Mental Floss History of the United States
From charlesreid1
Quotes
At its height in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Chaco Canyon proto-city probably had a population of 4,000–5,000 people, while the surrounding network of villages may have housed 25,000–50,000 people. Two hundred and fifty miles of roads, some of them paved with cobblestones, connected Chaco and the surrounding villages. No one knows why Chaco Canyon was abandoned around 1150, but there is evidence prolonged drought caused a famine. There may also have been violent upheaval; the oral histories of Navajo pueblo-dwellers recall Chaco as a place where “people got power over other people,” suggesting exploitation and social unrest.- Highlight on Page 8 , Loc. 117-21 , Added on Friday, April 08, 2016, 10:51 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
LIE: The Puritans came to America to establish religious freedom. THE TRUTH: The Puritans came to America to escape other people’s religious freedom. The story starts in 1593, when radical Protestant “Separatists” emigrated from England to Holland, where they could live in peace, without being hung or jailed for religious nonconformity. That led to a new problem for the Puritans: the easygoing Dutch allowed people to practice all sorts of crazy religions, including Judaism, Catholicism, and eventually even atheism–the horror!- Highlight on Page 10 , Loc. 149-53 , Added on Friday, April 08, 2016, 10:54 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Like the rest of us, you probably bought the ol’ Thirteen Colonies story, but it’s not an accurate depiction of colonial America for most of its history. In 1606 King James I chartered just two companies to settle North America, the Virginia Company of London and the Plymouth Company. As settlements were founded, each new city was recognized as its own colony: for example, Connecticut actually contained 500 distinct “colonies” (or “plantations”) before they were merged into a single colony in 1661.- Highlight on Page 12 , Loc. 172-75 , Added on Friday, April 08, 2016, 10:57 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
So technically, there were just 12 colonies in 1775 and 13 states in 1776.- Highlight on Page 12 , Loc. 180-81 , Added on Friday, April 08, 2016, 10:58 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
In Turkey tobacco use could bring the death penalty in the 1630s, and in Russia the first offense brought deportation to Siberia; the second, execution. But none of these had much effect: tobacco was so habit-forming that users would risk death just to get their fix.- Highlight on Page 30 , Loc. 458-59 , Added on Friday, April 08, 2016, 03:11 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
While they had barely scratched out a living before discovering tobacco, the first Virginia colonists became incredibly wealthy, and their success attracted thousands of imitators. Predictably, trouble followed.- Highlight on Page 31 , Loc. 462-63 , Added on Friday, April 08, 2016, 03:11 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Over the seventeenth century, the success of Virginia’s tobacco planters attracted increasing numbers of poor but ambitious young Englishmen. Enticed to the New World by the promise of endless free land, these new colonists were surprised to find that all the good land had already been claimed.- Highlight on Page 31 , Loc. 465-67 , Added on Friday, April 08, 2016, 03:12 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Above all, the new taxes angered American colonists because they were given no say in how the British Parliament decided that money should be raised or spent. This violated the 1689 British Bill of Rights, which said no subject of the English crown should be taxed without representation in the official legislature. But Parliament went ahead and granted itself the power to levy new colonial taxes–a power that members were thrilled to abuse.- Highlight on Page 40 , Loc. 613-16 , Added on Friday, April 08, 2016, 03:24 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
beginning in 1766, when he helped his former prime minister, William Pitt, persuade Parliament to repeal the hated Stamp Act. Grateful colonists erected statues of George III and Pitt in New York City. In fact, every unpopular colonial tax on the books was eventually repealed at the king’s request, or at least with his consent, except for one: the Tea Act of 1773.- Highlight on Page 43 , Loc. 654-57 , Added on Friday, April 08, 2016, 03:28 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Boston, as usual, opted for a more violent solution: the Boston Tea Party, in which 50 colonists–not very convincingly disguised as tea-hating Mohawk Indians about 300 miles from home–dumped all the tea in Boston Harbor. At this point, George III went from nice to nasty. It was one thing to protest taxes on paper, but destruction of property was a villainous crime. More importantly, George III wanted to keep his right to arbitrary taxation. In fact, that was the whole point of the Tea Act: George III said Parliament had to hang on to at least “one tax to keep up the right.”- Highlight on Page 44 , Loc. 660-64 , Added on Friday, April 08, 2016, 03:38 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
the plan for the final victory that ended the Revolutionary War–the siege of Yorktown–was suggested to Washington by General Comte de Rochambeau of France.- Highlight on Page 48 , Loc. 729-30 , Added on Friday, April 08, 2016, 03:45 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
The main denomination was intended to correspond in value to the Spanish real de a ocho, or piece of eight–the standard Spanish coin at this time. To mix things up a bit, the Founding Fathers called their version, with the same monetary value, a dollar, an old North European monetary unit from the German word Taler, a short form of Joachimstaler–a coin minted in the Joachimstal valley of Bohemia in the sixteenth century.- Highlight on Page 56 , Loc. 849-52 , Added on Friday, April 08, 2016, 09:09 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
This accession of territory affirms forever the power of the United States, and I have given England a maritime rival who sooner or later will humble her pride. –Napoleon Bonaparte, 1804- Highlight on Page 65 , Loc. 993-95 , Added on Friday, April 08, 2016, 09:19 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Along the way, he also helped develop America’s first fire department and first library, as well as the concept of daylight savings time. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Ben Franklin the inventor was his refusal to patent any of his ideas, so that the widest possible number of people could benefit from them. As we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of others we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously. –Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, published 1790- Highlight on Page 70 , Loc. 1069-74 , Added on Saturday, April 09, 2016, 02:17 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Soon, the party became better known by its nickname, the “Know-Nothings,” stemming from the answer members gave when asked about their secret meetings. But after sweeping into power in local elections in 1855 in Chicago and Boston–both cities with large Irish populations–the Know-Nothings rapidly faded from the scene.- Highlight on Page 88 , Loc. 1350-52 , Added on Sunday, April 10, 2016, 02:42 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Reaching out to German, Jewish, and Italian immigrants, the Tammany politicians handed out crooked city contracts and public jobs (especially with the police) and arranged for the mass naturalization of immigrants, who then became voters. They also stood up for tenants against greedy landlords and helped workers organize unions. Just how corrupt were they? The most famous leader of the Tammany machine, Boss William M. Tweed is believed to have stolen about $200 million from New York City–the equivalent of $8 billion today.- Highlight on Page 89 , Loc. 1357-61 , Added on Sunday, April 10, 2016, 02:42 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
