Surprising Facts

Here are some facts that might surprise you.  I did not research many of these facts, but instead parroted them from other web sites, so I cannot verify the accuracy of every fact.


Facts that directly contradict popular perceptions shaped by the media:

1. The fastest-growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 year old age bracket.
2.  Einstein's brain weighed 12% less than a normal male brain.
3.  Napoleon Bonaparte was just shy of 5 feet 7 inches, or nearly 2 inches taller than the average Frenchman of his day--certainly not short by the standards of that time.  He would be about 1 inch shorter than a typical Frenchman today.  So much for the Napolean complex.
4.  Gallop polls done throughout the 1960s showed that young and educated people (meaning college students) were far more likely to support the war than their old and uneducated fellow citizens.  In fact, it was the over-50 crowd that opposed the war more than anyone.
5.  President Obama is the smallest government spender since Eisenhower. Okay, this is one viewpoint.  Another viewpoint which came out immediately afterward: "Obama is biggest spender in world history."  This is a great example of how two people can selectively use facts to come to opposite conclusions.
6.  Saturated fat and cholesterol are not unhealthy and will not make you fat.  A low-fat, high-carb diet (with lots of starches and sugars) is what makes you fat and unhealthy.  This has been shown by all recent health studies.
7.  63% of Arab-Americans are classified as Christians.

Facts that reflect disturbing trends:

8.  There are various ways of tabulating unemployment.  But if you count all the people who theoretically ought to be working based on age, etc.--which admittedly includes some people who never did seek employment--the unemployment number is 37.2% rather than the "official" rate of 6.7%.  (I do not know whether the 37.2% estimate includes the 3.4% of Americans on disability; if not, the true number might be worse yet.)  When the "official" unemployment rate goes down, what it often means is that more people have become discouraged and have stopped looking for employment.  20% of American households are now on food stamps--an all-time record.

9.  Here's one possible explanation for the seemingly intractable unemployment rate:  The U.S. has a (very) basic skills shortage that is getting far worse, relative to job requirements.  More than one-third (37 percent) of the 25-to-54 year old U.S. population does not have the basic ability to write a letter explaining an error on a credit card bill, use a bus schedule, or use a calculator to determine a 10 percent discount (Level 3 literacy).

   Tragically, it has been reported that less than half (44%) of 25-to-34 year old high school graduates operate at literacy levels of 3 or higher. That means that more than 4 out of 10 working age adults don’t have the functional literacy skills to perform even the most basic jobs. Worse, nearly 55 percent of workers 55 to 64 year old have literacy skills at level 1 or 2. For your reference, Level 1 literacy is the ability to locate the expiration date on a driver’s license, total a bank deposit slip, or sign their names; Level 2 is the ability to locate an intersection on a street map, understand an appliance warranty, or total costs from an order.
   These statistics may soon put us in the category of a developing nation.  And it has been shown that a 1% increase in literacy results in a 1.5% increase in GDP.  We're on the wrong side of that curve.

10.  Around 72% of black children are born out of wedlock. It was 25% in the 1960′s and that was considered an epidemic at the time.
11.  58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.  42% of college graduates never read another book.

12.  By the age of 4, the average child in a professional family has heard 20 million more words than a child in a middle-class family, and about 35 million more than a child raised in a family that receives welfare assistance.
13.  In 1955, there were more than eight workers paying into the U.S. Social Security system for every beneficiary. Today, that number is a bit less than three workers paying in, and it's projected to be close to two workers by 2031.  (Now do the math.)

Science & Health Facts

14.  50% of healthcare dollars in the US are spent on the last 6 months of life.
15.  You are nearly 5 times more likely to die falling out of bed then dying in a plane crash, and 15 times more likely to die in a car accident.  The 5 top causes of death in the U.S. are heart attacks, cancer, strokes, a land vehicle accident, and suicide.  Cancer will soon be the leading cause of death.
16.  CPR only works 2% to 16% of the time, depending on the situation.

17.  In the US, there’s an average of 217 millions white blood cells per liter of cow's milk. Those white blood cells come from the pus of the infected teats of the cows.*
18.  There are 10 times more bacteria cells in your gut than there are cells in your body.  (Bacteria cells are smaller.)  Researchers believe what's in your gut may affect your mental state.
19.  The acid in your (empty) stomach is strong enough to dissolve razor blades.  When your stomach is full, the acid level decreases from a pH of 2 to a pH of 6, making you more vulnerable to such things as salmonella.  The acid in a dog's stomach is slightly stronger yet (pH ~ 2).  The acid in a vulture's stomach is much stronger still (pH ~ 0), making them very effective disease-fighting agents that greatly benefit us humans by gobbling up potentially dangerous disease transmitters.
20.  If you could stretch out all of a human's blood vessels, they would circle the world twice.
21.  The surface area of a single human lung is equal to that of a tennis court.
22.  Every year, 98% of the atoms in your body are replaced.
23.  The world's most toxic and deadliest substance is a new type of botulinum toxin.  10 to 12 grams of it would be enough to kill the entire human population of the earth.
24.  In the unlikely event that all the polar ice were to melt, the sea level all over the world would rise 500 to 600 feet. As a result, 85 to 90% of the Earth's surface would be covered with water as compared to the current 71%. The U.S. would be split by the Mississippi Sea, which would connect the Great Lakes with the Gulf of Mexico.
25.  Since the 1950s, around 90% of the large predatory fish in the ocean are gone.

