Hacker News Reader

Comment by bitbuilder | Hacker News Reader

I'm 47 years old, decently educated, and can honestly say I'd never heard of this war and thought this was a great read.

Granted, it's quite possible I was taught about this in some very dry history class in high school while I was barely paying attention to the teacher. But I think it's safe to say this isn't a war that comes up often in popular discourse of US history.

View on HN

I agree with you. Though, I'd also ask, are you in the Utah region or outside? It's easy for us to lose sight of just how huge the U.S. is, and what might be "common history" in one area is obscure bar-trivia somewhere else. We've all heard of the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and WWII and mostly know the broad strokes. I doubt the average person on the street could give you much info on The War of 1812, the Mexican American War, The First Barbary War, The Second Barbary War. Regarding local history, I grew up in Maine, so to me the Aroostook War might seem like common history, , and to my Filipina wife, the Philippine–American War might seem less than forgotten. I could forgive anyone on the street for knowing little or nothing about all these. Even the Korean War's nickname is "The Forgotten War".

Regional history, people don't understand how much there is. I never heard about the one bomb dropping on the continental 48 during World War 2 until I moved to Oregon, because where that happened it probably 2-3 hours away from me (bomb on a balloon). Grew up in the rural south. Like wise, my Wife who grew up in Oregon has never heard of Blair Mountain and the struggle between the the Union and the Mining company. Or she only knows of the Hatfields and McCoys from pop culture reference but doesn't actually know any of the story behind it. The US has a surprising large amount of this.

Wow, I had not heard of that - thank you for sharing. I've now gone and read up on it.

Similarly, many people "forget" (in quotes, since we're picking on that word today!) that some of the deadliest fighting in the Pacific was in Alaska*. Deadliest in terms of kill ratio, not total dead).

https://www.armytimes.com/veterans/2018/05/27/75-years-later...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com