Rebel Yell said:

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I was watching the Alamo with my wife's cousin (Texas raised) and as we watched character after character die, it dawns on her that the Texans aren't going to win . . .




It was hilarious and heart breaking at the same time.

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Did she ask how Bowie & Crocket were going to get away?

BadMoonRisin said:

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Fat Man is behind them on the left hand side.

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I didn't see that.

Three little boys being shadowed by a fat man.

NColoradoAG said:

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OP, hate to break it to you but you can buy tickets to 70mm showings anywhere tomorrow. It ain't an LA thing.

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But how many in your theater will still be wearing Covid masks?
It's hard to find that experience anywhere else.

And there ain't no 70mm in Colorado - according to 9 News.
Not even in my old suburb of Highlands Ranch
https://www.9news.com/article/news/nation-world/oppenheimer-imax-70mm-theaters-list/507-7aacd7ad-21a0-4a13-bda8-e51d4049559d

HollywoodBQ said:

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At the request of my Engineering degreed daughter, I just bought tickets to see Oppenheimer in 70mm tomorrow night (the day before it opens nationally - one of the few perks of paying to live in LA).

You would think this is going to be a hooray hashtag Women in STEM story but unfortunately, it's a sad state of education story.

After I bought the tickets, she says to me, now who was this guy? Was he like a Nazi scientist or something?

My jaw hit the floor. Not so much that she didn't know who he was - at least she's going to attend the movie and find out, but the fact that she didn't even know whose side he was on. She does know that we stole some scientists from the Nazis but that is more space program related.

I spent a ton of dough on private girls school in Australia and on out of state tuition at the West Point of the South. I can't believe that they didn't cover the development of The Bomb in either of those settings.

Maybe it's just accepted these days that "Nukes are Bad M'Kay" and they don't even discuss the Manhattan Project in history class.

It's been a long time since I took American History in HS, or US Military History in college but I just can't believe that kids these days would not even know the particulars about how we won the War in the Pacific. Since the Pacific Theater affected Australia the most, you'd think that they would teach schoolchildren that their bacon was saved by The Yanks and their A-Bombs. Also by Yanks like my Grandfather who went to Brisbane before participating in amphibious assaults in New Guinea and The Philippines.

So I asked her why did she want to see a 3 hour long movie (runtime 180 minutes with $22 tickets) if she didn't even know who the guy was. She said she heard it was a good movie.

I sure hope it is a good movie, we'll see.

So my question for the parents out there is - What do your kids know about Robert Oppenheimer, The Manhattan Project, WWII in the Pacific?

Is this just an isolated incident or, are we in the midst of an American History Pandemic?

Politics because - our kids should being taught this at the HS and/or College level.

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My two boys went to a Jesuit school where they not only learned about it they debated the morality/ethics of the program.

My kids are 7.5 and almost 5. They don't know a thing about him!

HollywoodBQ said:

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P.H. Dexippus said:

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When I was dating my born and raised Texas wife, I discovered she had no idea who Sam Houston was. And she had lived in Houston, including during high school. History is just not some people's strong suit.

I'd rank ignorance on the father of the atomic bomb somewhat lower.

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No way.

I'm not saying I don't believe you but, how is that possible?
I mean how do you not know who captured Santa Anna and won Texas Independence?

I hope she's not one of the "Come and Take It" flag wavers.

I don't expect her to know Juan Segiun, Mirabeau B. Lamar, or James Fannin, but at least Stephen F. Austin, Sam Houston?

I'm always curious about city names, county names, street names.

Statue on the side of I-45.

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I could hardly believe it myself. We were driving Beltway 8 (Sam Houston Parkway) at the time and I asked her if she knew the significance of name on the road sign. Nope.

