21 Santa Belief Ends Around Eight
In a 2019 survey of 4,580 Americans, respondents reported that they stopped believing in Santa Claus at an average age of 8.4. Mississippi recorded the oldest state average at 10.2, followed by Iowa at 9.9 and Montana at 9.8. Oregon recorded the youngest average at 7.4.
22 Survey Creates Most Unwanted Song
In 1996, a survey of about 500 Dia Art Foundation visitors identified the instruments, voices, genres, and subjects people most disliked in music. Russian-American artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid and American composer Dave Soldier turned the results into “The Most Unwanted Song,” a nearly 22-minute collision of accordion, bagpipes, atonal music, a rapping operatic cowboy, and a children’s choir urging listeners to shop at Walmart. It was released in 1997.
23 Workers Lie Throughout Job Applications
A 2023 ResumeLab survey of 1,900 workers found that 70% admitted lying on their resumes, 76% on cover letters, and 80% during job interviews. More than one-third, 37%, said they lied frequently on their resumes. Among respondents with master’s or doctoral degrees, 85% reported resume lies and 90% admitted being dishonest in cover letters.
24 Americans Reject Arabic Numerals Unknowingly
In a 2019 CivicScience poll of 3,624 Americans, 56% said schools should not teach Arabic numerals, while 29% supported teaching them and 15% had no opinion. The survey deliberately provided no definition because the company wanted to expose prejudice among respondents who did not understand the term. Arabic numerals are the familiar digits 0 through 9 that American schools already teach and people use throughout everyday life and mathematics.
25 Stilton Cheese Accompanies Vivid Dreams
In 2005, the British Cheese Board asked 200 volunteers to eat 20 grams of cheese 30 minutes before bed for one week and record their dreams. Among those given Stilton, 75% of men and 85% of women reported odd and vivid dreams, although nobody described the experiences as nightmares. The industry-sponsored study never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, so it could not prove that Stilton caused the dreams.
26 Vinyl Buyers Lack Record Players
In 2023, entertainment data company Luminate reported that only 50% of U.S. consumers who had purchased vinyl during the previous 12 months owned a record player. This meant the other half bought records without having the equipment to play them, while just 15% of American music listeners overall owned one. The report suggested that some music “superfans” treated vinyl as merchandise or collectibles rather than strictly as a listening format.
27 Packaging Causes Thousands of Injuries
Wrap rage describes the anger and frustration caused by difficult-to-open packaging, and a British study estimated that packaging injuries sent more than 60,000 people for hospital treatment each year. In a 2004 survey of 2,000 readers of the British magazine Yours, 71% said they had suffered an injury while opening food packaging. Separately, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated that attempts to open packaging caused about 6,500 emergency room visits in 2004.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
28 Workers Leave Paid Vacation Unused
In a 2023 Pew Research Center survey of 5,188 U.S. workers, 46% said they took less paid time off than their employers offered. Slightly more than half of that group said they did not need more time off, while lower-wage workers more often feared losing their jobs and higher-income workers worried about falling behind. Despite leaving days unused, 89% rated paid time off for vacations, medical appointments, or minor illnesses as extremely or very important.
29 Children Choose Sweatshops Over School
In 1913, factory inspector Helen Todd surveyed 500 child laborers in the United States who worked under difficult factory conditions and asked whether they would rather return to school if money were no obstacle. Of the 500 children, 412 said no, preferring sweatshops to the “monotony, humiliation, and cruelty” they experienced at school.
30 OxyContin Devastates Pike County Residents
After Kentucky sued OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma in 2007, the company’s lawyers hired a consultant in 2013 to survey Pike County residents and determine whether an impartial local jury could be seated. Almost 40% knew someone who had faced criminal trouble because of an OxyContin addiction, 33% knew someone who had overdosed or suffered serious harm, and 29% knew someone who had died. Nine out of 10 said OxyContin had a “devastating effect” on the community, and the judge denied Purdue’s request to move the case.
RE: Fact #43 (Remote Workers Save Thousands Annually) – Probably not a great fact to share with employers. They’ll just use it as an excuse to let you work from home while cutting your salary by 10 grand.
