Things Americans do backwards

Why has world domination eluded the United States?
We are masters of pop culture, technology, Olympic sports and the Snickers bar. We have a lot of people, a lot of money, a lot of weapons and a lot of high-fructose corn syrup. We haven't been bothered with dictators ever or civil war for a couple of centuries.
Yet we have not yet taken over the planet.

Why? I'll tell you why - yards, degrees Farenheit, quarts and how we write our dates.

Today a 10 year old German boy named Nikolaus asked me what yards are for, and how much is a yard in meters. As a substitute teacher I should know this.
"Well," I said, "a yard is almost the same length as a meter. People use yards in the U.S. and sometimes in England."
"If it's almost the same, why don't you just use meters then?" he asked.
"That's a good question. I don't know."
"I know - because you use yards in golf."
"That's true," I said. End of discussion.
This same child answered the question 'what does Christmas mean to you?' by saying, "it means golfing on Mallorca."

Measuring things like fabric and football fields in yards is one of our major handicaps. So is writing down what day it is. Even though people around the world agree that 9/11 was a terrible day, most of them probably think it happened in November. Europeans, like everyone else in the world, write their dates with the day, then the month, then the year. This is inherently logical. You start small and work your way up.

Why do Americans go with the month first? My in-depth google search brought me no answers other than that Americans are backwards. And if the internet doesn't know it, then there must not be an answer.
I have no idea what sort of global summits, academic symposiums an multinational corporate meetings Americans have missed. I can imagine what may have happened, though:
"Hello, I'm here to sign the international accord on nuclear energy. Where do I check in?"
"Um, I am sorry sir, that happened in March."

Time/date challenges on a lesser scale face expats like myself. Luckily I have not messed up any of my official documents. I'm lucky, because my birth date is 4-4. It's idiot-proof.

I blame it all on the English. They got us going with feet and pounds and - my personal favorite - stones. There's a scale in the teachers' bathroom at school that is set to tell your weight in stones. One stone is worth 14 pounds, so this scale is great for your self-image. The British have mostly moved on to the metric system and put their dates before their months. But we have one advantage - they still drive on the left.

So when little Nikolaus is out his designer golf shirt and plaid pants on a course in Mallorca on 25-12-13, maybe he will think about how Americans do things a little bit backwards. Maybe he will be eating a Snickers bar too.