I then asked follow ups…The statue near Huntsville? The name of the National Forest? The name of the city? Any idea what he did? "No". It definitely lead to an argument. She was homeschooled during the timeframe when public school kids are learning Texas history and I'm guessing my MIL didn't emphasize it. And no, she doesn't wave the Gonzales flag. I'm the one with the framed Republic of Texas map hanging in the kids' room.

samurai_science said:

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HollywoodBQ said:

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At the request of my Engineering degreed daughter, I just bought tickets to see Oppenheimer in 70mm tomorrow night (the day before it opens nationally - one of the few perks of paying to live in LA).

You would think this is going to be a hooray hashtag Women in STEM story but unfortunately, it's a sad state of education story.

After I bought the tickets, she says to me, now who was this guy? Was he like a Nazi scientist or something?

My jaw hit the floor. Not so much that she didn't know who he was - at least she's going to attend the movie and find out, but the fact that she didn't even know whose side he was on. She does know that we stole some scientists from the Nazis but that is more space program related.

I spent a ton of dough on private girls school in Australia and on out of state tuition at the West Point of the South. I can't believe that they didn't cover the development of The Bomb in either of those settings.

Maybe it's just accepted these days that "Nukes are Bad M'Kay" and they don't even discuss the Manhattan Project in history class.

It's been a long time since I took American History in HS, or US Military History in college but I just can't believe that kids these days would not even know the particulars about how we won the War in the Pacific. Since the Pacific Theater affected Australia the most, you'd think that they would teach schoolchildren that their bacon was saved by The Yanks and their A-Bombs. Also by Yanks like my Grandfather who went to Brisbane before participating in amphibious assaults in New Guinea and The Philippines.

So I asked her why did she want to see a 3 hour long movie (runtime 180 minutes with $22 tickets) if she didn't even know who the guy was. She said she heard it was a good movie.

I sure hope it is a good movie, we'll see.

So my question for the parents out there is - What do your kids know about Robert Oppenheimer, The Manhattan Project, WWII in the Pacific?

Is this just an isolated incident or, are we in the midst of an American History Pandemic?

Politics because - our kids should being taught this at the HS and/or College level.

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My kids were homeschooled, so they know about everything you listed. And it only took 3-5 hours per day, public school wastes a lot of time for little benefit other than daycare.

Of course we had to sacrifice and only had one income, but some people value vacations and new cars every few years more than a good education.

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Yeah, my daughter could probably write a Masters Thesis on important topics covered in her schooling like - Cyberbullying and why women only get paid 77 cents of the dollar a man earns.

My point with this whole topic is that we need to pay better attention to what our kids are learning or - not learning.

Or, more that I think about it, maybe we had the benefit of Sting's "Russians" and Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" to drive the point home.

What do they have now? Bad Bunny? Megan Thee Stallion? Lizzo?

Sounds like you are going for the engineering/history. Hope you're ready for the prolonged full nudity and "strong sex" scenes.

Why is this necessary to the telling of the story? Is the general public that horny?

Cillian Murphy on Oppenheimer

Quote:

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And no, she doesn't wave the Gonzales flag.

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I grew up wanting everyone to know about the flag from my hometown. I think it's kinda cool to see it everywhere, but at the same time it has been cheapened IMO. Folks with no idea of the history behind it see it as the "gun nut" or "Pro 2nd amendment Flag" depending upon your point of view.

HollywoodBQ said:

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NColoradoAG said:

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OP, hate to break it to you but you can buy tickets to 70mm showings anywhere tomorrow. It ain't an LA thing.

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But how many in your theater will still be wearing Covid masks?
It's hard to find that experience anywhere else.

And there ain't no 70mm in Colorado - according to 9 News.
Not even in my old suburb of Highlands Ranch
https://www.9news.com/article/news/nation-world/oppenheimer-imax-70mm-theaters-list/507-7aacd7ad-21a0-4a13-bda8-e51d4049559d

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AMC Promenade in Westminster most certainly has 70MM capability. Saw Dunkirk there in that format and they have showings for Oppenheimer as well.

