We are big fans of the United States of America and we want to celebrate this by telling you 82 crazy facts about that country. Let’s just look at the history and the present and you can find so many unbelievable fun facts about the USA we all want to tell you. Do you know what the “S” in Harry S. Truman stands for or what the shoe size of the Statue of Liberty is? Find it out.
1. Monowi in Nebraska has only one inhabitant and he is also mayor of the city.
2. John Adams, the second president of the United States once said “I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm; and that three or more become a Congress!”
3. George Washington was known to spend approximately seven percent of his annual salary on alcohol.
4. The slogan of Vermin Supreme, a candidate for the U.S. presidency, was “Free ponies for all Americans”.
5. The likelihood of getting bitten by a human in New York is higher than the likelihood of getting bitten by a shark in the sea.
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6. Every 21st inhabitant of New York is a millionaire.
7. The shoe size of the Statue of Liberty is size 879.
8. In the history of the United States there have been 17 Americans who ran a marathon in less than two hours and ten minutes. In October 2011 this was achieved by 32 Kenyans.
9. The “S” in the name of Harry S. Truman only represents an “S”.
10. Apple owns more cash than the United States.
11. When the Cornhuskers – the football team of the University of Nebraska- have a home match, the stadium becomes the third biggest city in the state.
12. The entire human population could live in New Zealand, and the population density would still be lower than that of Manhattan in New York.
13. The majority of astronauts, U.S. Presidents and Nobel Prize winners were first-borns.
14. In 1980 a hospital in Las Vegas had to dismiss several employees as they were betting on when patients would die.
15. In the United States at least one person per hour gets killed in a car accident due to drinking.
16. An anonymous donor pays for the college tuition of each student in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
17. A U.S. court had to decide if the X-men are humans or not. In the US, imported dolls representing human beings are subject to a higher tax than other toys. As of this a toy manufacturer sued for a declaration that the action figures did not represent human beings to pay lower taxes.
18. Central Park in New York is larger than the State Monaco.
19. When leaving school, a child in the U.S. has already witnessed 40,000 people dying on TV.
20. The Towers of the World Trade Centre had their own zip code: 10048 New York.
21. In 1867 the USA bought Alaska from Russia for just 7.2 million dollars.
22. New York is located more southern than Rome.
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23. In 1893, a U.S. citizen made an application to change the name of the country to “The United States of the Earth”.
24. On average, there are 88.8 weapons per 100 U.S. citizens.
25. Nothing is an uninhabited town in the U.S. state of Arizona. There is nothing but a gas station and a garage.
26. In the USA, a slave from 1850 by today’s standards, would cost 1,000 dollars.
27. The Golden Gate Bridge has to be painted regularly. The salt water corrodes the paint so fast, that one has to start repainting the bridge as soon as one is finished painting it.
28. Before coffee became popular, beer was served for breakfast in the USA.
29. In the U.S. the most dangerous job is to be a fisherman. Approximately one out of every 900 die during work.
30. In 1911, the Niagara Falls froze completely.
31. The former U.S. politician Thomas Jefferson believed that every law should automatically become void after 19 years, to be replaced by a new law, which is adjusted to the new generation.
32. The modern look of the U.S. flag was designed by a school child from Ohio as a school project. His teacher gave him a B-.
33. By law, cars are prohibited on Mackinac Island in Michigan since 1898. Inhabitants use horses instead.
34. Thanks to collaboration with Twitter, every public tweet sent in the U.S., is digitally archived in the Library of Congress.
35. Before English became the dominant language in the U.S., German was the second most common language.
36. In the U.S., the probability of suicide is twice the rate of an assassination by a third party.
37. There are about nine million people in a prison around the world. 25 percent of them come from the USA.
38. In the USA, there is a sports league for rock-paper-scissors competitions.
39. There are more public libraries in the U.S. than McDonald’s restaurants.
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40. Living in the White House is not free for the President of the United States. He receives a monthly bill for food and other expenses.
41. The average rent for a one room apartment in Manhattan is 3,400 dollars.
42. In 2013, more people died in the United States from children playing with small guns than from terrorists
43. George Washington was known to convince voters with the help of alcohol. At an election campaign with over 400 people, he brought over 500 liters of alcohol to secure their votes.
44. In the 17th century, New York was called New Amsterdam.
45. In 1958 an atomic bomb disappeared from the arsenal of the U.S. Army in Georgia. To this day it has not been found.
46. Chinatown in New York is the largest settlement of Chinese citizens outside Asia.
47. The longest street in the world connects Alaska with the south of Argentina. It has a length of approximately 18,641 miles and crosses 17 states, six time zones and four climate zones.
48. Whittier is a city in Alaska with 217 inhabitants. Almost the entire population of the city lives in the small community’s only building, which also houses a school, a hospital, a church and a grocery store. For this, the town has been nicknamed the “town under one roof”.
49. When the USA bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, they switched from the Julian calendar previously used in Alaska to the Gregorian calendar used in the USA. The result was that the 8th to 17th of October 1867 never existed in Alaska.
50. There are more people living in California than in Canada.
51. Although Christopher Columbus was the first to discover the American continent, it was the Italian Amerigo Vespucci who came up with the idea that this might be a new continent and not an Indian island, as Columbus had initially thought. In memory of this insight, the continent was named “America” after Amerigo Vespucci.
52. The GPS system was created and is still operated and maintained by the U.S. Air Force.
53. Alaska crosses the border with the eastern hemisphere and is thus the most eastern and western state in the USA.
54. From 1789 to 1790, New York was the capital of the USA.
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55. In Pittsburgh there is a restaurant called “Conflict Kitchen”. It only serves dishes from countries the USA is in conflict with. When the restaurant started to serve dishes from Palestine the owners received death threats
56. With 2.3 million soldiers, China has the largest army in the world. The USA follows in second place with 1.4 million.