After the war ended in 1865, the North tried to “fix” the South by making Southern whites as angry as possible. Unsurprisingly it didn’t turn out too well. The decade-long phase known as “Reconstruction” stalled in the face of Southern opposition. Embittered whites rolled back the reforms that had extended political and civil rights to freed slaves. Meanwhile, hard-core Confederate veterans formed new paramilitary organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan, to scare blacks into submission.- Highlight on Page 111 , Loc. 1699-1702 , Added on Monday, April 11, 2016, 11:20 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Shall we sink down as serfs to the heartless, speculative Yankees, swindled by his tariffs, robbed by his taxes, skinned by his railroad monopolies? –Democratic newspaper editor And that’s exactly what happened. In 1828 Northern congressmen passed a protectionist tariff (nicknamed the “Tariff of Abominations” by the South) so outrageous that the British responded with a counter-tariff of their own. The tariffs doubly affected the South, hurting cotton sales while making imports of manufactured goods more expensive.- Highlight on Page 114 , Loc. 1748-53 , Added on Monday, April 11, 2016, 11:25 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
In the fall of 1867, the KKK began “night-riding” to intimidate blacks in rural Tennessee–the first known instance of organized, large-scale racial persecution by the secretive group. In April of 1871, Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, allowing Grant to suspend habeas corpus to fight the KKK in South Carolina.- Highlight on Page 135 , Loc. 2067-69 , Added on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 11:00 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
But these early signs of progress proved fleeting. After a decade of Reconstruction, it became clear the federal government would never be able to crush entrenched white resistance across the South.- Highlight on Page 135 , Loc. 2069-71 , Added on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 11:00 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Eventually the Republicans just gave up, effectively cutting loose Southern blacks, as part of one of the dirtiest political deals in U.S. history–and that’s saying something. In 1876 the Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes lost the popular vote, but the election was still up in the air because of disputed counts in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Realizing the Republicans were probably going to steal the election anyway, Southern Democrats cut a secret deal giving Hayes these states, and the presidency, in exchange for withdrawing Union troops from the South. In the process, they were screwing over their own candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, but as a New York Yankee and former War Democrat, he was almost as bad as any Republican.- Highlight on Page 136 , Loc. 2073-78 , Added on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 11:01 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Planters were legally exempt from military service, but in 1861 Forrest enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private and was quickly elevated to colonel on account of his wealth.- Highlight on Page 137 , Loc. 2088-89 , Added on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 11:03 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
However, Vanderbilt–who was worth about $180 billion in today’s U.S. dollars–was not a man to be trifled with. Gentlemen, you have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt. –Cornelius Vanderbilt There was only one way this could end: Vanderbilt organized a coalition of half a dozen Central American states opposed to Walker, raised a rebel army in Costa Rica, and toppled the filibuster’s year-old regime.- Highlight on Page 147 , Loc. 2241-46 , Added on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 11:18 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
in pursuit of mankind’s eternal nemesis–the whale. By the early nineteenth century, they had the enemy on the run. The peak harvest came in 1840, when Yankee whalers brought in 11,593,483 gallons of whale oil to feed the American demand for lamp fuel. But as the supply diminished, the price went up, and even more whalers went into the business. From 1823 to 1846, the American whaling fleet increased from 203 to 736 ships, and they chased whales all the way from New England to the waters off Alaska; from there it was just a short trip down the Aleutian and Kuril island chains to the coast of Japan.- Highlight on Page 147 , Loc. 2250-54 , Added on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 11:18 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
To make sure the foreigners saw nothing of Japan, wood and silk screens were erected along the entire route, concealing practically everything but the cobblestone streets. To be on the safe side, the town was also guarded by thousands of samurai, brought in especially to make sure the Americans wouldn’t somehow slip unnoticed into Japan.- Highlight on Page 149 , Loc. 2272-75 , Added on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 11:20 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Known as the Meiji Restoration, in one incredible decade, Japan jumped from feudalism to an advanced industrial economy. But this didn’t mean everything was peachy: although they ended up agreeing to Perry’s demands, Japan’s leaders weren’t about to forget the fear and humiliation inflicted by the Westerners.- Highlight on Page 149 , Loc. 2283-85 , Added on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 11:22 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
During this period, cities took the leading role in the U.S. economy. Foreigners continued to pour into the United States, but more of them settled in urban areas–a big change from the 1840s to 1870s, when huge numbers of Europeans (especially Germans) had flocked to the Midwest.- Highlight on Page 160 , Loc. 2441-43 , Added on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 02:05 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Southern Democrats–or “Dixiecrats”–instituted requirements for voters, including literacy tests and poll taxes. Of course, both measures excluded poor whites too. In Alabama, the number of eligible white voters decreased from 232,821 in 1900 to 191,432 in 1903. When poor whites protested, legislators in some Southern states responded with “grandfather clauses,” which said a man could vote if his grandfather had voted in 1867 (the year before freedmen got the vote). These tactics, upheld by the Supreme Court well into the twentieth century, effectively sidelined black voters.- Highlight on Page 163 , Loc. 2485-89 , Added on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 02:09 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