I think that article is referencing just 70MM IMAX showings or something

JB99 said:

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I just quizzed my 18 yo son. Who just graduated a public tx 6a HS. He knew all about Oppenheimer, Manhattan Project, etc. He said they taught it in school although not at great depth. I think this is a cautionary tale that private school education is largely a giant ripoff. Although public HS in TX is probably superior to ****hole california

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Yeah, the Private Girls School education in Australia was overall worthwhile but was it the absolute best?, no. Are they much more well rounded than if they had attended school in the US, yes. Do they know anything about American Football?, no.

Without an entire treatise on the Australian school system, there are basically 3 parts - Public, Private and Catholic with significant depth to each of those.

Unfortunately (unlike the USA), Australia discriminates against immigrants so my children were excluded from the top public schools (which I was paying taxes for of course) so that's how we wound up in private school.

https://education.nsw.gov.au/public-schools/selective-high-schools-and-opportunity-classes/year-7/what-are-selective-high-schools

Leslie Groves was always my favorite.

I had no problem with Oppenheimer. Any decent scientist would/should ask questions.

twk said:

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Heck, even if you only get your history from the movies, this isn't the first film to cover the subject:

Fat Man and Little Boy



Knowledge of history seems to get less every year. Maybe it's that they are focusing on different aspects of history, but, whatever the reason, it's not doing a service to young people.

[Edit: hawg beat me to it. ]

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That is a good story, and I still get bummed out that John Cusack's character died in the movie (real event). Oppenheimer deserves all the credit he gets for developing the bomb. The guy who doesn't get enough credit is Edward Teller for taking those ideas and making way bigger bombs. He didn't have the moral reservations that Oppenheimer did, and he knew we had to develop them in order to stay ahead in the unfortunate arms race that came in the following decades

Apache said:

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Quote:

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And no, she doesn't wave the Gonzales flag.

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I grew up wanting everyone to know about the flag from my hometown. I think it's kinda cool to see it everywhere, but at the same time it has been cheapened IMO. Folks with no idea of the history behind it see it as the "gun nut" or "Pro 2nd amendment Flag" depending upon your point of view.

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I forgot, she did wave the flag once. We ran TIR together when we first started dating.

Watched a series on WGN called Manhattan. Pretty entertaining. Only lasted two seasons.

Zarathustra said:

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Here's why nobody remembers Oppenheimer.

I've talked to a bunch of people that can't wait to see the movie but not one person has mentioned any interesting fact about Oppenheimer. I've seen a bunch of Twitter threads promoting the movie as well, but not one of them mentioned even the smallest quirky fact about him. Same with 2 pages of post in this thread.

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And yet Hollywood made a 3 hour movie with his name as the title.

Which is kind of my point.

We've got people on this thread who self-identify as "well educated" who never heard of Oppenheimer.

I'm not like a biographer or anything but at least I heard of the guy and know what he did.

Now, a funny aside, in my Armor School Class at Fort Knox there was a guy from NY with a very similar name. We had a nickname for him which was something like - A-Bomb. For a bunch of 2LTs, we all got the joke so maybe that's why I'm surprised at the lack of name recognition on this thread. Not as surprised with younger people.

aggiehawg said:

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Dorm 15 said:

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Why Los Alamos?

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Oppenheimer lived in Albuquerque and thought the Sangre de Cristo mountains would be private and far enough removed to maintain the secrecy needed.

His idea.

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Wasn't their original operation in Chicago? How quickly did they move out there?

aggie93 said:

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I remember when I was in HS we didn't necessarily talk about Oppenheimer (the Fat Man and Little Boy movie seemed to really boost his profile) but we talked a lot about the morality of the bomb. Even did a "Mock Trial" where I volunteered to play Harry Truman with the case being about whether or not he should have dropped the bomb. My approach was "no brainer" because of ending the war and the lives that would have been lost with a Japanese invasion, not to mention the technology was coming either way. Had a few kids that voted to "convict" me but most agreed.

