Usless New Jersey Facts

• “I’m From New Jersey” is the only state song that is adaptable to any municipality with a two or three syllable name.

• New Jersey has the highest population density in the U.S. An average 1,030 people per sq. mi., which is 13 times the national average.

• New Jersey has the highest percent urban population in the U.S. with about 90% of the people living in an urban area.

• In November of 1914, the New York Tribune, cooperating with Mr. Bertram Chapman Mayo (founder of Beachwood) issued an “Extra” announcing: “Subscribe to the New York Tribune and secure a lot at Beautiful Beachwood. Act at once, secure your lot in this Summer Paradise now!” This was the greatest premium offered by a newspaper – nothing equal to it was ever attempted in the United States.

• New Jersey is the only state where all its counties are classified as metropolitan areas.

• North Jersey is the car theft capital of the world, with more cars stolen in Newark then any other city. Even the 2 largest cities, NYC and LA put together.

• New Jersey has the most dense system of highways and railroads in the U.S.

• Picturesque Cape May holds the distinction of being the oldest seashore resort in the United States and one of the most unique.

• In order to meet the increasing demand for his wire rope John Roebling opened a factory in Trenton, New Jersey in 1848. John Roebling, along with his two sons, Washington and Ferdinand, built a suspension bridge across the gorge of the Niagara River. They then built the Brooklyn Bridge plus many other suspension bridges in the United States.

• New Jersey has the most diners in the world and is sometimes referred to as the diner capital of the world.

• North Jersey has the most shopping malls in one area in the world with seven major shopping malls in a 25 sq. mile radius.

• Passaic river was the site to the first submarine ride by inventor John P. Holland.

• New Jersey has over 50 resort cities and towns, some of the nations most famous, Asbury park, Wildwood, Atlantic City, Seaside heights, Cape May.

• New Jersey is a leading industrial state and is the largest chemical producing state in the nation.

• New Jersey is a major seaport state with the largest seaport in the U.S. located in Elizabeth.

• Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Redman, Das EFX, Naughty by Nature, Sugar Hill Gang, Lords of the Underground, Jason Alexander, Queen Latifa, Shaq, Judy Blume, Arron Burr, Whitney Houston, Eddie Money, Frank Sinatra, Grover Cleveland, all New Jersey natives.

• The light bulb, phonograph (record player), motion picture projector were invented by Thomas Edison in his Menlo Park laboratory.

• New Jersey is home to the Miss America pageant held in Atlantic City.

• Atlantic City is where the street names came from for the game monopoly

• Fort Dix is named for Major General John Adams Dix, a veteran of the War of 1812 and the Civil War. During his distinguished public career, he was a United States Senator, Secretary of the Treasury, Minister to France and Governor of New York.

• Atlantic City has the longest boardwalk in the world.

• New Jersey has the largest petroleum containment area outside of the Middle East countries.

• The first Indian reservation was in New Jersey.

• New Jersey has the tallest water tower in the world.

• The first tin-foil phonograph developed by Thomas Edison was crude, but it proved his point—that sound could be recorded and played back. Thomas Edison had phonograph demonstrations and became world-renowned as the “Wizard of Menlo Park” for this invention.

• New Jersey is the only state in the nation which offers child abuse prevention workshops to every public school.

• The first baseball game was played in Hoboken.

• The first intercollegiate football game was played in New Brunswick, in 1869. Rutgers College played Princeton. Rutgers won.

• The first Drive-In Movie theatre was opened in Camden.

• New Jersey has 108 toxic waste dumps. Which is the most in any one state in the nation.

• New Jersey has a spoon museum featuring over 5,400 spoons from every state and almost every country.

• Origin of name: From the Channel Isle of Jersey.

• Tourism is the second-largest industry in New Jersey.

• In 1977, New Jersey voters approved legislation allowing legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City.

• New Jersey has 21 counties.

• Although the Borough of Ship Bottom was incorporated in 1925, the name dates back to a shipwreck that occurred in March 1817, when Captain Stephen Willets of Tuckerton rescued a young woman from the hull of a ship overturned in the shoals. The rescue became known as “Ship Bottom.”

• State motto is liberty and prosperity.

• The honeybee, apis mellifera, is the New Jersey state bug.

• The state seashell is the knobbed whelk, busycon carica gmelin, it is found on all beaches and bays of New Jersey.

• Modern paleontology, the science of studying dinosaur fossils, began in 1858 with the discovery of the first nearly complete skeleton of a dinosaur in Haddonfield, New Jersey. The Hadrosaurus is the official New Jersey state dinosaur.

• Atlantic City’s original summer visitors were the Absegami Indians of the Lenni Lenape tribe.

• Fair Haven is believed to have been seasonally inhabited by native Indians prior to the coming of European settlers in the 1660’s

• Parsippany has been named Tree City USA for 24 consecutive years.

• New Jersey’s state seal was designed by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere and presented in May 1777.

• Software and software related companies account for nearly 2,700 companies in New Jersey.

• The Statue, “Soldier At Rest” was dedicated to New Jersey Civil War veterans on June 28, 1875. It was purchased by the New Jersey State Legislature for $10,000.

• General Philip Kearny had a New Jersey town and 2 military decorations named after him.

• The Borough of Roosevelt is the only municipality in New Jersey that is, in its entirety, a registered National Historic Site

Useless Pennsylvania Facts

• Pennsylvania is the first state of the fifty United States to list their web site URL on a license plate.

• In 1909 the first baseball stadium was built in Pittsburgh.

