At this years Fourth of July picnic, I asked the other adult how many Americans died in combat during the Revolutionary War.  Answers ranged from 40,000 to 500,000 (it was a small sample).

Do your own experiment around the water cooler, at a picnic, wherever. See if your results compare with mine.

With the actual total 4435 (The History Guy: Casualties From America's Wars) (maybe the records from back then are not the best), all my interviewees were shocked. 

Expecting the results, I was thinking about the implications of our lack of knowledge. The following questions arose:

Do we really have any concept of large numbers of deaths? Does the death toll in Iraq really have any significant bearing on the discussion about continuing the war?

How bad is our educational system? Do we really have so little context with which to understand our world? Have we sucked all life out of History, with boring dates and numbers?

Has Hollywood's presentation of History become more real that real History? I'll admit that I think I saw all 4435 die in Mel Gibson's "Patriot." Why can't we separate fact from fiction?