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If you ever get the chance to tour the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, MO, they've got a lot of exhibit information about the decision to drop the bomb.

It was one of the things that subconsciously I knew but, the exhibit really drove it home.

The Fife said:

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My kids are 7.5 and almost 5. They don't know a thing about him!

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I assume they're also not asking for tix to a 3 hour long live action movie

Definitely Not A Cop said:

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aggiehawg said:

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Dorm 15 said:

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Why Los Alamos?

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Oppenheimer lived in Albuquerque and thought the Sangre de Cristo mountains would be private and far enough removed to maintain the secrecy needed.

His idea.

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Wasn't their original operation in Chicago? How quickly did they move out there?

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There were about 20 or so different sites across the country that were connected to the Manhattan Project in one respect or another. Oak Ridge in Tennessee was probably the largest. Then there was another large installation in Washington state next to the Columbia River to cool the reactors.

But what was in Chicago was just the theoretical and metallurgical stuff, no actual fissionable material. The egghead headquarters, if you will.

The Banned said:

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It's possible that the name was tossed out there and she simply doesn't remember it. I've personally taught students material that they don't remember the next week. It has to be repeated over and over and over, because the baseline for kids right now is memorize crap for a test and forget it immediately after.

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Well, that was the baseline in the early 90s as well when I was high school especially if you weren't in honors courses. It's probably just worse now.

To be somewhat fair here to the daughter and point you made, I have forgotten a lot of stuff I was once taught. And that is simply because it's out of sight and out of mind. I forget most of the details of a book I've read within days of reading it.

Information overload these days is real.

Apache said:

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We're almost 80 years since the end of WW2. More & more will be forgotten until it's just a few high points.
Our collective memory grows shorter every year. Gulf War 1/Desert Storm was a huge freaking deal when it happened & it is absolutely never talked about. Vietnam Vets are dying off & aside from some movies and a memorial folks don't know much about that war either. Korea? WW1? Forget about it. Civil War battlefield visitation is dropping every year.

Lots of other reasons as well. Too many new immigrants who have no familial connection to America's past so they don't GAF. Shorter attention spans in general. (Can you TikTok a visit to Gettysburg? Insta at Shiloh?) Our society's failure to see the value of history. (Outside of the media & many academics who would rather control the historical perspective for their purposes - see the recent spate of "The Texas Revolution was fought because of Slavery narrative)

It is a sad society that doesn't know where it came from & what their forefathers went through. Makes it easy to take things for granted.

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Excellent post!

Even when I was at A&M (30 years ago), there was talk about how Korea was the forgotten war.
I actually thought it was cool in the show "Mad Men" that they made Don Draper a Korea Vet.
Obviously MASH ran forever (251 episodes) but it was a comedy with some serious topics from time to time.

Your immigration point is right on. 50 years ago, we were a country of 200 Million people and seemingly everybody had grandparents who served. These days in a country of 330 Million, hardly anybody serves. Matter of fact, wasn't it last week that the Biden Administration said that they don't want families serving in the military for multiple generations?

Last night, my wife forced me to watch "Greyhound" with Tom Hanks. As I was watching it, I was thinking about how if the USA had to mobilize to that degree and people had to serve under those conditions today, there's no way it would happen. We're all too fat and out of shape for starters. And that's before we even get to motivation and dedication or purpose.

ArmyAg97 said:

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Sounds like you are going for the engineering/history. Hope you're ready for the prolonged full nudity and "strong sex" scenes.

Why is this necessary to the telling of the story? Is the general public that horny?

Cillian Murphy on Oppenheimer

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I'm watching "Foundation" on Apple TV right now and there have been a few sex scenes that really did nothing for the story. Reminds me, watched "Invasion" a few weeks ago on Apple TV and that had some of the hottest lesbian sex scenes I've ever seen.

I'll try to not get too excited during the movie.

Apache said:

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Quote:

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And no, she doesn't wave the Gonzales flag.

