The Extraordinary Book of Useless Information

by Don Voorhees

  ’TIS BETTER TO GIVE . . .

  The Americans who gave the most money to charity in 2011 were deceased agribusiness heiress Margaret Cargill, whose estate of $6 billion was left to a charitable trust; steel executive William Dietrich II, who gave away $500 million; Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, who donated $373 million; financier George Soros, who doled out $335 million; and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who gave away $311 million.

  In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg gave $500 million in Facebook stock to a charitable foundation.

  LUAU LARRY

  Oracle CEO and billionaire Larry Ellison bought the sixth-largest Hawaiian Island in 2012. He now owns 98 percent of Lanai, and the state owns the other 2 percent.

  DEER ME!

  There were 13.7 million American hunters in 2011.

  The majority of American deer hunters who get injured in the field do so by falling out of their tree stands.

  MILITARY MATTERS

  There were 167,000 women in the U.S. armed forces in 2010.

  The U.S. military spent $700 billion on defense in 2011. That’s more than the next seventeen highest-defense-spending countries combined.

  The last living American veteran of World War I, Frank Buckles, died in 2011 at the age of 110.

  Albert Woolson, the oldest living veteran of the Civil War, died in 1956 at the age of 109.

  The oldest documented veteran of the American Revolution was one Lemuel Cook, who died in 1866 at age 106.

  In 2010, there were 144,842 homeless veterans in the United States.

  One in 150 veterans is homeless.

  Apporximately 9.5 percent of adult Americans are veterans.

  ROCK STARS

  The huge sculptures of Confederates Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson carved into the side of Stone Mountain, Georgia, relied on major funding from the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

  Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum, the sculptor behind Mount Rushmore and Stone Mountain, was a member of the KKK.

  TAKING ITS TOLL

  The state of Texas has the most toll facilities—fifty-one. New Jersey has the second most, with forty, followed by New York with thirty-seven, Florida with thirty-four, and California with eighteen.

  TAKE ME HOME

  West Virginia has the nation’s highest home ownership rate at 73 percent. New York State has the lowest rate, with 53 percent.

  LOTTO FEVER

  Lotteries in America paid out $40 billion in 2011, but $800 million in prize money remained unclaimed.

  WEATHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

  2011 was the twenty-third warmest year on record in the United States.

  In 2011, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania had their wettest year since records were first kept in 1895. Texas had its driest year on record.

  More than five hundred people died from tornadoes in the United States in 2011, compared to only twenty-six who were killed by lightning. In the 1940s, an average of about four hundred people died from lightning strikes each year.

  About 10 percent of people struck by lightning actually die.

  December is the month with the fewest thunderstorms in the United States.

  2012 set an all-time record low for the number of tornadoes in the United States—about 1,072 reported and 919 confirmed. There were about 1,500 in 2011. The average year has about 1,200 twisters.

  The record low temperature for the lower forty-eight states is –33°F at Soda Butte, Wyoming, on October 29, 1917.

  Roughly 60 percent of the storms that enter the United States do so through the Pacific Northwest.

  UNITED STOUTS OF AMERICA

  West Virginia is the state with the highest obesity rate in the country—34.3 percent—followed closely by Delaware and Mississippi.

  Colorado had the lowest obesity rate—20.1 percent—followed by Utah and Connecticut.

  One in three American homeless people is obese.

  ONE FOR THE ROAD

  One in six American adults is a binge drinker, consuming an average of eight drinks per session, and doing so four times a month. Most drunk drivers are binge drinkers.

  Some 23 percent of men binge drink, as compared to 11.4 percent of women.

  Most binge drinkers are not alcoholics.

  HOT WHEELS

  The most-stolen cars in America are, in order, the Honda Accord, Honda Civic, Toyota Camry, Acura Integra, and Cadillac Escalade.

  KNOT FOR EVERYONE

  In 2011, 51 percent of American adults were married. That compares to 72 percent in 1960.

  Just 20 percent of Americans aged eighteen to twenty-nine were married in 2011, compared with 59 percent in 1960.

  June is the most popular month in the United States to get married, followed by September and October. The least popular month to tie the knot is January, followed by February and March.

  The South has the highest U.S. divorce rate. The Northeast has the lowest rate.

  BABY BLUES

  There were 10 million single mothers in the United States in 2011, up from 8.4 million in 1990 and 3.4 million in 1970.

  In 2010, the teen birth rate in the United States reached its lowest level since data have been collected—34.3 births per one thousand teenage girls aged fifteen to nineteen. The teen pregnancy rate has dropped 44 percent since peaking in 1991.

  There were 1,735,000 American single fathers raising children under the age of eighteen in 2011. This is up from 393,000 in 1970 and 1,351,000 in 1990.

  SEEING DOUBLE

  The number of twin births in America more than doubled between 1980 and 2009, going from 1.9 percent of births to 3.3 percent. The rate of twin births for mothers over forty increased by over 200 percent. The increase was attributed to increased use of fertility treatments and older maternal age.

  INCARCERATION NATION

  Nearly one in three Americans will have been arrested by the time he or she is twenty-three.