These fears weren’t groundless. Indeed, radical anarchists–most visibly those from Germany, Italy, and Russia–were the nineteenth-century equivalent of modern-day terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. Forming autonomous cells, they pursued their fantastic vision of a world without government through assassinations and indiscriminate bombings–dignifying terrorism as “propaganda of the deed,” a term invented by the Russian group “People’s Will.”- Highlight on Page 165 , Loc. 2528-31 , Added on Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 02:15 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Eugenicists also believed that society was actively undermining the process of natural selection through benevolent institutions like public education, charity, and social welfare. These programs had the unintended consequence of enabling “inferior” individuals to have more children, reversing the natural order of things.- Highlight on Page 184 , Loc. 2818-20 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 10:43 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
When Congress did get around to passing eugenics laws, it focused on limiting immigration by “undesirables,” including whole races and nationalities. Urged by lobbyists from groups like the Immigration Restriction League, the main targets were Slavs and Jews from Eastern Europe and Italians, who were supposedly less intelligent on average. In 1924 Congress invited Harry Laughlin–a former high school principal and the director of Eugenics Record Office–to testify on the subject of mentally defective immigrants. This led to the Immigration Restriction Act, effectively ending immigration until after the Second World War.- Highlight on Page 188 , Loc. 2869-73 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 10:50 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Riding the rails, itinerant black musicians were able to share local songs and styles and were also exposed to various kinds of white music, including Scots-Irish ballads that evolved into modern country music; in fact, there was a great deal of overlap between country music and the blues- Highlight on Page 188 , Loc. 2882-84 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 10:53 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Yes, it’s true: when the fizzy soft drink was first formulated, Coca-Cola contained small amounts of cocaine, which probably made it mildly habit-forming. But it turns out the early business dealings surrounding the “Pause That Refreshes” were far more nefarious than any of its ingredients.- Highlight on Page 189 , Loc. 2898-2900 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 10:54 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
1892 Candler decided to ditch the whole legal mess and create a new corporation, The Coca-Cola Company (note the important difference). If this all sounds a bit shady and illegal, well, it probably was: Candler supposedly forged Pemberton’s signature on the 1888 bill of sale–and his decision in 1910 to burn the company’s early corporate records doesn’t exactly allay suspicion. But as the old American saying goes: “Whatever!”- Highlight on Page 191 , Loc. 2917-20 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 10:57 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Bottling Coca-Cola allowed the beverage to expand into retail distribution, via general stores, as well as restaurants and hotels, which didn’t always have soda fountains. Of course pharmacies continued to sell the fountain drink. Operated by “soda jerks,” these were informally known as “dope shops” because of the cocaine content.- Highlight on Page 191 , Loc. 2923-25 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 10:57 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
All of this changed, however, with the invention of the internal combustion engine by an Italian engineer, Pietro Benini, in 1856. The internal combustion engine operated on the same basic principle as the steam engine–raising and lowering pistons to turn wheels or propellers–but it made the process more efficient by replacing super-heated water vapor with flammable diesel or gasoline, providing far more horsepower from a much smaller unit.- Highlight on Page 196 , Loc. 2993-96 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 11:09 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Before long they owned the largest oil refinery in the world, and in 1870, the brothers created a new corporation, Standard Oil of Ohio. The duo borrowed heavily to acquire new competing refiners, but John was able to achieve substantial savings elsewhere by striking secret deals with railroads that gave Standard Oil rebates for its high-volume oil shipping business. These methods allowed him to drive competing companies into bankruptcy and buy them cheaply.- Highlight on Page 198 , Loc. 3035-38 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 11:40 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Rockefeller’s achievements didn’t just benefit his own bank account. By creating economies of scale, he could offer consumers better quality kerosene at a lower price. But after achieving dominance in kerosene refining, there was nothing left to do but take over other parts of the supply chain.- Highlight on Page 199 , Loc. 3040-42 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 11:40 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
After American trade with Germany was severed by the British blockade, trade with Britain and France grew even more important. During the war, American exporters supplied both countries with vehicles, fuel, food, and consumer goods, allowing the Allied Powers to devote their own industry exclusively to armaments–and American exporters were making out like bandits. Then bankers got in on the act: starting in 1915 American banks loaned Britain and France hundreds of millions of dollars to continue buying American goods. These war financiers feared that the debts might never be repaid if the Allied Powers lost. With so much trade and money at risk, these business interests were all the motivation that the United States needed to get in on the Allied action.- Highlight on Page 210 , Loc. 3210-15 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 02:03 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
The German strategy almost worked: in the last two years of the war, U-boats sank 8.9 million tons of shipping, and the effort nearly starved Britain into surrender. But it also gave Wilson the support he needed to get Congress to declare war in April of 1917.- Highlight on Page 211 , Loc. 3226-28 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 02:07 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
When President Wilson left Washington he enjoyed a prestige and a moral influence throughout the world unequalled in history … The disillusion was so complete, that some of those who had trusted most hardly dared speak of it … Was the treaty really as bad as it seemed? What had happened to the President? –John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919- Highlight on Page 216 , Loc. 3302-6 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 02:17 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
