The USA is the world’s third largest country. History is full of crazy and interesting events.Here are 21 true and interesting facts about USA – America.
21 Interesting Facts about the U.S.A
1st on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: The U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition in the 20s and 30s, killing over 10,000 people.
And the numbers were not trivial. In 1926, in New York City, 1,200 were sickened by poisonous alcohol; 400 died. The following year, deaths climbed to 700. These numbers were repeated in cities around the country as public-health officials nationwide joined in the angry clamor. Furious anti-Prohibition legislators pushed for a halt in the use of lethal chemistry. “Only one possessing the instincts of a wild beast would desire to kill or make blind the man who takes a drink of liquor, even if he purchased it from one violating the Prohibition statutes,” proclaimed Sen. James Reed of Missouri.
The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences – slate.com
2nd on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: Every hour, at least 1 person is killed by a drunk driver in the U.S.
Since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began recording alcohol-related statistics in 1982, the number of persons under 21, killed in drunk driving crashes decreased 79% from the record high of 5,215 in 1982 to 1,072 in 2013. These fatalities account for 11% of the drunk driving fatalities in the U.S.
For every 100,000 Americans under the age of 21, 1.3 people were killed in drunk driving fatalities in 2012. The rate of under 21 drunk driving fatalities per 100,000 population has declined 46% over the past decade.
Source: http://responsibility.org/get-the-facts/research/statistics/drunk-driving-fatalities
3rd on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: 100 acres of Pizza are served in the U.S. every day.
For those of you yet to take lunch, we think it’s the perfect time for a hunger-inducing stat of the day. The Daily tells us, in a profile of healthy pizza purveyor Naked Pizza, that the United States pizza industry “serves about 100 acres of pizza a day.” This figure comes from the National Association of Pizza Operators, an organization that aims “to create and foster a community of independent and small chain pizzeria operators and their industry suppliers where doing business with one another is mutually beneficial.” According to a survey by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, when it comes to eating fast food, Americans are much more satisfied by pizza than burgers, turning to Pizza Hut as their preferred fast pizza vendor of choice.
Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/06/100-acres-pizza-served-us-daily/351989
4th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: Exposure to Secondhand smoke causes nearly 50,000 deaths each year in the U.S. alone.
Overall mortality among both male and female smokers in the United States is about three times higher than that among similar people who never smoked.
The major causes of excess mortality among smokers are diseases that are related to smoking, including cancer and respiratory and vascular disease.
Smokeless tobacco is a known cause of cancer. In addition, the nicotine in smokeless tobacco may increase the risk for sudden death from a condition where the heart does not beat properly (ventricular arrhythmias).
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality
5th on interesting Facts About the U.S.A: One American consumes as many resources as 32 Kenyans.
The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries like Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that’s a big problem. Yes, it is a problem for Kenya’s more than 30 million people, but it’s not a burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their relative per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10 times the population, the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does.
Source: www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02diamond.html
6th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: America’s firstslave owner was ablack man.
Anthony Johnson (b. c. 1600 – d. 1670) was an Angolan who achieved freedom in the early 17th-century Colony of Virginia after serving his term of indenture. He became one of the first property owners and slaveholders of African birth there. Held as an indentured servant in 1621, he earned his freedom after several years, and was granted land by the colony.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Johnson_(colonist)
7th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: 1 in 3 Americans is obese.
The scale of our bigness — 34 percent of Americans are obese, compared to 24 percent of Canadians — is made more striking by the scale of our efforts to combat it. America spends more money per person than any other country on “health care” (yes, I put that in quotes), while achieving worse outcomes than most of our peers in almost every conceivable dimension. The trillions we spend relative to Canada (about twice as much, per capita) do not make it any harder to tell Canadians from Americans in the immigration line.
Big Government, Small Bellies: What Japan Can Teach Us About Fighting Fat – theatlantic.com
8th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: 9 million people are in prisons around world, and a quarter of them are in the U.S.
Half of the world’s prison population of about nine million is held in the US, China or Russia.
Prison rates in the US are the world’s highest, at 724 people per 100,000. In Russia the rate is 581.
At 145 per 100,000, the imprisonment rate of England and Wales is at about the midpoint worldwide.
Many of the lowest rates are in developing countries, but overcrowding can be a serious problem. Kenyan prisons have an occupancy level of 343.7%
Source: news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm
9th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: There are at least 97 people called “LOL” in the U.S.
Source: http://names.whitepages.com/first/Lol
10th on interesting Facts About the U.S.A: In 1962, the U.S. blew up a hydrogen bomb in space that was 100 times more powerful than Hiroshima.
