The Extraordinary Book of Useless Information by Don Voorhees

compared with 59 percent in 1960.
    June is the most popular month in the United States to get married, followed by September and October. The least popular month to tie the knot is January, followed by February and March.
    The South has the highest U.S. divorce rate. The Northeast has the lowest rate.
    BABY BLUES
    There were 10 million single mothers in the United States in 2011, up from 8.4 million in 1990 and 3.4 million in 1970.
    In 2010, the teen birth rate in the United States reached its lowest level since data have been collected—34.3 births per one thousand teenage girls aged fifteen to nineteen. The teen pregnancy rate has dropped 44 percent since peaking in 1991.
    There were 1,735,000 American single fathers raising children under the age of eighteen in 2011. This is up from 393,000 in 1970 and 1,351,000 in 1990.
    SEEING DOUBLE
    The number of twin births in America more than doubled between 1980 and 2009, going from 1.9 percent of births to 3.3 percent. The rate of twin births for mothers over forty increased by over 200 percent. The increase was attributed to increased use of fertility treatments and older maternal age.
    INCARCERATION NATION
    Nearly one in three Americans will have been arrested by the time he or she is twenty-three.
    As of late 2012, three hundred prisoners on death row in America had had their sentences overturned based on DNA evidence that showed they did not commit the crime.
    Roughly ten thousand prisoners a year have their sentences reduced because they cooperated with law enforcement officials by providing incriminating information about others.
    American prisons, by and large, ban inmates from having dental floss for various reasons, including:
    â€¢ In Texas, a prisoner used dental floss and toothpaste to saw through the bars of his cell.
    â€¢ In Illinois, Maryland, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, inmates saved enough dental floss to braid into rope and used it to try and climb over prison walls.
    â€¢ An Illinois prisoner used floss to stitch together the dummy he left behind in his bed when he took off.
    HOLIDAY RUSH
    Fourteen percent of Americans begin decorating for Christmas on Thanksgiving or earlier. Thirty percent do so the day after Thanksgiving. Two percent wait until Christmas Eve.
    There were 190 home fires started by Christmas trees in 2009, down from 850 in 1980.
    According to
AdWeek
, the top ten shoplifted items at Christmastime 2011 were filet mignon, high-end liquors, power tools, the iPhone 4, Gillette Mach 4 razors, Axe scented products, designer clothes, Let’s Rock Elmo, high-end perfumes, and Nikes, in that order.
    YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
    Some of the more curious expenditures made by the U.S. Congress in 2011 include $10 million to remake
Sesame Street
for Pakistani audiences, $764,825 to study how college students use mobile devices for social networking, and $550,000 to study how rock music contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union.
    In fiscal years 2010 and 2011, the U.S. Department of Agriculture spent $2 million on an intern program that only hired one person.
    SMASHING THE GLASS CEILING
    Some notable women CEOs of major American corporations in 2012 included Irene Rosenfeld of Kraft, Ellen Kullman of DuPont, Lynn Elsenhans of Sunoco, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, Ursula Burns of Xerox, Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard, Denise Morrison of Campbell Soup, Marillyn Hewson of Lockheed Martin, and Virginia Rometty of IBM.
    JOINT DECISION
    About 50 percent of Americans surveyed say that marijuana should be legalized.
    DOWNER DATA
    Health.com conducted a 2011 study of federal health data and determined that the ten states with the greatest percentages of depressed people were, in alphabetical order: Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
    LUXURIOUS LISTINGS
    The most expensive apartment in New York was sold in 2011 for $88 million. A Citigroup executive sold the penthouse on Central