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[–] 88 points 1 year ago (14 children)

<Seattle goes up in smoke because foreigners don't understand the difference between Washington state and Washington DC>

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I mean, you wouldn't be too far off. There's an Air Force base about 20-30 minutes from my house. I imagine it would be a military target if a war was ever waged stateside.

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  • [+] 28 points 1 year ago (7 children)
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    When I moved away from Alaska, the first person I spoke to in Georgia was a fast food cashier who asked about my day, and they asked “How are you liking the states?” No variation of “Alaska is a state.” would get through to him, he just kept saying “Sure, but I mean like a United States state.”

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    He presumably meant contiguous, but definitely didn't know the word

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    He did not, I asked specifically. I even said “Alaska is the 49th of the 50 states.” and he chuckled and said I was confused. Thankfully that wasn’t the standard, but I did meet a few more similarly confounded people over the years.

    Also the number of people that think Alaska is small because of how it’s shown on many maps is staggering.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    There's a tweet going around a little while ago about an American who didn't know that Rome was in Italy. Apparently there's a Rome in the US and she only knew about that one.

    Do American schools teach their kids literally anything at all? How can you not know where Rome is.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I guarantee that a random Italian living in a tiny nowhere village knows more about the US than your average US citizen knows about Italy. I don't know a single person who doesn't know the difference between Washington state and Washington the city.

    I have however spoken to Americans who couldn't point to the United States on an atlas.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    To be fair if we're talking geographically, it'd be more fair to compare knowledge of the US to knowledge of the whole of Europe.

    If we're talking about history it's a bit different.

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