the deception was a big deal. It triggered a wave of outrage across the German political spectrum–left, right, and center–which almost never agreed on anything. If Allied diplomats didn’t understand why this was a problem, then they’d just have to wait and see. It wouldn’t be long. To this day, nobody really knows what Wilson was thinking. It’s possible he deliberately deceived the Germans–but the implication that he drew up an idealistic peace program as part of the biggest con job in history just seems too perversely cynical. Alternatively, it may have just slipped his mind; there are, in fact, questions about Wilson’s mental health during this period. In April 1919, while in Paris, he suffered a minor stroke, which can change one’s personality and cause disordered thinking.- Highlight on Page 217 , Loc. 3313-18 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 02:21 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Don’t forget about food! Road-tripping builds an appetite, but in an era before effective health regulations, drivers were understandably leery of catching salmonella at some roadside greasy spoon. New national restaurant chains sprang up to meet this demand, offering travelers alimentary assurance with a standard menu and prominently displayed promises of cleanliness.- Highlight on Page 222 , Loc. 3396-98 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 02:44 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Counterintuitively, some forgiving and forgetting would actually have been more beneficial to the United States: putting cash in European pockets would have allowed them to buy more American imports, and the United States could have used its leverage to demand an end to protective tariffs. Renewed trade could also have tied Europe together, possibly averting another war.- Highlight on Page 225 , Loc. 3441-43 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 02:49 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Meanwhile, the German government, infuriated by the French occupation, had a brilliant idea for paying off its debts: print more money! This scheme triggered hyperinflation, and by November 1923, the average price of consumer goods in Reichsmarks was an incredible 260 million times what it had been in January of that year.- Highlight on Page 226 , Loc. 3459-62 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 02:51 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Finally, in 1924 the United States took action and proposed an awesomely ridiculous scheme that “solved” the problem. The “Dawes Plan” (named for Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Charles Dawes) called for billions of dollars in new American loans to Germany, which Germany would use to pay reparations to France, so France could pay Britain, and Britain in turn could pay America. The circular scheme ended up being just as futile as it sounds, since all the loans were basically wiped out by the Great Depression. No country benefited, and everyone suffered. Just canceling the debts really would have been the smarter move. This would all be sort of comical, in a Three Stooges kind of way, except for the terrible long-term results. The French occupation of the Ruhr inspired a fresh surge of anger in Germany, multiplied by the economic meltdown that followed. As various groups vied to grab the reins in an unsteady German state, one crazy contestant rose to prominence. In 1923 a war veteran named Adolf Hitler led his tiny Nazi Party in a (failed) attempt to seize power in Munich. Thanks in part to the Dawes Plan, he’d be back.- Highlight on Page 226 , Loc. 3465-72 , Added on Thursday, April 14, 2016, 02:52 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
An emotional style focused–paradoxically–on minimizing emotion, “being cool” likely began in African-American culture as a way for individuals to passively deflect the psychological hurt inflicted by white racism. In American Cool, effortless mastery of both oneself and one’s context became expressed through verbal and body language, or lack thereof: the cool American is calm, unfazed, even slightly jaded or blasé. This new emotional minimalism was part of a long-term shift in what society modeled as “proper” emotional behavior.- Highlight on Page 231 , Loc. 3536-40 , Added on Friday, April 15, 2016, 11:24 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Originating in the 1910s–1920s and first popularized by jazz idol Lester Young in the 1930s, the idea of “cool” quickly spread through mainstream culture, giving rise to scores of expressions: you can “be cool,” “stay cool,” “play it cool,” “keep your cool,” “lose your cool,” “cool it,” “cool your heels,” or “cool your jets.” We all want to make a “cool million,” and someone can be a “cool customer,” “cool cat,” “cool as a cucumber,” “coolheaded,” or just “real cool.” Before long (surprise!) the concept was co-opted by corporate America and soon anything could be cool.- Highlight on Page 233 , Loc. 3560-64 , Added on Friday, April 15, 2016, 11:27 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Of course, cool wasn’t the only new slang being slung in America. “Hip” and “hipster,” coined by jazz musicians, referred to the typical position of a supine opium smoker, lying sideways on his or her hip, leading to the coded inquiry: “Are you hip?”- Highlight on Page 233 , Loc. 3567-69 , Added on Friday, April 15, 2016, 11:28 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
On March 4, 1918, a deadly influenza virus surfaced among American soldiers in Fort Riley, Kansas–followed by Queens, New York; Charleston, South Carolina; and Detroit, Michigan, later that month. Small and isolated, Fort Riley is definitely the odd man out in this list, prompting an obvious question: why there? Since it’s unlikely the flu actually came from Kansas–most flu strains originate in poor countries where peasants live in close proximity to infected livestock–an innocuous precursor was most likely brought to Fort Riley sometime before the first outbreak.- Highlight on Page 233 , Loc. 3571-75 , Added on Friday, April 15, 2016, 11:49 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
With the earth encircled by disease, the toll was truly epic: altogether the pandemic infected about 500 million people and carried off 50 million–100 million victims. The death toll was two or three times the total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I, and probably more than those killed by the Black Death in medieval Europe. In the United States alone, the flu killed 675,000 people, about six times the number of American soldiers killed in World War I. And actually, more than half of the 110,000 American war dead–57,000–also died from the flu. This global decimation was especially shocking because most of the casualties were young people, reversing the usual pattern for influenza mortality.- Highlight on Page 235 , Loc. 3592-97 , Added on Friday, April 15, 2016, 11:51 AM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Close the medical school, get rid of the student body, build a new medical school on the Johns Hopkins model, get new chairmen and start over. –advice to philanthropist Robert Brookings on how to improve the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis- Highlight on Page 240 , Loc. 3667-70 , Added on Friday, April 15, 2016, 01:49 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
To paraphrase Shakespeare: some countries are born great, some achieve greatness, and some spill something that smells like greatness on themselves after falling asleep on the couch. That last would be America. Having turned its back on international affairs after World War I, the United States had to be roused awake and then dragged kicking and screaming into World War II–after which it ended up a “superpower.” Some countries have all the luck.- Highlight on Page 246 , Loc. 3765-68 , Added on Friday, April 15, 2016, 01:55 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
