50 Interesting Facts About The 50 State Capitals - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.47)

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. 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 3255 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 any 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 damn 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 Damn 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, Teddy Roosevelt became the first president to publicly ride in an automobile

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 Dover after a city in England, you know, like they did with all the early American cities

In the 1500s, the first North American Christmas celebration took place in DeSoto, 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 Lovolova

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's a two-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 whack

Meredith, you're better than that. In 1921 the Made Right sandwich shop in Springfield Illinois opened the first ever drive 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 Coliseum 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 Bunton 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 Allan Poe's

only play, Polition, 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

Frankfurt, Kentucky. Here I made a list of things that Frankfurt, 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, 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 3000 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. Twenty-one 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, St. 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 bad news for Jefferson

City, but it's great news for Marty McFly and Doc Brown. What do Dick Cheney, Hillary

Swank and Johnny Carson all 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, 0% of the 1952 western Carson City was filmed there

In 2011, Michelle Bachman 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 50 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, Jerry 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 banjo, 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 largest termite is a statue in Providence Rhode Island At 58 feet long it 920 times larger than a real termite Hootie and 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 Chateau Jr., whose family was responsible

for goods that early Americans couldn't live without, like beaver hats. Both Trisha Yearwood and Kathy Matea 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, quote, 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 America's veinest city, claiming that 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 scissors. 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 turned

February 1st into Gomer Day. Mayor Susan Baumann's proclamation mentions multiple compelling reasons, including that

quote, 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