All The Things The US Does Differently From The Rest Of The World

The United States Customary System of weights and measures (or the USCS - think inches and miles) is unique in that the rest of the world uses the metric system (think meters and kilograms). If everyone else has adopted a singular measurement system, why has the US stuck with its own? Throughout the later 18th century, Thomas Jefferson, with the support of George Washington, worked on standardizing the American measurement system, but Congress repeatedly dragged its heels on the matter, until it was too late and too expensive to make the change. In 1832, the US adopted the so-called Imperial measurements used in Great Britain - the yard, gallon, and bushel - in a move toward standardization. But at that point, the American protocol had become so ingrained in the country's economic systems that joining the rest of the world in metrication - the process by which nations adopted the metric system - became impossible. Despite repeated attempts to standardize in the US, including a measure passed by Congress in 1975, the metric system never took hold.

If you look hard enough, you can find an American flag almost anywhere in the US. They’re on government buildings like the post office, of course, but they also fly above fast-food restaurants, are plastered on cars, and wave in front of peoples’ homes. This kind of behavior isn’t common anywhere else in the world. So where does this flag obsession come from? It all boils down to the flag’s deep ties to Americans' national identity - ties so deep that people perceived to be (or even purposely) disrespecting the national anthem or the flag are met with harsh criticism. The US was founded without a unifying figurehead - like a monarch - so there wasn’t a person for people to rally around. Instead, they rallied around the ideals perpetuated in the founding of the country - such as unity, democracy, and freedom - regardless of the country's own dark history. Those ideals then became wrapped up in the flag, elevating its importance as a national symbol.

If someone commits an international war crime, the International Criminal Court is the judicial body responsible for trying them. That is, unless the suspected criminal is an American or American-allied citizen. The ICC was established in 1998, with 123 nations ratifying the Rome Statute (which established the ICC). The US is the notable exception to that ratification, meaning the government does not recognize the ICC’s authority. After 9/11, President George W. Bush took this opposition a step further, passing the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, which granted Americans further protection against the ICC and gave the president the authority to invade the Hague (the ICC's location) if a US citizen is detained.

Every four years, American citizens huddle around their TVs tracking the results of the presidential election live. While a lot of attention is paid to the popular vote, what really matters is how many votes each candidate gets in the electoral college. Rather than have the highest seat of government elected by the majority of citizens, each state is afforded a number of votes based on population that electors from each state then cast for the president. This process is unique in that it sometimes means the presidential candidate with the most votes is not the one who ends up winning the election. When creating the framework for the American election process, the Founding Fathers had several hurdles to face. The biggest was how to ensure the results of each election both represented the will of the people and was fair and balanced based on the overall population. When the country was founded, the main issue was how to best account for the enslaved population in the South. If the enslaved were counted as citizens, either in a popular vote or when deciding electors, votes would weigh heavily in the south’s favor. This is where the three-fifths compromise came into play. Enslaved people counted as three-fifths of a person when counting the population, thus helping, in the eyes of the Founding Fathers, maintain balance when determining how many votes each state was allowed. The Electoral College also serves as a sort of stopgap for elections. In most cases, electorates vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote in their region. However, that is not a requirement of the position. The idea was always that electorates would vote in the best interests of the region they represent, which means they could vote against the popular vote if they believed it was what was best for their constituents. It's not a perfect system, and attempts to modify the Electoral College have been suggested as early as the 19th century by Alexander Hamilton. However, successfully changing the system would require a long legal process unlikely to ever be successful.

Using a public restroom is no one’s ideal situation, and a big reason for that comes down to the lack of privacy. In the US, public privy stalls are notorious for said lack of privacy. The doors and walls don’t reach the floor or ceiling, and there’s usually a gap between the door and the partition wide enough to see through. Using the restroom in said condition understandably makes for a less-than-pleasant experience. First introduced by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in Buffalo’s Larkin Building in 1904, the design was heralded for its practicality - the accessibility made the stalls easier to clean. Soon, these types of stalls were used across the US. Beyond cleaning, the fact that stalls don’t go from floor to ceiling means that construction is cheap and universal, because no custom measurements are necessary. What’s more, the lack of privacy restroom-goers despise also make it almost impossible to use the spaces for illicit activities.

Traditional breakfasts around the world vary widely, depending on the region and culture that created them. The same can be said of certain traditional American breakfast foods. However, some of the most popular staples in the US have international origins, due to decades of people from different cultures converging on the US. The result is an American breakfast category that’s almost as diverse as the country itself. French toast, a common staple on American brunch tables, has roots in Europe, of course. Jewish immigrants from Poland brought bagels in the late 19th century. And Dutch colonists introduced the New World to donuts. The introduction of foods from different cultures combined with American staples like cereal, toast, and orange juice to create a wholly unique American breakfast menu.