Historical Facts:

26.  The federal government is still paying two Civil War pensions (to children of soldiers).  The last Civil War widow died in 2003.*
27.  The maximum area of the Roman Empire was an impressive 2.51 million square miles.  It was actually only the 19th largest empire in history.*
28.  All British tanks since 1945 have been equipped with Tea-Making Facilities.*
29. In 1598, Queen Elizabeth ordered a banquet featuring a food source from the new world--potatoes. The royal cooks, having never prepared potatoes before, threw the veggie away and cooked the green part or eye instead, sickening the whole royal court.  Elizabeth banned the vegetable for 100 years.*
30.  The current 50 star flag was designed by  then 17 year old Robert G. Heft, as part of a school project.  For his effort, he received a grade of B-.  When his design was chosen and adopted by presidential proclamation, his teacher changed his grade to an A.*
31.  Over 3500 hours of recordings were made by the taping system established in the White House and other executive offices by Richard Nixon during his presidency.  Of these, only about 200 hours contain references to Watergate.  By the time of Nixon's death in 1994, only 63 hours had been made public.*
32.  Seven of the ten deadliest wars were fought in China alone.  More people died in each of the two largest of these wars than in WWI.*
33.  The pony express is part of the lore of the Old West.  Most people don't realize that it lasted barely nineteen months, from April 1860 to October 1861.*
34.  John Tyler became the 10th president of the United States in 1841.  He still has two living grandchildren.*
35.  In 2005, George W. Bush was nearly assassinated in Georgia by a man named Vladimir Arutyunian, who threw a grenade at the president.  It did not explode.*
36.  The citizens found guilty during the Salem witch trials were not actually burned at the stake. They were hanged.*
37.  At its height in 480 BC the first Persian Empire covered 44% of the world's population, the highest of any empire in history (the British had just 20%).  This was just 70 years after Cyrus the Great began his conquests.  Alexander destroyed this empire just 150 years later.*
38.  The pyramids weren't built by Egyptian slaves.  They were built by paid laborers.*

39.  In the 18th century it was believed that blowing tobacco smoke up someone's rectum would resuscitate them from drowning.  It was such a widely held belief that equipment was hung up all along the Thames in London.
40.  Jesus' real name was Yeshua (as in Joshua).  The New Testament was first written in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic.  Greeks did not use the "sh" sound, so "s" was substituted.  Then, to make it masculine, they added another "s" at the end.  The "J" didn't even come until the late middle ages, making it "Jesus."  This etymology is actually a simplification of the real story that may trace the name's earliest origins from a combination of YHWH and Hoseah.
41.  After Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery made it to the Pacific, they spent the Winter of 1804-05 trading what was left of their personal effects for sexual favors from the Clatsop women, who gave them syphilis.  Because the prevailing treatment was an oral dose of mercury, we can say with certainty where many of the Corps' camp latrines were located, thanks to the mercury that remains in the soil today.*
42.  80% of all Russian males born in the year 1923 didn't live past their 22nd birthday.
43.  Lincoln's Gettysburg address was most likely influenced by his sometime reading of Pericles' Funeral Oration by Thucydides, which praises the uniqueness of Athens' commitment to democracy.
44.  Non-violent resistance was a concept expounded upon by Tolstoy in his writings as a result of studying the Bible.  Gandhi was a friend of Tolstoy, and the older Tolstoy's influence on the young man was profound, despite their religious and cultural differences.  Gandhi influenced other later reformers such as Martin Luther King.
45.  Bill Clinton sent a total of two e-mails during his presidency.

Unfortunate Facts

46.  More American soldiers die from suicide than from fighting in combat.
47.  Since 1989, 303 convicted felons have been exonerated by DNA evidence.  18 were on death row.  25 percent had confessed.  28 of them pled guilty.  Meanwhile, in 2013, 39 inmates were executed in the U.S.  The U.S. is among 20% of the countries in the world still practicing capital punishment in law and in practice...countries such as Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, China, Pakistan, Sudan and South Sudan.

48.  The amount of American dollars spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars could have paid for solar panels on the roof of every house in America and dramatically spurred our economy as well as eliminating a significant portion of U.S. greenhouse gas.

49.  The US spends $660 billion a year on the military, or about 20% of the federal budget. (The total the US has spent on NASA in its 55 year history is $526 billion.)  Yearly expenditures on foreign aid total about $33 billion, or 1% of the federal budget.

50.  The budget to send the Curiosity Rover to Mars is less than the worldwide military expenditure for 13 hours.
51.  In the last 3,500 years, there have been only 230 years of peace throughout the civilized world.
52.  Young black males without a high school diploma were more likely to be in prison or jail (37 percent) on any given day in 2008 than to be working (26 percent).  The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
53.  70% of murders in Detroit go unsolved.

*Shamelessly copied from this source