The Geography of Game of Thrones: Part 4 – The Stormlands

Posted by historymaniacmegan on February 5, 2019

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Known for its destructive and erratic weather patterns, the Stormlands is home to the Baratheons who are descended from Aegon the Conqueror’s illegitimate half-brother Orlys Baratheon. Later, they overthrew the Targaryens and ruled Westeros for nearly two decades. Or at least Robert did. But once he dies, King Joffrey assumes the throne and kicks off a major succession crisis between him and his uncles Stannis and Renly who are at each others’ throats. Of course, as of Season 7, anyone with the name Baratheon is dead. While the only remaining person from that family tree is a bastard blacksmith son of King Robert named Gendry. A temperate rainforest, it’s also home to the old Targaryen palace of Summerhall. Not to mention, one of our favorite knights in shining armor Brienne of Tarth is also from this region.

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Location: On the southeast coast of Westeros but north of Dorne.

Size: Of moderate size.

Capital: Storm’s End, though not in its original structure. Since increment weather had repeatedly destroyed it under the Storm Kings. After the Storm King fell in battle during Targaryen Conquest, King Aegon the Conqueror gave it to his half-brother Orlys Baratheon.

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Climate: Warm and temperate but with lots of storms and significant rainfall.

Environment: It’s a rocky, storm ravaged land as well as a temperate rainforest. Is the most densely forested of the 7 Kingdoms since it has 2 major forests with the Kingswood bordering the Crownlands and the Rainwood. Has low mountains in the center and high mountains in the south. The Isle of Tarth is the only place in this region not ravaged by frequent storms.

Resources: Well, they have a potential for lumber since it’s one of the most forested places in the realm.

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Population: Supports a moderate population.

Key Cities: Includes several islands most notably, Estmont and Tarth.

Culture: Noble bastards take the surname Storm.

Religion: Under the Storm Kings, once worshipped the Storm God. After the Targaryen Conquest, adopted the Faith of the Seven.

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Great House: Formerly House Baratheon, which is extinct as of Season 7. Currently it’s in the midst of a succession crisis.

Vassal Houses: House Tarth, House Errol, House Estermont, House Wylde, House Swann, House Connington, House Caron, House Dondarrion, and House Morrigen.

History: Was originally the Storm Kingdom before the Targaryen conquest and once ruled the Riverlands before the Ironborn pushed them out. During the conquest, Aegon the Conqueror defeated the last Storm King and made his illegitimate half-brother Orlys Baratheon Lord Paramount, giving him the Stormlands, Storm’s End, and the last king’s daughter to rule.

Current Status: Since all the legitimate Baratheons and their heirs are all dead, it’s in the midst of a succession crisis. The only Baratheon remaining is a blacksmith’s apprentice named Gendry who’s one of Robert’s bastards.

Best Known for: Savage and frequent storms from the Narrow Sea.

Home of: Brienne of Tarth, Robert Baratheon, Stannis Baratheon, and Renly Baratheon.

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Landmarks: Summerhall is a ruined castle built by the Targaryens as a summer palace and vacation home. Destroyed by fire killing Aegon V, his heir, and friend Ser Duncan the Tall. Said to be caused by an attempt to hatch dragon eggs.

What to Avoid: Well, the storms for one.

For Those Who Want to Visit: Tarth is known for its great beauty and isn’t as much affected by storms as the other Stormlands.

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The Geography of Game of Thrones: Part 3 – The Crownlands

Posted by historymaniacmegan on February 5, 2019

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As the capital region of Westeros, the Crownlands is a prevalent setting in Game of Thrones, particularly if It’s King’s Landing. A place of palace intrigue, it is home to the Iron Throne that so many are willing to kill for. Yet, it also includes the Targaryen ancestral home of Dragonstone. Created by Aegon the Conqueror since it was where 3 of the major kingdoms met, the Crownlands are the newest region of Westeros since they were once part of the Riverlands. So it’s no surprise that both areas seem culturally similar. Anyway, for most of 3 centuries, the Targaryens ruled the area and Westeros until Robert’s Rebellion overthrew them. House Baratheon ruled the next two decades until King Robert died in a “boar hunting accident.” After that, King Joffery and King Tommen ruled but they’re basically Lannisters. But after Tommen committed suicide following the Destruction of the Great Sept of Baelor, Cersei Lannister assumed the throne as Westeros’ first reigning queen and House Lannister became the most powerful region in Westeros at last. But given that being on the Iron Throne will put you in the hot seat, it will only be a matter of time until Cersei falls in the upcoming Season 8.

