You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

[Lee Stewart]

The Statue Of Liberty Isn’t In New York. The Statue of Liberty, which adorns pretty much every bit of tourist memorabilia you can purchase in the Big Apple, is actually not located in New York City at all. It’s technically in Jersey City, New Jersey.

[Lee Stewart]

Atlantic City Has The World’s Longest Boardwalk (4.5 miles long)

[Lee Stewart]

The Original Capital of the United States Was Philadelphia. The country’s capital wasn’t always Washington, D.C. As stipulated by the Residence Act, Philly was made to be the temporary capital of the newly created United States of America between 1790 and 1800, while Washington, D.C., was being built.

[Lee Stewart]

Harvard Was the First University In the United States. The school was founded in 1636, in Cambridge, Massachusetts—right across the Charles River from Boston.

[Lee Stewart]

Lincoln Created the Secret Service the Day of His Assassination. The president, who was assassinated on April 14, 1865, had signed legislation to create the U.S. Secret Service hours before he headed to Ford’s Theatre. However, the Secret Service wouldn’t have saved Lincoln had it been created in time—the original purpose was to combat widespread currency counterfeiting. It wasn’t until 1901 that its M.O. was to protect the president.

[Lee Stewart]

You’ve likely heard about how crazy some of the law enforcement of prohibition laws could be, but it turns out the U.S. government literally poisoned alcohol in its effort to discourage drinking. When people continued to consume alcohol despite its banning, law officials got frustrated and decided to try a different kind of deterrent: death. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the U.S., which were products regularly stolen bootleggers. By the end of Prohibition in 1933, the federal poisoning program is estimated to have killed at least 10,000 people.

[Lee Stewart]

The First Face Of The $1 Bill Wasn’t Washington. Nope! The first person to appear on this most common bill was Salmon P. Chase. The first $1 bill was issued during the Civil War in 1862. Chase was the Secretary of Treasury at that time and was also the designer of the country’s first bank notes.

[Lee Stewart]

According to Allstate’s Best Driver’s Report in 2017, which takes a look at the nation’s 200 largest cities, Boston took the not-coveted first place in being the nation’s home to the worst drivers. The best drivers can be found in Kansas City.

[Lee Stewart]

On the personal finance site WalletHub, experts analyzed the 50 states and Washington, D.C. The used 28 key metrics of happiness, including emotional health, income level, social connectivity, and sports participation rates. Utah came in first, followed by Minnesota. Alabama and West Virginia rank as the unhappiest states in the country.

[Lee Stewart]

The town of Whittier, Alaska, is an hour southeast of Anchorage. It’s a small town of around 220 people. And these 220 people all live under one roof, in one building. For those who have privacy issues, this is probably not the town for you.