(Untitled)

[mikejtanner]

Is my understanding of American history greater than the average persons? Well, yes, I'm frickin' scholar but stil....

"The common perception is that John Wilkes Booth, a failed actor, suffered a mental breakdown over the imminent Union victory in the Civil War and in a fit of madness struck out at Lincoln, the recently re-elected U.S. president.

Comments

Yeah But

[designdriver]

how many Americans can actually locate the State of Montana on a map?

Maybe i just, A. paid too much attention in school, B. like history too much, and C. have watched too much History Channel, but i have never heard that "lone gunman" theory before - unless most of us get our late 1860's history from Zoolander.

Now look here you nerds

[egv]

Americans don't learn much in the way of history, and what we do learn we tend to forget immediately upon graduation from school. There's no "common perception" of the Lincoln assassination other than that he was assassinated. It seems like you should be able to ask anyone what the middle name of Lincoln's killer was, but I'd be willing to bet large sums of money that you'd be considered a nut for asking the question and expecting people to know the answer. And I can pretty much guarantee that the name of the assassin and even the century of the event are indeed considered trivia. Why keep that totally useless information in your brain when you can keep up to date on how many heads TomKat's baby will have?