Everything You Never Knew About Popular States, Like Why Missouri Has 1.4 Billion Pounds Of Buried Cheese
Everything You Never Knew About Popular States, Like Why Missouri Has 1.4 Billion Pounds Of Buried Cheese
How Much Do You Really Know About America?
The United States packs an incomprehensible amount of history and culture into its 50 states. Every year, millions of tourists flock to the Land of the Free for a little taste of both, but beneath luxury resorts and limestone caverns lie some of the country's most fascinating stories. Here are 20 remarkable secrets from American states that you have probably never heard of before.
1. Indiana's Wabash Was the First City Lit by Electricity
On March 31, 1880, Wabash, Indiana, became the first city anywhere illuminated by electric light. Though it’s hard to imagine by today’s standards, four arc lights were installed in the courthouse dome and switched on before a baffled crowd!
2. West Virginia's Resort Hid a Nuclear Bunker for Congress
Beneath the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia lay a fallout shelter for all 535 members of Congress. It was built between 1959 and 1962 under the guise of a hotel expansion; it included 1,000 bunk beds, a cafeteria, and 25-ton blast doors. For a while, it had a pretty good run, operating for over three decades until a 1992 Washington Post expose blew the story wide open and forced the government to shut it down.
3. South Dakota's Mount Rushmore Has a Secret Chamber
Sculptor Gutzon Borglum had a vision. He wanted a Hall of Records carved just behind Lincoln's hairline—meant to serve as a 75-foot chamber for the nation's key documents. Well, the government refused, and Borglum died in 1941 without finishing. However, his ideas outlived him, and in 1998, the National Park Service sealed 16 porcelain panels in a titanium vault exactly where he wanted.
4. Kentucky Has More Bourbon Barrels Than People
Yes, you read that right. Kentucky produces around 95% of the world's bourbon supply, and the state holds over 17 million aging barrels. It’s more than three for every person in the Commonwealth. It sounds crazy (and it is), but the industry also brings in roughly $10.6 billion every year and supports thousands of jobs across the state’s 100 distilleries.
5. Indiana's Famous Indy 500 Milk Tradition Started by Accident
Every year, the Indianapolis 500 winner celebrates with cold milk in Victory Circle, but the tradition wasn’t exactly planned out. After his third win in 1936, Louis Meyer cracked open a bottle of buttermilk in Victory Lane on his mother's advice. A dairy executive spotted the newspaper photo and moved to make it permanent, and the tradition has continued ever since. (That’s just good marketing for moms and milkmen everywhere.)
Greg Hildebrand from Plymouth, IN on Wikimedia
6. Hawaii's Mauna Kea Is the World's Tallest Mountain
Mount Everest is often crowned the golden boy of mountain peaks, but if you measure base to summit, Mauna Kea on Hawaii's Big Island is the world's tallest. Its base sits 19,700 feet below the Pacific Ocean, giving it a total height of nearly 33,500 feet—that’s over a mile taller than Everest!
Nula666 (talk · contribs) on Wikimedia
7. Engineers Once Reversed the Direction of the Chicago River
It’s not every day you just change the Earth’s will, but it happened on January 2, 1900. The river had carried so much sewage into Lake Michigan, the city's drinking water, that it caused deadly disease outbreaks. So, engineers excavated 42 million cubic yards of earth for a 28-mile canal and reversed the river’s direction. At the time, it was one of the biggest engineering feats in American history.
8. New Mexico's 1947 Roswell Incident Was a Spy Balloon
When humble rancher Mac Brazel found debris in 1947, the Army Air Forces claimed to have recovered a flying disc. But just as quickly, they then retracted it as a weather balloon. The truth emerged in 1994: the debris was from Project Mogul, a classified program monitoring Soviet nuclear tests.
