Most US university students think Beethoven is a dog ...

Thats a myth,

If there's one thing that annoys me about my British compatriots, it's their never-ending attempts to portray the Americans as somehow intellectually inferior to themselves.

Guess what? They really aren't. Pound for pound, there are if anything probably more dumbasses over here, and if nothing else the US's results speak for itself. In the last half-century they've got to the moon, founded the world's biggest technology companies, and made astonishing leaps in medical and biotechnology (among other things). Britain, meanwhile, has chortled at how smart it is. How hum.

Stop trying to gloat and feel superior, and start actually doing something with your lives.

The American space program was all tied up with Operation Paperclip, which recruited scientists who previously worked in Nazi Germany to work in the USA (often burying their past associations under the carpet) in order to stop their expertise from going to the USSR and the UK. In addition, captured German rockets were the starting point for technological research.

You're right. The beagle probe totally owned their efforts.

(Seriously, though, pick other examples if you want. My point is that the whole "omg Americans so dumb lol" outlook is a complete crock of crap, and I'm frankly embarrassed that so many people in this country buy into it.)