http://www.freerepublic.com/~ls/index


50 posted on 04/14/2012 2:48:41 AM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: JCBreckenridge

You might be interested in my previous post, if you don’t know about LS and his books already.


51 posted on 04/14/2012 2:52:42 AM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: dr_lew
You asked for it.


52 posted on 04/14/2012 2:58:10 AM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: grundle

Can I venture a guess that most of the morons who didn’t know the Titanic sinking was real probably (without being forced to) have never read a newspaper, book, or magazine not having to do with entertainment in their short, shallow lives. Further interrogations of these numbskulls would most likely find them not knowing a lot of other things people taken for granted as common knowledge by most people. When I was about seven or eight, I knew about the sinking of the Titanic. And there several movies about the sinking that were making the rounds. In fact I remember seeing pictures of the Andrea Doria on the front page of the local rag as well. Too young to read the story, but I remember the pictures. This is the age we live in where “news” about celebrities takes precedence over hard news.


53 posted on 04/14/2012 3:01:13 AM PDT by driftless2
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To: grundle

How about the SS Sultana?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Sultana

Around 1,600 US deaths. How many US folks know about that one?


54 posted on 04/14/2012 3:19:40 AM PDT by PeteB570 ( Islam is the sea in which the Terrorist Shark swims. The deeper the sea the larger the shark.)
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To: rfreedom4u

“She said she didn’t know it was international.”

I often think I’m in Mexico without leaving Maryland.


55 posted on 04/14/2012 3:27:57 AM PDT by PLMerite (Shut the Beyotch Down! Burn, baby, burn!)
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To: grundle

No Way!

American people are getting Dumber and Dumberer.

56 posted on 04/14/2012 3:31:11 AM PDT by hattend (Jesus wants me to make churches pay for abortions. - Barack Obama)
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To: guinnessman
A few years ago, I was sitting on the beach with my husband. We were next to three people (two guys and a gal) in their mid to late twenties. All three were particularly loud, and we understood they were in med school in Raleigh, NC. One man and the woman were apparently getting married and talking about their imminent honeymoon. They said they were going to Greece and the woman said excitedly that they were going to an island. The second man asked with wonder, “are there any islands in Greece?” the couple answered very pleased that there were, and that they hadn't known that, either.
Needless to say, my husband and I were shocked that these buffoons had somehow gotten into a fairly prestigious medical school without the basic understanding that Greece ‘had some islands’. Total idiocy.
57 posted on 04/14/2012 4:48:58 AM PDT by Rutabega (No one reads these anyway, right?)
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To: arasina

When teaching middle school social studies and language arts, I would have the kids read that book, and then watch the movie. I had heavily diversified students, most of whom never had heard anything bad had ever happened to anyone who wasn’t black. I am haunted by a scene in that story about a women who secretly gives birth in the camp, and then, of course, gets caught.


58 posted on 04/14/2012 4:56:22 AM PDT by Rutabega (No one reads these anyway, right?)
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To: dr_lew

1.41 sra


59 posted on 04/14/2012 4:58:12 AM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. +12 ..... Crucifixion is coming)
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To: Rutabega

Women=womAn

Too early to read, apparently :)


60 posted on 04/14/2012 4:58:43 AM PDT by Rutabega (No one reads these anyway, right?)
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