I certainly wasn't claiming most people remember the war of 1812 -- I was just stating that it's not as if the events are glossed over or not taught in school.

I certainly wasn't claiming most people remember the war of 1812 -- I was just stating that it's not as if the events are glossed over or not taught in school. It is well covered in early American history curriculum; it just gets taught during the peak of puberty, which is pretty unfortunate. In my experience, most people remember a few fragments like you do, and particularly famous events from the war (old ironsides, burning of the white house, carrying out the portrait of Washington to save it) might not even be associated with that war in people's minds. Most people seem to erroneously associate many of those events with the revolutionary war, similar to how they often associate the Constitution with the revolutionary war even though it came later.