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| August 25, 2008
| Society
FactID: 421
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Rated
3.50 stars from 16 votes
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The median price of existing homes in America is $218,000 -- a 14.1% increase from the past year.
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| Source: America's National Association of Realtors via The Economist.
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| August 23, 2008
| Society
FactID: 419
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Rated
4.12 stars from 16 votes
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22.7% of American adults are obese.
This is an average from 2002-2004 -- a number that has been steadily increasing. The report, based on CDC data, also finds that MS, AL, WV, LA, and TN have the highest percentage of obese adults.
"Obesity" is defined by having a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or more. Find out your BMI now!
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| Source: WashingtonPost.com via Jason Langberg
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| August 18, 2008
| Society
FactID: 415
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Rated
3.27 stars from 11 votes
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Daylight Saving Time begins for most of the United States at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of April. Time reverts to standard time at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday of October. In the U.S., each time zone switches at a different time.
The official spelling is Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight SavingS Time.
On August 8, 2005, President Geroge W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This Act changed the time change dates in the U.S. Beginning in 2007, DST will begin on the second Sunday of March, and end the first Sunday of November.
Daylight Saving Time, for the U.S. and its territories, is NOT observed in Hawaii or in most of the Eastern Time Zone portion of the State of Indiana, and the state of Arizona (not the Navajo Indian Reservation, which does observe). Navajo Nation participates in the Daylight Saving Time policy, due to its large size and location in three states.
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| Source: Webexhibits.org
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| July 31, 2008
| Society
FactID: 404
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Rated
4.00 stars from 7 votes
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30% of the degrees awarded in China and India are engineering degrees.
In the US, that number is only 4%.
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| Source: Jeff Immelt, FastCompany
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| July 25, 2008
| Society
FactID: 398
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Rated
4.20 stars from 5 votes
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Two-thirds of all the men and women who have ever lived past 65 in the entire history of the world are alive today.
On a sidenote, Florida, Montana, and a few New England states seem to have more of this group of people.
|

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| Source: Fortune and Census Factsheet
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| April 6, 2008
| Society
FactID: 619
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Rated
4.50 stars from 8 votes
|
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Americans spent $16B on bottled water last year- that's more than was spent on movie tickets or iPods!
24% of the bottled water purchased in America is 're-purified' tap water (water clean enough to drink in the first place) from Coke (Dasani) and Pepsi (Aquafina)!
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| Source: Christina Miller
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| November 19, 2007
| Society
FactID: 617
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Rated
3.00 stars from 10 votes
|
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For the first time, two Hispanic surnames — Garcia and Rodriguez — are among the top 10 most common in the nation, according to the US census bureau.
It was probably the first time that any non-Anglo name was among the 10 most common in the nation.
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| Source: US Census Bureau via NYTimes article
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| April 24, 2007
| Society
FactID: 605
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Rated
3.11 stars from 9 votes
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Women make only 80% of the salaries their male peers do 1 year after college!
10 years after college, women earn only 69% of what men earn, in spite of the fact that women have slightly higher grade point averages than men in every major, including science and math -- all according to the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation.
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| Source: AJC newspaper article
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| March 24, 2007
| Society
FactID: 306
|
Rated
4.20 stars from 25 votes
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Black and Asian women earn slightly more than similarly educated white women.
This is according to figures from the Census Bureau's annual look at educational achievement in America. Considering only college-educated women, an Asian makes $43,700 on average, a Black woman makes $41,100 and a white woman makes $37,800.
At $66,390, white men with four-year degrees top the list (Jason).
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| Source: CNN via Katie Higgins
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| January 16, 2007
| Society
FactID: 599
|
Rated
4.29 stars from 7 votes
|
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More American women are living without a husband than with one.
In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000. In addition, married couples are also a minority in the US, according to an old fact
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| Source: NYTimes article
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| January 2, 2007
| Society
FactID: 597
|
Rated
4.00 stars from 9 votes
|
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In June 2006, Warren Buffett donated $37 billion to charity.
According to VH1, this is enough money to buy every single house in Deleware!
Buffett still lives in the same house he bought in his home town of Omaha, Nebraska, in 1957.
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| Source: VH1 Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous via Jason Langberg
|