RE: Fact #24 (Americans Reject Arabic Numerals Unknowingly) – This is a slippery slope. Next thing you know, people will be demanding they stop teaching algebra in schools too.
RE: Fact #36 (Mothers Earn Cool Mom Status) – My mom is awesome, and if everyone had a supportive parent like mine, the world would be a much better place.
RE: Fact #11 (iPhones Dominate American Teen Ownership) – People are just locked into the ecosystem, and there is not much reason for them to switch.
RE: Fact #13 (Hiring Managers Deceive Job Candidates) – Hiring managers lie constantly, especially about the reasons a position is actually open.
RE: Fact #1 (Family Estrangements Affect Millions Nationwide) – My extended family on one side used to have annual get-togethers, but things changed when one relative decided she didn’t want to be around a certain family member anymore. She stopped attending any events where he might be present, which effectively meant she cut ties with the whole family, not just him.
I’ve been there too. I went no-contact with my mom, so I skip family events on her side. The two times I did go to big things like a wedding or my grandmother’s 90th, she made it all about her, crying about how her child won’t talk to her. It’s frustrating because she ignores the fact that she was the one who stopped talking to me first over a perceived slight, and she completely glosses over decades of physical and verbal abuse.
I cut off my mom’s side of the family along with her. Now I only hear about them when they pop up in the local news for getting arrested again.
RE: Fact #14 (Dogs Influence Millennial Home Purchases) – For my next project, I am going to design small housing units that include a play area for dogs.
RE: Fact #20 (Eastern Germans Report Widespread Atheism) – It’s interesting that in Russia, after 70 years of atheistic state policies, the population returned to the global average of about 16% atheist, while East Germany didn’t. I wonder what caused that difference.
RE: Fact #17 (Children Misidentify Everyday Food Sources) – My kid hates tomatoes but loves salsa. He also used to hate potatoes, but the only side he would eat at one restaurant was the hashbrown casserole, he called it ‘cheesy rice.’
RE: Fact #47 (Menu Anxiety Overwhelms American Diners) – The Cheesecake Factory is the absolute worst for this. I just pretend 90% of the menu doesn’t exist when I go there now.
RE: Fact #46 (Afghan Men Unaware of 9/11) – Americans are traumatized by 9/11 largely because the U.S. hasn’t had to deal with major military aggression on its own soil in history. We don’t understand what it’s like to have your neighborhood firebombed, droned, or destroyed as collateral damage, or to have your kids killed by landmines after the worst seems over. To people in war-torn regions who even know what 9/11 is, our reaction must feel like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum.
RE: Fact #31 (Americans Overestimate Their Own Intelligence) – It’s a mix of impostor syndrome and Dunning-Kruger. If I’m certain of anything, it’s that I’m not as smart as I want to be. There’s nothing more frustrating than wanting to really understand something but feeling like you lack the capacity to get there.
RE: Fact #22 (Survey Creates Most Unwanted Song) – It’s a masterpiece. If I had to listen to one song on repeat forever, this would be it. If I’m going to lose my mind anyway, I might as well get it over with quickly.
RE: Fact #35 (Workers Estimate 173 Productive Minutes) – That survey only covers desk jobs. If you work a physical job like nursing or retail, you are definitely spending way more of your shift actually doing things.
RE: Fact #50 (Mario Outranks Mickey Among Children) – I remember watching Mickey Mouse cartoons in the 90s and just thinking they weren’t as funny as Looney Tunes.
RE: Fact #47 (Menu Anxiety Overwhelms American Diners) – When I go to a new restaurant, I scan the whole menu quickly to find one thing I’ll probably like, then spend the rest of the time agonizing over every other item until the waiter arrives. If I haven’t found a better option, I just stick with the first one. It works when I’m put on the spot, but it means I’m rarely adventurous. If I check the menu online beforehand, I get confident in what I want, until I arrive and find out the physical menu is totally different. Then I panic, revert to the quick-scan method, and feel like I’ve been cheated out of a better meal.
RE: Fact #45 (Infants Receive Soda Before Toddlerhood) – That definitely explains the stat about 25% of kids having cavities by age 4. Soda is packed with sugar and acid.
