By Nicole Caldwell and Lauren Liebhaber for Stacker
As the Congress and Senate reach an agreement on a $2 trillion stimulus bill amidst the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, Stacker looked at news and government reports to provide a by-the-numbers breakdown of how those funds will be allocated. Click through for an explanation of notable inclusions in the historic relief package and updates as they come in.
By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker
Adolescence represents one of the most significant periods of self-identity. Famed developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst Erik Erikson said the teenage years are specifically punctuated by that quest, which he described featuring “identity vs. role confusion.” No longer children but not quite adults, adolescents work through their personal goals, belief systems, and values while battling against their lack of autonomy. Without the ability to express themselves with careers, acquisitions, or other outlets, a vast majority of teenagers use exaggerated outward appearances that often subscribe to a particular stereotype to fit into a specific role.
High school students over the last century have divided themselves by visibly striking groups: the hippies, jocks, preppies, punks, emo kids, hipsters, and so forth. From fashion and musical tastes to hairstyles, teenagers wear their identities quite literally on their sleeves and heads. These trends reflect the cultural backdrops from which they grew: pixie cuts and fedoras during the Roaring Twenties; long hair and Afros during the ‘60s, and the big-hair trends of the ‘80s all typify the world in which these people lived; whether constrained and conservative (the ‘50s) or wild and subversive (the ‘70s).
In this way, it’s possible to chart American history by fashion trends and hairdos. Never ones to disappoint, the folks at The Pudding seized on this concept to use AI deep learning classification to analyze a dataset of more than 30,000 high school yearbook photos spanning 1930 to 2013 in a study called The Big Data of Big Hair, published in 2019. The study identified the median hair density for high school students in every year; median hair density is a measure of how far out a hairstyle extends from the bearer’s head. Here, Stacker has included the densities for the beginning, middle, and end of each decade in the study, separated into hairstyles associated with boys and those associated with girls.
The data is decidedly Anglocentric, which is representative of census data which shows the U.S. white population comprised more than 80% of the total population until 2000. As demographics in the U.S. have changed in the last few decades, we have seen more representative, mainstream hairstyles (and associated products) change, as well. It may take longer for schools to catch up to these changes: A New Jersey wrestler in 2019 was forced to cut his dreadlocks before a match; while hairstyles like braid extensions have been called out for violating dress codes.
Keep reading to see how big (and cropped) hairstyles accentuated the times from which they grew.
By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker
There is no American music that doesn’t have Black roots. From country-western, which draws upon banjo music from Africa, to rock ‘n’ roll, begun by a Black woman playing electric guitar in 1938, American music can’t be separated out from its rich history of diversity and experimentation.
Every artist transforms his or her medium simply by working in it, and it so follows that every musician changes the art form slightly just by creating and performing songs. But throughout American history, there are examples of artists who have been so transformative as to change musical genres themselves. Other times, artists unwittingly create new genres—whether Fela Kuti with Afrobeat, Frankie Knuckles with house music, or Fats Domino with ska.
To take a closer look at how Black musicians shaped American music, Stacker pored through historical documents, recordings, Billboard charts, and studied similarities in various musical acts over time to determine 41 artists music wouldn’t be the same without. Paring the list down to just 41 was a challenge (the gallery could easily include hundreds)—so there are certainly icons missing, including powerhouses like Lightnin’ Hopkins, Wilson Pickett, Mary Wells, Roberta Flack, Tina Turner, and Gloria Gaynor—each of whom has made significant contributions to music in his or her own right. To help narrow the field, we focused on artists whom scholars can definitively conclude altered the musical landscape in some dramatic fashion. Artists highlighted in this gallery changed the course of music by doing something entirely new with it rather than simply building upon the legends who came before.
Beyond their musicianship, many of the Black artists throughout history also stand as shining examples of bravery and leadership in the face of adversity. From Marian Anderson, who inspired Eleanor Roosevelt to drop out of the Daughters of the American Revolution when the group wouldn’t allow Anderson to sing in front of an integrated audience (Anderson ended up singing in front of 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial and was the first Black person to perform with the Metropolitan Opera in New York), to Ray Charles, who refused to perform for an all-white audience in Georgia, there is example after example of musical icons who shone a light that encouraged others to forge ahead and make incremental changes that helped form a more perfect union.
Keep reading to learn about 41 Black artists music wouldn’t be the same without—and be sure to check out our curated Spotify playlist of essential listening from each.
By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker
Americans are obsessed with dogs. We are more likely than any other people on Earth to have dogs as pets and are lavish participants in a $70 billion pet products industry.
