Strange but Free Information

                The topic of discussion for this Freedom Friday concerns some strange facts about America that most Americans do not know.  The information was in an email that was forwarded to me recently.  I have no idea if the numbers and percentages are correct but do believe the information is generally true.  I found it to be very interesting.  If only half the information is correct, we could be in big trouble.

1.    In more than half of all states in the United States of America, the highest paid public employee in the state is a football coach.

2.    It costs the U.S. Government 1.8 cents to mint a penny and 9.4 cents to mint a nickel.

3.    Almost half of all Americans (47 percent) do not put a single penny out of their paychecks into savings.

4.    Apple has more cash than the U.S. Treasury.

5.    The state of Alaska is 429 times larger than the state of Rhode Island, but Rhode Island has a significantly larger population than Alaska does.

6.    Alaska has a longer coastline than all of the other 49 states in the United States put together.

7.    The city of Juneau, Alaska, is about 3,000 square miles in size.  It is actually larger than the entire state of Delaware.

8.    When LBJ’s “War on Poverty” began, less than 10 percent of all U.S. children were growing up in single parent households.  Today, that number has skyrocketed to 33 percent.

9.    In 1950, less than 5 percent of all babies in America were born to unmarried parents.  Today, that number is over 40 percent.

10.  The poverty rate for households that are led by a married couple is 6.8 percent.  For households that are led by a female single parent, the poverty rate is 37.1 percent.  

11.  In 2013, women earned 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees that were awarded that year in the United States.

12.  According to the CDC, 34.6 percent of all men in the U.S. are obese at this point.

13.  The average supermarket in the United States wastes about 3,000 pounds of food each year.  Meanwhile, approximately 20 percent of the garbage that goes into our landfills is food.

14.  According to one recent survey, 81 percent of Russians now have a negative view of the United States.  That is much higher than at the end of the Cold War era.

15.  Montana has three times as many cows as it does people.

16.  The grizzly bear is the official state animal of California, but no grizzly bears have been seen there since 1922.

17.  One recent survey discovered that “a steady job” is the number one thing that American women are looking for in a husband; it also discovered that 75 percent of women would have a serious problem dating an unemployed man.

18.  According to a study conducted by economist Carl Benedict Frey and engineer Michael Osborne, up to 47 percent of the jobs in the United States could soon be lost to computers, robots and other forms of technology.

19.  The only place in the United States where coffee is grown commercially is in Hawaii.

20.  The original name of the city of Atlanta was “Terminus”.

21.  The state with the most millionaires per capita is Maryland.

22.  One survey of 50-year-old men in the United States found that only 12 percent of them said that they were “very happy”.

23.  The United States has 845 motor vehicles for every 1,000 people.

24.  Forty-eight (48) percent of all Americans do not have any emergency supplies in their homes whatsoever.

25.  There are three towns in the United States that have the name “Santa Claus”.

26.  There is actually a town in Michigan called “Hell”.

27.  If you have no debt and also have 10 dollars in your wallet, you are wealthier than 25 percent of all Americans.

28.  By the time an American child reaches the age of 18, that child will have seen approximately 40,000 murders on television.

The author summarized his information as follows:  “Once upon a time we were the most loved and most respected nation on the entire planet, but those days are gone.  We have wrecked our economy, we have lost our values and we have fumbled away our future.  But if you look close enough, you can still see many of the things that once made this country a shining beacon to the rest of the world.

                “This article includes some weird facts, some fun facts, but also some very troubling facts.  If we are ever going to change course as a nation, we need to come to grips with just how far we have fallen.  This nation, in 2015, is badly in need of leadership at the highest levels of Government.

                “`In God We Trust.’  Our Founding Fathers made that a key statement included in much of how this country was originally built!!!