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Location: Situated close to the Narrow Sea and above the Stormlands and stretching from Blackwater Bay.

Size: It’s about moderate size.

Capital: The Red Keep at King’s Landing, built by House Targaryen.

Climate: Mostly temperate.

Environment: Environment is similar to the Riverlands with plains and river valleys and consists of 3 main areas the mainland, the islands, and Dragonstone. Though Cracklaw Point is forested with hills and bogs.

Resources: Other than agriculture and tourism, there’s not much else.

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Population: This is rather densely populated given the importance of King’s Landing.

Key Cities: Of course, there’s King’s Landing which is the capital city of Westeros as well as its largest city. Actually it’s overpopulated. Notable townships include Duskendale and Rosby. While notable islands comprise of Dragonstone, Driftmark, and Claw Isle.

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Culture: Noble bastards take the surname Waters. Since it’s the newest region in Westeros, it doesn’t have much of a distinct cultural identity than this.

Religion: Worship the Faith of the Seven. Headquarters of the Faith Militant and the Great Sept of Baelor (well, formerly). High Septon is based here as well.

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Great House: House Lannister now that Cersei has declared herself Queen of Westeros in her own right. Before then, it was House Baratheon during the reign of King Robert. While before then, it was House Targaryen who united the Seven Kingdoms and ruled for centuries before Robert’s Rebellion.

Vassal Houses: House Stokeworth, House Ryker, and House Rosby.

History: Once contested territory between the Riverlands, the Iron Islands, the Reach, and the Stormlands. The Crownlands were created by Aegon the Conqueror through his conquest of Westeros. So this land section was set aside for his castle.

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Current Status: Basically run by the Lannisters since the death of King Robert Baratheon. Though Dragonstone is now a base for Daenerys Targaryen.

Best Known for: Considered the capital region of Westeros.

Home of: Qyburn, Varys, Gendry Waters, Joffey Baratheon, Myrcella Baratheon, Shireen Baratheon, Tommen Baratheon, and Davos Seaworth.

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Landmarks: The fortress castle of Dragonstone has been the Targaryens’ ancestral home in Westeros and was usually occupied by the heir to the Iron Throne. In King’s Landing there’s the Great Sept of Baelor (now destroyed), the Guildhall of the Alchemists with the pyromancers.

What to Avoid: Keep away from the Faith Militant at all costs, especially if they’re royal pawns. Also, stay out of Fleabottom. You might want to stay out of the Red Keep, too.

For Those Who Want to Visit: You might want to obey the law at all times. Since the King’s Landing legal system usually holds trials as a mere formality and often determines effective guilt before then. Also, though King’s Landing may have a pretty skyline, it’s a wretched hive underneath with rampant poverty. Anyway, feel free to watch a tournament or see a play. In addition, if you’re into that sort of thing, Littlefinger’s brothel looks kind of nice.

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The Geography of Game of Thrones: Part 2 – The Westerlands

Posted by historymaniacmegan on February 5, 2019

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Second, we venture to the Westerlands, home of the Great House we love to hate, the Lannisters (though with the exception of Tyrion). Thanks to their hills being filled with mines of gold and other precious metals, they’re said to be the wealthiest family in Westeros while their bannermen are also said to have plenty of wealth. So they can amass a large army. But the mines eventually run dry that the Tyrells had to pay half the wedding bill and the family’s taking loans from the Iron Bank. Nonetheless, while we see a lot of the Lannisters on Game of Thrones, we don’t see much of the Westerlands. But while it’s small in size, it’s densely populated. As of Season 7, the Lannisters are the most powerful family in Westeros. But we must acknowledge that power is fleeting when you play the game of thrones as Tyrion managed to capture Casterly Rock for Daenerys.

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Location: West of the Riverlands. North of the Reach.

Size: One of the smaller regions of the 7 Kingdoms.

Capital: Casterly Rock, now captured by Tyrion Lannister with Daenerys’ Army of the Unsullied.

Climate: Somewhat temperate.

Environment: Surrounded by natural defenses like thick forests, low mountains and hills, and the sea at the region’s back. Home to wild mountain lions.