Of the estimated 63.4 million people with dogs in the U.S., the average owner spends a modest $73 a year on groomers and grooming supplies, according to the American Pet Products Association’s 2019–2020 National Pet Owners Survey. The same survey found that $6.31 billion was spent in 2019 alone on services such as grooming, boarding, training, pet sitting, pet exercise, and pet walking. Average spending on dogs is highest among millennials, who drop about $1,285 a year on their fur babies, according to a 2018 study by TD Ameritrade. And in fact, for people younger than 30, lower income levels don’t correlate with a decreased likelihood of purchasing premium dog food.
Of course, averages are just that. To find out what next-level pet care looks like, you have to take a look at the upper echelon. There, you’ll find spikes in high-end dog-care services, from holistic care and dog yoga to $1,800 pet cemetery plots. But excess is perhaps most obvious in how we pamper our pets with spas, toys, and specialty grooming services. While most of us think of groomers as providing basic shampoos, trims, brushing, and nail-clipping, dog spas today offer everything from massages and dye jobs to custom fur styles and blueberry facials.
Stacker checked out some of the most luxurious dog spas in the U.S., of which there are many more than we ever expected. The spas aren’t restricted to coastal city centers, either; they can be found in virtually every state and are as diverse as their clientele.
Read on to discover which spa will pick your dog up in a Bentley and where you can splurge on a “Don Draper” tie for your best friend.
By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker
Folk tales serve as a cultural binder of sorts, bringing people together with a fomented sense of shared identity. They’re also used as explainers, similarly to how mythology worked for ancient Greeks. American folk heroes are richly textured and many-layered: Contemporary characters like Paul Bunyan explained the creation of America’s rivers and lakes and served as inspiration for workers exposed to grueling conditions while carving a way West and extracting resources for trade or infrastructure. Other tales, like those of Sacagawea and Pocahontas, served as scapegoats for a version of American history that sidesteps the Native American genocide enacted by early colonists, Western explorers, and even the U.S. government.
For enslaved African Americans, folklore provided subjugated people with heroic tales of bravery, defiance, and escape from Br’er Rabbit to Stack-O-Lee. Native Americans had hundreds of stories rooted in folklore from the Sleeping Ute Mountain to Kokopelli. Many folk heroes such as Hugh Glass and Annie Oakley are based on actual people, while others are pure fiction such as the Maid of the Mist and Bud Billiken. These tall tales come in the form of nursery rhymes, children’s tales, mascots, and cautionary myths and speak to us of strength, perseverance, and the celebrated intrepidness of rugged American individualism.
As is the case with any hero, much of American folklore features flawed characters. Some would certainly be villains today, whether Billy the Kid for his unchecked aggression against officers of the law or Hannah Duston for her violent slaughter of Native Americans.
Stacker scoured American history and mythology from books, news accounts, history lessons, and journal articles to curate a diverse gallery of 25 American folk heroes and the stories behind them. Some are well-known characters like Johnny Appleseed and Molly Pitcher, and others are much more obscure.
See how many you already know, and read on to learn about all the rest.
By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker
There are few game shows as revered as “Jeopardy!”—helmed by one of America's most-adored television personalities, Alex Trebek. Trebek took on hosting responsibilities forthe popular game show since 1984, two decades after the show's premiere. "Jeopardy!" is taped 46 days out of every year, with Trebek changing suits five times each of those days to account for each episode being filmed. To date, he has hosted more than 7,000 shows. His dedication to the game show (unless there's a Lakers game on TV, he says he dutifully watches the show every night) has paid off: “Jeopardy!” is the proud bearer of more Emmy Awards than any other game show and more than 9 million viewers who tune in each week to play along.
“Jeopardy!” withstood two cancellations before Trebek came on board, and the game show has become synonymous with his name—making his disclosure in 2019 of having stage 4 pancreatic cancer all the more difficult for his faithful fans.
To celebrate all things “Jeopardy!” and Trebek, Stacker turned to the fan-created “Jeopardy!” Archive and found three clues for each of the 50 states from the questions curated there. The states are in no particular order, making readers' tasks a true challenge: to guess which state each set of three clues—covering geography, history, pop culture, and everything in between—corresponds with. Think you have what it takes? Click through to put your state knowledge to the test and see if you have the mettle to be a “Jeopardy!” champion—even if you can't beat Ken Jennings' 74-game winning streak.
By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker
U.S. history books are filled with tales of brave heroes who fought and died to stay true to the ideals of a wild, new world order focused on equality and freedom. Those iconic characters you read about—from Harriet Tubman and Crazy Horse to Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.—represent revolutionaries with progressive ideals who fought relentlessly for what they hoped to make a more perfect union bolstered by a government that would support each of its people in their individual quests for happiness.
