PAPennsylvania Fun Facts

Pennsylvania bought its only coastline with cash. In 1792 the state paid the federal government roughly $151,000 for a triangle of about 202,000 acres in the far northwest, purely so it could reach Lake Erie and build a port. Without that purchase the state has no Great Lakes frontage at all, and the city of Erie belongs to somebody else.

Facts most people get wrong

• Philadelphia was not the first capital under the Constitution. New York City was, and Washington took the oath there in 1789. Philadelphia served from 1790 to 1800 while Washington DC was being built. Earlier, with the British holding Philadelphia, the Continental Congress met for a single day in Lancaster and then for nine months in York.
• The Liberty Bell did not crack on 4 July 1776. It was not even called the Liberty Bell then. Abolitionists gave it that name in the 1830s, and the famous crack is the result of a repair attempt in the 19th century that failed.
• The Betsy Ross story rests on one witness. Her grandson told it to a historical society in 1870, nearly a century after the fact. No document from the 1770s connects her to the design of the flag.
• The Pennsylvania Dutch are German. The word is a worn-down form of Deitsch, what the speakers call themselves, related to Deutsch. They came from the Rhineland, the Palatinate and Switzerland, not from the Netherlands.
• Pittsburgh nearly lost its h. From 1891 to 1911 the federal Board on Geographic Names standardised the spelling as Pittsburg. The city fought the ruling for twenty years and got the letter back.
• Punxsutawney Phil is bad at his job. NOAA has reviewed the record and put the groundhog's forecast accuracy near 40 percent, worse than flipping a coin.

Records and firsts

• The first commercial oil well, 1859. Edwin Drake struck oil at 69 feet outside Titusville and started the petroleum industry. Within two years the surrounding valley held boomtowns that no longer exist.
• The first hospital in the colonies, 1751. Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, founded by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Bond, is still operating on the same site.
• The first general purpose electronic computer, 1946. ENIAC was built at the University of Pennsylvania, weighed about 30 tons, and was programmed largely by a team of six women.
• The oldest zoo in the country. The Philadelphia Zoo was chartered in 1859 and opened to visitors in 1874 after the Civil War delayed it.
• More mushrooms than the rest of the country combined. Most of the national crop comes from the area around Kennett Square in Chester County, grown indoors year round.
• The Slinky, 1943. Richard James, a naval engineer in Philadelphia, watched a tension spring walk itself off a shelf. They are still manufactured in Hollidaysburg.

Geography that surprises

• The southern border settled a family feud. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed the line between 1763 and 1767 to end an eighty year property fight between the Penn and Calvert families. Its association with slavery came decades later.
• The Delaware border is a circle. The boundary is an arc drawn 12 miles out from the courthouse in New Castle, the only curved state line in the country.
• Pittsburgh has 446 bridges, more than any other city in the world, because three rivers and steep ravines cut the city into pieces.
• The high point is a ridge, not a peak. Mount Davis in the far southwest reaches 3,213 feet, and the summit is flat enough that an observation tower was built to see over the trees.
• Philadelphia is an ocean port about 100 river miles inland, reached by ships coming up the Delaware from the Atlantic.

Where the name comes from

Penn's Woods, with sylvania from the Latin for forest. William Penn neither chose the name nor wanted it. Charles II granted the charter in 1681 to clear a debt he owed Penn's late father, Admiral Sir William Penn, and named the colony for the admiral.

The younger Penn, a Quaker who had already been jailed for his beliefs, was afraid the name would look like vanity. He asked for New Wales, then simply Sylvania, and by his own account tried to pay the king's secretary to have the Penn removed. The secretary refused and the name stood.

Quick stats

• Population: over 10 million
• Area rank: #33 of 50
• Admitted: 1787, the 2nd state to ratify
• Capital: Harrisburg
• Largest city: Philadelphia
• Time zone: Eastern

Bordering states

Explore further