  As of late 2012, three hundred prisoners on death row in America had had their sentences overturned based on DNA evidence that showed they did not commit the crime.

  Roughly ten thousand prisoners a year have their sentences reduced because they cooperated with law enforcement officials by providing incriminating information about others.

  American prisons, by and large, ban inmates from having dental floss for various reasons, including:

  • In Texas, a prisoner used dental floss and toothpaste to saw through the bars of his cell.

  • In Illinois, Maryland, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, inmates saved enough dental floss to braid into rope and used it to try and climb over prison walls.

  • An Illinois prisoner used floss to stitch together the dummy he left behind in his bed when he took off.

  HOLIDAY RUSH

  Fourteen percent of Americans begin decorating for Christmas on Thanksgiving or earlier. Thirty percent do so the day after Thanksgiving. Two percent wait until Christmas Eve.

  There were 190 home fires started by Christmas trees in 2009, down from 850 in 1980.

  According to AdWeek, the top ten shoplifted items at Christmastime 2011 were filet mignon, high-end liquors, power tools, the iPhone 4, Gillette Mach 4 razors, Axe scented products, designer clothes, Let’s Rock Elmo, high-end perfumes, and Nikes, in that order.

  YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

  Some of the more curious expenditures made by the U.S. Congress in 2011 include $10 million to remake Sesame Street for Pakistani audiences, $764,825 to study how college students use mobile devices for social networking, and $550,000 to study how rock music contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union.

  In fiscal years 2010 and 2011, the U.S. Department of Agriculture spent $2 million on an intern program that only hired one person.

  SMASHING THE GLASS CEILING

  Some notable women CEOs of major Ameri
can corporations in 2012 included Irene Rosenfeld of Kraft, Ellen Kullman of DuPont, Lynn Elsenhans of Sunoco, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, Ursula Burns of Xerox, Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard, Denise Morrison of Campbell Soup, Marillyn Hewson of Lockheed Martin, and Virginia Rometty of IBM.

  JOINT DECISION

  About 50 percent of Americans surveyed say that marijuana should be legalized.

  DOWNER DATA

  Health.com conducted a 2011 study of federal health data and determined that the ten states with the greatest percentages of depressed people were, in alphabetical order: Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

  LUXURIOUS LISTINGS

  The most expensive apartment in New York was sold in 2011 for $88 million. A Citigroup executive sold the penthouse on Central Park West to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian fertilizer magnate, who bought it so his daughter would have a place to stay while attending college in the United States.

  The most expensive American residential real estate transaction of 2011 was the sale of a 25,000-square-foot Palo Alto, California, mansion known as Loire Chateau. It was purchased by Russian billionaire venture capitalist Yuri Milner for $100 million as a vacation home.

  SQUEEZE INN

  The thinnest house in New York City is the famed home at 75½ Bedford Street, which is just nine and a half feet wide. The 990-square-foot dwelling’s occupants over the years have included Cary Grant, John Barrymore, and Margaret Mead.

  GONE TO THE DOGS

  About 55 percent of people sleep with their dogs, 55 percent buy them holiday gifts, and 40 percent take them on vacation.

  YOU CAN’T EAT THAT

  The sale of the pear-shaped fruit ackee—the national fruit of Jamaica—is banned in the United States, as it contains toxins that can restrict the body’s ability to release sugar, causing the blood sugar level to drop and potentially resulting in death.

  Eating horsemeat is legal in most states, but killing a horse for its meat is illegal throughout the country.

  The sale of unpasteurized, or raw, milk is banned in twenty-one states.

  Wild beluga caviar from the Black Sea and Caspian Sea basins has been banned in the United States since 2005 because the beluga is a threatened species.

  Durian is known as the “king of fruits” in Asia, but has a disgusting smell that many people find revolting. Because of its horrific odor, the public consumption of durian is illegal in some Asian cities and it is extremely hard to find in the United States.

  The sale of redfish was been banned in all states except Mississippi since 1986. The fish population was decimated after famous chef Paul Prudhomme popularized blackened redfish. The U.S. Commerce Department has since shut down redfish fisheries.

  Foie gras, the livers from force-fed ducks and geese, is illegal in most of Europe. Only France, Belgium, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Spain still allow its production. The state of California and the city of Chicago have also banned its sale.

  SHIPPING NEWS

  The busiest port in the United States in 2010 was South Louisiana, which handled 236 million tons of cargo. The next four busiest ports were Houston, Texas; New York/New Jersey; Beaumont, Texas; and Long Beach, California.

  STRIP SEARCH

  The Las Vegas Strip is not in Las Vegas. The 4.2-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard South runs through Paradise, Nevada, and Winchester, Nevada, which lie just south of Las Vegas proper.

  Fifteen of the world’s largest twenty-five hotels are located on the Strip.

  MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME

  Half of what is now Kentucky was known as the Transylvania Colony in 1775, after the land was purchased from the Cherokee tribe by Richard Henderson, owner of the Transylvania Company. A year later, the sale of the land, which belonged to North Carolina and Virginia, was invalidated by the Virginia General Assembly. (Transylvania means “after the woods” in Latin.)

  Henderson is the man who hired Daniel Boone to blaze the Wilderness Road and the Cumberland Gap to open the way for settlement of the area.

