12 Troubling Facts About Arkansas You Would Be Better Off Not Knowing

Arkansas is an incredible, amazing state. It’s got great beauty and greater people. Like all awesome things, Arkansas also has some haters. Those haters are obviously dummies, but there are a few things about our glorious state that we’d all be better off not knowing.

1. In 2014, CNBC named Arkansas the tenth worst state to live in.

2. Arkansas is the third least physically healthy state in America.

Part of the problem is cigarettes. One quarter of all adult Arkansans smoke.

3. Obesity: it is estimated that one third of Arkansans need to fight the fat.

All the fried vegetables probably don’t help.

4. One third of Arkansas children live in poverty.

5. In 2008, Arkansas lawmakers fixed a law passed in the previous session—a law that made it legal for Arkansans of any age to marry as long as they had parental permission. That’s right, for a few months it was legal for toddlers to marry in Arkansas.

6. Arkansas is the tenth most dangerous state in the U.S.

Crime rates in Pine Bluff and Little Rock don’t help much.

7. As of 2013, the time of the last nationwide rankings, Arkansas had the fourth highest teen pregnancy rate in the United States.

The good news is that that number is in decline. As of the latest statistics, the teen birth rate amounts to 39.5 births per 1,000 girls ages 15-19, which is down 5% from previous years.

8. It is technically legal to beat your wife in Arkansas, but you may not do it more than once a month.

9. While recent measures for quality of pre-k education and high school graduation rates put Arkansas in a pretty good place as far as education goes, the college graduation rate is only 39%. That makes us 48th in the nation.

10. Arkansas has the second highest average combined state-local sales tax rate.

11. In 2015, XNA was ranked as the fifth worst airport in the nation.

12. It’s illegal to keep an alligator in a bathtub.

The truly troubling part is that at some point someone kept an alligator in a bathtub and they had to make a law about it.

Well, there we are. Now let’s try to forget all of these.