You can easily find examples of this by searching twitter.

I recall conversations about the Titanic with older relatives when I was young. It was one of the great mysteries - a giant ship lost forever in the ocean. It seemed amazing that with all our modern technology we could not even find it - it spoke to a world that was beyond our control. One which our greatest accomplishments could not master.

They found it in 1985. I would have been 9. Those same older relatives were riveted. That was almost certainly the most read issue of National Geographic.

Then it was a movie, in 1997, and aspects of that movie become pop culture touchpoints. Media literate children certainly know some of the scenes in that movie even if they've never bothered to watch it, because they are constantly referenced.

But no one tells them the actual story of the Titanic. There is no mystery any more. Man seems a much greater threat to us in this era than nature.