50 Fun Facts About American Culture

What do Americans carve into jack-o'-lanterns at Halloween, in place of the turnips used in Ireland?

Pumpkins, a crop native to North America, took over when immigrants brought the Irish and British custom of carving root vegetables to the United States.

Which treat served in America's Chinese restaurants was probably invented by Japanese immigrants?

Fortune cookies are not Chinese in origin: they most likely grew out of cookies baked by Japanese immigrants, and California bakers popularized them in the early 1900s.

Which dessert, first recorded in medieval England, features in a saying about all things American?

Apple pie reached America with English, Dutch and Swedish colonists, who had to bring the trees as well: the only native apples were small, sour crabapples.

In which order do Americans usually write the parts of a date, unlike nearly all other countries?

Month, day, year is the traditional American order, so 5/6 means May 6, where a British reader would see the fifth of June.

Which championship game is played on America's second-biggest eating day, behind only Thanksgiving?

Super Bowl Sunday is the second-largest food consumption event in the US, and the game frequently draws the largest TV audience of the American year.

Which color are American school buses painted, a shade agreed at a 1939 safety conference?

Yellow was chosen because lettering printed on it is the most legible in semi-darkness, and the official shade is now called National School Bus Glossy Yellow.

Which animal is said to predict six more weeks of winter each February 2 if it sees its shadow?

Groundhog Day grew from a Pennsylvania Dutch superstition, and the older German tradition behind it watched a badger instead.

What do Americans call the sport most of the world knows as football, using old British slang?

Soccer is a British coinage: it began as 1880s school and university slang shortened from association football, the sport's formal name.

What are diners in American restaurants expected to leave for the server, usually 15 to 20 percent?

A tip is now expected at any sit-down meal, yet six American states once passed laws that made tipping illegal.

Which work trousers made for miners did Marlon Brando and James Dean turn into 1950s teen fashion?

Blue jeans owe their strength to copper rivets at the pocket seams, patented in 1873 by tailor Jacob Davis and his cloth supplier Levi Strauss.

Which bird does the US president ceremonially pardon each year before Thanksgiving dinner?

Turkey is so central to the meal that the holiday is nicknamed Turkey Day, and George H. W. Bush made the White House pardon a permanent ritual in 1989.

Which national holiday do Americans celebrate every July 4 with fireworks, parades and barbecues?

Independence Day honors the Declaration adopted on July 4, 1776, although Congress had actually voted for the break with Britain two days earlier.

Which shopping day's name did Philadelphia police apply to the traffic jams after Thanksgiving?

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, traditionally opens the Christmas shopping season and is the busiest shopping day of the American year.

At which New York City crossroads does a glowing ball descend at midnight on New Year's Eve?

Times Square has hosted the ball drop since New Year's Eve 1907, pausing only in 1942 and 1943 because of wartime blackouts.

Which civil rights leader is honored with a US federal holiday on the third Monday of January?

Martin Luther King Jr. gained the honor when Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later.

Which holiday on the first Monday of September honors American workers and unofficially ends summer?

Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, while more than 150 other countries honor their workers on May 1 instead.

Which holiday, made federal in 2021, marks the 1865 order that enforced emancipation in Texas?

Juneteenth blends the words June and nineteenth: on that date General Gordon Granger's order reached Texas, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect.

Which Great Lakes city dyes its river bright green to celebrate St. Patrick's Day?

Chicago's tradition arose by accident in 1961, when plumbers were using a dye to trace illegal pollution flowing into the river.

Which celebration brings bead-throwing parade floats to the streets of Louisiana before Lent begins?

Mardi Gras was first celebrated in North America near present-day Mobile, Alabama, in 1703, well before the famous Louisiana parades began.

Which department store's name is on New York City's Thanksgiving parade of giant character balloons?

Macy's first parade, in 1924, used live animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo; a Felix the Cat balloon replaced them three years later.

Which food do contestants race to eat at the Nathan's Famous contest on Coney Island every July 4?

Hot dogs must be eaten bun and all within ten minutes, and a promoter admitted in 2010 that the contest's fabled 1916 origin was invented for publicity.

Which spread is paired with jelly in the classic sandwich of American school lunches?

Peanut butter and jelly first met in print in 1901 as a dainty tea sandwich; by 1913 the pairing was being recommended for children's school lunches.

Which campfire treat sandwiches a toasted marshmallow and chocolate between two graham crackers?

S'more is a contraction of 'some more', and a recipe under that longer name appeared in a Girl Scouts cookbook in 1927.

Which New York State city gave its name to the spicy chicken wings made famous by the Anchor Bar?

Buffalo wings, in the best-known account, were first fried up in 1964 by Teressa Bellissimo as a quick late-night snack for her son's friends.

In which Georgia city did John Pemberton invent Coca-Cola, first sold as a patent medicine?

