Hi I’m John Green.
Welcome to my salon.
Hey there, fake fireplace.
This is Mental Floss on YouTube.
Did you know that Montgomery, Alabama has a minor league baseball team named the Montgomery
Biscuits?
And their mascot IS a biscuit.
His name is Monty.
And that’s the first of 50 facts about the 50 state capitals in the United States that
I’m going to share with you today.
At 3,255 square miles, Juneau, Alaska is the largest capital city.
It’s larger than the entire state of Delaware.
It’s also the second-largest city in the entire United States, second only to Sitka,
Alaska.
Arizona’s capital, Phoenix, was originally named “Pumpkinville” in the late 1800s.
And there weren’t even pumpkin growers there, just melons that kind of looked like pumpkins.
Helena, Montana also considered the name “Pumpkinville” as well as “Squashtown.”
THAT’S RIGHT.
Two state capitals were almost named “Pumpkinville.”
Little Rock, Arkansas is home to the longest bridge in North America built exclusively
for pedestrians.
Before it was built in 2006, a local county judge said, “We’re going to build that
dam bridge,” apparently referring to the dam that the bridge goes over, not to the
offensive word.
Anyway, the bridge is now most commonly known as the “Big Dam Bridge.”
Before he became famous, Mark Twain worked for a California newspaper, The Sacramento
Union.
In 1866, he traveled to Hawaii and sent the newspaper letters to publish.
The U.S. city that brews the most beer: Denver, Colorado.
In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt became the first president to publicly ride in an automobile[a]
when he was driven through Hartford, Connecticut.
Dover, Delaware was founded by William Penn (also known as not-the-guy-on-your-Quaker-oats-box).
He named it after a city in Kent, England.
You know, like they did with all the early American cities.
In the 1500s, the first North American Christmas celebration took place in De Soto, which today
is known as Tallahassee, Florida.
According to the New York Times, Atlanta, Georgia is hip hop’s “center of gravity.”
Many artists got their start there including Ludacris who once DJed for a local radio station
under the stage name “Chris Lova Lova.”
(think anyone would make the walking dead connection?)[b]
The only royal palace in the United States can be found in Honolulu, Hawaii.
It was used by Hawaiian monarchs from 1879 until the overthrow of the monarchy occurred
in 1893.
There is a to-scale replica of the Liberty Bell in front of the Boise, Idaho capitol
building.
The only difference?
The one in Boise doesn’t have a crack.
Because crack is wack.
Meredith...
you’re better than that.
In 1921, the Maid Rite Sandwich Shop in Springfield, Illinois opened the first ever drive-thru
in America.
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to my beloved Indy 500, takes up 253 acres.
That means that Churchill Downs, Yankee Stadium, the Rose Bowl, the Roman Colosseum, and Vatican
City could all fit inside of it.
“Des Moines,” the capital of Iowa, is French for “of the monks.”
In what I’m sure is one of America’s greatest regrets, Des Moines was almost named Fort
Raccoon.
In 2010, the mayor of Topeka, Kansas wanted Google to install their fiber optic broadband
Internet in the city and to get the company’s attention, Mayor Bill Bunten announced the
city would unofficially change its name to “Google” for a month.
Google responded on April Fool’s Day by announcing that they would change their name
to “Topeka.”
Edgar Allen Poe’s only play, Politian, was inspired by a real-life murder and even though
the play takes place during the 16th century in Rome, the actual murder it’s based on
occurred in 1825 in Frankfort, Kentucky.
Here, I made a list of things Frankfort, Kentucky and Rome have in common.
In 1988, Baton Rouge, Louisiana saw the infamous “Earthquake Game” at Louisiana State University’s
football stadium.
A last-second touchdown caused the crowd to cheer so loudly that it registered as an earthquake
on a local seismograph.
America’s oldest wooden fort can be found in Augusta[c], Maine.
Old Fort Western was built in 1754 and was later used by Benedict Arnold before his invasion
of Canada.
This was back in the old days when central Maine was “the West.”
Annapolis isn’t just a James Franco movie that no one saw.
It’s also the capital of Maryland and home to the largest crab feast in the world.
Each year, people eat over 300 bushels of crab and over 3,000 ears of corn at the Annapolis
Rotary Crab Feast.
In 1919, Boston, Massachusetts flooded...with molasses.
A 50-foot tall tank of molasses broke and around 2.3 million gallons of molasses destroyed
surrounding streets.
21 people died.
Lansing only became the capital of Michigan because so many other cities wanted to be
capital.
The Michigan House of Representatives was forced to choose Lansing to end the political
turmoil that determining a capital had become.
The decision was shocking because Lansing was much less populated than the other cities
that wanted to be capital, like Ann Arbor and Marshall and Jackson.
In the 1800s, Saint Paul, Minnesota was called “Pig’s Eye Landing,” named after a local
tavern owner.
Wait, “Pig’s Eye Landing?”
Pigs?
Time to put a quarter in the staff Pork Chop Party Fund.
Cha-ching!
It’s believed that the song “Jackson” popularized by Johnny Cash and June Carter
is about the capital of Mississippi.
In the 1960s, that area of the state was known for wild partying and illegal gambling.
The Missouri State Capitol building in Jefferson City has had some tough luck.
In 1837, the first one burned down about ten years after it was built.
