118 facts across the U.S.
The city of Huntsville, AL is otherwise known as Rocket City because of its close association with the NASA space progra…
The worlds first monument to an agricultural pest resides in the town of Enterprise, Alabama. In 1919, the citizens of E…
On March 27, 1964 the Good Friday Earthquake rocked the state of Alaska with a temblor recorded at 9.2 on the richtor sc…
The first true Walmart store opened in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962. Operated by visionary businessman Sam Walton, the store…
California is the only U.S. state to have hosted both the Summer and Winter Olympics. The 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics…
Tulare Lake, on the western edge of California's San Joaquin Valley, was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mi…
In 1888, a tremendous train wreck known as "The Blast", occurred in Fountain, Colorado. A freight train carrying eightee…
In 1993, Pueblo City Council adopted the tagline "Home of Heroes" for the city due to the fact that Pueblo, Colorado can…
Connecticut's official nickname is "The Constitution State", adopted in 1959 and based on its colonial constitution of 1…
The Charter Oak was a majestic, unusually large white oak tree growing on Wyllys Hyll in Hartford, Connecticut, from aro…
Delaware is the first state in the Americas where settlers utilized log cabins. Swedish immigrants in the mid-1600s brou…
Delaware shares a semi-circular border with Pennsylvania at the top of the state. The border was drawn at the time of th…
Florida was the first region of the continental United States to be visited and settled by Europeans. The earliest known…
In the 1960s, refugees from Cuba fleeing Fidel Castro's communist regime arrived in Miami at the Freedom Tower. This for…
Dry Tortugas National Park sits 70 miles west of Key West and can only be reached by boat or seaplane. Its centerpiece,…
The popular theme park, Six Flags Over Georgia, was actually named for six flags that flew over Georgia: England, Spain,…
Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia was the first college in the world chartered to grant degrees to women.
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park, in present-day Macon, Georgia, has evidence of 17,000 years of continuous huma…
Madison has one of the largest historic districts in the state of Georgia, and tourists from all over the world come to…
In 1883, sugar planters on Maui imported 72 mongooses from Jamaica to control the rat population that was devastating th…
Ancient Hawaiians invented modern surfing. They called it he'e nalu, wave-sliding, and it was practiced by everyone from…
While pineapples are practically synonymous with Hawaii, the fruit is not native to the islands and originated in South…
The potato wasn't what built Idaho. The fur trade, and then a series of gold and silver rushes, drove the state's early…
Sun Valley Resort, which opened in Idaho in 1936, was the first destination ski resort in the United States and the firs…
The world's first nuclear power plant to generate usable electricity was built not in a major research city, but in the…
The first Ferris wheel in history was built for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, designed by bridge eng…
Cahokia, located just across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis in southwestern Illinois, was the largest…
Illinois was the first state to ratify the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, doing so on February 1, 1865, just two day…
The Chicago River is one of the few rivers in the world to have been permanently reversed. In 1900, city engineers compl…
The first professional baseball game played under pay-for-play conditions took place in Fort Wayne, Indiana on May 4, 18…
Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeastern Iowa preserves more than 200 prehistoric earthen mounds built by Native…
Pizza Hut was founded in Wichita, Kansas in 1958 by brothers Dan and Frank Carney with a $600 loan from their mother. Th…
Dodge City, Kansas became the most famous cattle town in the American West after the Santa Fe Railroad arrived in 1872.…
The Kentucky Derby, first run in 1875 at Churchill Downs in Louisville, is the oldest continuously held major sporting e…
Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky on February 12, 1809.…
Louisiana is the only state in the United States that bases its civil law on the Napoleonic Code, a legal framework inhe…
Jazz music was born in New Orleans, Louisiana at the turn of the 20th century, emerging from a collision of African rhyt…
Maine's Acadia National Park, established in 1919, was the first national park east of the Mississippi River. Its Cadill…
On the night of September 13, 1814, Francis Scott Key watched the British fleet bombard Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor…
The U.S. Naval Academy has been located in Annapolis, Maryland since its founding in 1845. It was established on the gro…
The Mason-Dixon Line, the famous boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that came to symbolize the divide between No…
Basketball was invented in Springfield, Massachusetts in December 1891 by a Canadian physical education instructor named…
The first American public school, Boston Latin School, was founded in 1635, a year before Harvard College. It has been i…
The Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth in 1620 aboard the Mayflower were not the first Europeans to visit the Massachusetts…
Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts was established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy — a Cape Cod native. It…
Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile, but he fundamentally changed who could own one. When Ford introduced the moving…
Motown Records was founded in Detroit, Michigan in 1959 by Berry Gordy Jr. with an $800 loan from his family. Within a d…
The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota has been ranked the top hospital in the United States more times than any other…
The Mississippi Delta region, roughly defined as the flat alluvial plain between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, is th…
Mississippi was the last U.S. state to officially ratify the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, and the delay was extrao…
The city of Natchez, Mississippi contains the highest concentration of antebellum plantation homes in the United States,…
The word "Mississippi" comes from the Ojibwe name "Misi-ziibi," meaning simply "Great River", and it earns the title. Th…
The ice cream cone was invented at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, though the exact origin is disputed between several…
Missouri was the starting point for three of the most important westward migration routes in American history: the Orego…
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, a village of about 100 people.…
Harry S. Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri in 1884 and remained a Missourian his entire life, retiring to Independence…
The Battle of Little Bighorn took place in eastern Montana on June 25 and 26, 1876, when Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Cu…
Chimney Rock in western Nebraska is a narrow spire of volcanic ash and clay rising 325 feet from a conical base on the s…