Since we’re coming up on the Fourth of July, and towns everywhere are preparing their better-than-ever fireworks spectaculars, we would like to offer this humbling bit of history. Back in the summer of 1962, the U.S. blew up a hydrogen bomb in outer space, some 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean. It was a weapons test, but one that created a man-made light show that has never been equaled — and hopefully never will.
More information
11th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: The U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia for just US$7.2 million in 1867.
The Alaska Purchase (Russian: Продажа Аляски, tr. Prodazha Alyaski) was the United States’ acquisition of Alaska from the Russian Empire on March 30, 1867 by a treaty ratified by the United States Senate, and signed by president Andrew Johnson
Source
12th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: 8 billion chickens are consumed in the U.S. each year.
13th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: 40% of births in the U.S. come from unmarried women.
- Number of live births to unmarried women: 1,604,870
- Birth rate for unmarried women: 43.9 births per 1,000 unmarried women aged 15-44 years
- Percent of all births to unmarried women: 40.2%
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/unmarried-childbearing.htm
14th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: Everyday, nearly 4000 teens in the U.S. smoke their first cigarette while 1,000 start smoking on a daily basis.
“Each day, about 4000 teens smoke a cigarette for the first time. That’s nearly 1.5 million youths per year. Nicotine addiction is so powerful that every day about 1000 teens become daily smokers.”
Dance of the Cilia and the Smoke Bomb: Why Teens, Young Adults (and Parents) Should Never Smoke by Don Christensen
15th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: Smoking causes 1 in every 5 deaths in the U.S. every year.
Cigarette smoking causes about one of every five deaths in the United States each year. Cigarette smoking is estimated to cause the following:
- More than 480,000 deaths annually (including deaths from secondhand smoke)
- 278,544 deaths annually among men (including deaths from secondhand smoke)
- 201,773 deaths annually among women (including deaths from secondhand smoke)
Source
16th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: About 20 million Americans live in mobile homes.
“US Census figures confirmed that her state did indeed have the highest proportion of mobile homes – also known as trailers or manufactured housing – though the figure is closer to 18% than 20%.”
Source
17th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: Medical errors are the 6th leading cause of the death in the U.S.
In fact, the study, from doctors at Johns Hopkins, suggests medical errors may kill more people than lower respiratory diseases like emphysema and bronchitis do. That would make these medical mistakes the third leading cause of death in the United States. That would place medical errors right behind heart disease and cancer.
Source
18th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: The U.S. has 115,000 janitors, 83,000 bartenders and 323,000 restaurant servers with bachelor’s degrees.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that we now have 115,000 janitors, 83,000 bartenders, 323,000 restaurant servers, and 80,000 heavy-duty truck drivers with bachelor’s degrees — a number exceeding that of uniformed personnel in the U.S. Army.
End U.S. Student Loans, Don’t Make Them Cheaper by Richard K. Vedder
19th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: Christmas was illegal in the U.S. until 1836 as it was considered an Ancient Pagan Holiday.
Christmas was originally pagan festival, you might not have known that in the UK it was made illegal for 12 years and in the US it was illegal for 260 years.
In England, parliament banned Christmas for 12 years from 1647 under Cromwell. That ban was lifted only for it to be imposed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1660. This ban on Christmas, becoming law in many places, lasted until the apparently progressive state of Alabama was the first US state to legalise Christmas in 1836, meaning there was almost 200 years during which it was criminal to celebrate Christmas in the US. Oklahoma became the very last state to make Christmas legal again in 1907 despite the US making it a federal holiday in 1870.
Source
20th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A:After Christianity, the largest religious affiliation in the U.S. is Judaism.
After Christianity, Judaism is the next largest religious affiliation in the US, though this identification is not necessarily indicative of religious beliefs or practices. There are between 5.3 and 6.6 million Jews. A significant number of people identify themselves as American Jews on ethnic and cultural grounds, rather than religious ones. For example, 19% of self-identified American Jews do not believe God exists.
Source
21th on 21 interesting Facts About the U.S.A: In the U.S. it costs US$245,000 to raise a child, before college.
The Department of Agriculture has released its latest report on what families spend raising their children, and it’s full of all sorts of statistics to make you think long and hard about adopting a dog instead. The headline figure: A middle-income married couple can now expect to spend $245,000 on their precious one from birth through age 17 (in other words: pregnancy and college not included). As a point of reference, the median new home sells for about $273,000. Meanwhile, in 1960, the inflation-adjusted price tag for a child was about $198,000. So in half a century, the expense has jumped about 24 percent.