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Resources: Its mountains are home to mines of gold, silver, iron, and other precious metals that have made the Lannisters and their vassals immensely wealthy. Though as of Season 7, these mines have already run dry after the War of the Five Kings (or at least the ones owned by the Lannisters). Since they’ve had to secure a marriage alliance with the Tyrells who footed half the wedding bill and have taken tremendous loans at the Iron Bank of Bravos.

Population: Has one of the larger populations of Westeros.

Key Cities: The port town of Lannisport is the Westerlands’ largest city and main source of trade. A notable village is Oxcross.

Culture: Noble bastards take the surname of Hill.

Religion: Worship the Faith of the Seven.

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Great House: House Lannister, considered the richest family in Westeros (though the real richest family on the continent is most likely the Tyrells. Nonetheless, the Lannisters are definitely the most powerful by a longshot). Yet, after the War of the Five Kings, their mines have run dry. Since they’ve had to take tremendous loans from the Iron Bank of Bravos while they secured a marriage alliance for House Tyrell who footed half of the royal wedding bill. While the death of Tywin has put the family in a delicate position while Tyrion’s exile has left no suitable heir for Lord Paramount and Warden of the West. Also has a reputation for incest.

Vassal Houses: House Clegane, House Payne, House Lefford, House Reyne (extinct), House Mabrand, House Westerling, House Lefford, House Crakehall, House Swyft, House Sarsfield, House Serrett, and House Tarbeck (extinct).

History: Legend states that Lannister patriarch, Lann the Clever successfully swindled House Casterly out of their castle of Casterly Rock. Was known as the Kingdom of the Rock before the Targaryen Conquest.

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Current Status: For the first time in history, Casterly Rock has fallen to a foe. Utilizing a secret passageway constructed by Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys’ Unsullied armies infiltrated and captured the castle. Whil the Lannisters have deliberately left Casterly Rock underdefended so they can focus more on capturing Highgarden, which they did. But Daenerys’ forces smashed the Lannisters in the Battle of Goldroad so they’re in charge of the capital. But the Lannisters still rule the rest of the place.

Best Known for: Said to be the richest of the Seven Kingdoms. Also has the best equipped army in the realm with heavily-armored soldiers and cavalry.

Home of: Tyrion Lannister, Podrick Payne, Gregor Clegane, Cersei Lannister, Tywin Lannister, Jamie Lannister, The Hound, and Bronn.

Landmarks: The ruins of Castamere which was owned by House Reyne. Until Tywin Lannister suppressed a rebellion and destroyed the castle. Another is the ruins of Tarbeck Hall raised when they joined the Reynes.

What to Avoid: When you hear “The Reynes of Castamere” head for the hills since it means the Lannisters will send their regards. Also, don’t piss off the Lannisters. Not to mention, you might want to beware of lions in the mountains.

For Those Who Want to Visit: Know that the saying “A Lannister always pays his debts,” can also be about seeking revenge. So be nice to them (though that may not mean they’ll be nice to you). Can be accessed through the Riverlands from the Golden Tooth. Possesses a number of navigable rivers as well.

The Geography of Game of Thrones: Part 1 – The North

Posted by historymaniacmegan on February 5, 2019

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Based on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, the long-running HBO series Game of Thrones is filmed in many exotic locations, mostly in Europe and the Middle East. Since the continents of Westeros and Essos are home to various kinds of people with their own customs on lands of various terrain. While Essos seems to have more variety, Westeros is home to the Seven Kingdoms. So here I give you a guide on all the places in the characters’ known world. This information is taken from the hit HBO show as of Season 7 so there will be plenty of differences from A Song of Ice and Fire books which I never read. Then again, George R. R. Martin still has a couple of books to write so I don’t think I’m missing much. The first several posts will concern the 7 Kingdoms of Westeros while the others will focus on the places in Essos.

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First, we go to the North, home to our favorite Great House in Westeros, the Starks at Winterfell. Of course, during the series, this family goes through hell with Ned’s beheading, the Red Wedding, and the Bolton takeover. But after the Battle of the Bastards, the Starks have re-taken the North with Jon Snow as its king. Bordered by a swamp called the Neck, it’s a rather hostile place of forest, ice, and snow. As the only region to resist the Andal invaders, the Northmen the Old Golds of the Forest of the First Men. But they still remember the Long Night and the White Walkers. And they know when winter comes, the White Walkers may pass the wall and wreak havoc onto humanity.