In the mid-19th century, wealthy Americans vacationing in Europe discovered the idea of tipping and brought it back home with them, where it soon became a common practice to tip service workers. In Europe, on the other hand, the practice - with roots in Medieval master-serf relations - faded into obscurity, with most servers in the area today not expecting tips. This is because the practice started to be viewed as condescending and unfair to lower-class citizens who could not afford a tip in addition to their meal cost. Those feelings existed in the US too, but tipping culture persisted in large part due to the abolition of slavery. In an attempt to essentially get free labor after enslaved people were freed, railroad and restaurant employers would hire formerly enslaved people and pay them a $0 wage, with the expectation that customers would pay them in tips instead. This practice of subsidizing workers’ pay with tips spread throughout the country. When the first federal minimum wage law was passed in 1938, it further cemented tipping as an integral part of the American wage system. By mandating employers only pay tipped workers a wage that would add up to the minimum wage after adding in tips, the integration of tipping in the US was complete. Efforts to amend this practice and adopt the tipping and gratuity practices common in other countries - where such gestures are appreciated, but not always required - have been met with backlash and a reversion to the old system.

If you go to a professional sports game in most of the world, the teams will start playing without hearing their country’s national anthem. In the US, however, every game - from baseball to football to soccer to hockey - won’t start until the “The Star Spangled Banner” plays. The tradition dates back to the 1918 MLB World Series. During the first game's seventh-inning stretch, the band played the anthem to a lackluster crowd reeling from the onslaught of WWI. The song boosted the crowd’s morale and became a mainstay for the rest of the series. It was played regularly at important baseball games (think Opening Day, holidays, and during the World Series) from then on. After the US joined WWII, playing the national anthem before games became a more regular occurrence, as it boosted support for the war efforts among citizens. After the conflict, most major sports leagues in the country kept the tradition going, and since then, teams have been met with backlash when the anthem is not played.

In most of the world, a value-added tax is tacked on to the total price paid for goods at every stage of the production process and paid to the government, rather than a sales tax charged to the consumer at the purchasing stage. The US sales tax system is unique in this way. While both the VAT system favored by most of the world and the American sales tax system raise roughly the same amount of money for the government, what’s different is who pays those taxes, and when. The VAT is regarded as an easier system to track and can serve as an alternative to other taxes in the country. However, as with other aspects ingrained in the American economy and government processes, like the metric system and the Electoral College, switching from the current system to VAT would cost more than it's worth for the US.

Control over the American government has been won throughout the years by whichever party in a two-party system comes out on top during elections. This has largely been the case since George Washington stepped down from the presidency. However, he and other founding fathers - like Hamilton and Madison - all strongly opposed the development of political parties. So how did the two-party system become such an integral part of the American government? Some experts believe the development and success of a two-party system in the US was inevitable. For one, political parties give people - especially those who may not have a complete understanding of politics - an easy way to align their votes on election days. Presumably, a person can select the party that most aligns with their values and needs and vote along party lines. On the part of the parties themselves, they can structure their platform to appeal to a broad audience, leading naturally to a two-party system in which one party - in the simplest terms - is for one issue or candidate and the other is against. In the US, where there are no concessions for candidates who don’t win a majority of the vote, this means third parties cannot compete with the Republican and Democratic parties that appeal to the broader American population; instead, those smaller parties can benefit from allying themselves with one of the two major parties. While other countries with a two-party system sometimes see a third-party candidate actually challenge the two main parties, the third-party candidate in the US has barriers that don’t exist elsewhere: the Electoral College and a winner-takes-all voting system. In the UK and India, for example, voters are more incentivized to vote for candidates outside of the major parties because they actually have a chance at winning in an election.

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic - and associated toilet paper shortage - sparked American interest in the bidet, where previously there was little to no interest. However, bidets were commonly used in restrooms throughout the world before this; the US was the odd nation out. So, why have Americans always favored toilet paper as opposed to the environmentally friendly bidets used in many other countries? It really boils down to one thing: Americans, upon first introduction to the bidet during WWII, associated them with brothels - the only place they had ever seen them before. Americans weren’t alone in their feelings; the British also shunned bidets because they associated them with French hedonism. This connection with illicit activities (it was once also viewed as a method of birth control, which religious Americans viewed as a sin) prevented the bidet from ever taking off.