Some of our country’s greatest civil advancements have come at a terrible price; paid for with bloody battles, imperfect leadership, and the scars left behind from racism, sexism, and even genocide. Our history includes the mass killing of Native Americans and the scourge of American slavery as much as it includes the Declaration of Independence and the liberation of people from Nazi camps.
America’s greatness comes in even measure with her complex past, with countless demonstrations of unchecked power and the foolish notion of boundless growth; but it is also borne of great showings of empathy and what is possible when, as a nation, we defer to our “better angels.”
To take a look at the rich history of the United States—from battles won in favor of righteousness and equality to periods of extreme darkness—Stacker used a variety of historical sources and photographs to put together a quiz highlighting key events in American history in every year of the past century. On each slide, you’ll find part of a historic photo that matches a clue about American history from that year. On each subsequent slide will be the answer, along with some background on the significance of that event.
Keep reading to test your knowledge of American history, from the Roaring ‘20s and Mickey Mouse’s debut film to the civil rights movement and Watergate.
By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker
Ancient civilizations thrived in relation to their proximity to food sources thousands of years before the global food trade our world relies on today. Eridu (present-day Tell Abu Shahrain in Iraq), founded in Mesopotamia along the Fertile Crescent’s Euphrates River around 5400 B.C., was believed by the Sumerians to be the first city in the world, and integrated urban farming into the city’s design itself. Examples throughout history show the rise of new civilizations in direct proportion to food and water sources.
As trade routes opened up around the world, farmers could specialize in raising specific foods to trade with other specialists in different regions. The Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries further bifurcated cities and food sources by automating farming processes, dramatically increasing production, and making the international transportation of fresh foods a reality.
Since then in American history, proximity to food sources has fluctuated. During World War II, private residents started Victory Gardens that by 1944 accounted for 40% of U.S. produce. The country’s community gardens—neighborhood plots where people work together to raise food—have spiked in the past decade, with a 44% jump in city garden plots between 2012 and 2018. Community gardens springing up in empty lots in cities across the country offer inspiration for fresh approaches to urban revitalization in places like Detroit, where 23,000 residents participate in urban gardens, 1,500 residents have private gardens, and 16.75% of the city’s land is considered vacant.
Urban gardens can provide nutritious resources for residents who otherwise live in food deserts (areas without convenient access to fresh, whole foods, usually because of a lack of grocery stores and farmers markets, often in impoverished parts of cities or remote locations), provide children and adults with an education in self-sufficiency, and reduce food costs for individuals and families.
For those interested in getting into urban gardening, Stacker used a variety of agriculture and gardening resources to compile a list of 25 tips to get you started—from plant selection and garden location to essential tools for the job.
By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker
In one of the biggest environmental protests in world history, more than 7.6 million people from 185 countries joined forces between Sept. 20 and 27, 2019, for the Global Climate Strike. That immense civic action is part of a swelling movement, sparked in August 2018 by then-15-year-old activist Greta Thunberg. The Swedish teenager began cutting school to stand outside the parliament building holding a sign that translates in English to "School strike for climate." Her civil disobedience touched off a worldwide effort demanding stronger, more comprehensive climate policies, an end to oil extraction, clean energy options, investments in green infrastructure, and more equitable futures for citizens around the globe.
The movement is coming at the same time politicians in the U.S. push for the banning of plastic bags, the eradication of single-use drinking straws, and the passage of the Green New Deal, a bold plan that envisions drastic measures to curb greenhouse gases. These green efforts come against a backdrop of numerous reports of natural disasters caused by climate change, how weather patterns are expected to shift in the next 50 years, and how climate change is adversely affecting the food systems people rely on.
Other environmental crusaders are pressuring governments and corporations to divest from fossil fuels—and mounting legislation against oil companies who, according to recently surfaced evidence, knowingly disrupted information linking oil drilling to global warming in a way that's reminiscent of how tobacco companies hid evidence linking smoking to cancer in the 20th century.
Stacker scoured data from Apolitical to take a closer look at 20 top environmental crusaders working in local and national governments, international organizations, and nongovernmental groups like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Harvard, Oxford, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and The Climate Action Network.
To determine who was nominated to Apolitical's master list of 100 individuals influencing climate policy, the organization accepted nominations from experts as well as peers of the organization. Hundreds of nominations were counted, followed by research conducted into each nominee and the work he or she is doing on behalf of the climate. Factors considered included the number of nominations received, the potential for affecting change, past achievements affecting change, public perception of influence, seniority beyond expectations for someone of a similar age, significant speaking engagements, social media presence, and feedback from experts.