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Location: Stretches from the Sunset Sea to the Shivering Sea as wells from the Wall to the bogs of the Neck.

Size: The North is the largest region in Westeros by area, big enough to house the other six kingdoms in Westeros.

Capital: Winterfell, which is situated atop hot springs and has existed for millennia. While winding tombs below the castle contain Stark king and lord remains as well as record the ancient family’s history.

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Climate: It’s the coldest region in Westeros since some areas experience snow during the summer, especially close to the Wall. While snowfall increases as your move further along the Kingsroad. And this is in any a fantasy world where the seasons can last for years. When it’s winter, it’s especially harsh. Yet, the southern areas enjoy comparatively mild temperatures.

Environment: The nothernmost areas in the region could consist of subarctic tundra as well as the Wolfswood forest (the largest in Westeros) along with rivers and plains. The Neck is a swamp which serves as a natural barrier to the North proper. Only House Reed and the area’s crannogmen can properly navigate through its treacherous landscape and fierce creatures. While many have died trying to find their way through it unaided.

Resources: Aside from agriculture in the Neck, there’s not many resources here.

Population: Due to the forbidding climate and environment, the North isn’t known for having a dense population. In fact, it’s one of the most sparse. People usually have dark hair and white skin akin to the First Men. Neck inhabitants are called crannogmen while Wildlings inhabit the northernmost areas.

Key Cities: The port town of White Harbor is the North’s primary source of trade and the only place that can be considered a city there. Barrowton is another notable town.

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Culture: Place a high value on honor while believing in White Walkers and the Long Night as undeniable truth. Noble bastard children have the name Snow. Are particularly zealous about cultivating and preserving their resources since surviving winter is often a life-or-death struggle. Have fewer wars amongst themselves since cooperation is essential for survival. Practice strict observance of guest right and the laws of hospitality. Don’t hold tournaments (though participate in those in the southern areas) and have little regard for southern political intrigues.

Religion: Worship the Old Gods that the First Men adopted from the Children of the Forest and pray underneath the weirwood trees dotting the land. Because the Andals found little foothold in the North, its warriors aren’t regularly designated as “knights” since “knighthood” is a code of values associated with the Faith of the Seven.

Great House: House Stark (though there was a stint when the Boltons ruled between the Red Wedding and the Battle of the Bastards) Ruled by Warden of the North Jon Snow and Lady Sansa Stark. The Starks have also been the dominant family in the North for thousands of years. Believe that he who passes sentence should swing the sword.

Vassal Houses: House Bolton (extinct), House Karstark, House Reed, House Mormont, House Umber, House Glover, House Cerwyn, House Hornwood, House Tallhart, House Manderly, House Dustin, House Flint, House Forester, House Dormund, House Whitehill, House Ryswell, and House Glenmore.

History: According to legend, the Kingdom of the North was established by House Stark’s founder Bran the Builder who built the Wall as a shield against the possible return of the White Walkers. Stark rulers were known as Kings of the North before King Torren submitted to Aegon the Conqueror who made him Lord Paramount of the region. Though Torren got criticized for this, bending the knee is the main reason why House Stark managed to survive for this long. Since nobody stood a chance against dragons.

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Current Status: Has recognized Daenerys as its sovereign while still ruled by House Stark. Still, though Jon Snow may no longer be King of the North, he has a strong claim to the Iron Throne as a Targaryen. In addition, he and Daenerys will most definitely get married and have a child in Season 8.

Best Known for: Hardened warriors and honorable leaders. Also, for being the only region of the Seven Kingdoms that holds the traditions of the First Men.

Home of: Jon Snow, Meera Reed, Jorah Mormont, Ramsay Bolton, Ned Stark, Osha, Bran Stark, Robb Stark, Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, Rickon Stark, Jojen Reed, Benjen Stark, Lyanna Mormont, Jeor Mormont, Old Nan, Osha, and Hodor.

Landmarks: Well, there are weirwood trees. Then there’s the ruined castle of Moat Cailin in the Neck, which was built by the First Men but has been unoccupied for centuries.

What to Avoid: Stay away from the Boltons since they have an infamous reputation for torture on all occasions (though they’re extinct so you need not worry even at the Dreadfort). Also, watch out for White Walkers.

For Those Who Want to Visit: Take warnings of winter and White Walkers very seriously. Make sure take a fur coat along. Also, be nice to the Wildlings. Further you stay away from the wall, the better.

