Fun and Amazing Facts About the United States!
These facts contain some little-known and curious facts about the United States and its history! Feel free to read and enjoy them all. All facts have been taken from various sources and have been checked for accuracy as much as possible.
Japan sent bombs aboard balloons to the United States during World War II. Dozens of them actually landed, doing some damage. A family in Oregon was actually killed by one in 1944. There might be more just laying around undiscovered! This story is perhaps the most amazing here!
The largest man-made lake in the U.S. is Lake Mead, created by Hoover Dam.
Boulder City, Nevada, is the one of only two places left in the state where gambling is illegal. The government did not want workers on the Hoover Dam to gamble their money away. There is one more place in Nevada: Panaca.
All banks in the U.S. were closed during the week of March 5th - 12th, 1933. This was to keep scared people from taking all their money out.
The deadliest hurricane in the U.S. hit Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900. There is no exact count , but estimates are between 6,000 and 10,000 people were killed.
The 30's gangster Machine Gun Kelly gave the FBI the nickname "G-Men."
The first gold rush in the United States happened in Dahlonega, Georgia, 1828.
Before 1913, the U.S. had no income tax. The 16th Amendment was needed so the government could do what they wanted to with the money.
Iced tea was first served at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. A British businessman wanted to increase tea sales in America.
The first coast-to-coast telephone line was established in 1914.
Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, was the first known carrier of typhoid fever in the U.S. She was confined to a hospital the last 20 years of her life because she refused to stop working as a cook. She died in 1938.
President John Tyler was aboard the USS Princeton when a gun exploded. It killed 8 people including the man who would have been his future father-in-law. John Tyler was also the first president to get married while in office.
The London Bridge, built about 160 years ago in London, was transplanted in 1968 to Lake Havasu, Arizona.
In 1850, the U.S. wanted to build a canal through Nicaragua, not Panama. The French started the Panama Canal, gave up, and sold the rights to the U.S.
150 residences in New York City got the first televisions in 1936. The first program NBC broadcast to them was a cartoon of Felix The Cat!
More Civil War battles were fought in Virginia than in any other state.
The Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee, is the world's only reproduction of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.
Hernando de Soto became the first European to reach the Mississippi River in 1581.
More than one-fourth of the entire population of Memphis, Tennessee, was wiped out by yellow fever in 1878.
Cathedral Caverns in Alabama, has what is believed to be the largest stalagmite, named Goliath, as well as the largest cave opening and cavern room in the world.
In the 1930's, the U.S. government sent farmers from the midwest to "colonize" the Matanusk Valley in Alaska. It proved a success and today that region is perhaps the only important agricultural area in the state.
The largest meteorite crater in the world is in Winslow, Arizona. 4,150 feet across and 150 feet deep.
General Ulysses S. Grant's real name was Hiram.
Virginia was once one state. People in the western half did not want to secede. So, West Virginia was "admitted" to the union in 1863. The other half, still named Virginia became a member of the confederate states.
US Highway 550, near Durango and Silverton, Colorado, is called the Million Dollar Highway because it was paved with low grade gold ore in the road bed.
