FACTS ABOUT USA 12
- Americans are responsible for generating roughly 20% percent of the garbage in the world.
- In the U.S., over 35 million people have used some sort of illegal drug in the last year.
- Annually 17 tons of gold is used to make wedding rings in the United States.
- U.S. Postal Service processes 38 million address changes each year.
- There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.
- In the United States, you are more likely to be killed by a bee sting than a shark attack.
- Alaska has 591,000 square miles (375,000,000 acres) and is double the size of the next largest state, Texas
- One of the earliest records of man in the Americas is a caribou bone with a serrated edge found at Old Crow in Alaska’s northern Yukon. Almost certainly used by man as a tool, carbon dating has placed the bone at 27,000 years old.
- In 1865, the Western Union Telegraph expedition, led by William Dall, surveyed the interior of Alaska for the first time, revealing its vast land and resources
- Alaska is the only U.S. state to produce platinum. Half a million ounces have been placer mined from southwestern Alaska since the first platinum nugget was discovered there by an Eskimo named Walter Smith in 1926.
- On a tip from fellow prospector Robert Henderson, a sourdough named George Cormack and his two Indian brothers-in-law, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie, found gold in Alaska’s Klondike Valley at Bonanza Creek on August 17, 1896. This sparked North America’s last great gold rush.
- Originally established as the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserving 1901, Tongass National Forest covers almost the entire southeastern Alaska panhandle, making it the largest national forest in the United States.
- The Red Dog zinc mine in northwest Alaska is the world’s largest zinc producer.
- Hawaii is the only state that is not geographically located in North America, is completely surrounded by water, and does not have a straight line in its state boundary.
- Born in Hawaii, Barack Obama is the only president from outside the continental United States.
- Because of its continuous volcanic eruptions, Hawaii is the only state in the nation to have an increasing land area.
- In the 1960s, astronauts trained for moon voyages by walking on Mauna Loa’s hardened lava fields, which resemble the surface of the moon.
- Surfing, or heenalu, was invented thousands of years ago by the Polynesians who first settled Hawaii. Their boards weighed more than 150 pounds and measured up to 20 feet.
- Hawaii is America’s youngest state, entering the nation on August 21, 1959.
- Ancient Hawaiians believed that the heavier a woman, especially a chieftess, the more beautiful she was.
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