stumbled across a random trivia question on another website last week. the question was, "in what year did the pilgrims sign the mayflower compact?". 4 choices: 1590, 1600, 1610, and 1620. made my choice, then upon redirect to the answer page, discovered that only 27% of respondents (about 750 to that point) answered correctly- no statistically significant difference from random chance.
the question i pose to you is not whether or not you know the answer, but whether you think you, me and everyone else should know the answer. does this date belong in the group of important dates that all americans should know?
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I'm really disappointed that no responded to this question. I would have posted mine earlier, but I knew that the brains behind Finkipedia knows the dates I considered the benchmarks for understanding U.S. history:
1492
1607 & 1620
1776
1789
1861-1865
1917-18
1941-45
2001 (though it may be too soon to tell the lasting significance the terrorist attacks)
And if we ever do colonize space, 1969 probably will be added to that list.
The other things every America should know:
the name of his or her mayor (if applicable);
the name of his or her governor;
the name of his or her U.S. Congressman/woman;
the names of his or her 2 U.S. Senators;
the name of the Vice President; and
the name of the Speaker of the House
(I'm assuming that it's only the comatose who don't know the name of the President)
I know that the middle name of the incoming President in Hussein and that he is a Muslim, but that I also don't like him because he went to radical Christian church. I am unfazed that these two facts are in conflict with each other. Palin 2012!
can't argue with any of those dates above. i'd say that regardless of colonizing space, 1969 belongs on the list as well.
2001 also belongs because like the dates before it, it significantly altered life after it for not just america, but the world.
We're personally too close to 2001 to judge it effectively. I'm sure that the people who saw the White House burn during the War of 1812 thought it'd be a landmark day in U.S. history, but few people (far less than 27%) remember that we had another war against the British after the Revolutionary War, let alone that the British took control of our capital and burned the Executive Mansion.
What happened in 2001 was tragic, and it was certainly significant, but I don't know that it's going to go down in the annals of history as being as important as any of the other dates that we've listed. I don't buy the notion that Al Qaeda poses an existential threat to the U.S., and that's one reason I think that it's possible that it won't go down as one of the milestone dates in our history. Even if the worst case scenario happens -- that of Al Qaeda detonating one or several nuclear weapons in major cities -- our nation would still exist. Compare that with the Cold War, where there was a real possibility that multiple nuclear weapons could have been used over every major city in the country as well as every major stragetic location for our nation (i.e. major military bases and installations, the Panama Canal, key oil piplines, etc.). That was an existential threat.
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