5 Crazy Facts About The Congress

The United States congress runs on the bicameral legislature having two main chambers that are; House of Representatives and the Senate. The number of voting members are 535 in which the congress. 435 of them are the representatives and 100 are the senators. This doesn’t include the 6 non voting members that make it 541. These are the facts and figures about the US congress, but there is something more.

People of every country are always curious about the inside facts of their congress or country. Here are some crazy facts about the congress that will leave you awestruck. Five of them will be discussed in this article.

1- Aimless Speeches:

The members of the senate are completely allowed to give pointless speeches just for the reason to delay votes. Filibusters is the term used to classify this act. They are way too more common in the US Senate. The longest filibuster was about 24 hours and 18 minutes just for the delay.  

2- Satellite TV Network:

An actual group of broadcasters is funded by the Congress in which they have two TV stations and radio stations. These are the kind of networks which you will never watch, but still they exist. Alhurra and Radio Sawa are usually known. The purpose of these channels is to convey the news to the people of the Middle East or North Africa which are considered partly or not free.

3- Candy Craze:

This may sound really immature or unreal, but a desk in the senate is always filled with the candies. It is known as the ‘candy desk’ which is desk number 80. George Murphy started it and it’s still in the senate. Rules and regulations are also applied on this crazy fact, but it is something that has never stopped even if it is specific to the states.

4- First Sitting:

Only 21 members of Congress attended the first sitting and preferred their business, health and other societal affairs over that. There were eight senators and 13 representatives in the sitting. It was the first one so some elections were also delayed by that.

5- Annual Baseball Match:

Isn’t it surprising to hear, a baseball match? Yes, it happens. The differences of the members of Congress are set aside once in a year and they all play a great baseball match. This activity happens every year. It started in 1909. Surely it wasn’t liked by everyone, but it has always happened even after the objection on it in 1958.

These facts actually sounds crazy as no one would believe on the candy desk or a baseball game, but it exists in the United States Congress. People were non-serious about this also at the first sitting, but with the passage of time it has progressed and still progressing. These were the five crazy facts about the United States Congress that people are usually unaware of. But now, you have a better idea about some of them.