Strange Facts about the U.S.
Strange Facts about the U.S.
More people live in New York City than in 40 of the 50 states.
The word “Pennsylvania” is misspelled on the Liberty Bell.
There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South America in one foot of liquid.
There's a town in Washington with treetop bridges made specifically to help squirrels cross the street
In 1872, Russia sold Alaska to the Unites States for about 2 cents per acre.
It would take you more than 400 years to spend a night in all of Las Vegas's hotel rooms.
Western Michigan is home to a giant lavender labyrinth so big you can see it on Google Earth
There’s an island full of wild monkeys off the coast of South Carolina called Morgan Island, and it's not open to humans.
There's enough concrete in the Hoover Dam to build a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York City.
Arizona and Hawaii are now the only states that don't observe daylight savings time.
Boston has the worst drivers out of the nation's 200 largest cities. Kansas City has the best drivers.
Kansas produces enough wheat each year to feed everyone in the world for about two weeks.
Oregon's Crater Lake is deep enough to cover six Statues of Liberty stacked on top of each other
.
The Empire State building has its own zip code.
The Los Angeles Coroner’s Office has its own quirky gift shop called Skeletons in the Closet.
The Library of Congress contains approximately 838 miles of bookshelves—long enough to stretch from Houston to Chicago.
At 46 letters, Massachusetts’s Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggcha ubunagungamaugg has the longest place name in the U.S. (even though it's based on a joke).
In 1922, a man built a house and all his furniture entirely out of 100,000 newspapers. The structure still stands today in Rockport, Massachusetts.
The entire Denver International Airport is twice the size of Manhattan.
In 1893, an amendment was proposed to rename the country to the "United States of Earth."
A highway in Lancaster, California plays the “William Tell Overture” as you drive over it, thanks to some well-placed grooves in the road
.
The total length of Idaho's rivers could stretch across the United States about 40 times.
The town of Centralia, Pennsylvania has been on fire for 55 years.
The one-woman town of Monowi, Nebraska is the only officially incorporated municipality with a population of 1.
The sole, 83-year-old resident is the city's mayor, librarian, and bartender.
The entire town of Whittier, Alaska lives under one roof.
The number of bourbon barrels in Kentucky outnumbers the state’s population by more than two million.
Montana's Glacier National Park has a canine "bark ranger" that helps herd wildlife away from high-traffic areas.
You can watch more than 100 ponies swim to Chincoteague Island every year in Virginia.
In 1943, the temperature in Spearfish, South Dakota jumped 49 degrees in two minutes (-4°F to 45°F), one of the most drastic changes on record
The world's tiniest park is in Portland, measuring a mere two feet wide.
The inventor of the Ouija board lived and died in Baltimore; his tombstone stands as a reflection of his achievement.
The biggest signature in human history belongs to Texas farmer Jimmie Luecke. The two-mile landmark can be seen from space.
There are around 5,000 commercial airplanes flying over the United States at any given time.
Only one-third of all $100 bills are actually inside the United States.
In Colma, California the dead outnumber the living by nearly 1,000 to 1.
The smallest county in the U.S., Kalawao County on the Hawaiian island of Moloka'i, is also a leprosy colony where a few former patients still live.
South Florida is the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles coexist in the wild.
Tags
Who is online
103 visitors
Anybody got any more?
The movie Silent Hill is loosely based on this town.
Also:
I'll vouch for the Boston bad driver statistic. It's the only city I've ever driven in (and I've driven in a lot of cities in North America) where drivers actually TRIPLE park, and take away their keys.
Great fun! Like Jeremy, I Googled Centralia, Pennsylvania.
Thanks.
There were photos that went with each of those items, but it was going to be a tedious job to copy and post each one.
Link?
I now copied and pasted the photos that were unusual - the others were just photos of the cities, a photo of the Liberty Bell, that were common. There is no link because it was an email sent to me by my brother.
The Hollywood Bowl is the worlds largest outdoor amphitheater.
I suppose that depends on how one defines outdoor amphitheater.
The Flavian amphitheatre or Colosseum of Rome, Italy, completed in AD 80, covers 2 ha (5 acres) and has a capacity of 87,000. It has a maximum length of 187 m (612 ft) and a maximum width of 157 m (515 ft).
I've been to both Dean...I prefer the Hollywood Bowl, but in reality the Bowl has a capacity of 80,000 vs 65,000 for the Glen Helen.
I never thought of the Colosseum as an amphitheater, but it does hold 87,000.
I guess that we should include the Memorial Colosseum in LA, which holds 93,000.
I thought you were referring to this Hollywood Bowl with a seating capacity of only 17500 is there another?
Same one Dean, my figure was a typo...17,500 is correct, but it has held as many as around 25,000 back in the day.
Have some about my home state, Michigan:
Michigan and Ohio fought a war in 1835 over a strip a land between what is now the Michigan and Ohio border. Called the Toledo War, it was largely a symbolic and bloodless battle but congress intervened and awarded the strip of land around Toledo to Ohio. In return Michigan got the Upper Peninsula. Considered a bad deal at the time, copper, silver and timber was discovered in abundance in the UP and in the end Michigan got the best of that deal.
Suck on that Ohio. From Michigan, your "real" Toledo War winner.
More tonnage passes though the Soo Locks in Sault Ste. Marie than the Suez and Panama Canals combined.
The nation’s first regularly scheduled air passage service began operation between Grand Rapids and Detroit in 1926.
The Packard Motor Car Company in Detroit manufactured the first Air-conditioned car in 1939
Indian River is the home of the largest crucifix in the world. It is called the Cross in the Woods.
Good additions.