What Are Random Facts Only Americans Would Know?

31 comments

1. There are 5280 feet in a mile.

2. There are 17 different cities/towns named Plainfield in the US and 34 Springfields. We’re the best at naming stuff creatively.

3. Statistical records in the history of major league baseball like Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs.

4. Local to Washington state. Each county seat needed to be located no more than one day’s horse ride from any location in the county.

5. How to properly pronounce Arkansas.

6. American films and television shows are fictional, not accurate depictions of Americans and our daily lives.

7. In college football, 1 foot down before out of bounds while in control of the ball constitutes a catch. In the NFL it must be both feet. It’s not obscure to the average American sports fan but I assume it definitely is to the rest of the world.

8. Los Angeles County in California has a bigger population than 43 states (individually, not combined).

9. The naval military college’s mascot is a goat.

10. What happens if you sing “JG Wentworth!” on a crowded bus.

11. Baseballs 7th inning stretch

12. The million different slang terms for carrying a gun

    Heated, hot, packing, strapped, loaded, heavy ect

13. Detroit is the only US city where you can face south and be looking at Canada.

14. Andrew Jackson’s pet parrot was ejected from his funeral for swearing too much. Warren Harding lost the presidential china collection while gambling. Chester Arthur likely wasn’t eligible to be president, but no one called him out on it during his campaign or time in office.

15. New York City gets more rain annually than Seattle.

16. How many grams are in an ounce. Legal weed plus US Customary units lead to this little conversion fact.

17. New Mexico is 250 years older then the Nation state of Mexico

18. Texas has 254 counties.

19. What The Red River Shootout, the Worlds Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, Bedlam, Farmageddon, and the Holy War are

20. Heinz is the only acceptable ketchup

    Preparing to be downvoted by people who like regional ketchups I don’t know about living on the east coast

21. Most Americans know the White House is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, probably most foreigners do not.

    Also that Washington DC is not in any state.

22. Both Brooklyn and Queens are on Long Island but they are part of NYC. When people talk about Long Island, they almost always mean Nassau and Suffolk counties only.

    Long Island (Nassau and Suffolk counties) has a higher population of a few states combined.

23. During the Revolutionary War more battles were fought in South Carolina than any other state.

24. In Kentucky, there are more barrels of bourbon than there are people.

25. Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb.

26. Washington DC is not a state, I had two people yesterday name DC as a state.

27. How specific can we be with the “Americans” group, here? Would “things only Texans know” count, since Texans are Americans? If so: we have a large grocery store chain in Texas named after [a guy whose last name was Butt](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Edward_Butt_Sr.).

28. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.

29. Louisiana pretends to be part of the United States, but really they’re just slowly colonizing their surrounding states bit by bit until we’re all Cajuns.

30. Founding father John Adams wrote in a letter to his wife, dated July 3rd 1776:

    “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.-I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival”

    And here we are grillin and chillin on the 4th every year.

    Here’s the whole letter if you’re interested:
    https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17760703jasecond

31. How to tell if the conversation is about Washington or Washington by context only.