Country Profile: 60 Facts & Figures About United States of America

In 1936 fitness expert, Jack LaLanne opened USA’s first health and fitness club in Oakland, California. Doctors, however, advised their patients to stay away from his health club, a business totally unheard of at the time, and warned their patients that "LaLanne was an exercise 'nut,' whose programs would make them "muscle-bound" and cause severe medical problems.

52. 50% of the nuclear energy produced in the USA is from old Soviet warheads brought by the USA. Under a landmark 1993 nonproliferation deal, the United States has purchased uranium derived from around 20,000 Russian nuclear warheads eliminated under the accord informally known as the “Megatons to Megawatts” program.

53. ‘Meconium’, the first bowel movement of an infant, can be tested to determine if the mother smoked, drank or engaged in drug use during pregnancy. Meconium testing can be used in the USA to determine the eligibility of the parents to keep their newborn child.

54. While mathematician Kurt Gödel prepared for his U.S. citizenship exam he discovered an inconsistency in the constitution that could, despite its individual articles to protect democracy, allow the USA to become a dictatorship.

55. The 1918 flu pandemic is often called the Spanish flu because Spain didn't fake and minimize the data about the dead like Germany, Britain, France and the USA.

Richard Johnson, the 9th Vice-President of the USA, literally owned his wife. Slave Julia Chinn was 1/8th African and was inherited by Johnson after his father's death. Interracial marriage was illegal, so Johnson kept her as his "slave."

57. In 2006, one-third of all stocks traded in the USA and the European Union were traded electronically by specially designed algorithms without any human input. Today, it is estimated that around 70% of stocks traded in the US and EU markets are bought/sold by algorithmic programs, with some markets pushing 80%.

58. Travis Williams, a public defender in USA tattoos on his back the names of every defendant whose case he lost in court. He has up to six names as of 2013.

59. Duracell outside of the USA airs commercials featuring a Duracell Bunny while inside of the US only Energizer features a bunny. This is because the Duracell Bunny predates the Energizer Bunny and in 1980 Duracell failed to renew their trademark in the US and Energizer trademarked it instead.

60. In the late 1980s, a mass moral panic swept across the USA where many daycare providers were accused of ritual satanic sexual abuse, with dozens jailed based solely on children’s testimony, who were coached by psychologists.