41 Coos Bay Panhandlers Outearn Clerks
In 2008, a police survey found that panhandlers outside a Wal-Mart in Coos Bay, Oregon, could make $300 a day, more than the Wal-Mart store clerk reportedly earned in a week. A police captain named Rodger Craddock said most of the panhandlers were longtime residents who had homes and treated begging as their chosen profession. Police said most were docile and had broken no law.
42 Bacon Wins Lifelong American Loyalty
In 2017, National Today surveyed 1,000 Americans and found that 21% would eat bacon every day for the rest of their lives if given the choice. Another 16% said they could not live without bacon, 18% named it their favorite food, and only 4% said they disliked it. The survey also found that 67% preferred thin-cut bacon and 52% wanted it very crispy. In a separate survey conducted by Smithfield, 65% of Americans said they would support making bacon their “national food.”
43 Remote Workers Save Thousands Annually
In a 2022 FlexJobs survey of 4,502 professionals, 45% of remote workers estimated saving at least $5,000 annually. One in 5 placed their yearly savings above $10,000. Avoiding restaurant meals, gasoline, dry cleaning, and other workplace expenses accounted for those savings.
44 British Adults Forget Basic Mathematics
In a 2016 YouGov survey of 2,000 UK adults, 35% said they no longer knew how to calculate the mode, 31% the median, 28% the mean, and 27% the area of a circle. One in 5 had forgotten how to work out fractions or percentages, while 26% could not calculate a square root. The gaps extended beyond mathematics, with 23% unable to explain when to use a semicolon and 41% unable to recall or explain mitosis. The Oxford Open Learning Trust commissioned the survey to examine how much school knowledge adults retained.
45 Infants Receive Soda Before Toddlerhood
According to a 2008 survey of infant and toddler feeding habits, some American babies were already being served soft drinks every day at just 9 months old. By age 2, more than 10% of toddlers reportedly drank soda daily. The national Feeding Infants and Toddlers Study examined the diets and eating habits of children from birth through age 4.
46 Afghan Men Unaware of 9/11
In 2010, a survey found that 92% of 1,000 Afghan men interviewed in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar had never heard of the September 11 attacks. The International Council on Security and Development questioned men ages 15 to 30 across eight districts where fighting between coalition troops and the Taliban remained intense. Most respondents did not recognize the event that had prompted the U.S.-led intervention in their country nearly nine years earlier. Another 40% believed foreign forces had come to destroy Islam or to occupy and destroy Afghanistan.
47 Menu Anxiety Overwhelms American Diners
In a OnePoll survey of 2,000 American adults, more than 30% reported “menu anxiety,” or distress when ordering at a restaurant or cafe. More than 40% of Gen Z and millennials ages 18 to 43 experienced it, compared with 15% of Gen X and baby boomers ages 44 to 77. Too many choices, unfamiliar ingredients, fear of choosing badly, allergies, and dietary restrictions could turn a simple meal decision into paralysis. The report also cited people who obsessively reviewed menus online before accepting invitations.
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48 Americans Struggle With Basic Science
According to the National Science Board’s 2014 Science and Engineering Indicators, 26% of 2,256 American adults surveyed in 2012 failed to identify that Earth orbits the Sun. Another 49% incorrectly accepted the claim that antibiotics kill viruses, while 47% rejected it, and 47% failed to recognize that electrons are smaller than atoms. The survey also found that 53% incorrectly accepted the false statement that lasers work by focusing sound waves.
49 North Korean Defectors Consider Returning
In a survey released in December 2021 by the Seoul-based Database Center for North Korean Human Rights and NK Social Research, about 18% of 407 North Korean defectors said they were willing to return to the North. Most cited nostalgia, particularly longing for family members left behind, while South Korea’s Unification Ministry also pointed to emotional and economic difficulties during resettlement. Ministry figures classified about 56% of defectors as low-income, with nearly 25% receiving basic livelihood subsidies. At the time, roughly 33,800 North Koreans had resettled in South Korea, while officials had confirmed only 30 returns since 2012.
50 Mario Outranks Mickey Among Children
In 1990, national Q Score research found that Nintendo’s Mario had become more recognizable to American children than Disney’s Mickey Mouse. The result came only five years after Nintendo released Super Mario Bros. in the United States. By June 1993, Nintendo said Mario games had sold 100 million copies worldwide, becoming the first video game franchise to reach that milestone.
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.
Also, if those relatives actually want to see you, they can come see you. If they say, “We miss you, we’d love to see you, ” then they should just show up or pick up the phone. My number hasn’t changed. They shouldn’t be calling just to act as a messenger for my mom or to drag me into someone else’s event. If they want to keep in touch, they should just keep in touch and leave the other person out of it.
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.’
I am an adult and I am right there with your kid on the tomato thing. I hate raw tomatoes. They have a weird, snot-like texture and the flavor is weak and watery. But anything made out of tomato? I love it.
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.
RE: Fact #16 (Lay’s Customers Overlook Real Potatoes) – My conspiracy theory is that Lay’s just made this research up to get the headlines and earn some free advertising.
RE: Fact #10 (Britons Believe Sherlock Holmes Existed) – It’s kind of funny reading about people being ignorant and realizing it’s not just Americans. Seems like everyone is just as clueless, they just hide it better.
RE: Fact #12 (Suits Inspires Future Legal Professionals) – I am a lawyer, and I quit watching Suits after one episode. First, they had a ‘motion to dismiss for lack of evidence, ‘ which is not a real thing; you do not need evidence at that stage. A motion for summary judgment is different. Then, one lawyer pays off a fake witness, and when the other finds out, he extorts a settlement out of him by threatening to go to a prosecutor. Both should have been disbarred. I also only watched one episode of The Good Wife. The lead wins her case, it gets dismissed, and the plaintiff’s lawyer just says he will refile under a different theory. The judge actually let him do it, which violates Res Judicata, basically the civil law version of double jeopardy. You cannot just keep filing new cases until you win. Legal shows just eat away at my enjoyment because of things like that. My Cousin Vinny is the only truly accurate legal movie out there.
RE: Fact #48 (Americans Struggle With Basic Science) – If you check the stats, the incorrect answer rates in the U.S. aren’t actually that much higher than in the EU. For instance, 34% of people in the EU don’t know the Earth orbits the sun, 53% think lasers focus sound waves, 54% think electrons are larger than atoms, and 54% think antibiotics kill viruses. We actually perform pretty well compared to the EU, and it looks like South Korea is the only place doing significantly better than the U.S.