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The Matter of Gerrymandering

Posted by historymaniacmegan on July 6, 2017

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Every ten years after the census, each state in the US is required to redraw its legislative districts in order to accommodate changes in population. Now redistricting is supposed to be fair and proportional. But since most states in the US have their legislatures control redistricting, this isn’t always the case. As result you have a practice known as gerrymandering. Named after an early 19^th century governor of Massachusetts, to gerrymander is to manipulate an electoral district’s boundaries so as to establish a political advantage for a particular party or demographic. The primary goal for this is to maximize the effect of supporters’ votes while minimizing opponents.’ Recently, gerrymandering has become a major problem in the United States mostly due to a dominant political party wanting to retain power in the state. So much so that the US Supreme Court has recently agreed to hear arguments on a partisan gerrymandering case. Nevertheless, though the practice is mostly perceived as bad for democracy through court rulings and anti-discrimination laws, it doesn’t seem to go away any time soon.

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Gerrymandering Tactics:

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Here are common ways states gerrymander districts for representatives. Cracking and packing are the most common. But sweetheart gerrymandering exists, too so incumbents can stay in.

Cracking: consists of spreading voters of a particular type among districts in order to deny a sufficiently large voting bloc in any particular district. For example, a state might split urban area voters among several districts of mostly suburban voters. Such arrangement would be on the presumption that the two groups would vote differently and the suburban voters far more likely getting their way in elections. You can see this in action by looking at Austin, Texas in the state’s congressional map where parts of 5 districts are but not one of them contain a majority of its residents or voters. And it’s very clear the Texas Legislature drew these districts that way to curb Austin’s liberal political influence within the Republican dominated state.

Packing: To concentrate as many voters of one type into a single electoral district in order to reduce their influence in other areas. In some cases, legislatures may do this to obtain representation for a community of common interest (like a majority-minority district), rather than to dilute that interest over several districts to the point of ineffectiveness (and to avoid likely racial discrimination lawsuits if minority groups are involved). You can often see this in congressional districts pertaining to urban communities of color. When the party controlling the districting process has a statewide majority, packing is usually not necessary since the minority party can be “cracked” everywhere. Though it’s often employed by parties to pack voters together into a minimum number of districts and don’t have enough representation in others to win the majority of the House’s seats. Because by forfeiting a few districts packed with the opposition, cracking can be used in shaping the remaining districts.

Hijacking: Redraws 2 districts in such a way as to force 2 incumbents of the same political party to run against each other in one district, ensuring that one of them will be eliminated. Meanwhile, this would leave the other district to be won by someone from a different political party. A good example of this happened in my own congressional district during the early 2000s, when Congressmen John Murtha and Frank Mascara had to compete against each other. And my district ended up with a representative from Johnstown.

Kidnapping: Aims to move areas where a certain elected official has significant support to another district, making it more difficult to win future elections with a new electorate. This is often employed against politicians representing multiple urban areas, removing larger cities in order to make the district more rural.

These tactics are typically combined in some form, creating new “forfeit” seats for packed voters of one type in order to secure more seats and greater voter representation of another type. This results in candidates of one party (usually the one responsible for the gerrymandering) winning by small majorities in most of the districts and another winning by a large majority in only a few.

Gerrymandering Types:

Prison-based gerrymandering is when they count urban prisoners in their rural corrections facilities as residents despite that they can’t vote or they don’t live there. Here is a map of what states and localities have done to handle the problem. As for those who don’t, well, it’s very clear they benefit from it.

Partisan Gerrymandering– When districts are redrawn in order to increase a political party’s power in legislatures. This is the most general form of gerrymandering that it’s just referred to as “gerrymandering.”

Incumbent or Bipartisan Gerrymandering– When the districts are redrawn in order to protect incumbents in both parties in order to keep the status quo, regardless of what voters want.

Prison-Based Gerrymandering– Counting incarcerated people who aren’t allowed to vote in the district where the prison is located instead of their home district.

Negative Racial Gerrymandering– Drawing districts to prevent racial and ethnic minorities from electing their candidates. White Southern Democrats used this from Reconstruction to the mid-20^th century to reduce black people’s voting impact if efforts to effectively disenfranchise them had failed. Prohibited thanks to the 1965 Voting Rights Act and subsequent amendments.

