HARDCORE HISTORY

These posters started popping up online recently. They're pretty clever and I was stoked to see The Smithsonian try something like this because it might make people a little more interested in learning some history.

History lessons in which we are desperately in need of. I asked 5 people last week when the Declaration of Independence was signed and got 5 different answers—none of them correct. These days no one knows anything about history but they can tell you exactly how many times Tumblr went down that week. And that's fucking depressing.

But I did a little more digging and it turns out that these ads were made by a college student strictly for a class assignment on how to get college kids interested in history. Last week after they hit the internet, she started getting phone calls from news outlets and eventually even reps from The Smithsonian got in touch with her. The papers wanted to talk about her ideas and such, The Smithsonian wanted them taken down immediately and their name removed.

That's even more depressing because I think these posters genuinely stirred up some interest in, God forbid, learning a fucking thing or two.

But anyway, the woman's name is Jenny Burrows and you can read her story about the posters here.

And read about the Teddy Roosevelt story here. Which is awesome.