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| December 15, 2006
| Society
FactID: 595
|
Rated
3.80 stars from 5 votes
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Americans will devote nearly half of their time in 2007 to consuming media -- including TV, the Web, radio and printed materials, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The report found that Americans next year will log 3,518 hours using media -- equivalent to 146 days, or five months, and that total will include 1,555 hours in front of the TV.
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| Source: U.S. Census Bureau and USA Today
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| December 12, 2006
| Society
FactID: 594
|
Rated
4.00 stars from 6 votes
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At private, nonprofit four-year colleges, average tuition rose 81% from 1993 to 2004 , more than double the inflation rate, according to the College Board.
Over the same period, campus-based financial aid rose 135%.
|

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| Source: NY Times article
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| November 25, 2006
| Society
FactID: 593
|
Rated
4.60 stars from 10 votes
|
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4 in 10 U.S. children born in 2005 were out of wedlock.
Births among single mothers rose most dramatically among women in their 20s. Teen mothers were not responsible for the increase.
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| Source: CNN via Shaival Patel
|

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| November 8, 2006
| Society
FactID: 226
|
Rated
4.18 stars from 22 votes
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There are 5 million more women than men in America! The US is 49.1% male and 50.9% female.
Looks like Nevada and Alaska are the only places where men really outnumber women.
Other interesting news: 1 out of 4 Americans can't vote (they're under 18). And there are almost 7 million completely vacant housing units in the US.
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| Source: US Census Bureau Fact Sheet
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| November 4, 2006
| Society
FactID: 341
|
Rated
4.46 stars from 24 votes
|
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Each year in Los Angeles people spend 93 hours sitting in traffic.
That's almost 4 whole days every year just sitting in traffic! Other cities in the top five are San Francisco (72), DC (69), and Atlanta (67), & Houston (63).
This is from the Texas Transportation Institute which recently released its 2005 Mobility Study. Each year the study looks at, among other things, how much time people spend in traffic.
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| Source: LA Times and TTI via Jason Langberg
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| October 16, 2006
| Society
FactID: 587
|
Rated
4.00 stars from 5 votes
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Married couples are the minority in the US!
The American Community Survey, released this month by the Census Bureau, found that 49.7% of the nation’s 111.1 million households in 2005 were made up of married couples — with and without children. Five years ago, 52% of US households were of married couples.
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| Source: Census Bureau via NYTimes article
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| September 4, 2006
| Society
FactID: 584
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Rated
3.15 stars from 13 votes
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Over 50% of new-car loans were for five, six, even seven years last year, according to the Consumer Bankers Association.
That was up from 22% in 2000!
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| Source: Bankrate.com
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| August 9, 2006
| Society
FactID: 582
|
Rated
4.50 stars from 14 votes
|
|
A generation ago the average pay of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) was 40 times that of a worker.
Today, CEO compensation can be 500 times as much as his or her employees ($10,000,000 vs. $20,000)!
|

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| Source: NY Times article and AFL-CIO database via Shruti Nagaraj
|

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| August 7, 2006
| Society
FactID: 580
|
Rated
4.00 stars from 10 votes
|
According to Money magazine, Raleigh, NC is the 4th best big city to live -- one rank above San Diego, CA!
|

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Link |
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| Source: CNN Money via Chris Shields
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| July 30, 2006
| Society
FactID: 576
|
Rated
4.25 stars from 8 votes
|
There are 2 million weddings every year in the US -- and the average price tag is $26,000!
|

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Link |
Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: CharityFocus.org
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| July 14, 2006
| Society
FactID: 569
|
Rated
4.00 stars from 8 votes
|
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On average, individuals in the industrialized world spend three hours each day watching television.
This is half of their leisure time, and more than on any single activity save work and sleep.
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| Source: Scientific American
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| June 26, 2006
| Society
FactID: 564
|
Rated
4.00 stars from 7 votes
|
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Approximately one fifth of all humans that have existed in the last six thousand years are currently alive.
And another interesting fact about the US population and Taco Bell.
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| Source: Wikipedia via Quinn McCleery
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| May 18, 2006
| Society
FactID: 557
|
Rated
3.30 stars from 10 votes
|
|
In the United States, Mother's Day was originally conceived by social activist Julia Ward Howe during the American Civil War with a call to unite women against war. She wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870 as part of the feminist belief of women's power to shape society.
In the United States, the day now simply celebrates motherhood and thanking mothers.
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| Source: Wikipedia
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| March 17, 2006
| Society
FactID: 541
|
Rated
4.43 stars from 14 votes
|
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According to the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis, Americans spent more than they earned in 2005 -- a negative savings rate of 0.5% for the year.
That's the first time that's happened since the Great Depression.
|

