Be honest: Before last week, what did you know about Dunkirk?
Beyond that it's the title of a new wartime epic by "that director who made those really good Batman movies," you probably didn't know too much about the historical event.
That's because the 350,000-person evacuation of a sleepy French village during World War II (also known as Operation Dynamo) has largely taken a backseat in America to the more storied events of the era: D-Day, Pearl Harbor, the atom bomb.
But now, thanks to Christopher Nolan's acclaimed new film "Dunkirk," you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't know the name.
Judging from the initial box-office haul, "Dunkirk" is now known the world over. One week into its theatrical run, "Dunkirk" had already banked a lofty $50.5 million in the U.S. alone.
And Nolan is not the only person who wants to talk about the bomb-raked shores of Dunkirk in May and June 1940.
In April, Danish director Lone Scherfig's dramedy "Their Finest" was released in the U.S. The film chronicles a British filmmaking team's endeavor to put together a "morale-boosting" film about Britain's role in the evacuation.
Timed almost perfectly with the release of Nolan's "Dunkirk," publishers are rolling out books left and right that further elucidate Dunkirk's legacy.
Historian Joshua Levine's "Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture" is already a New York Times bestseller.
Dunkirk's unexpected emergence in pop culture is something of a double victory: a coup for Nolan's film but also for Dunkirk and the history buried within it.