Finally, Apolitical's list of nominees was reviewed by experts for final decisions and updated in March 2019. This gallery lists the 20 most influential people in climate policy in alphabetical order according to their first names.
Read on to learn more about the world's top environmental crusaders, from long-established leaders like Bill McKibben to more recent crusaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker
The smells of cleaning products, disinfectants, and laundry soaps for many people are hallmarks of a clean home. While the overpowering smell of furniture polish or laundry soap may evoke certain pleasant associations or childhood memories, those familiar scents are mostly toxic. They are comprised of everything from reproductive disruptors to phthalates and allergens. Air fresheners alone release more than 100 chemicals and create adverse health effects in an estimated one-fifth of the U.S. population. Lysol aerosol sprays send corrosives and respiratory irritants airborne that can cause developmental problems, harm vision, and pollute waterways.
The sodium hydroxide in most commercial drain cleaners eats through the very pipes it’s intended to clear while burning all organic matter along the way. And a 2018 study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found the toxins in household cleaners can lead to childhood obesity. Nevertheless, toxic cleaning chemicals are ubiquitous in supermarket aisles and big box stores—and people keep buying them. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards are known for being lax, and greenwashing or subpar “green” products has left consumers with limited options.
Using ratings from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), scientific studies, and other authoritative sources, Stacker compiled a gallery of 10 toxic cleaning products and their natural alternatives. All the natural items listed are highly accessible and utilize as little waste as possible, keeping in mind that many containers for cleaning products don’t get reused or recycled. Furthermore, plastic waste ending up in landfills does not biodegrade.
Keep reading to learn more about 10 toxic cleaning products, their natural alternatives, and how people can make their own cleaning products that are safe for their home, family, and backyard.
Click here for gallery
By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker
Humans’ primal desire to compete can be traced to basic principles of evolution: To survive, all organisms on the planet must constantly outdo each other for resources. But where fellow terrestrials use play to simulate competitive skills like hunting or fighting, human beings have taken their zest for competition many steps further. The world is riddled with odd competitions, from the Air Guitar World Championships held in Finland since 1996 and cow pie bingo to any number of eating competitions, polar dips, and, of course, the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest, held each year at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, Calif.
Events like lumberjack or woodsmen competitions have been mainstays in American culture, while other events come briefly into the public eye only to fade quickly (and, sometimes, thankfully) back into obscurity. Decades ago, women were subjected to
(in which contestants wore papier-mache masks to hide their faces), “perfect back” contests, cleaning championships, and other archaic competitions that trudged forward through humans’ primordial soup into splendid, utter irrelevancy.
Charlie Chaplin once entered a
(he came in 20th place), and we’ve since seen the same from Adele. Then there are the now-defunct ,
, and even the Extreme Ironing World Championships (which is just what it sounds like). Still (surprisingly) in operation, however, are contests for lawnmower racing, baby crying, rock-paper-scissors, black pudding throwing, Punkin Chunkin, tree climbing, shovel racing, and even the Cold Water Swimming Olympics.
Mining various news reports, organization and town websites, and championships data yielded 25 of the most unusual competitions from around the world. It seems there’s a contest for every imaginable skill, from belly-flopping to swimming in grits.
Keep reading to find out where you can compete to be the best Santa Claus or find your way to self-transcendence in a 3,100-mile race.
In the Bible's Book of Ezekiel, a mysterious ship appears from the sky in Chaldea, modern-day Kuwait. The next wave of mysterious apparitions showed up in fourth-century China when a “moon boat” was documented floating over the country once every 12 years. More strange sightings were noted around Rome in 218 B.C., Germany in 1561, Hull, England, in 1801, and multiple times during World War II when allied pilots used the term “foo fighters” to describe the odd circles of light pilots noticed flanking their planes during combat.
The term “UFO,” short for “unidentified flying object,” was coined in 1953 by the United States Air Force as a bucket term for such reports as the foo fighters in WWII. Stateside sightings were hardly restricted to military flyover zones, however. Here, the first recorded UFO sighting is from 1639 when John Winthrop wrote in his diary about a large, strange light in the sky that shot back and forth long before the time of satellites or planes. By the time he and the other men on his boat got their wits about them, their boat was a mile from where it had been when they first spotted the light.
The first documented image of a UFO was captured in 1870 on the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. More sightings were reported at Mount Rainier in Washington in 1947, and of course several in Roswell, N.M. Since then, countless numbers of unusual shapes in the sky—and their supposed inhabitants—have been exhaustively reported without sufficient explanations beyond the possible existence of extraterrestrial life.