Roswell Daily Record. on Wikimedia
9. Nebraska is the Birthplace of Kool-Aid
A big shoutout to Edwin Perkins for making the best drink of our childhoods: Kool-Aid! This special stuff was invented in 1927 in Hastings, Nebraska. Perkins had sold a liquid concentrate called Fruit Smack, but glass bottles broke in transit, so he dehydrated it into powder, and the rest is history.
MissouriStateArchives on Wikimedia
10. Texas is the Only State With the Legal Right to Divide Up to Four Different States
When Texas joined the Union in 1845, it secured the right to divide into up to five separate states—acknowledging its unusual history as a formerly independent nation. No division has ever actually been made or even attempted, but Texas remains the largest state in the contiguous U.S.
11. Alaska's Capital is Almost Bigger Than Rhode Island and Delaware Combined
While you probably wouldn’t want to live there, there’s no denying just how much Alaska has to offer! And you’d likely find it in Juneau, the state capital, which covers almost as much land as Rhode Island and Delaware combined.
12. Missouri is Home to a Massive Cheese Stockpile
Deep underground in converted limestone mines near Springfield, the government stores roughly 1.4 billion pounds of cheese (better understood as a national U.S. inventory). No, we’re not kidding! Carter's $2 billion dairy subsidies in the 1970s spurred overproduction until the government was buying every surplus block available.
13. North Dakota Set a Guinness World Record for Snow Angels
In 2007, North Dakota gathered on the Capitol lawn in Bismarck and made a pretty chilly history. 8,962 people lay in the snow and waved their arms in unison, setting the Guinness World Record for the most people making snow angels at one time! When you think about it, it’s a fitting tribute to the state's notoriously nasty winters.
Alexandra Smielova on Unsplash
14. Wisconsin Has an Unsung Chosen Bird
Officially, Wisconsin's state bird is the American robin, but that didn’t stop Madison from choosing a far more colorful option: the plastic pink flamingo. Oh yes—in 1979, University of Wisconsin students planted about one thousand plastic flamingos outside the dean's office as a prank. But the joke left such a lasting impression that in 2009, Madison's city council officially adopted it as the city bird.
15. Connecticut Published the First American Cookbook and Phone Book
We know, we know. Who uses phone books anymore? Well, for a while there, they had an important job, and we have Connecticut to thank! The state produced the world's first telephone directory in New Haven in 1878, which was really just a pamphlet listing 50 subscribers. The first U.S. cookbook was also printed in Hartford in 1796.
16. New York City Is Home to More Than 800 Languages
Calling all lovers of language! It’s not that surprising to hear that New York City is one of the most linguistically diverse places on Earth, but the city offers more than you think. Researchers have documented 700+ languages and dialects spoken across the city, and some estimates go even higher.
17. Colorado Has a Famous Claim—But the Details are Murky
The origins of the cheeseburger are still hotly debated, and Denver has its own angle: local history often credits the Humpty Dumpty Drive-In with popularizing the term “cheeseburger.” They’ve even trademarked it. The thing is, it’s more widely-accepted than documented on legal paperwork.
amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash
18. California's Lowest and Highest Points Are Only 85 Miles Apart
As if we didn’t already think it, California is uniquely extreme. Why, you ask? Well, Badwater Basin in Death Valley sits 282 feet below sea level, while Mount Whitney rises to 14,494 feet—and they’re only about 85 miles apart.
19. Kansas is Home to the World's Largest Ball of Twine
In 1953, local farmer Frank Stoeber started rolling a ball of twine by hand. Astonishingly, it grew to eight feet tall in four years and was donated to the city in 1961, where it spawned an annual twine-a-thon each August just to keep the effort alive. The ball now contains an estimated eight million feet of twine and is still growing!
20. Alabama Hosts the Country’s Best-Known Lost-Luggage Store
Ever lose your luggage on a flight? You might as well head to Scottsboro, Alabama, where the Unclaimed Baggage Center buys unclaimed airline luggage and resells what’s inside. It spans about 50,000 square feet, and the inventory ranges from travel gear to wonderfully weird finds. (Or, you know, it might just be your laptop.)