• Hershey is considered the Chocolate Capital of the United States.

• In 1913 the first automobile service station opened in Pittsburgh.

• In 1946 Philadelphia became home to the first computer.

• Bob Hoffman of York is hailed the world round as the Father of Weightlifting. Hoffman started York Barbell Corp. in 1932 and preached the gospel of physical fitness throughout his life as an U.S. Olympic coach, businessman and philanthropist.

• The first daily newspaper was published in Philadelphia on Sept. 21, 1784.

• Philadelphia saw the first Zoological garden in July 1874.

• Drake Well Museum in Titusville is on the site where Edwin L. Drake drilled the world’s first oil well in 1859 and launched the modern petroleum industry.

• In Hazleton, there is a law on the books that prohibits a person from sipping a carbonated drink while lecturing students in a school auditorium.

• In Philadelphia in 1775 Johann Behrent built the first piano in America calling it under the name “Piano Forte.”

• Philadelphia is the site of the first presidential mansion.

• Betsy Ross made the first American flag in Philadelphia.

• “Doctor, if you don’t give me something to help me breathe, I’m going to stop!” came the urgent cry of 16-year old Frederick Gable of Loganville. Vowing not to lose another patient to pneumonia, Dr. George Holtzapple successfully created the first application of oxygen, thus saving his patient’s life and winning international fame through his discovery. The year was 1885.

• Stewartstown hired its first police officer in 1876. He was also the town lamp lighter.

• Philadelphia is home to the cheesesteak sandwich, water ice, soft pretzels, and TastyKakes.

• The Rockville Bridge in Harrisburg is the longest stone arch bridge in the world.

• Kennett Square is known as the Mushroom Capital of the World.

• The town of Franklin became a center for worldwide oil production following Colonel Edwin Drake’s discovery of oil in nearby Titusville.

• The Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia in 1776.

• KDKA radio in Pittsburgh produced the first commercial radio broadcast.

• Philadelphia is home to the Liberty Bell.

• Each year on Christmas day the “Crossing of the Delaware” is reenacted at Washington Crossing.

• The Liberty Tunnel in Pittsburgh opened in 1924. At that time the 5,700 foot facility was the longest artificially ventilated automobile tunnel in the world.

• Pennsylvania is the only original colony not bordered by the Atlantic Ocean.

• Benjamin Franklin founded the Philadelphia Zoo, the first public zoo in the United States.

• Indiana County is the Christmas Tree capital of the world.

• Actor Jimmy Stewart was born and raised in the town of Indiana. Each year at Christmas the downtown area is decorated in the theme of the film “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

• Pittsburgh is famous for manufacturing steel. Its professional football team is named the Pittsburgh Steelers.

• Fairmount Park in Philadelphia is the largest city park with over 8,000 acres.

• Pittsburgh has over 300 sets of city maintained steps. If they were stacked on top of each other, they would reach over 26,000 feet high. They would measure higher than a lot of the Himalayan Mountains.

• Little League Baseball’s first World Series was held in 1946 in Williamsport.

• Nazareth is the home of Martin guitars. Finger picking good since 1833.

• The State College Area High School was the first school in the country to teach drivers education in 1958.

• Philadelphia was once the United States capital city.

• Originally Bellefonte, a town now with a population of 5,000, was once considered to be Pennsylvania’s capital. But Harrisburg was chosen because of the easy navigation on the Susquehanna River.

• The first coal festival was held 201 years after the establishment of “Peter’s Camp” on Memorial weekend 1993 in Blossburg.

• The oldest stone railroad bridge in use in Pennsylvania is the Starrucca Viaduct that crosses PA Route 171 north of Lanesboro in Susquehanna County.

• In June 1778, a 700 wagon caravan escorted the Liberty Bell on its return to Philadelphia from Allentown along Towamencin’s Allentown Road. Nine months earlier, when British troops threatened to capture the city, the bell had been whisked into hiding via the same route.

• The Shenango River Dam near Sharpsville is a concrete gravity dam with an uncontrolled center spillway. The roadway crossing the top of the dam, over the spillway is nearly 68 feet above the streambed. The dam has a top length of 720 feet with a base width of 66 feet.

• At the Moravian Pottery & Tile Works in Doylestown handmade tiles are still produced in a manner similar to that developed by the potter’s founder and builder, Henry Chapman Mercer.

• The Borough of Kane is known as the Black Cherry Capital of the World.

• George G. Blaisdell founded Zippo Manufacturing of Bradford in late 1932. He started with a simple idea: create a product that answers a real need, design it to work, and guarantee it to last.

• When completed in 1882, the Kinzua Railroad Bridge near Mount Jewett was acclaimed “the highest and longest railroad viaduct in the entire world.” Rising 301 feet from the valley floor at its center, with a total length of 2100 feet

• Antrim Township is located in South-Central Pennsylvania with its southern border being a part of the Mason-Dixon line.

• Ringing Hill in Lower Pottsgrove Township is named after the “ringing rocks” which were known for the unique ringing sound they made when struck by a hammer.

• During the depression canned goods served as admission to The Star Theater in Mercersburg to help supply the local soup kitchen.

• Located in the Grape Coast region of Pennsylvania the city of North East has four thriving wineries and is home to the largest Welch’s grape processing plant in the country.

• Penn Township, officially referred to as the Township of Penn, was named after the founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn.

• Punxsutawney citizens are proud to be over shadowed by their town’s most famous resident the world-renowned weather forecasting groundhog Punxsutawney Phil. Punxsutawney is billed as the weather capital of the world.