RE: Fact #27 (Packaging Causes Thousands of Injuries) – There is regular packaging, and then there is the absolute nightmare of opening a Barbie doll. You would think they were made of solid gold given how they secure them. Between the plastic that slices your fingers, the twist ties, rubber bands, and the thread sewing the hair to the box, you aren’t really opening a doll so much as breaking her out of a high-security prison.
RE: Fact #44 (British Adults Forget Basic Mathematics) – It isn’t that shocking. If you haven’t needed to calculate the ‘mode’ or the area of a circle in decades, you’re bound to forget what those even are. The 20% who don’t understand basic fractions or percentages is the real concern, though.
RE: Fact #25 (Stilton Cheese Accompanies Vivid Dreams) – Calling your weird British cheese dreams ‘odd’ doesn’t really do them justice. What exactly happens in these dreams?
RE: Fact #28 (Workers Leave Paid Vacation Unused) – I recall hearing about an American working in Sweden whose company eventually had to take away his laptop just to make him actually stop working and take some time off.
RE: Fact #7 (Pilots Fall Asleep During Flights) – I’m sure the plane has some sort of alarm or alert if something serious actually goes wrong.
RE: Fact #5 (Christmas Costs Drive Holiday Avoidance) – The spending part doesn’t really bother me as much as the struggle of picking out gifts for people I barely talk to. I’d be happy to buy things if I knew they actually wanted them, instead of just contributing to more landfill waste.
RE: Fact #27 (Packaging Causes Thousands of Injuries) – Those impossible plastic packages that have become so common lately need to go. Do they really cut down on shoplifting enough to justify the frustration?
RE: Fact #39 (Russians Regret Soviet Union’s Collapse) – I can offer some perspective on why people regret it. There was a huge economic depression after the fall. My partner’s family was in Kazakhstan, and his grandmother sent a letter saying, “Come to Russia! We have food and work, and we even bought the grandkids a pony!” So they took a train toward Moscow, only to realize his grandparents were just as poor as they were. They ended up having to eat the pony because there was no other food. They eventually moved back to Kazakhstan. In Soviet times, his family was given a home for free. When I visited, he showed me around his town, pointing at rotted-out concrete buildings and saying, “This used to be a factory; now a drug lord lives there, ” or pointing at a pile of trash and saying, “That was the city pool where I used to swim as a kid.” I get why they regret the collapse; they had housing, work, and food just handed to them.
RE: Fact #29 (Children Choose Sweatshops Over School) – That was also an era of lead paint and basically zero unions. Poverty is brutal, and when you can spend your time making money instead of learning whatever the curriculum was in 1913, you start to value your time differently.
RE: Fact #23 (Workers Lie Throughout Job Applications) – It’s interesting that the survey didn’t highlight lying about current compensation as a top answer. I lied about my salary both times I switched jobs because I knew it was just a negotiating trick and they had no way to check it anyway.
RE: Fact #10 (Britons Believe Sherlock Holmes Existed) – I recall hearing something similar about how most British kids don’t realize the U.S. started as a British colony.
RE: Fact #41 (Coos Bay Panhandlers Outearn Clerks) – When I was 12, I went on a school trip to Boston. My friends and I had some free time, so we found some garbage bags to wear and pretended to be homeless. Being 12-year-old kids from a fancy private school, we didn’t have any real-world perspective. It was cold, so we curled up in the bags and put our hats out for money. I learned a few things: 1. Everyone saw us, but nobody realized we were kids. 2. People who were alone never gave money; only people trying to look good in front of others did. 3. Begging is technically legal, but police usually just ignore it because they don’t want the hassle. 4. Nobody ever looks a beggar in the eye. I felt completely invisible. 5. People pay closer attention to girls; my friend Amy tried it and got called out as a fake immediately. 6. I saw people I knew, but they didn’t even notice me. They just didn’t look closely enough. 7. I made $40 in two hours, $20 an hour. We felt like huge jerks after we realized how much we made. We donated all the money to people we knew who were struggling, but we never told any adults about it.
RE: Fact #19 (Teenagers Fear Getting Behind Wheels) – In my experience, the other 60% think they’re invincible and treat driving like it’s a video game.