You can probably name the Founding Fathers, you might know which city was once called New Amsterdam and you may even be able to recite the Gettysburg Address – but there’s a lot more to America’s history that you’d never learn in school. From a spelling error on the Liberty Bell to the president who kept bear cubs at the White House, this is the historical trivia you won’t find in most textbooks.
Read on to find out some of our favourite fun facts from US history...
It’s often assumed that Jamestown, Virginia, is the oldest city in the US, but in fact it was just the first permanent colony established by the English in May 1607. The oldest city accolade goes instead to St Augustine in Florida, which was founded by the Spanish in 1565. Aside from a brief interlude under British rule, it remained the capital of 'Spanish Florida' for more than 250 years.
It’s up there with Thanksgiving as one of America's most important public holidays, but was 4 July 1776 really when America declared its independence from Great Britain? In fact, 2 July should be the date enshrined in the nation’s collective memory, as that’s the date the 56 members of the Second Continental Congress voted to approve their groundbreaking declaration – it just took a couple of days to approve the wording. So, if you want to set your fireworks off a couple days early, history is on your side.
While we’re on the subject of the Declaration of Independence, have you ever wondered why Americans refer to a signature as a 'John Hancock'? It all comes down to the looping cursive favoured by the famous Founding Father, who signed his name in such large, clear writing that it could supposedly be read without spectacles. Although the declaration was voted through on 2 July, most historians agree that the document wasn't actually signed until 2 August.
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This icon of American independence is a must-see on visits to Philadelphia, often called the birthplace of America as it’s where the Founding Fathers met to sign the Declaration of Independence and, later, the Constitution. The Liberty Bell was among the bells rung on 8 July, 1776, as the declaration was read out to the public. But despite its associations with freedom from Great Britain, the bell was actually forged at the Whitechapel Foundry in London in 1751, the same place where Big Ben was made.
The Liberty Bell is famously inscribed with the words of a bible verse from Leviticus – "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all of the inhabitants thereof" – as well as information about the Pennsylvania Assembly. But look closer and you might just spot a spelling error as seen on this replica. It’s attributed to the state of 'Pensylvania', rather than Pennsylvania – though this was an accepted spelling at the time.
Yes, really. George Washington was, of course, the first president elected under the terms of the US Constitution. But before that the Articles of Confederation required a 'President of the United States in Congress Assembled' to serve a one-year term. The first of eight men to take up the baton was John Hanson (pictured), who served from 5 November 1781 until 3 November 1782. In just 12 months he set up the Treasury and the Foreign Affairs Department, and removed all foreign troops.
The Constitution – written in 1787, ratified in 1788 and in operation since 1789 – was clearly groundbreaking, but it owes a debt of gratitude to the Iroquois Confederacy. This league of six Indigenous nations – namely the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and later the Tuscarora – was based in modern-day Ontario, New York and Pennsylvania. The Confederacy's Great Law of Peace, which let them govern together while blending harmony with sovereignty, especially influenced the constitutional research of John Adams.
If you’ve ever zoned out while watching a presidential inauguration, you might wish that modern politicians would take a leaf out of George Washington’s book. His second inaugural address in 1793 is the shortest on record at just 135 words – barely more than the oath of office itself – though some have speculated that his lifelong dental troubles and ill-fitting dentures may have made speaking difficult. The longest was by William Henry Harrison in 1841, at 8,445 words.
You might have come across unusual pets like snakes or spiders, but did you know one former president kept two grizzly bears on the front lawn of the White House? In October 1807, explorer Captain Zebulon Pike picked up a pair of cubs and sent them to President Thomas Jefferson, who planned to donate them for display at Peale’s Museum. But first, they apparently spent two months on view to the public in a cage in front of the White House, leading political opponents to nickname it the 'bear garden' after the rowdy venues of the Elizabethan era.
That wouldn’t be the last time a deadly creature was let loose in the presidential residence. Legend has it that John Quincy Adams (pictured) was given a pet alligator by the Marquis de Lafayette, and put it in the East Room bathtub to give unsuspecting visitors a scare. Historians are sceptical, although the first family have since kept sheep, a dairy cow, a badger, a parrot and plenty of cats and dogs, so perhaps it's not such a stretch after all.