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| Source: Bankrate.com
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| March 15, 2006
| Society
FactID: 540
|
Rated
4.22 stars from 9 votes
|
According to the New York Times, there are now 1.33 women graduating from college for every 1 man.
|

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Link |
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| Source: NY Times
|

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| March 3, 2006
| Society
FactID: 538
|
Rated
3.83 stars from 6 votes
|
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Children's TV programming is more violent than mainstream adult programming.
According to the Parents Television Council, children's programming contained an average of 6.3 instances of violence per hour, compared with 4.71 such incidents during prime-time programming -- these figures even exclude "cartoony" violence (when an anvil falls on Wile E. Coyote during a Looney Tunes cartoon)!
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Link |
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| Source: MediaWeek
|

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| February 15, 2006
| Society
FactID: 533
|
Rated
2.80 stars from 5 votes
|
|
The average American house built in 2005 was 2,349 square feet in size, a 12% increase from ten years ago.
And then there's the August fact about a 14% increase in prices this past year.
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| Source: The Economist
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| January 30, 2006
| Society
FactID: 527
|
Rated
4.21 stars from 14 votes
|
In 2005, 12% of US newlyweds met online.
|

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| Source: McKinsey
|

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| January 21, 2006
| Society
FactID: 523
|
Rated
3.33 stars from 9 votes
|
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There are 2.1 billion Christians in the world. This includes just over a billion Catholics, about 350 million Protestants, and the Orthodox and Anglican faiths.
Islam is the world's second-largest religion, with roughly 1.3 billion followers -- including 940 million Sunnis and 170 million Shiites, as well as those belonging to other Muslim faiths like Sufism. Hindus are the third largest group at just under a billion.
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| Source: Ask Yahoo!
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| December 27, 2005
| Society
FactID: 511
|
Rated
4.00 stars from 7 votes
|
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The average American family has $8,100 of total credit card debt. If they paid only the minimum amount due each month, this would take approximately 30 years to pay off.
31% of the credit card industry's profits came in the form of late-payment fees, over-limit fees, etc.
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| Source: Bankrate.com
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| November 23, 2005
| Society
FactID: 487
|
Rated
3.18 stars from 11 votes
|
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In a discussion of why some technological innovations succeed while others fail, many researchers adhere to Rogers' (1983) "Ideal Adopter Categories," which group individuals according to how and when they adopt changes.
The first category, innovators, comprises only 2.5% of society, and they are the people who create new ideas and new products. The other categories are early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%). Laggards never fully adopt a change.
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| Source: TechnologySource.org & FindArticles.com via Kate Hardeman
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| November 1, 2005
| Society
FactID: 469
|
Rated
3.75 stars from 12 votes
|
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The United States leads the world in one-person households. 26% of US households are home to only one person.
Kinda lonely...
|

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Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: Nationmaster
|

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| October 27, 2005
| Society
FactID: 466
|
Rated
4.20 stars from 10 votes
|
|
Full-time Wal-Mart employees earn on average ~$17,500 a year.
46% of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.
|

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| Source: NYTimes via Ankeet Shah
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| October 6, 2005
| Society
FactID: 450
|
Rated
3.56 stars from 9 votes
|
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Oh say can you sing...
ABC News reports that 61% of Americans don’t know the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
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| Source: ABC News via PopJournalism.com
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| October 2, 2005
| Society
FactID: 447
|
Rated
4.30 stars from 10 votes
|
Cognitive scientists make a distinction between short-term, or working memory, and long-term, or secondary memory. Research suggests that generally only seven items can be stored for about a minute in short-term memory, whereas long-term memory is limitless.
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Link |
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| Source: "Cognitive Approaches to Grammar Instruction" via Kate Hardeman
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| September 8, 2005
| Society
FactID: 432
|
Rated
4.55 stars from 11 votes
|
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An American child will consume and pollute more over a lifetime than 30 children born in India.
Our economy also uses more resources than any other nation and generates one quarter of the greenhouse gases contributing to global warming.
|