57. To date, there have been a total of 2,055 atomic bomb tests worldwide. 1,039 were carried out by the USA alone, 718 by the Soviet Union and 198 by France.
58. The largest bomb ever detonated was tested by the United States in 1954 and had an explosive power equivalent to a thousand times that of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb. After the test, the scientists found that the bomb had almost twice the explosive force they had previously calculated. The flash was seen 250 miles away, and radiation injuries occurred within a radius of more than 87 miles.
59. In September 1719, prisoners in Paris were released under the condition that they marry a prostitute and emigrate to Louisiana, USA. The objective was to advance French colonies along the Mississippi.
60. On 24 January 1961 a US Air Force B-52 bomber crashed during a military exercise and had to initiate the emergency jettison of two hydrogen bombs over the Goldsboro region (North Carolina, USA). On one of the bombs, only one of four safety devices remained intact after the crash, while the second bomb landed in a swamp area where remains of the bomb are still found to this day. If you are interested in the whole story just read our article about the Goldsboro Crash here.
61. Adolf Hitler’s nephew William Patrick Hitler emigrated to the USA in 1939 and even fought alongside the Americans against Nazi Germany during the Second World War. He was even awarded the Purple Heart for his accomplishments during the war. After the war, however, he changed his name to William Patrick Stuart-Houston.
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62. In the 19th and 20th centuries, a family clan with predominantly bluish skin lived in the Appalachian Mountains in the USA. This was due to a disease called methemoglobinemia, which was repeatedly passed on within the Fugate family due to the isolated living conditions in the mountains. We wrote a detailed article about that story. Make sure to check it out here.
63. In 1983, 90 percent of US media were still in the hands of 50 different companies. Today, only six companies control 90 percent of the media landscape in the USA.
64. In 1916, a law was submitted to the US Congress to stipulate that any declaration of war by the USA first had to be confirmed by a referendum and that anyone who voted “yes” would have to go to war themselves. However, the law was never passed.
65. In 1967 a solar storm almost caused a nuclear war. The charged solar particles caused the US early rocket warning system to fail, so that the Americans first assumed that the Soviet Union had launched a targeted interference attack in order to be able to carry out a nuclear strike on the USA.
66. “Son of Sam Law” is the term used in the USA to describe laws that prohibit criminals from earning money in any way with the stories of their crimes – for example through films or books. Instead, the state has the right to confiscate such proceeds and pay the money to the perpetrator’s victims.
67. The kidnapping of four-year-old Charley Ross in 1874 is considered to be the first kidnapping in the history of the USA to have been widely reported in the media. The girl, who would never be found, was lured by two men with fireworks and sweets. Due to the worldwide interest in this case, children are still advised not to accept sweets from strangers to this day.
68. The Diomedes Islands are a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean. The western island of this group belongs to Russia, while the eastern island belongs to the USA. Both islands are only 2.5 miles apart, but as the International Date Line runs between them, they are separated by a 21-hour time difference.
69. During the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s, banker Pat Munroe advised his customers in the city of Quincy, Florida, to buy shares in the beverage company Coca-Cola. Over the next few years, the share price rose so much that countless people in Quincy quickly became millionaires and the city became the richest city in the USA.
70. In the USA, more money is spent on slot machines than on cinema, baseball and amusement parks combined.
71. The westernmost point of the USA and the easternmost point of Russia lie just three miles apart.
72. Behind Lincoln’s face in Mount Rushmore, there is a secret chamber where memorabilia of the most important historical events in the USA are kept. The room is not accessible to tourists.
73. In the U.S. most movies are released on Independence Day. Conversely, the movie “Independence Day” was released a week prior to Independence Day.
74. 450 men die of breast cancer in the U.S. each year.
75. Monopoly was developed in 1930 in the U.S. to create a pastime for the unemployed people during the great depression.
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76. In the U.S. state of Minnesota, a three-year-old was mayor for a short time.
77. The former U.S. Marine soldier Guy Gabaldon was able to catch about 800 Japanese soldiers during World War Two. The Japanese soldiers were hiding in a cave and Guy Gabaldon sneaked in. He convinced them that their cave was surrounded. After everyone was handcuffed he called for support.
78. In 1960, Frances Kelsey, an executive at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), refused to approve thalidomide as a painkiller for pregnant women, even though the drug had already been approved in more than 20 other Western countries. Later on, it was discovered that the drug, marketed under the name “Contergan”, caused severe disabilities in children. So Frances Kelsey’s decision saved countless children in the United States.
79. During World War II, the U.S. Army collaborated with Walt Disney to develop a gas mask that looked like Mickey Mouse, in order to make children less afraid of a poison gas attack.
80. The U.S. Navy now uses Xbox 360 controllers to control its periscopes. The soldiers find the controller much easier to use, while at the same time the costs of the control units have declined drastically.
81. 50,000 people die a year in the U.S. from the effects of passive smoking.
82. The border between Canada and the USA is the longest international border in the world between two countries.
What do you think about our 82 facts about the USA? Did you know some of them already and which facts did you like most? Tell us your opinion down in the comments. More unbelievable facts can be found in our Facts section or follow us on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
General Facts about the USA
Apart from be above listed fun facts about USA you might also be interested in some more general facts about that country. See them here:
| Capital | Washington, D.C. |
| Largest City | New York City |
| Total Area | 3,796,742 sq mi (9,833,520 km2) |
| Population (2018) | 327,167,434 |
| President | Joe Biden |
| Vice President | Kamala Harris |
| Currency | United States dollar |
Last Update: March 7th 2021.