Did You Know...? The Wright brothers made the first manned flight at Kitty Hawk on Dec. 17, 1903. Blackbeard the pirate was killed in North Carolina in 1718. The state had its own Declaration of Independence, the 1775 Mecklenburg Declaration. America’s largest home, Biltmore House in Asheville, has 250 rooms
Did You Know...? Thousand Islands salad dressing comes from New York’s Thousand Islands region. Sam Wilson of Troy was the original “Uncle Sam.” The “I (heart) NY” logo was created in 1977 for New York state, not the city. The public can attend theater inside Sing Sing; prisoners are the
Did You Know...? The first atomic bomb was built and detonated in New Mexico in 1945. Truth or Consequences, named for a game show, was previously named Hot Springs. The capital, Santa Fe, is the oldest seat of government in the U.S. The Cumbres and Toltec is America's longest and
Did You Know...? Motion pictures were born in West Orange, N.J., thanks to Thomas Edison (1893). Also, Fort Lee was the movie capital of the world in the early 1900s. Cowtown Rodeo is the longest-running Saturday-night rodeo (1955) in the U.S. In the 1780s, Princeton and Trenton served as temporary
Did You Know...? New Hampshire’s beloved Old Man in the Mountain rock profile collapsed in 2003. Winds of 231 mph were recorded atop Mount Washington, a world record in 1934. The state has America’s longest covered bridge (460 feet) and the oldest (1829). Workers quarried 350,000 cubic feet of the
Did You Know...? Nearly half the nation’s wild horses and burros live in Nevada. Nevada has a state fossil, the Ichthyosaur, an extinct marine reptile. It is a myth that casinos never have windows or clocks. Nevada is the sole state with legal prostitution, but only in eight counties, not
Did You Know...? Nebraska has more lakes than any state except Minnesota. The largest mammoth fossil ever found was unearthed near Wellfleet (1922). Red Cloud claims it is the subject of more books than any other town in literature. Congress admitted Nebraska to the union in 1867, overriding a presidential
Did You Know...? Montana claims more than three dozen ghost towns — more than any other state. Each day, about 390 million gallons of water gush out of Giant Springs in Great Falls. Custer’s Last Stand, in 1876, occurred in Montana near the Little Bighorn River. The main street in
Did You Know...? The Lake of the Ozarks was artificially created. Missouri sits on more than 6,200 caves. The Missouri River is longer than the Mississippi River. The lake inside the Bonne Terre Mine is the largest subterranean lake in the world. The Pony Express was a financial failure; it
Did You Know...? Playwright Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier — in Mississippi. Natchez is the oldest permanent settlement on the Mississippi River (1716). The blues, a truly American music form, was born in the Mississippi Delta. Mississippi has more African-Americans than any other state (36%). The last heavyweight bare-knuckle