From the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 to the end of the war, the number of German troops deployed on the Eastern front never sank below three-quarters of Germany’s total strength. As a result, the Eastern front saw mind-boggling casualties: just under 90 percent (3.2 million) of German combat deaths and three-quarters of German tank losses occurred there. On the Soviet side, 11 million soldiers died, including 2 million in German POW camps. Combined with civilian deaths, the total Soviet toll came to an astonishing and horrifying 25 million, compared to 1.3 million combined military and civilian deaths for the United States, U.K., and France.- Highlight on Page 257 , Loc. 3940-45 , Added on Friday, April 15, 2016, 02:09 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Persian oil is yours. We share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, it is ours. –FDR, to the British ambassador Lord Halifax, 1944- Highlight on Page 269 , Loc. 4113-15 , Added on Friday, April 15, 2016, 02:24 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
After the war was over, Luciano, who had been freed and deported to Italy by the U.S. government in recognition of his wartime service, started getting involved in organized crime’s new high-growth business, drug smuggling, almost certainly with the knowledge–and maybe even help–of the CIA. The postwar Mafia drug-smuggling operation evolved over time, and it was thanks to the mob’s BFF, the CIA, that the most profitable network–“the French Connection”–came about.- Highlight on Page 272 , Loc. 4164-67 , Added on Friday, April 15, 2016, 02:43 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
In 1947, CIA spymasters employed two Corsican brothers, Antoine and Barthelemy Guerini, to break up strikes by communist dockworkers in the port city of Marseilles, France. Once in control of the docks, the Guerinis went into business with Luciano. Beginning in 1951, raw opium harvested in Turkey was smuggled overland to Beirut, Lebanon, refined into morphine base, and then shipped onward to Marseilles, where Corsican drug chemists turned it into heroin. From Marseilles the heroin was distributed all over Europe as well as to the United States via merchant ships sailing from northern European ports. After New York City customs officials caught on, smuggling shifted south under the direction of Santo Trafficante Jr., one of the most powerful mobsters in American history. The boss of the “Tampa family,” controlling Florida, Cuba, and the Caribbean, Trafficante established new routes running from Marseilles through Cuba, Martinique, and Guadeloupe, onward to Puerto Rico, and finally to Miami for distribution across the United States.- Highlight on Page 272 , Loc. 4168-75 , Added on Friday, April 15, 2016, 02:44 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
The Mafia’s only concession? They agreed to limit heroin sales to African-American neighborhoods, figuring the government wouldn’t care as much about addiction among minority populations. (They were right.)- Highlight on Page 273 , Loc. 4177-78 , Added on Friday, April 15, 2016, 02:45 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
The same year that saw the invention of the atomic bomb also gave the world another hot device: the microwave oven. The principle behind microwave cooking was discovered by Percy Spencer, an engineer who worked on radar installations for defense contractor Raytheon. After noticing that a chocolate bar melted after being accidentally placed in front of a new “magnetron” vacuum tube, Spencer experimented with other foods, including popcorn (which worked perfectly) and an egg (not so much). After these experiments, Spencer deduced that the food was being heated by low-density microwave energy that could penetrate solid objects. Using those principles, he designed his first primitive oven in 1945, and by October of 1946, Raytheon had filed a patent for a microwave based on Spencer’s idea.- Highlight on Page 279 , Loc. 4271-77 , Added on Friday, April 15, 2016, 02:54 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
In short, the United States became a youth culture. The baby boomers were doted on by parents determined to give them all the things they’d missed growing up in the Great Depression–from bikes and baseball gloves to college and cars. The boomers displayed astounding creativity, energy, and sheer precocious self-confidence. As teenagers and young adults, they voiced concern about nuclear weapons, pollution, and racial discrimination. But their larger-than-life qualities could also be weaknesses: self-assurance could turn to arrogance, self-expression to self-destruction. As a result, movements that began with good intentions often ended up far from their original goals. Maybe free love and psychedelic drugs weren’t the solution to the world’s problems after all?- Highlight on Page 290 , Loc. 4447-52 , Added on Saturday, April 16, 2016, 02:31 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
In fact, King had paid careful attention to Mahatma Gandhi’s successes in undermining British rule in India, and he came away believing that peaceful action–designed to provoke violent reaction–could strip government of its legitimacy.- Highlight on Page 295 , Loc. 4521-23 , Added on Saturday, April 16, 2016, 02:35 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
They are not the first Negroes to face mobs, they are merely the first Negroes to frighten the mob more than the mob frightens them. –James Baldwin, August 1960- Highlight on Page 296 , Loc. 4537-38 , Added on Saturday, April 16, 2016, 02:38 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. –James Madison, 1793- Highlight on Page 299 , Loc. 4582-84 , Added on Saturday, April 16, 2016, 02:45 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
The presidential power grab (and congressional abdication of responsibility) got even bigger with President Lyndon Johnson. The 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution authorized the commander in chief to order whatever military action seemed appropriate in Southeast Asia after North Vietnamese forces (allegedly) took a couple of potshots at U.S. Navy ships. This open-ended resolution basically gave Johnson a blank check to escalate the conflict in Vietnam, setting in motion a textbook example of how not to conduct a war–er, that is, “police action.”- Highlight on Page 300 , Loc. 4587-90 , Added on Saturday, April 16, 2016, 02:46 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Overall, the proportion of American workers who belonged to a union fell from about 40 percent in 1955 to 30 percent in 1975–in the private sector. However, the situation was different in the public sector (meaning government jobs), thanks to JFK, who encouraged federal workers to unionize, setting the precedent for state and county employees not long after. From 1955 to 1975, the proportion of public employees who belonged to unions jumped from 12 percent to 40 percent. Insert jokes about the DMV here.- Highlight on Page 305 , Loc. 4673-77 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 02:04 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Meanwhile, tobacco companies mounted a furious counterattack, playing up tobacco’s patriotic association with American history and funding studies that blamed the rising prevalence of lung cancer on other plausible culprits, like increasing air pollution. In 1953 the industry came together to create the Council for Tobacco Research, which sought to win over the scientific community with generous research grants, followed in 1958 by the Tobacco Institute, whose main mission was neutralizing negative PR. Beginning in 1954, the industry also trumpeted the cigarette filter, which supposedly made tobacco “safe” (it didn’t).- Highlight on Page 312 , Loc. 4780-84 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 02:14 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