A surge in eyewitness accounts begot even more sightings, and ways to guard against invasions and abductions—more than 40,000 Americans bought into alien protection insurance, which offers customers monetary relief should a loved one get carted away by little green men. As recently as last year, Texas reported a wave of UFO sightings even as overall sightings have declined. In spite of hundreds of thousands of sightings, reports, and claimed abductions (researchers of one Roper Poll in 1991 estimate 4 million Americans think they've been abducted by aliens) worldwide, the official position of the government thus far has been that such alien activity stems from hoaxes or simple cases of mistaking other objects like weather balloons for alien life. Of course, UFOs are simply that: unidentified objects, which are not necessarily the same things as evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Since its founding in 1974, the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) has documented around 90,000 UFO sightings, with almost 95% of those sightings supposedly easily explained away as military tests, weather balloons, or other terrestrial activity. Still, in December of 2017, the New York Times brought to light the Pentagon program Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a $22 million investigation funded and carried out by the U.S. government into UFO reports from 2007 to 2012. This investigation came decades after more well-known programs such as the 1952 Project Blue Book, which inspired the 2019 History Channel series by the same name.
Using data from NUFORC's 24/7 hotline, which has been around since 1974, Stacker compiled a ranking of the states with the most reported UFO sightings. The website details not only the total number of sightings in each state, but also the odds of spotting a UFO for a resident in each. Of note is that almost three-quarters of all UFO sighting reports in the United States occur between 4 p.m. and midnight, and tend to peak between 9 and 10 p.m. Food for thought next time you're out scoping for alien life.
By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker
Children around the world live vastly different lives, from places where child labor is legal and common (Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Myanmar), to countries where education is compulsory and lengthy (Norway, the United Kingdom, and South Korea). Some nations, such as Italy, even require children to attend preschool. On other fronts, marriage and motherhood among teenage girls are still widespread (even in developed countries), and both are often viewed by international organizations and human rights groups as inhibitors to economic and social growth.
To find out which countries in the world are best for children, Stacker looked to a 2018 report from international NGO Save the Children, a group working to promote the welfare and rights of young people everywhere. Save the Children’s report is the result of data the group compiled on the livelihoods of children worldwide from 2012 to 2017. Save the Children created an index score on a scale from 1 to 1,000 that reflects the average level of performance across a set of indicators related to child health, education, labor, marriage, childbirth, and violence. Countries with higher scores are better at protecting and providing for children. Data points specifically look at under-5 mortality rates (deaths per 1,000 live births); percent of primary and secondary school age children not in school; percent of girls aged 15 to 19 currently married or in union; and births per 1,000 girls aged 15-19.
Findings reveal that Niger comes in last internationally for children, with an index score of just 388; while the United States ranks at a middling #36 with a score of 945 in between Russia and Belarus. Singapore and Slovenia are tied for first place with an index score of 987.
Stacker broke this listing out into the top-50 countries for children internationally and included the percent of a country’s population that is 0 to 14 years old for reference, provided by the CIA World Factbook.
Read on to discover the 50 best countries in the world for children.
By Nicole Caldwell for Stacker
About 300 million tons of plastic are produced from oil each year. Almost half of that is used for single-use packaging, such as plastic wrap on food, containers for personal care items, bottles for cleaning products, and other everyday purchases—including the plastic bags we carry them home in. Worse, only about 9% of all the plastic ever created has been recycled. And things are getting worse, not better: Almost half of all the plastic ever made has been created since 2000, the production of plastic is way up, and recycling alone can't stop the flow of plastic pollution into the world's oceans.
As more statistics come out about the volume of plastic ocean pollution (18 billion pounds annually from coastal regions alone) and the effect that is having on marine life (267 species worldwide have already been adversely affected), people have begun eschewing plastic products for zero-waste, eco-friendly options. Most global consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products, which has inspired thousands of companies to seek alternatives to plastic items from zero-waste personal care products and kitchen items to office equipment and ethically sourced, sustainable clothing.
Stacker has pored over the research and scoured product reviews and company backgrounds to compile this gallery of 50 easy, eco-friendly replacements for common plastic items in your life. Prices have been provided, and represent the cost for long-term use, except in the case of items that run out, like toothpaste. Those numbers should be compared to an individual's or family's spending on similar, single-use products over time for items such as sandwich bags or disposable razors. Wherever possible, products listed in this gallery represent less expensive options over time to their plastic, disposable counterparts.
In the interest of being most serviceable, Stacker has left two of the most ubiquitous, eco-friendly items—stainless steel drink canteens and reusable shopping bags—off the list in order to make room for items that may be less well-known. Wherever possible, products referenced come in zero-waste, plastic-free packaging, as well.
Continue reading to discover 50 easy alternatives to everyday, plastic items.
