the lack of knowledge baffles me

this all started with a friend who gets straight A's at school and you'd think is pretty knowledgeable about stuff in general. we were playing a guessing game, where you had to describe a given word/person, and your partner would have to guess as many described words as possible, in a given amount of time. it just so happens that my friend has to describe "Abraham Lincoln" to her partner, which shouldnt be too hard. wrong, apparently. she starts saying "american scientist that starts with an a", so of course we're all pretty confused, i for one know no american scientists like that, so she just skips the word once she sees her partner wont be able to guess. at the end of the round, we check to see which word she skipped, and we see ABRAHAM LINCOLN. listen, id understand if this was someone who didnt give much attention to history or education in general (were not even american), but keep in mind this is a straight A student, and has been her entire life. HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHO ABRAHAM LINCOLN IS??? 

and this is what got me thinking, a lot of the people i know have no idea what the holodomor is, for example, which, again, to me is baffling cause we learn about stuff like the concentration camps or other dark events like that in school. for those who dont know (because apparently theres a bunch of people who dont), the holodomor was a wide-spread famine across the ukrainian and moldovan region, whilst it was still under the ussr. it basically happened because, since ukraine had rich soils and agriculture (at least much better than russian land), a majority of its produce was imported into large cities, towards the russian land, whilst these other regions had to deal with small rations. it lead to a horrible famine, with a lot of deaths (and some stories say certain areas even resorted to cannibalism to survive, although i cant find any exact sources for this so dont take my word for it). as you can see, this was REALLY BAD. like, really REALLY bad, and yet nobody i know has ever heard of this.

what shocked me even more is that a lot of people dont even know about the molotov-ribbentrop pact between the USSR and nazi germany. it was said to be a non-aggression pact between the two countries (we all know how that went), but more specifically, under secret protocol, it basically served to split eastern europe up between the two countries. i cant speak about the other countries affected, but at least for romania, we lost bessarabia, northern bukovina and the hertsa region. after that, we also lost both northern transylvania and southern dobruja (all thanks to the axis powers). polands invasion was also due to this pact, so its shocking that SO FEW PEOPLE ACTUALLY KNOW OF IT??

here's another thing, some people dont know who the guys on our banknotes are. my younger brother has NO IDEA who ANY of the people on the romanian banknotes are, NOT EVEN OUR MOST INFLUENTIAL POET, who literally *everyone* from romania should know, mihai eminescu. some of his works were translated into over 50 languages, and overall he's considered to be romanias most important writer to date. its not even just my brother, my own friends, who are just as old as me, have no idea whos on our banknotes, or dont even know who they are. take for example the 1 lei banknote, who has nicolae iorga on it. this guy used to be the PRIME MINISTER of romania, who was kidnapped and killed by the fascist movement in our country at that time. he was very well known for being a child prodigy, polymath and polyglot, doing MASSIVE work for the education system in our country, AND ALSO the romanians in the transylvanian region, when it was under foreign occupation

i know writing about this is gonna do very little, but i felt like id at least point it out, because in todays day and age, a LOT of things are getting claimed as either true or false, and, unfortunately, history *is* being rewritten (or at least certain people are actively trying to). its why knowing of this stuff and learning about it is important, because one of the few things we still own are our thoughts and memories (unless elon musk desides to implant a microchip into everyones brains lmao)