The number of first-time users tripled from 1960 to 1965 to 600,000, then surged to 2.5 million new users in 1969 and nearly 3.5 million in 1972, and continued at that rate for the rest of the 1970s. In total, from 1960 to 1975 over 28 million Americans experimented with marijuana, equaling 13 percent of the population in 1975, with a good number–around 14 million–returning for follow-up experiments.- Highlight on Page 315 , Loc. 4824-26 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 02:17 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning [that is, a longing] that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries … she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question–"Is this all?” –Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963- Highlight on Page 318 , Loc. 4870-74 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 02:20 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
The centerpiece of the “deterrence” strategy was a large nuclear arsenal, and we do mean large: from six fission bombs in 1945, the U.S. stash grew to include 3,057 fission and fusion warheads by 1955 and 31,642 by 1965. The number of high-yield (multi-megaton) devices peaked around 1960; supposing 500 high-yield bombs could wipe out human life on earth, it seems the U.S. nuclear arsenal had enough firepower that year to destroy civilization five times over, give or take an apocalypse.- Highlight on Page 320 , Loc. 4906-10 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 02:23 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Neil Armstrong’s astronaut application arrived almost a week past the June 1, 1962, deadline. A friend of his who worked at the Manned Spacecraft Center slipped the tardy form into the pile before anyone noticed the postmark.- Highlight on Page 324 , Loc. 4968-69 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 02:27 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
The lunar landing was a foreign policy triumph. At a time when televised images of the losing battle in Vietnam were broadcast around the world, Apollo 11 provided undeniable proof of American wealth, power, and technical skill in the form of a riveting broadcast event. The event was watched live by about 600 million people around the world.- Highlight on Page 325 , Loc. 4970-72 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 02:41 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
In 1970 the CIA orchestrated the assassination of the commander in chief of the Chilean armed forces and also worked to destabilize Chile with inflation, a collapse of foreign trade, and crippling strikes. Amid this growing chaos, in August 1973 the Chilean parliament asked the military to restore the “rule of law.” Pinochet, the new commander in chief, clearly interpreted this as an invitation to stage a coup, which he did after consulting with the CIA on September 11, 1973. Defiant to the end, Allende was killed when Pinochet ordered planes and tanks to attack the presidential palace.- Highlight on Page 330 , Loc. 5053-57 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 02:49 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
They say that the United States has had its days in the sun, that our nation has passed its zenith. They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems, that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities. My fellow citizens, I utterly reject that view. –Ronald Reagan, 1980- Highlight on Page 342 , Loc. 5242-45 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 03:00 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
History suggested the disillusioned evangelicals would join fundamentalists in withdrawing from politics altogether, but there was a new activist impulse at work, inspired by moral issues: in 1969 evangelicals in Anaheim, California, drew national attention with protests against a sex education curriculum planned for the city’s public schools, followed in 1974 by a similar protest against sex ed in Kanawha County, West Virginia. Then the Democrats surprised everyone by nominating a “born-again” Southern evangelical to run for president in 1976. Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter hit all the right issues, lamenting “the loss of stability and loss of values in our lives,” which he blamed on “the steady erosion and weakening of our families.” He promised to tackle divorce, illegitimacy, and drug abuse, but his most important promise was also the simplest: “I will never lie to you.”- Highlight on Page 346 , Loc. 5302-9 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 03:02 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Toward the end of the Carter administration, the CIA initiated “Operation Cyclone,” delivering money and weapons to the Afghan guerillas via Pakistan, an American ally since the 1950s–but at this point the level of funding ($20 million-$30 million in 1980) was too low to have any real impact on the course of the war. That changed when a U.S. congressman from Texas named Charlie Wilson took an interest in the Afghan resistance and–at the urging of CIA Director William Casey and CIA Afghan task force chief Gust Avrakotos–persuaded Congress to funnel more and more money and weapons to the mujahedin, reaching about $600 million per year by the mid–1980s. Congress also agreed to send billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan to keep things running smoothly, including emergency relief for millions of Afghan refugees. Meanwhile, American allies, led by Saudi Arabia, also poured billions of dollars into the resistance.- Highlight on Page 350 , Loc. 5356-62 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 03:07 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
The groundwork for the Internet was laid in the late 1960s by researchers at leading California universities who invented a way to transmit information by breaking large amounts of data into smaller “packets,” which could be sent to multiple computers simultaneously. This pioneering digital network was organized and funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the Pentagon’s cutting-edge research and development division, as a way of sharing information between research sites: ARPANET’s first four routers were located at UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, Stanford, and the University of Utah.- Highlight on Page 352 , Loc. 5397-5401 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 03:09 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
