The Dysentery Oregon Trail T-Shirt features the green covered wagon from the 1970′s computer game The Oregon Trail and reads ‘ YOU HAVE DIED OF DYSENTERY’ in all caps below the wagon. The Oregon Trail computer game was developed in 1971 by Don Rawitsch, Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heinemann and produce by the Minnesota Educational Computing  Consortium in 1974. [...]

The Dysentery Oregon Trail T-Shirt features the green covered wagon from the 1970′s computer game The Oregon Trail and reads ‘ YOU HAVE DIED OF DYSENTERY’ in all caps below the wagon.

The Oregon Trail computer game was developed in 1971 by Don Rawitsch, Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heinemann and produce by the Minnesota Educational Computing  Consortium in 1974. The game was originally crated to teach school children about life on the Oregon Trail, as the player took on the responsibilities one would have had back in the day of pioneer life.

The Oregon Trail actually did serve a purpose of showing some very harsh realities about life in the pioneer days. Death held its place with other problems the players would face. One could die of the measles, typhoid, snakebites, cholera, exhaustion, broken legs, drowning, and yes, dysentery. Dysentery, well there will be no going into what that is exactly, because it is gross, but! It usually comes from contaminated food and water and the lack of keeping sanitized, so it is understandable how that was a common killer back in those days.

Anyway, The design! Well, once again there is not much to the design, though it does capture the feel of the old computer games perfectly.  It was picked more for the memories that it will bring people. It is one of those things that probably does not get thought of too often, but makes you smile when you do remember waiting for your turn to play it in the school’s computer lab.