September 11 -- what year? 30 percent of Americans don't know

[Alluminitti]

September 11 -- what year? 30 percent of Americans don't know

Wed Aug 9, 10:53 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Some 30 percent of Americans cannot say in what year the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington took place, according to a poll published in the Washington Post newspaper. While the country is preparing to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the attacks that claimed nearly 3,000 lives and shocked the world, 95 percent of Americans questioned in the poll were able to remember the month and the day of the attacks, according to Wednesday's edition of the newspaper.

But when asked what year, 30 percent could not give a correct answer.

Of that group, six percent gave an earlier year, eight percent gave a later year, and 16 percent admitted they had no idea whatsoever.

This memory black hole is essentially the problem of the older crowd: 48 percent of those who did not know were between the ages of 55 and 64, and 47 percent were older than 65, according to the poll.

The Post telephone survey was carried out July 21-24 among 1,002 randomly selected adults. The margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.

 

This is rather odd...

[Weirdy]

These are probably the same 30% that appear on Jay Leno's "Jay Walking."

Here is a fan made knock off for those who don't know how the sketch goes.

[Gryph]

One would expect that the amount of times 9/11 is brought up that people would actually know this.

[Robert]

I'd imagine that most people who live outside the immediate area of New York and Washington DC would no longer care about it that much. They would have been totally sick of the hype long ago and basically "switched off".

[Weirdy]

I was tired of hearing about the tragedy like a month after it happend.

 

On that day I was thinking "wtf, this is horrible?!" Then after, it was like every hour of tv was about 9/11.

 

Some of us on the gamesurge IRC channel expressed something like that almost two years ago then some guy got mad, attempted to chew us out, and left.

[Gryph]

I remember that guy. He was pretty cool other than that incident.

[garyoak99]

This is rather odd...

 

Yes, it is rather odd to us young people:

 

48 percent of those who did not know were between the ages of 55 and 64, and 47 percent were older than 65, according to the poll.

 

My guess is that your memory tends to fade quickly as you get older!