In 1988 the Pentagon announced it would phase out ARPANET by 1990, prompting universities, industry, and other civilian users to expand the nonmilitary network. At the urging of these groups, in 1988 Gore authored legislation allocating federal funds to connect 1,000 academic and other civilian networks to form an “information superhighway.” This evolved into the National High-Performance Computing and Communications Act, a $1.7 billion project linking universities, libraries, government facilities, and industrial labs in a common network. The NHPCCA–otherwise known as the “Gore Bill"–also funded computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana who developed Mosaic, the first graphic Web browser, which inspired successors like Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. The 1992 expiration date set for funding from the National Science Foundation raised the question of how to finance further expansion. Again, Gore was instrumental in getting Congress to pass the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992, which allowed businesses and individuals to use the Internet for commercial purposes. There was no question Gore understood the broader implications of his policies: rallying support for the NHPCCA in the House of Representatives in 1989, he told committee members, “I genuinely believe that the creation of this nationwide network will create an environment where work stations are common in homes and even small businesses.”- Highlight on Page 353 , Loc. 5410-21 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 03:10 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Actually, the optimists were half right. From 1950 to 1975, the number of blacks living in poverty dropped from 75 percent to 31 percent as per capita income rose from $810 to $2,980 ($7,150 to $10,800 in 2008 dollars). Adult illiteracy fell from 10 percent to 2 percent, and the number of African-Americans enrolled in four-year colleges increased fivefold to 665,000. And the numbers don’t lie, right? Well, it turns out these gains weren’t shared evenly by the community: as things got better for the rising African-American middle class, they got worse for an increasingly destitute and desperate “underclass.”- Highlight on Page 355 , Loc. 5429-33 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 03:11 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
the earlier pattern of “white flight” from cities to suburbs, the African-American middle class left ghettoes for suburban neighborhoods with lower crime rates, better schools, and higher property values. From 1970 to 1990, the number of African-Americans living in suburbs jumped from 3.6 million to 10.2 million. However “black flight” contributed to an even greater concentration of poverty in central cities. The total number of African-Americans living in poverty in the ghettoes increased from 2.9 million in 1970 to 5.3 million in 1990, from 13 percent to 18 percent of the African-American population.- Highlight on Page 355 , Loc. 5437-41 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 03:12 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Crime rates surged, with the number of young African-American men murdered each year tripling between 1985 and 1992. From 1975 to 1992, the number of African-American men in prison almost quadrupled, to 425,000, or 50 percent of the total prison population. In 1991 the Justice Department estimated that an African-American male born that year had a 28 percent chance of going to prison someday.- Highlight on Page 356 , Loc. 5450-52 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 03:13 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
From 1975 to 1992, the number of Americans who were obese doubled from 30 million to 60 million, with rates rising in children as well as adults. Average calorie intake during this period stayed the same, at about 2,100 per person. How is that possible? That’s the $46 billion question (the total cost of treating obesity in 1990). Scientists still aren’t sure.- Highlight on Page 359 , Loc. 5502-5 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 03:17 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Between rising legitimate costs, pork barrel, and massive fraud, federal spending on Medicare jumped nine-fold from $15.5 billion in 1975 to $136.3 billion in 1992, while Medicaid spending increased 10fold from $6.6 billion to $66 billion. That compares to a mere six-fold increase in total health care spending over the same period. Somehow, the math just doesn’t seem to add up. Of course, it’s not all Uncle Sam’s fault. The private sector had its own issues, like the always fun practice of suing doctors. During this same period, the number of medical malpractice lawsuits soared from 2.5 per 100 physicians in 1975 to 14.1 per 100 in 1992. Some of these were doubtless justified, but profit, as always, was a major factor.- Highlight on Page 362 , Loc. 5542-47 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 03:20 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Russia is playing chess, while we are playing Monopoly. The only question is whether they will checkmate us before we bankrupt them. –Jeanne Kirkpatrick, 1988- Highlight on Page 376 , Loc. 5760-62 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 03:50 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
“Red state” TV viewers can fulminate about the godless perverts sipping lattes and marrying their dogs “on the coasts,” while their “blue state” counterparts can heap scorn on all the stupid hicks who think dinosaurs are a U.N. hoax in “flyover country.”- Highlight on Page 393 , Loc. 6023-25 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 04:06 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Of the 35 million immigrants living in the United States in 2008, the total number of foreign-born Spanish speakers constituted just over half–nearly 18 million. With the United States exerting this kind of attraction, it’s not surprising that Hispanics also constitute the largest population of illegal immigrants: 55 percent of the Mexican immigrants, or about seven million people, are living in the United States illegally, along with similar percentages from other Spanish-speaking countries.- Highlight on Page 396 , Loc. 6061-64 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 04:09 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Where 51 percent of the adult Hispanic population had a high school diploma in 1990, the number rose to 59 percent by 2005, while the number holding college degrees increased from 5.5 percent to 8.5 percent. Still, parts of the Hispanic community continue to face some serious challenges: in 2008 the high school dropout rate for Latinos was 17 percent, compared to 9 percent for African-Americans, 6 percent for whites, and 4 percent for Asians. This in turn affects progress in areas like learning English, which correlates directly with employment opportunities and income levels. About 16 million Hispanics, or 35 percent of the total population, have limited or no English.- Highlight on Page 396 , Loc. 6069-74 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 04:10 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Meanwhile, beginning around 1995 real estate prices started to eclipse their rental earning potential at an alarming rate. In other words, the value of residential real estate was no longer linked to its utility; instead, prices kept going up because, well, prices kept going up. What’s that old expression about everything that goes up? From 2006 to 2009, the total appraised value of U.S. residential real estate fell from $30.5 trillion to $24.7 trillion, and if it continues falling in 2010, it could wind up right back where it started in 2000.- Highlight on Page 398 , Loc. 6095-99 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 04:12 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
In 2010, there were 19 million vacant homes in the United States–enough to house the population of France at 3.4 people per home.- Highlight on Page 398 , Loc. 6103-4 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 04:12 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
