Americans Live In Such Profound Ignorance It's Crazy

One in four Americans are completely unfamiliar with Nicolaus Copernicus's 1543 theory that the Earth circles the Sun, according to a study by the National Science Foundation.

A total of 42 per cent of Americans said that astrology is either "very scientific" or "sort of scientific".

When Newsweek set 1,000 Americans the challenge of completing their country’s citizenship test, 29 percent could not name the current vice president (Joe Biden), and almost three quarters could not correctly say why America fought the Cold War.

Two thirds of the respondents estimated the population of the US at between 750 million and two billion (actual figure: 298 million).

The US respondents consistently finished last behind their European peers when asked to identify key words from recent news.

In 2003, a US Strategic Task Force of Education Abroad report concluded that America’s ignorance of the outside world was so great as to constitute a threat to national security.