Do other people ever astonish you with their lack of general knowledge?

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Just recently I've spoken to a few people who expressed amazement when they disocovered that Chernobyl is a real place. I know that we all have gaps in our knowledge but how the hell you can not know about the Chernobyl disaster? It's a bit like the simpleton on a twitter some years ago who was amazed to discover that the Titanic was a real ship and not figment of James Cameron's imagination....

I remember one time a work colleague was going to Rome and when I told them I'd been they asked me if there was lots of stuff to see and do there. I was like well of course, it's Rome. And they asked me what they were. I then had to list the coliseum, the Trevi Fountain, The Spanish Steps, The Vatican, the countless Roman Ruins etc not to mention the countless designer shops and fabulous restaurants. They genuinely had no idea what was in Rome. I was gobsmacked. This was someone I'd assumed was pretty intelligent as well.

I can't work out if I just know too much, or these people are just really ignorant?

l have a friends (a married couple) who are both teachers. They never read newspapers or watch the news.
l don't know if l'm being unreasonable, or if that's a bit strange.

I can see how if you were younger 20 to early 30s- you wouldn’t know about Chernobyl.

It should be taught in schools, and if a bit more were known about nuclear power perhaps we'd be better off as there woudnt be so much risistance towards Nuclear energy which could sort out that global warming issue if that were true also;!..

By the way anyone know what "Cockcrofts Follies" were without looking it up? It is Nuclear related and in England!

@GertrudeCB ahhh, I thought you meant budgeting home finances or something at first

Ignorant. I have also met people like that. Not knowing the capital of France, eg. Makes me think I should put more effort into my children's education so that they are never in that position. I'm surprised it happens in our days with the Internet and information about anything you wish

My husband isn’t quite in the doesn’t-know-the-Titanic-was-a-thing camp but he knows astonishingly little history and the history of this country. He’s a real brainbox with maths and psychics and stuff and he’s got far better, more diverse A Levels than me but his general knowledge is woeful.

It's not just an age thing, my friend and I are both 25 but she really has very little general knowledge compared to me.

She was telling me about the Chernobyl mini series and was saying how it turns out there was this power plant in Ukraine... I was a bit that she'd never heard of it before.

I was chatting to a colleague about the tradition of good quality serials broadcast at 9.00 PM on Sunday evenings. Les Miserables, for example. Quality.
She replied 'I don't watch costume dramas'.
What do other people think of describing an adaptation of Victoria Hugo as 'costume drama'?

Not really. You either know it or you don't. People sometimes have other things going on, they might be stressed or have stuff on their mind and not know the date the bloody leaning tower of Piza was built. I think the people who bang on about how ignorant other people are and how much they know are usually quite narrow minded and stupid.

I agree re: people not knowing about Chernobyl. I'm 30 and it's been a fact of life my whole life - I can remember hearing stories about children from the affected areas coming here for respite trips from my early childhood.

People learn different things. I hated history, so, even kings of 20th century would be a push for me.

Hated English too, so that's the whole of shakespeare and dickens out of the window.

Liked maths & science though.

I went to Rome as a boy, and mostly remember the Cars and mopeds. Buildings made less of an impression.

an uneducated population are far more susceptible to facism/control than educated people - people who know f-all about the world are really sitting ducks for crazy conspiracies/hate-speech/fake news etc etc.

The one I remember was Tomasz Schafernaker on 'Would I lie to You' who told the true story that, until he was in his 30s, he didn't know that lambs were baby sheep...he'd seen them in the fields together but just assumed they were two totally different types of animal....

I went to a pub quiz with my work colleagues and I ended up a bit up a bit bemused that they were all amazed at the breadth of my trivia knowledge (not music or dates of things except world wars) they were even telling our customers how surprised they were at what I knew. I put it down to the fact that I will read anything and everything and none of them read for pleasure. I didn't judge them for their lack of knowledge but was a bit shocked at some of the things that they didn't know and they were a mix of ages.

i think how you define ignorance reveals alot.and whether you mention it or not.

