AllTop Viral!

Traditions vary widely around the world, and the ways of one society often seem downright wacky to others. American culture and traditions, thanks to the hard work of Hollywood and other arms of the nation’s media multiplex, have become well-known in most corners of the map. But that doesn’t always mean people in other countries find some of these customs less bizarre than Americans consider theirs.

If you normally mute commercials but spend Super Bowl Sunday analyzing every joke or camera angle, you know some American traditions can be kind of bizarre. What are 10 of the weirdest?

• Throwing Tailgate Parties When Americans attend sporting events it’s often not enough to simply show up and take their seats. They need to arrive hours in advance to properly prepare for the experience of seeing the game live and in person.
• Punkin Chunkin: What doesn’t say “fun” about launching a pumpkin into the air? There are several ways this can be accomplished to satisfy a crowd, whether it’s through the use of air cannons, catapults, trebuchets or machines using torsion and centrifugal force.
• Inches, Teaspoons and a Ton of Bricks: Although the government now requires metric use in some public sectors and strongly encourages it in many private industries, the American public never really took to the system and largely dismissed it, making the United States the only industrialized nation where that’s the case.

Full list at HowStuffWorks.com.

Total aggregation of HowStuffWorks.com.

Photo credit: Fotolia