  Seventeen and a half square miles of western Kentucky lies outside the rest of the state in what is known as the Kentucky Bend, enclosed in an oxbow loop on the Mississippi River and surrounded by Missouri and Tennessee. There are but seventeen people living in this area and their mailing address is Tiptonville, Tennessee.

  NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

  The area encompassing present-day West Virginia and western Pennsylvania was originally proposed to be the fourteenth state of the Union and would have been called Westsylvania. Congress nixed the idea in 1776.

  When surveyors laid down the border between Tennessee and Georgia, they were off by about a mile, erring in the favor of Tennessee. Since then, Tennessee has had fifty-one square miles of land that should have been in Georgia. Nine times since 1890, Georgia has petitioned Tennessee to give the land back, to no avail.

  Ten states border the Mississippi River.

  Some of the Florida Panhandle is in the Central Time Zone, while the rest of the state is in the Eastern Time Zone.

  The Appalachian Mountains run through eighteen states.

  The arc on Delaware’s northern border is known as the twelve-mile circle. The arc has existed since the Duke of York ceded Delaware to William Penn in 1682 and specified that the northern border be a compass arc drawn twelve miles from the cupola on the old New Castle Courthouse.

  LAWS OF THE LAND

  Nearly forty thousand new state laws were enacted across the USA in 2011.

  In 1790, there were twenty federal laws on the books. Now there are about 4,500. No one knows the exact number.

  Some unusual state laws follow:

  In Alabama, it is illegal to wrestle a bear.

  In Alaska, one needs an elephant permit to import or export an elephant.

  In Arizona, it’s a crime to leave a fishing rod unattended.

  In Arkansas, it is illegal for a pinball machine to give more than twenty-five free games to a high scorer.

  In California, home sellers must warn buyers if the house is believed to be haunted.

  In Colorado, it is illegal to duel.

  In Connecticut, the cutting down of a tree to catch a raccoon is illegal.

  In Delaware, it is illegal to sell dog hair.

  In Florida, it is illegal for a woman to fall asleep under a hair dryer.

  In Georgia, it is illegal to sell a child off to the circus.

  In Hawaii, it’s a crime to have more than fifteen cats or dogs in a household.

  In Idaho, cannibalism is prohibited, except in life-or-death situations.

  In Illinois, a motorcyclist can now go through a red light if the motorist feels the light has been red a “reasonable length of time.”

  In Indiana, it is illegal to display the alcohol content of a beer on the label.

  In Iowa, it is a crime for parents to display their deformed children in the circus.

  In Kansas, it is illegal to kill a cow with a hammer.

  In Kentucky, it is a crime for a driver to coast down a hill.

  In Louisiana, it is illegal for spectators at a sporting event to insult the players.

  In Maine, it is against the law to advertise on a rock.

  In Maryland, it is illegal to have more than three turtles.

  In Massachusetts, it is unlawful to possess an explosive golf ball.

  In Michigan, it is illegal to only play part of the national anthem.

  In Minnesota, only the blind may possess a white cane.

  In Mississippi, it is a crime to use vulgar language in the presence of two or more people.

  In Missouri, it is against the law to fake blindness to make money.

  In Montana, it is unlawful to drive animals onto a railway to stop a train.

  In Nebraska, doing a reverse bungee jump is illeg
al.

  In Nevada, cursing in front of a corpse is against the law.

  In New Hampshire, it is illegal to work or play on Sunday, except out of necessity.

  In New Jersey, it is against the law to detain a homing pigeon.

  In New Mexico, it is illegal to trip a horse.

  In New York, it is a crime to sell cat fur.

  In North Carolina, it is unlawful to sing off key.

  In North Dakota, kangaroo boxing is prohibited.

  In Ohio, it is illegal for horses to copulate within thirty feet of a public road.

  In Oklahoma, it’s against the law to bet on elections.

  In Oregon, it is unlawful to strap a child to the hood, fender, or roof of a car.

  In Pennsylvania, a fortune-teller can’t tell someone where to dig for buried treasure or try to shorten someone’s life.

  In Rhode Island, it’s illegal to wrap just-caught fish in newspaper.

  In South Carolina, it a crime to wear a mask in public, unless for a holiday or theatrical production.

  In South Dakota, dogs cannot be used to hunt big game, except mountain lions.

  In Tennessee, atheists are banned from holding public office.

  In Texas, it is unlawful to fish off a bridge.

  In Utah, it’s illegal to cause a catastrophe.

  In Vermont, it is a crime to sell dogs from the side of the road.

  In Virginia, it is unlawful to write a term paper for someone else.

  In Washington, it’s illegal to attach a vending machine to a utility pole.

  In West Virginia, it’s against the law to ski while drunk.

  In Wisconsin, livestock have the right of way along roads.

  In Wyoming, it’s against the law to fish using corn for bait.

  COMMERCE CLAUSE

  The State of Alabama has a ten-cent sales tax on decks of cards and charges retailers a one– to three-dollar license tax for selling them.

  Fat Bastard wine can be sold in Alabama, but Dirty Bastard beer is illegal because its name is considered profane.