Please tell me you know what this is.

Yes, yes, we all know it's a submarine. I mean, specifically, please tell me you know what that part sticking up in the air is called.

See, there are some things I know that I think everyone else knows, but then it comes out that not everyone does and sometimes I'm like "Huh? How can you not know?"

I realize that a large part of this is just that we all have different areas of knowledge or interest. Murphy could post a photo of his service weapon and I would have no idea what it is. But then, I don't expect that he'd recognize a Mark-48 torpedo on sight, either.

But submarines are a bit more common knowledge than that, right? At least, their general existence & parts. I don't expect random people to know that the submarine in the picture is a 688i, or what differentiates a 688i from a "normal" 688, or even that they're all Los Angeles class submarines. But surely we know what the general parts of them are called, right?

I ask this, because as I was reading the Stars & Stripes article on the collision between the USS Hartford (which, for the record, is a 688i) & the USS New Orleans (which is a target surface ship), the author went to great pains to explain exactly what the sail is, as if this isn't common knowledge.

So what I want to know is this: Is the author an idiot, and this is common knowledge, or am I that much of a geek?

And on a side note: An 85-degree roll? Holy shit, people! That's damn near sideways. No wonder there were 15 injuries.

And on yet another, this time completely unrelated side note: that photo is of the USS Boise in the Suez Canal in 2003, on its way to help lay the smack-down on Saddam. It should have been the USS Oklahoma City on that deployment, but alas they tried to surface underneath a Norwegian Oil Tanker, & thus were in no shape to take their surge deployment.

My middle daughter was born exactly 9 months and 4 days after the Boise returned from that deployment. There's a fairly good chance that my ex-husband is in that photograph, but I can't make out who's topside in the sail.