I was hoping to see "Taxation without Representation" on the list... though I suppose "The District" as the official nickname would be a dead giveaway.
Just a recommendation, include a chart along the side of the quiz that highlights the states that were guessed correctly and leaves those that were yet to be guessed blank.
I like Show Me. It's like the "Prove It" State. Put your money where your mouth is. Practice what you preach. etc etc, whether that's what they originally meant or not.
I live right next to Missouri, and people have varied interpretations of their motto. It mostly seems to be taken as "Missouri has so much to show, that someone can say 'Show me what's great about your state', and they won't be disappointed." The scenery in some parts is beautiful, I won't deny.
Although I'm sure we'd all like to believe that (and that's what Missouri's tourism board no doubt tries to get people to believe), the truth comes from the old stereotype, dating back to Missouri's territorial days, that people from the state are so stubborn that they won't believe anything unless they can see it.
The most widely known legend attributes the phrase to Missouri's U.S. Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver, who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1897 to 1903. While a member of the U.S. House Committee on Naval Affairs, Vandiver attended an 1899 naval banquet in Philadelphia. In a speech there, he declared, "I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me." Regardless of whether Vandiver coined the phrase, it is certain that his speech helped to popularize the saying.
Other versions of the "Show-Me" legend place the slogan's origin in the mining town of Leadville, Colorado. There, the phrase was first employed as a term of ridicule and reproach. A miner's strike had been in progress for some time in the mid-1890s, and a number of miners from the lead districts of southwest Missouri had been imported to take the places of the strikers. The Joplin miners were unfamiliar with Colorado mining methods and required frequent instructions. Pit bosses began saying, "That man is from Missouri. You'll have to show him."
Same here...a lot of these I knew from license plates and the way some journalists use alternate nicknames for states just to avoid saying the same word over and over and over.
There is a "Peace Garden" split between Canada and the US along the North Dakota border. I suppose it's North Dakota's answer to South Dakota being the Mount Rushmore state.
"Natural state" refers to the fact that Arkansas existed in nature and wasn't artificially claimed from the sea, which is the most interesting Arkansas fact I can think of.
Arkansas has so many natural resources, that it could totally exist independently if the rest of the nation (or world) excommunicated it, or sunk in the sea, or what have you. It doesn't need to trade outside or inside to support its inhabitants.
I'm pretty sure that it's because it gave all women the right to vote before any other state. However, it is weird that Wyoming is now really conservative. 100+ years is a lot in politics, though...
Well, one of them in particular... the "Show-Me State"? What?
Also, why isn't Arkansas the Land of Opportunity?
At least Arkansas didn't keep the old nickname of "Toothpick State!"
"Natural state" refers to the fact that Arkansas existed in nature and wasn't artificially claimed from the sea, which is the most interesting Arkansas fact I can think of.