The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support Forums35 mind blowing facts about Americans today.
The following are 35 mind blowing facts about America that previous generations of Americans never would have believed
#1 Approximately one-fourth of the entire global prison population is in the United States.
#2 By the time an American child reaches the age of 18, that child will have seen approximately 40,000 murders on television.
#3 The average U.S. adult logs 6 hours, 43 minutes of total screen time daily.
#4 Approximately 96 percent of all Americans use the Internet.
#5 According to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, nearly 56,000 bridges in the United States are currently structurally deficient. What makes that number even more chilling is the fact that vehicles cross those bridges a total of 185 million times a day.
#6 In more than half of all U.S. states, the highest paid public employee in the state is a football coach.
#7 The Pentagon has more square footage of office space than any other office building in the entire world.
#8 The state of Alaska is 429 times larger than the state of Rhode Island. But Rhode Island has a significantly larger population than Alaska does.
#9 Alaska has a longer coastline than all of the other 49 U.S. states put together.
#10 The city of Juneau, Alaska is about 3,000 square miles in size. It is actually larger than the entire state of Delaware.
#11 The average age of Americas dams is now 52 years.
#12 The average supermarket in the United States wastes about 3,000 pounds of food each year.
#13 There are more than 75 million dogs in the United States, and that number is constantly growing.
#14 Montana has three times as many cows as it does people.
#15 The grizzly bear is the official state animal of California. But no grizzly bears have been seen in the state since 1922.
#16 The only place in the United States where coffee is grown commercially is in Hawaii.
#17 More than 2 million Americans work for Wal-Mart.
#18 Half of all American workers make less than $30,533 a year.
#19 According to one recent survey, 37 percent of all Americans eat fast food every 24 hours.
#20 One study found that one-third of all American teenagers havent read a single book in the past year.
#21 Almost one-third of all Millennials are still living with their parents.
#22 The suicide rate in the United States has risen by 33 percent since 1999.
#23 Women have earned at least 57 percent of all bachelors degrees in the United States for 18 years in a row.
#24 If the U.S. health care system was a country, it would have the fifth largest GDPon the entire planet.
#25 America does not have a single airport that is considered to be in the top 25 in the world.
#26 Today, a million Americans are living in their RVS, and that number is rising with each passing year.
#27 More than 100 churches in the United States are dying every single week.
#28 The original name of the city of Atlanta was Terminus.
#29 There are three towns in the United States that have the name Santa Claus.
#30 There is actually a town in Michigan called Hell, and during the recent polar vortex it actually froze over.
#31 Almost one-third of all land in the United States is owned by the federal government.
#32 More than 27 million acres of U.S. farmland is owned by foreigners.
#33 Congestion on our highways costs Americans approximately 101 billion dollars a year in wasted fuel and time.
#34 According to Bloomberg, it is being projected that by 2025, shortfalls in infrastructure investment will subtract as much as $3.9 trillion from U.S. gross domestic product.
#35 In 1980, the U.S. national debt had just surpassed the one trillion dollar mark. In 2019, we are about to surpass the 22 trillion dollar mark with no end in sight.
tblue37
(64,979 posts)wishstar
(5,267 posts)Stuart G
(38,359 posts)Numbers 2, 3, 6, and 22, are particularly interesting.
underpants
(182,271 posts)Some interesting stuff there
NoMoreRepugs
(9,257 posts)Trump is doing a good job. THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A MINUTE.
TwilightZone
(25,342 posts)Austin Bergstrom is pretty routinely declared one of the best airports in the world on various lists. It's a smaller airport, so it doesn't tend to get much attention. It gets a lot of awards, however, including international ones.
http://austintexas.gov/department/awards-and-honors-received-department-aviation
http://austin.culturemap.com/news/travel/06-13-19-austin-bergstrom-international-airport-worlds-best-airports-list-fodors-travel/
Major Nikon
(36,814 posts)Atlanta, Chicago, and DFW all have more takeoffs and landings than any other airport in the world. So in terms of best utilization, the rest of the work is well behind.
NJCher
(35,423 posts)and not getting any better.
p.s. especially in reference to the first fact.
Fla Dem
(23,347 posts)bills, notes, and bonds held by foreign countries. The rest of the $22 trillion national debt is owned by either the American people or by the U.S. government itself.
https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-debt-to-china-how-much-does-it-own-3306355
Just another mind blowing fact about America. Hope China never calls in that debt.
jmowreader
(50,447 posts)The Borough of Juneau, AK, is over 3000 square miles. Borough is Alaskan for "county." The City of Juneau is only 14 square miles.
Stuart G
(38,359 posts)But I didn't check all of it out. Oh well back to the laboratory ......
ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)The city of Juneau is larger than the state of Delaware.
What is the effect of having so much more space? What would happen if someone who grew up in Juneau had to live in Delaware? To me the difference in cultures across the country is fascinating.