30 interesting facts about Pennsylvania
- The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a state located in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States.
- Philadelphia is the largest city in Pennsylvania and the sixth-most-populous city in the United States.
- Pennsylvania capital is Harrisburg.
- Total Area: 33rd among states, 119,290 sq km (46,058 sq mi).
- In 2008, the population of Philadelphia was estimated to be over 1.54 million, while the Greater Philadelphia metropolitan area's population of 5.8 million made it the country's fifth-largest.
- The nation's first circulating library, the Library Company of Philadelphia, was founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin and others.
- The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada to the north, and New Jersey to the east.
- Popular nicknames for Philadelphia include Philly and The City of Brotherly Love.
- The state's four most populous cities are, respectively, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Erie. The state capital is Harrisburg.
- In 1869 a Philadelphia garment worker, Uriah S. Stephens, helped found one of the first
- major national labor unions, the Knights of Labor.
- Pennsylvania has 51 miles (82 km) of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles (92 km) of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary.
- Each February national attention is focused on Punxsutawney, where according to lore the emergence of a groundhog from its burrow predicts the number of weeks remaining of winter.
- Pennsylvania has been known as the Keystone State since 1802, based in part upon its central location among the original Thirteen Colonies forming the United States, and also in part because of the number of important American documents signed in the state (such as the Declaration of Independence).
- Hershey is considered the Chocolate Capital of the United States.
- Another one of Pennsylvania's nicknames is the Quaker State; in colonial times, it was known officially as the Quaker Province, in recognition of Quaker William Penn's First Frame of Government constitution for Pennsylvania that guaranteed liberty of conscience.
- The first commercial broadcast station in the world was KDKA in Pittsburgh, which started daily schedule broadcasting on November 2, 1920.
- Other nicknames: "The Coal State", "The Oil State", and "The Steel State".
- The first all-motion-picture theater in the world was opened on Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh on June 19, 1905, by John P. Harris and Harry Davis.
- "The State of Independence" currently appears on many road signs entering the state.
- Pennsylvania is the first state of the fifty United States to list their web site URL on a license plate.
- Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, five days after Delaware became the first.
- The Warner brothers began their careers in western Pennsylvania.
- James Buchanan, of Franklin County, was the only bachelor President of the United States and the only one to be born in Pennsylvania.
- The earliest successful experiment of Thomas A. Edison with electric lighting was made in Sunbury.
- The Battle of Gettysburg—-the major turning point of the Civil War—took place near Gettysburg.
- The first U.S. zoo was built in Philadelphia in 1876.
- Pennsylvania was also the home of the first commercially drilled oil well. In 1859, near Titusville, Pennsylvania, Edwin L. Drake successfully drilled the well, which led to the first major oil boom in United States history.
- Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell belong today to the city of Philadelphia, which purchased the property for $70,000 from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1816.
- In 1923 President Calvin Coolidge established the Allegheny National Forest under the authority of the Weeks Act of 1911 in the northwest part of the state in Elk, Forest, McKean, and Warren Counties for the purposes of timber production and watershed protection in the Allegheny River basin. The Allegheny is the state's only national forest.