*What do other people think of describing an adaptation of Victoria Hugo as 'costume drama'?

Is it a drama? Are they in historical costumes?

A couple of grown women didn't know what suffragettes where when i mentioned it. I was pretty shocked.
I pick up a lot of stuff by osmosis and I love a pub quiz but i bet there its lots of knowledge that I'd be useless at.

I'm crap with dates and any sport except football.

I know a little about a lot of things but I wish I could swap it all for being an expert in one thing, a lot of stuff really doesn’t matter very much.

‘Children of Chernobyl’ still coming to our city for holidays.

Kids at school cannot understand that I didn’t have a television when I was a child or that we didn’t have computers at school😂

People do know different things and someone may have an in depth knowledge of something you know nothing about.

I used to be surprised (as someone who didn't grow up in the UK) how many Brits I knew, who had years of RE, didn't know what I thought were general knowledge religion basics like the Beatitudes or the differences between the Jewish Moshiach and Christian Messiah. Then my DD had RE and I'm not so surprised anymore as even in a CoE school, it seems less facts of religion that I had expected and more philosophical discussions with religions pretty loosely touched on as frameworks.

I don't think I knew about Chernobyl until I was an adult, my parents never watched the news and it just wasn't talked about. I can see why someone who may have only studied ancient Rome might not know what's still there (and TV representations of a lot of US cities aren't terribly accurate -- and monuments do tend to get blown up a lot).

One day, my DD told me that a teacher had told her what a zebra crossing was and this instigated a housewide conversation on the difference between zebra, pelican, puffin, and toucan crossings and how no one in the house entirely knew the differences between all of them. That should probably be common general knowledge, but to me, they're all just crossings so never got the animal thing.

not know the date the bloody leaning tower of Piza was built

I have no idea when the leaning tower of Pisa was built (1350ish at a pure guess) but at least I know there is one!

I don't expect people to always know exact dates but to have a rough idea and in which order ie to know Elizabeth I ruled quite a long time before Victoria. Some people don't even know that.

There is a saying:
We are all ignorant, but on different subjects.

I mentioned this to my sister once, and she went ballistic, as I had apparently insulted her.

I’m surprised at the fury being expressed here towards the OP. Obviously, nobody knows everything, and that was never claimed.

I feel that our current disastrous political situation is down to ignorant voters. If you don’t know what you’re voting for, don’t vote.

Equally, we have an astonishing number of MPs who are completely unable to discuss, negotiate and compromise. They’ve recently let the whole world know that the UK is an intellectual lost cause and completely open to exploitation.

Hold tight everyone as we go down the pan!

Well, Chernobyl you can understand. It was all over the news, like, thirty years ago, and then everybody stopped talking about it. Like, it had been, like, wiped off the map or something. Then Kylie Jenner (#squeal) tweeted a selfie of her and Fares Fares (who was actually AT Chernobyl on THE OPENING NIGHT) And so that is why everyone who isn't, like super old, like, over thirty, hasn't heard of it. #duuuh

I work with a colleague who is around 35, who seems bright and switched on, but every day I am gobsmacked by how little she knows about the world around her, not even history stuff, but basic general knowledge. I don't know if it's because she's not interested, or doesn't pay attention to the news. This last week I've had to tell her a) what a national anthem was, b) who the next monarch was going to be; c) who Elvis was - she said she'd never heard of such a person); and d) that the Republic of Ireland was not the same as Northern Ireland and wasn't part of the UK. (Oh, and I had to explain the difference between the UK and Great Britain). I don't foist this information on her, she asks whenever something is mentioned in conversation and she doesn't know what we're all talking about.

Am I the only person who just went and googled eingangstrasse? (If anyone else is interested it means entrance road..)

Apparently when Chernobyl happened in 1986, the sale of Marks and Spencer's Chicken Kiev's went down ! True Story.