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I grew up wanting everyone to know about the flag from my hometown. I think it's kinda cool to see it everywhere, but at the same time it has been cheapened IMO. Folks with no idea of the history behind it see it as the "gun nut" or "Pro 2nd amendment Flag" depending upon your point of view.

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Went to A&M with two guys from Gonzalez. Even went to a wedding there.

I feel the same way about it that I feel about Juneteenth.
Did you know you're celebrating Texas History?
Do you know the story behind it?
Enjoy your day off.

Really cracks me up when I see the "Come and Take It" merchandise out here in California. These Californians couldn't hold the jock of the folks who were at Gonzales.

Quote:

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Went to A&M with two guys from GonzaleS

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Wish you had stars so you could tell me their names.... pretty sure I would know them
Initials & the year they graduated HS would probably be enough though.
Edit - just saw that you were at A&M 30 years ago, so I would definitely know them. Was probably at the wedding you went to.

Viper16 said:

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Don't take this the wrong way Hollywood BQ, but what did you teach your child about US History over the years?

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More importantly, did you teach them about Texas history?

Viper16 said:

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Don't take this the wrong way Hollywood BQ, but what did you teach your child about US History over the years?

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Good point - there are certain things that I just take upon myself to make sure my kids know. The schools can't cover everything, and your kids won't remember all of what they do cover in school. In my case, I'm trying to double up on math and also fill in the missing gaps so that they get something closer to a classical education. Guess I should add the Manhattan project to the list as well.

Or do our kids know that this government still celebrates the Nazi scientists it imported during Operation Paperclip while trying to erase Confederate names from history?

This thread saddens me, but does not surprise me. I did make a point of talking about historical topics with both my kids, but at the end of the day, it is up to the kid to take up the interest in history.

History class was where I excelled in junior and high school. It was always an interest for me, going as far back as I can remember. My mom told me she read books about WWII aviation to me while she was pregnant with me, which probably explains my life-long fascination with warplanes of the era. But my high school history class spent about two weeks on WWII - I don't recall the name Oppenheimer coming up but won't say that it didn't. The name is like the peanut butter to the Manhattan Project jelly, they just go together.

I am a software engineer by profession. Makes a lot of income for my family and would not trade it for anything. But I often refer to myself as an amateur historian, as I have spent decades reading various books about historical events. Military history, I should say. Most about WWII, but I have also read many about other wars as varied as The French and Indian War and the war in Afghanistan, and most everything in between. One of the books in my library is "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes, which is where I gleaned the bulk of what I know about Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project.

Schools are too busy sticking coaches who know NOTHING about history in classrooms and ignoring the massive deficiencies in basic historical education, just as l9ng as little Johnny can play some by-god football

I love reading about military history since there are so much they can learn from leadership (sometimes the lack of), geopolitical decisions, terrain, and what lead to the wars. My 8 year old son has the same interest and I read him some of Oppenheimer's background to understand why he came up with such a weapon and why it was used. Also how weapons of war can help in other things like from the nuclear bomb we got nuclear energy.

I was the odd child who always had a book in my hands. My Mom bought Time Life series on different topics. When I was about 10, my older sister's boyfriend arrived to pick her up for a date but she wasn't ready. So he asked me what I was reading. I held the volume up and replied, "European Land Battles: 1944-1945."

Did I mention I was odd?

Yeah while they were changing names I think they forgot the nazi with a large office complex at Redstone arsenal. On second thought maybe they agree with his earlier leanings?

I don't remember Oppenheimer being mentioned as part of any history class curriculum, though it's possible. I do remember a teacher (can't quite which one or what year...I want to say it was my 7th grade English teacher or my 6th grade Social Studies teacher) mentioning him doing a discussion about the atom bomb...I think the subject was brought up and a student asked if Albert Einstein invented the bomb...that's when the teacher mentioned Oppenheimer.

I think he's more of a subject that relies on individual interest in history/WWII rather than taking broad US History classes.