Then, the second one was struck by lightning in 1911 and burned to the ground.
That’s bad news for Jefferson City, but great news for Marty McFly and Doc Brown.
Dick Cheney, Hilary Swank, and Johnny Carson have in common very little except that they
all lived in Lincoln, Nebraska at some point or another.
On the other hand, Abraham Lincoln, for whom the city was named, never lived there.
If you never want to visit Carson City, Nevada, just watch the films that were partially shot
there like Misery, An Innocent Man, or John Wayne’s last movie, The Shootist.
On the other hand, zero percent of the 1952 western Carson City was filmed there.
In 2011, Michele Bachmann made a speech in New Hampshire in which she said, “You’re
the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord.”
She didn’t realize that the capital of New Hampshire, Concord, was NOT the Massachusetts
city where the Revolutionary War started.
When William Taft was elected president, a company in Trenton, New Jersey was commissioned
to custom-make a large bathtub for him.
It held fifty gallons and weighed 600 pounds.
Of course, Taft would later get stuck in a White House bathtub, but there’s no record
that it was that bathtub.
Mission San Miguel is the oldest church in the United States.
It was built in Santa Fe, New Mexico in the 1600s.
Meanwhile, Albany, New York’s great claim to fame is that perforated toilet paper was
invented there.
At Pullen Park in Raleigh, North Carolina, there’s a bronze statue of Andy and Opie
from “The Andy Griffith Show.”
You know, it was like this one, except it was bigger and it didn’t feature Ron Swanson.
Anyway, in 2004, the plaque was stolen.
It read, “The Andy Griffith Show.
A simpler time, a sweeter place, a lesson, a laugh, a father and a son.”
In 2007, almost 9,000 people gathered in Bismarck, North Dakota to set the world record for most
snow angels in one place.
In 1964, Jerrie Mock became the first woman to fly around the world alone.
The trip started and ended in Columbus, Ohio.
It took her 29 days.
There’s a pre-World War II banjo living at the American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma City,
that is worth over $175,000.
More like banj-WOAH.
Meredith.
I expect better.
Waldo Park, one of the smallest parks in the world, can be found in Salem, Oregon.
FINALLY we have answered the question: Where’s Waldo...park?
It’s in Oregon.
It’s 12 feet by 20 feet and contains a single tree, which was planted in 1872.
In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt visited the capitol building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and said,
“It’s the handsomest building I ever saw.”
The world’s largest termite is a statue in Providence, Rhode Island.
At 58-feet long, it’s 920 times larger than a real termite.
Hootie & the Blowfish was formed at the University of South Carolina in its capital city of Columbia.
In a scene straight out of Pitch Perfect, Mark Bryan overheard Darius Rucker singing
in the dorm showers and the rest is history.
Pierre, South Dakota is named after fur trader Pierre Chouteau Jr. whose family was responsible
for goods that early Americans couldn’t live without...like beaver hats.
Both Trisha Yearwood and Kathy Mattea worked as tour guides at The Country Music Hall of
Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee before they became famous country singers themselves.
The unofficial slogan of Austin, Texas is “Keep Austin Weird.”
They have to keep it unofficial because if that were an official slogan, it wouldn’t
be weird enough.
The phrase was invented by a local community college librarian who resented “Austin’s
descent into rampant commercialism.”
Now, a bunch of businesses capitalize on the idea by selling products featuring the motto.
In 2007, Forbes named Salt Lake City, Utah “America’s vainest city”, claiming they
have six plastic surgeons to every 100,000 people and spend millions more on beauty products
than citizens of similarly sized cities.
That was a lot of sszzss.
Every Valentine’s Day, an unknown “Valentine Phantom” decorates Montpelier, Vermont with
huge red hearts - everywhere from stores to schools to the capitol building are surprised
with these red hearts.
And when same-sex marriage was legalized in September of 2009, the bandit struck again,
this time with rainbow hearts.
Patrick Henry made his famous “Give me liberty or give me death!”
speech at a church in Richmond, Virginia.
Then they gave him death.
Olympia, Washington USED to be home of Olympia Beer, but now it’s owned by Pabst Brewing
Company because, you know, everything’s a sellout.
Every Valentine’s Day, the “Grumble Run” is hosted in Charleston, West Virginia.
It’s a 5k “race” that usually lasts a long time because participants stop often
to eat, to smoke, and just in general to grumble.
A local Madison, Wisconsin rock band, The Gomers, is so popular that two mayors have
named February 1st into “Gomer Day.”
Mayor Susan Bauman’s proclamation[d] mentions multiple compelling reasons including that
“the Gomers are really good recyclers.”
And finally I return to my salon to tell you that the world’s largest outdoor rodeo is
Cheyenne Frontier Days in Wyoming.
Thanks for watching Mental Floss here on YouTube, which is made with the help of all these nice
people.
Every week we endeavor to answer one of your mind-blowing questions.
This week’s question comes from Colt S. who asks, “How many seconds are in a year?”
The answer, Colt, is 31,536,000 seconds, although leap years have 31,622,400 seconds.
Thank you again for watching.
[a]Cool picture: http://i.imgur.com/SR5TGqF.jpg [b]totally
[c]I know someone who can get me a pic of maine, so don't worry about this one
[d]http://www.beeftone.com/gomers-press.html