All this gave a huge boost to the risky securities market, which in turn gave private lenders a big incentive to offer more risky loans. Following the lead of Countrywide Financial, a big subprime lender, in 2004 many subprime mortgage corporations began using automated loan approval systems, meaning loan applicants were (barely) screened by computers, with scant human supervision. By 2007 a total of $1.5 trillion in subprime mortgages were held by 7.5 million homebuyers–13.4 percent of all outstanding home loans. At the same time, the volume of risky mortgage-backed securities issued annually rose from $87 billion in 2001 to $450 billion in 2006, with private investors taking a bigger and bigger slice. Thus when the real estate market began declining in the second half of 2006, a lot more was riding on it than most people understood–but everyone was about to get a quick tutorial.- Highlight on Page 399 , Loc. 6114-21 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 04:14 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
From January to December 2008, total subprime losses in the financial sector almost quadrupled, from $218 billion to $800 billion, rippling outward from the original subprime culprits. Adding up the failures and government-brokered fire sales, bank shareholders lost $7 trillion. Meanwhile, global stock markets lost an incomprehensible $30 trillion in value–yes, that’s $30,000,000,000,000. For comparison, that’s the net worth of Green Bay, Wisconsin, if every resident was Madonna; alternatively, it’s like winning the Powerball lotto jackpot 300,000 times in a row.- Highlight on Page 401 , Loc. 6134-38 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 04:15 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
The staggering losses made a government bailout funded by the public (hello, you!) unavoidable. In July of 2008, President Bush signed a bill providing $300 billion in new loans to keep the mortgage market from freezing up completely. As panic set in following the Lehman Brothers failure in September, the U.S. government took control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (setting aside $200 billion to cover their subprime securities losses), poured another $295 billion into domestic financial markets, loaned $330 billion to foreign central banks to stabilize overseas financial markets, and ponied up $125 billion to bail out American International Group (AIG), an insurance giant that lost tens of billions.- Highlight on Page 401 , Loc. 6138-43 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 04:15 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Within 24 hours of September 11, three aircraft carrier battle groups set sail for the Arabian Sea, and U.S. planes and ground forces began gathering in friendly countries around the Persian Gulf. Under U.S. pressure, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan renounced the Taliban, whom they’d previously supported, and Pakistan opened its airspace to U.S. warplanes. Even Iran, still a bitter U.S. enemy, agreed to rescue any American airmen forced down in its territory.- Highlight on Page 404 , Loc. 6182-85 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 04:18 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
When it’s $100,000 of debt, it’s your problem. When it’s a million dollars of debt, it’s the bank’s problem. –Robert D. Manning, author of Credit Card Nation- Highlight on Page 419 , Loc. 6425-26 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 04:34 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
In 1980 there were about 105 million acres of wetlands in the United States, but by 2010 the number had shrunk almost 10 percent to 95 million acres. The country is currently losing about 80,000 acres of wetlands per year–scientists estimate there were over 220 million acres of wetlands before European settlement.- Highlight on Page 421 , Loc. 6450-52 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 04:54 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
990 about two million Americans were using the Internet–less than 1 percent of the total U.S. population; by 2010, the number had climbed to 200 million, or 63 percent of the total population. This expansion went hand in hand with a tidal surge of online business activity, beginning–where else?–in America.- Highlight on Page 425 , Loc. 6514-16 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 04:59 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
In other words, in less than a decade, a single corporation saw its value decrease by an amount exceeding the individual GDPs of 180 countries in the year 2000, including Russia, Sweden, Turkey, and Pakistan.- Highlight on Page 427 , Loc. 6541-43 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 05:02 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
From a mere $19 million in 2000, Google’s total ad revenues increased over a thousandfold to $23.6 billion in 2009.- Highlight on Page 428 , Loc. 6549-50 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 05:03 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
For once, money is the least interesting part of the story. What’s truly fascinating is how the Internet is changing everyday life for billions of people around the planet. The phenomenon is too wide-ranging, varied, and dynamic to ever accurately describe, but just look at personal ads:- Highlight on Page 428 , Loc. 6554-56 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 05:04 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
While it’s hard to judge the company’s claims, one of the most popular online dating sites, eHarmony, claimed to have helped facilitate 43,000 marriages in 2007 alone–about 2 percent of the total 2.3 million weddings in the United States in 2007.- Highlight on Page 429 , Loc. 6567-69 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 05:05 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
It’s even more amazing that all this complex, sensitive equipment actually works, considering the way these robots are delivered to the Red Planet.- Highlight on Page 429 , Loc. 6577-78 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 05:05 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
In 2003 the MER missions loaded Spirit and Opportunity onto three-stage Boeing Delta II rockets, which propelled them beyond Earth’s gravity for their 320-million-mile journey to Mars. Six months later, both Explorer spacecraft entered the Martian gravity field in January 2004 traveling at about 12,000 miles per hour.- Highlight on Page 429 , Loc. 6578-81 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 05:05 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Perhaps most incredible of all is the total cost of the missions to date: just $950 million (which is a rounding error in terms of federal spending in the first decade of the twenty-first century). And of course, one of the best things about robots is that they aren’t people, so if you blow them up, no one gets too upset.- Highlight on Page 430 , Loc. 6592-94 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 05:06 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Chose not to seek reelection in 1968. Quote: “If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: ‘President Can’t Swim.’- Highlight on Page 446 , Loc. 6837-38 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 05:55 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
Quote: “When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.” Trivia: nickname for chief political advisor Karl Rove is “turd-blossom.”- Highlight on Page 450 , Loc. 6896-97 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 06:00 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)
There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America. –Otto von Bismarck You can always count on Americans to do the right thing … after they’ve tried everything else. –Winston Churchill- Highlight on Page 487 , Loc. 7464-66 , Added on Monday, April 18, 2016, 06:03 PM The Mental Floss History of the United States (Erik Sass)