Everyone knows about the Salem Witch Trials, when the Massachusetts town of Salem was overrun with hysteria about witches in their midst, but have you ever heard of the Salem Tomato Trial? In 1820 it was apparently believed that tomatoes were poisonous, and local lore holds that Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson challenged this fallacy in Salem, New Jersey, by eating one of the red fruits in front of a crowd outside the local courthouse. He survived to tell the tale and tomatoes were soon on the menu.
While many countries have their national language written into the constitution – Canada lists both French and English, for instance – the US doesn’t have one on its statute books. According to the US Census Bureau, the 350-plus languages most commonly used in America include Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese and Arabic, along with widely spoken Native American languages such as Navajo, Yupik, Dakota and Apache. Curiously, England does not have a legally-enshrined official language either.
Some say a week is a long time in politics – but a month was all too short for William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the US. He was inaugurated in 1841 but died seemingly of pneumonia just 31 days later, making him the first president to die in office and the holder of the shortest ever tenure in the White House. Some put it down to his lengthy inauguration speech, which took nearly two hours on a bitterly cold, wet day, but scientists have since pointed to contaminated drinking water as a more likely cause of death.
When the Oregon Treaty was signed between Britain and the US on 15 June 1846, it removed the risk of a third Anglo-American War by settling sovereignty questions over the Pacific Northwest. By extending an existing boundary along the 49th parallel, it also brought the soon-to-be states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana formally under American control, creating the world’s longest international land border. At 5,525 miles (8,891km), the US-Canada border still holds the record today.
It might have had 'conductors' and 'cargo', but the Underground Railroad – a series of routes that helped up to 100,000 enslaved people escape to freedom – had nothing to do with trains. It was just a convenient way to describe the network of people and places that led from the American South to the relative liberty of Canada or Mexico, with safe houses or 'stations' along the way. Helpers who provided food, shelter and clean clothes were 'stationmasters', while those leading the way were 'conductors'.
She’s best known for her leading role in orchestrating the Underground Railroad, but that wasn’t the end of the line for Harriet Tubman. She worked as a nurse in South Carolina during the Civil War, tending to African-American soldiers and newly emancipated slaves, and even set up a spy ring to infiltrate enemy lines. During the Combahee Ferry Raid in June 1863, Tubman became the first woman to lead a major military operation in an attack that saw 700 enslaved people set free.
When John Wilkes Booth took his fateful shot at Ford’s Theatre on 14 April 1865, assassinating President Abraham Lincoln, it shook the nation to its core. Just hours earlier, Lincoln had signed an order to establish the US Secret Service – the agency that would take on the responsibility of protecting the president – but it came too late to save him. In a cruel twist of fate, Booth had been in the audience during Lincoln’s second inaugural address that year to hear the president make a plea for post-Civil War peace.
Ever wondered why the Democrats are represented by the symbol of a donkey? During the 1828 presidential race, opponents of Andrew Jackson labelled him a 'jackass' and it stuck, with Jackson even using it on his own posters. The Republican elephant has roots in the Civil War, when 'seeing the elephant' meant serving in battle. It was linked to the party after being used in an 1874 Harper’s Weekly sketch by renowned political cartoonist Thomas Nast – who also drew our modern-day image of Santa Claus.
It might sound odd to our ears, but Chester A Arthur earned the nickname 'the Dude President' – in the 19th century this meant being a bit of a dandy – for his love of silk top hats, shoes and swanky tailored suits. He served as president from 1881 to 1885 during the Gilded Age, but his foppish style and expensive tastes drew criticism from all sides. The moniker was probably still better than Zachary Taylor's 'Old Rough and Ready', 'Ten-Cent Jimmy' for James Buchanan or 'the Sphinx' for FDR.
Nothing says 'welcome to America' like a first glimpse of New York's Statue of Liberty, a gift from France to celebrate friendship between the two countries that was dedicated on 28 October 1886. But Lady Liberty is not alone – in 1889, Americans living in Paris gifted France a quarter-sized version to mark the centenary of the French Revolution, and it still sits at Pont de Grenelle. There are also several other replicas around France including at the Musee d’Orsay and in Colmar, home of the statue's sculptor, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi.