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| Source: Nova: World In the Balance on PBS via Shruti Nagaraj
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| June 30, 2005
| Society
FactID: 374
|
Rated
4.36 stars from 11 votes
|
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What's the fastest growing city in the United States according to the 2000 census? New York? LA? Houston? Philadelphia?
Nope, it's Las Vegas. While the nation holds a growth rate of 13%, Vegas checked in at a whopping 84%. (Sidenote: With only about 4 inches of rain a year, it's likely that the city will face major water issues in the years to come.)
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| Source: Environment and Ecology for PA: Meeting the Standards textbook via Madeleine DeBlois
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| June 11, 2005
| Society
FactID: 360
|
Rated
3.75 stars from 8 votes
|
Men now make up only one in five teachers in the nation's public schools, and account for only nine percent of teachers in elementary schools, according to the National Education Association.
|

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| Source: The Boston Globe via Katie Higgins
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| June 7, 2005
| Society
FactID: 355
|
Rated
3.14 stars from 7 votes
|
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A total of 49.6 million children attended public and private school in 2003, beating the previous high mark of 48.7 million set in 1970 when the baby boom generation was in school.
The increase is partly due to the "echo" of the Baby Boom (the surge in births following the second World War), where those babies born after 1945 grew up and had kids of their own.
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| Source: ABC News via Katie Higgins
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| May 21, 2005
| Society
FactID: 339
|
Rated
3.33 stars from 12 votes
|
|
40% of 12-14 year olds have cell phones
63% of Americans have cell phones.
|

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Link |
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| Source: Yankee Group via Forbes
|

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| April 26, 2005
| Society
FactID: 319
|
Rated
4.38 stars from 13 votes
|
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According to the US Transportation Security Administration, in 2003, passengers left $303,970 in loose change at airport metal detectors.
The US Treasury Department appropriates the money and returns it to circulation.
|

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Link |
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| Source: BusinessWeek
|

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| April 3, 2005
| Society
FactID: 299
|
Rated
3.30 stars from 10 votes
|
|
Opposites really do attract.
According to research at McMaster University in Canada, people trust people who look like them. In addition, the participants of this experiment described the similar faces as sexually unattractive.
|

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| Source: BBC via Chris Shields
|

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| March 23, 2005
| Society
FactID: 279
|
Rated
4.54 stars from 13 votes
|
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"That's not my forte"
If you pronounce this word "for-tay" then perhaps the English language is less of your forte than you would like to admit.
The word forte, coming from French fort, should properly be pronounced with one syllable, like the English word fort. But you're certainly not alone in your error; common usage prefers the two-syllable pronunciation, (fôr' te). In a recent survey a strong majority of the Usage Panel, 74 percent, preferred the two-syllable pronunciation. The result is a delicate situation; speakers who are aware of the origin of the word may wish to continue to pronounce it as one syllable but risk sounding incorrect to the less articulate.
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| Source: The American Heritage Dictionary via Madeleine Deblois
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| March 13, 2005
| Society
FactID: 258
|
Rated
3.90 stars from 10 votes
|
At any given moment, there are 61,000 people airborne over the U.S.
|

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Link |
Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: "So Now You Know" by Bright & Briscoe
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| March 4, 2005
| Society
FactID: 263
|
Rated
4.20 stars from 10 votes
|
|
Yikes. In 2000, barely 25% of high school seniors found school work to be meaningful and only just over 30% of seniors thought that things they learned in school would be important later in life.
How's that for motivation?
|

