Most people search online to find the answer of the question "What is the capital of Italy" shows the lowest point the knowledge of primitive geography has fallen.
Today on Nov. 1st, at about 10:15PM I was looking at Google Trends feature to see what are the people searching in general. I was amazed to see that the number one top searched term is called "Capital of Italy." Or another popular search in top ten was phrased "What is the capital of Italy."
This news story is not intended to answer the simple question that the capital of Italy is Rome, but rather to raise another question: how bad is the knowledge of geography U.S. society that people have to make a search to find the answer of the capital of Italy. I wrote U.S. society because presently Google Trends only shows the top internet trends in USA.
I assume that right now one of the major newspapers has a crossword puzzle where one of the questions is "what is the capital of Italy." But people, Italy is not another planet or a galaxy. Italy is one of the oldest countries in the world and a top tourist destination.
We used to learn things like the names of the world capitals in the 3rd or 4th grade. I mean if this was a question asking about the capital of a small unknown country I would understand people making a search, but Italy??? Have these searchers ever heard of a thing called Roman Empire?
If we knew better geography perhaps we would better understand and appreciate other cultures and traditions and perhaps that would make this world a more livable place.
By the way, the capital of Italy has been Rome for more than 2000 years.
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Comments
#1 Are you smarter than a fifth grader?
Most of the top google trends were questions asked on november 2nd eposide of "are you smarter than a fifth grader". Two celeb ( clay aiken and regin philbin) guests played against the class. one question was what is the captial of italy. one was who wrote a christmas carol. etc.. so.. yes everyone should know the capital of rome.. but it was a 2nd grade question on some dumb t.v show that was ripped off of howard stern anyways.. who cares?