The US can lay claim to a lot of world firsts, but one proposed amendment to the constitution sought to take that a step further. In 1893, Wisconsin representative Lucas Miltiades Miller laid down a proposal to rename the country 'the United States of the Earth', believing that more states could be added to the Union until it eventually stretched across the entire planet. Needless to say the proposal was rejected, and Miller was not nominated for a second term in the House.
The Wright brothers are the famed inventors of modern aircraft, having designed and piloted the world’s first successful engine-powered plane, the Wright Flyer, which took to the skies in North Carolina on 17 December 1903. Ohio-born Orville Wright was at the helm, staying in the air for 12 seconds. Neil Armstrong, also an Ohio native, was so inspired by their pioneering spirit that he carried a piece of the Wright Flyer's propeller and fabric from its left wing in his spacesuit on the first Moon landing in 1969.
The Hoover Dam was the biggest engineering project of its time, standing a colossal 726 feet (221m) high and creating much-needed post-Depression jobs for 21,000 workers. They even had to build nearby Boulder City, Nevada, to provide housing for that many people. So much concrete was used for the dam that it would be enough to build a two-lane highway from Seattle to Miami, or a four-foot-wide (1.2m) path all the way around the Equator.
Eleanor Roosevelt was a trailblazer for women, and she gave female reporters exclusive access to her own weekly press conferences so they could score stories in the male-dominated world of newspapers. Her first address on 6 March 1933, just two days into Franklin D Roosevelt's first term, drew 35 ‘newspaperwomen’, and she would go on to hold 348 weekly conferences up to her final morning as First Lady in 1945. She tackled a range of topics including the serving of beer post-Prohibition, equal pay, pensions and low-cost housing.
Native American soldiers serving in the First and Second World Wars didn't get much recognition at the time, but their contributions were important for victory. 'Code talkers' from more than 20 Native American nations used traditional dialects to send secret messages that enemy forces couldn't translate. Around 534 Native American code talkers served during the latter conflict, primarily in the US Marine Corps, including people from the Navajo, Comanche, Meskwaki, Chippewa, Oneida and Hopi communities.
Turkey day is a regular fixture in the US calendar, but it wasn't always so. George Washington first proclaimed a day of thanksgiving in 1789 but subsequent celebrations varied, until Abraham Lincoln set it to the final Thursday in November. That lasted until 1939, when the holiday would have fallen on the last day of the month and shortened the Christmas shopping season – essential to economic recovery at the time – so FDR moved it forward. Cue two years of confusion with states marking it on different days, until a 1941 resolution fixed it to the fourth Thursday of the month – taking into account years when November has five Thursdays.
The star-spangled banner has had many different iterations over the years, but did you know the current flag came from a school project? In 1958, on the eve of Hawaii and Alaska becoming the 49th and 50th states, 17-year-old high school student Robert G Heft (pictured in 2007) decided to update the design from 48 stars to 50. His teacher gave him a B-, but supposedly joked that if he could get Congress's approval, he might improve his grade. Heft gave it a try and his flag won against countless other designs, earning him a trip to the White House – and an A.
Here’s one for trivia fans – London Bridge can be found not on the Thames, but spanning Arizona's Lake Havasu. The British bridge survived the Blitz but couldn’t keep up with modern traffic and was set to be demolished, until eccentric Missouri entrepreneur Robert McCulloch stepped in. In 1968 he bought it for $2,460,000 (£1,937,000), shipped it brick by brick to his development at Lake Havasu City and rebuilt it to bring in tourists. Most thought him a fool, but the town has prospered since and London Bridge remains its top attraction.
Everyone is familiar with the footage of the incredible Moon landings on 20 July 1969 and the inspiring words of Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon. But what did he really say? The famous quote is: "That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Yet some argue that Armstrong actually said "one small step for a man", and the broadcast relay just didn’t pick up the "a". Despite in-depth analysis and reports that Armstrong confirmed the extra article, it hasn’t been definitively proved.
The American Civil War ended in 1865, but more than 150 years later the Department of Veterans Affairs was still paying survivor benefits. Mose Triplett first fought for the Confederacy then defected to the Union, and began picking up his pension 20 years on. He later remarried and his daughter Irene – born in 1930 when he was 83 – was entitled to a $73.13 (£57.57) a month pension until her death in 2020 at the ripe old age of 90.
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