Homestead National Historical Park in Beatrice, Nebraska, commemorates the Homestead Act of 1862 — a law that transferre…
Nevada produces about 75% of all gold mined in the United States and is the fourth largest gold-producing jurisdiction i…
The Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border was the largest dam in the world when it was completed in 1935, standing 726…
Las Vegas did not exist as a significant settlement until the railroad arrived in 1905, and the city as it is known toda…
New Hampshire was the first of the original thirteen colonies to establish an independent government separate from Briti…
Alan Shepard, the first American to travel to space, was born in East Derry, New Hampshire in 1923. On May 5, 1961, just…
Thomas Edison established his research laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey in 1876, describing it as an invention facto…
The first game of baseball played under the Knickerbocker Rules, the set of rules that form the foundation of modern bas…
The first boardwalk in the United States was built in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1870. The idea came from hotel owners…
The Trinity Site in the Jornada del Muerto desert of southern New Mexico is where the world's first nuclear weapon was d…
The city of Taos, New Mexico has been home to one of the most continuously inhabited communities in North America. Taos…
The Erie Canal, completed in 1825 after eight years of construction, connected the Hudson River to Lake Erie and opened…
The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from France, conceived by French political thinker Edouard de Labo…
The first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was held in New York City on November 27, 1924. Macy's employees dressed in cos…
Before 1904, roughly one in every four trees in the eastern United States was an American chestnut — an estimated four b…
On December 17, 1903, on a cold and windy beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright made four succe…
North Carolina is the birthplace of three U.S. presidents: Andrew Jackson, born in the Waxhaws region in 1767; James K.…
Theodore Roosevelt arrived in the Dakota Territory in September 1883 as a young, sickly New York politician looking to h…
North Dakota and South Dakota were admitted to the Union simultaneously on November 2, 1889, when President Grover Cleve…
Ohio has produced more astronauts than any other state in the United States. Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on…
The Cincinnati Red Stockings, founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1869, were the first fully professional baseball team in th…
The first ambulance service in the United States was established at Commercial Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1865, des…
Seven U.S. presidents were born in Ohio, more than any other state: Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfiel…
Ohio's Cuyahoga Valley National Park follows 33,000 acres of the Cuyahoga River — the same river whose pollution-fueled…
Oklahoma has 39 federally recognized Native American tribes, more than any other state in the country, a legacy of the f…
The Oklahoma Land Run of April 22, 1889 was one of the most chaotic and extraordinary events in American history. At pre…
Route 66, the historic highway running from Chicago to Los Angeles, passes through more miles of Oklahoma than any other…
The musical Oklahoma!, which opened on Broadway on March 31, 1943, fundamentally changed the American musical theater. B…
Oklahoma's Chickasaw National Recreation Area was originally Platt National Park — the smallest national park ever creat…
Nike was founded in Eugene, Oregon in 1964 by University of Oregon track athlete Phil Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman…
Oregon has more ghost towns than any other state in the country, with over 200 documented abandoned settlements scattere…
Philadelphia served as the de facto capital of the United States for much of the nation's early history, and both the De…
ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer, was built at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia betwee…
Pennsylvania is home to the largest Amish community in the world. Lancaster County and surrounding areas have been settl…
Rhode Island is the smallest state in the United States at 1,214 square miles, small enough that you could fit 425 Rhode…
Rhode Island was the first of the thirteen colonies to declare independence from Britain, doing so on May 4, 1776, two m…
The first U.S. Open tennis tournament, then called the U.S. National Championships, was held at the Newport Casino in Ne…
The Breakers, the summer cottage of Cornelius Vanderbilt II in Newport, Rhode Island, was completed in 1895 and remains…
The first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina at 4:30 AM on April 12,…
The Gullah Geechee people, descendants of West African slaves who were brought to the Sea Islands and coastal lowlands o…
Charleston, South Carolina was the wealthiest city in North America in the decades before the Revolutionary War. Its wea…
The carving of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota began in 1927 and took 14 years and about 400 workers t…
Deadwood, South Dakota was the site of the Black Hills Gold Rush of 1876, which brought thousands of miners into Sioux t…
Texas was an independent nation, the Republic of Texas, for nearly ten years between 1836 and 1846. After winning indepe…
The transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869, when workers for the Union Pacif…
Vermont was an independent republic from 1777 to 1791, with its own constitution, currency, postal service, and naturali…
Virginia is the birthplace of more U.S. presidents than any other state, with eight born on its soil: George Washington,…
Jamestown, established on a marshy peninsula along the James River on May 14, 1607, was the first permanent English sett…
The first Thanksgiving in American history was not in Massachusetts but in Virginia, at Berkeley Plantation in Charles C…
Shenandoah National Park, stretching along the Blue Ridge Mountains in northern Virginia, was created during the 1930s t…
Mount St. Helens erupted on the morning of May 18, 1980 in an explosion that remains the most destructive volcanic event…
Starbucks opened its first location at Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington in 1971, founded by three partners who s…
West Virginia is the only state in the United States to have been formed by seceding from another state. When Virginia v…
Beneath the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia lies a massive bunker code-named Project Greek Isl…
From 1764 to 1767, two brothers named John and Samuel Pringle lived inside the hollow trunk of a massive sycamore tree n…
The Republican Party of the United States was founded in a small white schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin on March 20, 1854…
The first kindergarten in the United States was established in Watertown, Wisconsin in 1856 by Margarethe Schurz, a Germ…
Harry Houdini was born Erik Weisz in Budapest, Hungary in 1874 but spent his formative years in Appleton, Wisconsin, whe…
The Ringling Brothers Circus was founded in Baraboo, Wisconsin in 1884 by five brothers: Al, Otto, Alf T., Charles, and…
Wyoming was the first territory in the United States to grant women the right to vote, doing so in December 1869, more t…