Atlanta's new tonic changed hands in 1888, when Pemberton sold his rights to Asa Candler, whose marketing made Coca-Cola the dominant soft drink worldwide.

Which sport, long called America's national pastime, pauses for a seventh-inning stretch?

Baseball was already being called the national pastime by New York journals in 1856, after a craze for the game swept the city.

Which sport did James Naismith invent in 1891 to keep a gym class busy on a rainy day?

Basketball takes its name from the peach basket Naismith nailed up as a goal; its bottom was left intact, so the ball had to be fetched out after every score.

What do American sports fans call the parking-lot party held around their cars before a big game?

A tailgate party is named for the fold-down rear door of a truck or wagon, which fans turn into a table for barbecued food and drinks.

Which nickname is given to the spring NCAA tournament that Americans try to predict with brackets?

March Madness has turned prediction into a national ritual of its own: a 2023 estimate put the brackets filled out each year at 60 to 100 million.

Which sideline activity began in 1898 when student Johnny Campbell directed a crowd's chants?

Cheerleading began as an all-male activity, and women were not permitted to join in at the University of Minnesota until 1923.

In the four-year ladder of American high schools and colleges, what are second-year students called?

Sophomores in high school are in 10th grade, usually aged 15 to 16, and the same four labels start again from the bottom at college.

Which formal dance, with tuxedos and wrist corsages, do American high schools hold near graduation?

The prom is short for promenade dance, and in its early days the evening served much the same purpose as a debutante ball.

Which standardized test, first given in 1926, is widely used for US college admissions?

SAT was for much of its history short for Scholastic Aptitude Test, with a verbal and a mathematical part each scored from 200 to 800.

Which group of elite universities, including Harvard and Yale, is formally an athletic conference?

Ivy League became an official name only in 1954, when the athletic conference was formed, although the term had been in use as early as 1933.

Which alphabet's letters name most American college fraternities and sororities, a tradition begun in 1776?

Greek letters became the model after Phi Beta Kappa was founded at the College of William and Mary, and campus fraternities and sororities are collectively known as Greek life.

Which patriotic verse by Francis Bellamy do American schoolchildren recite while facing the flag?

Pledge of Allegiance was composed for the children's magazine The Youth's Companion in 1892, and Congress added its reference to God only in 1954.

Which temperature scale, on which water freezes at 32 degrees, do American weather forecasts use?

Fahrenheit remains in everyday use in the United States and only a few other places, such as Palau and the Cayman Islands.

Which three-digit number, first dialed in Alabama in 1968, do Americans call in an emergency?

911 had its first call in the town of Haleyville; Britain had launched the world's first national emergency number, 999, back in 1937.

What do most US states add to a purchase at the register, with no national version?

Sales tax is governed state by state, and five states, among them Oregon and Delaware, levy no statewide one at all.

Which US coin is worth ten cents, yet is smaller and thinner than the five-cent nickel?

Dime comes from an Old French word meaning a tenth part, and the coin is the smallest and thinnest in American circulation.

Which Los Angeles district, under a giant hillside sign, became shorthand for American film?

Hollywood's sign spelled out Hollywoodland when it went up in 1923, as a temporary advertisement for a local real estate development.

Which Manhattan thoroughfare gives its name to New York City's top professional theaters?

Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world, and a house needs 500 or more seats to count.

Which Louisiana port city is the birthplace of jazz, a blend of brass bands, ragtime and blues?

New Orleans was also the birthplace of Louis Armstrong, and the city's jazz grew out of its African-American communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Which music genre emerged from block parties in the Bronx, New York City, in the early 1970s?

Hip hop took shape when DJ Kool Herc began extending the drum breaks of records at a back-to-school party hosted by his sister.

Which symbol of the US government is, by legend, named after a meatpacker who fed the army in 1812?

Uncle Sam's most familiar portrait, on a 1917 recruiting poster, is partly a self-portrait: artist James Montgomery Flagg used a modified version of his own face.

Which phrase did James Truslow Adams popularize in 1931 for the ideal that anyone can prosper?

The American Dream got its name in Adams's book The Epic of America, written in the darkest years of the Great Depression.

Which metaphor for immigrants blending into one nation did Israel Zangwill's 1908 play popularize?

Melting pot became a common American phrase after Zangwill's play of that name, although the image of peoples melting together was in use by the 1780s.

On which day of the week do Americans vote in federal elections, under a law dating from 1845?

Tuesday let voters attend church on Sunday, travel to the county seat on Monday and be home again by Wednesday, when farmers usually sold their produce at market.

Which painter's Saturday Evening Post covers showed everyday American life for nearly five decades?

Norman Rockwell also painted the Four Freedoms series in 1943, finishing it in seven months and losing fifteen pounds in the effort.

Which hat maker designed the 1865 Boss of the Plains, forerunner of the classic cowboy hat?

Stetson became all but interchangeable with the cowboy hat, though the original design had straight sides and a flat brim and held sway for about twenty years.