AMERICANS PREFER COW

The average American eats about 70 pounds of beef each year.

Pre-sliced bread was first sold by Missouri’s Chillicothe Baking Company in 1928. By 1933, about 80 percent of all bread sold in the U.S. was pre-sliced.

The state flower of Michigan is the Apple Blossom.

In 1863, U.S. innovators applied for 3,773 different patents. Just six years later, that number had risen to 12,000. By the 1930s, patent applications were coming in at the rate of a thousand a week.

When Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) and his family moved to Europe in 1892, it wasn’t because they loved the Old World. Instead, the family could live more cheaply in Europe, a fact that became very important as Clemens did just about everything possible to avoid impending bankruptcy.

Broadway theaters have seats with each row identified by a letter. But there is no Row I. That’s because the letter that follows H is too easily confused with the number 1.

In 1910, U.S. President Howard Taft began a tradition by throwing out the first ball on the Washington Senators’ opening day.

Kansas, Texas, Missouri and Florida have the country’s greatest percentage population of people, age 65 and older.