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Link |
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| Source: Report (Indicator 9) from the National Center for Education Statistics via Madeleine Deblois
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| February 27, 2005
| Society
FactID: 271
|
Rated
4.30 stars from 10 votes
|
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The "Gates" in New York City's Central Park have attracted more than 1 million visitors in the short period (16 days) they were on exhibit. 7,503 "gates" spread out over 23 miles, one for each year the couple waited to display their dream.
The 'art' cost $21 million to create, and used 5,290 tons of steel, about two-thirds the amount used to make Paris' Eiffel Tower. It also used 1 million square feet of vinyl. The materials will be recycled.
The "Gates" close on Monday, February 28th.
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| Source: NYTimes via Udayan & NYC.gov
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| January 31, 2005
| Society
FactID: 230
|
Rated
2.44 stars from 9 votes
|
|
27% of America goes to school everyday (76 million).
24% of Americans 25 years or older have a college degree.
|

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Link |
Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: US Census Fact Sheet
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| January 12, 2005
| Society
FactID: 194
|
Rated
4.00 stars from 5 votes
|
|
Seattle is the fittest city in the US.
Houston is the the fattest city in the U.S (for the fourth time in the past 5 years).
|

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| Source: Reuters via Udayan Seksaria
|

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| January 7, 2005
| Society
FactID: 189
|
Rated
4.00 stars from 5 votes
|
|
The Red Cross has an annual revenue of $3,018,783,874 - 3 billion dollars in donations, grants, etc.
They provide relief for more than 70,000 disasters every year with their 1 million volunteers and 36,000 employees!
|

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Link |
Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: Charity Navigator via Sharat Nagaraj
|

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| January 3, 2005
| Society
FactID: 182
|
Rated
3.57 stars from 7 votes
|
|
About 62% of all working women are the contributors of half or more of their household income.
I believe this means that most working women are contributing as much or more than their husbands in terms of household income.
At the same time, although women account for about half of managerial and professional positions, they account for only 8% of executive vice presidents and above at Fortune 500 companies.
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Link |
Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: AFL-CIO 2004 survey via Fortune
|

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| December 23, 2004
| Society
FactID: 167
|
Rated
4.50 stars from 6 votes
|
|
Manhattan in NYC is a 13.4 mile long island, only 2.3 miles across at its widest point, with only 1.5 million residents.
Every business day, 6.7 million people commute into Manhattan, via only 12 bridges and tunnels. 85% of the residents use public transportation, compared with only 5.3% for the rest of the US.
|

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Link |
Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: USA Today
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| December 18, 2004
| Society
FactID: 163
|
Rated
4.50 stars from 6 votes
|
Pounds are abbreviated as "lbs.", as in the latin word "Libra" which refers to balance scales for measuring weight -- just like the Libra constellation in the sky (one of the Zodiac constellations) that looks like a big balance scale.
|

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Link |
Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: World Wide Words
|

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| November 28, 2004
| Society
FactID: 139
|
Rated
3.40 stars from 5 votes
|
In America, there are more shopping centers
(47,000) than high schools, drawing $2 trillion in annual revenue.
|

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Link |
Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: Fortune
|

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| November 3, 2004
| Society
FactID: 122
|
Rated
4.50 stars from 22 votes
|
Through the 1990s, the average weight of Americans
increased by 10 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. The extra weight caused airlines to spend $275
million to burn 350 million more gallons of fuel in 2000 just
to carry the additional weight of Americans.
|

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Link |
Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: Mehul Patel
|

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| October 27, 2004
| Society
FactID: 121
|
Rated
4.33 stars from 3 votes
|
|
The most common first name in the world
is Muhammad.
The most common last name is Chan.
|

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Link |
Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: Katie Corbyons
|

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| July 17, 2004
| Society
FactID: 70
|
Rated
4.00 stars from 1 vote
|
|
The number of Americans that are millionaires
is up 14%.
Now, 1 out of every 128 Americans is a millionaire.
|

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|
Link |
Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: Money
|

|
| June 5, 2004
| Society
FactID: 55
|
Rated
2.00 stars from 1 vote
|
1 out of every 75 men in America is in jail.
|

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|
Link |
Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: USA Today
|

|
| May 31, 2004
| Society
FactID: 49
|
Rated
2.00 stars from 2 votes
|
Raleigh, NC ranks 2nd on a list of large
cities with the highest percentage of residents at least 25 with
a bachelors degree. A more complete list: Seattle - 48.8%
Raleigh - 48%
San Francisco - 47.8%
Washington, DC - 42.5%
|

more Society
|
Link |
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| Source: U.S. Census Bureau
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