Affirmative Racial Gerrymandering– Drawing district lines in order to favor ethnic and racial groups. Though whether it benefits minorities is very hard to say since the practice is controversial that there are several Supreme Court rulings on this. Because this type has been known to both increase and decrease minority representation in federal and state governments. Since the Civil Rights Era, it’s been difficult to determine since most minorities vote Democrat while white conservatives have shifted Republican during the last 4 decades. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has ruled in the North Carolina case that partisan gerrymandering along racial lines is unconstitutional.

Signs of Gerrymandering in Your State:

One key sign of gerrymandering is that the election outcomes don’t reflect the votes cast. Now while the South is mostly Republican now, there should be more Democratic representatives as you can see. But gerrymandering skews the results so Republicans can send more representatives.

The shapes of the congressional districts makes no logical sense. – This is an easy one to spot but it’s not always a guarantee. Sometimes districts can be drawn in ridiculous ways for a very important reason like adhering to the Voting Rights Act. The VRA ensures that minority voters can’t be unfairly packed or cracked in ways that reduce their chances of electing representatives representing their communities. But the vast majority of the time a contorted looking district is a warning sign of gerrymandering.
Your community has virtually little in common with most of your fellow constituents in the district.– You might feel good about living in a district where your congressman shares your views. But you might think it odd that your fellow supporters don’t even live in the same city or school district. You and your Republican friends have been “packed” together into a conservative echo-chamber. Everyone shares the same ideas and generally agrees with each other. And you start feeling like you don’t need to be involved. Or the communities in the district just don’t simply belong together. For instance, in Pennsylvania, my district, the 18^th, is lumped together with most of Washington and Greene Counties along with a good chunks of Allegheny and Westmoreland Counties. But the 9^th District includes Fayette and Indiana Counties which don’t have much to do with each other at all. Whereas, residents in Westmoreland and Fayette County have known each other for years, especially where I live. Their high school sports teams play against each other. The state government and other organizations usually has them in the same jurisdiction. People even have friends and family living in both counties. And don’t get me started on the 12^th District which is just a sliver stretching from Lawrence County through Beaver, Allegheny, Westmoreland, Somerset, and Cambria, which seems to defy all explanation. Meanwhile, the 14^th District is basically crammed into a Democratic pocket in Allegheny County.
Election outcomes don’t match votes.- This is the surest sign of gerrymandering. One way to measure this through the efficiency gap, computing the difference in wasted votes from the 2 political parties summed all over the districts in the state divided by the number of votes. When parties win elections in rough proportion to their electoral popularity, the efficiency gap is near zero with both parties having an equal wasted vote distribution. But if the gap exceeded a certain threshold, then you can surmise the party with fewer wasted votes could control the state as long as the district map was valid. They used this measure to determined gerrymandering in Wisconsin. In the 2012 Election, Republicans in that state had 48.6% of the 2 party votes, 61% of its 99 districts in the state legislature. Thus, its efficiency gap was 11.69% to 13%. The Supreme Court is expected to hear a case on Wisconsin’s gerrymandering in the fall of this year. Yet, in 2012, Republicans in state legislators also received a minority of the statewide vote in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and my home state of Pennsylvania, but still ended up controlling the state legislatures. And scholars estimate that gerrymandering has helped congressional Republicans control 10-15 more seats in the House even though Democratic congressional candidates received more votes in 2012.
Your district has been changed and you feel like you can no longer make your voice heard.– Now this has happened to me a couple times in my life since mine was switched from Murtha’s to Murphy’s while I was in college. So let’s say you’re a Democrat who’s voted for Democratic candidates during the last few elections. Then you and other Democrats get “cracked” away from your neighbors and put you into a Republican majority district. That Republican representative in your district doesn’t need to listen to your voice on your concerns because they know all their Republican supporters will re-elect them year after year. Your Democratic voice gets lost in your district’s Republican majority. This might leave you feel hopeless and disenfranchised. Or like you shouldn’t even bother voting because Tim Murphy will always win unopposed.
Your representative skipped a town hall to go golfing with a lobbyist.– As taxpayers and voters, our politicians are supposed to work for us. Having politicians manipulate voting maps to keep themselves in office turns democracy on its head. When your district’s drawn to avoid outside competition and to ensure only one party’s candidate wins, chances are your representative doesn’t need worry about what their constituents think of them. Thus, they could spend more time hanging out with lobbyist friends and cater to their wealthy donors’ needs. Even if you might belong to the advantaged party, you’re still not going to get good representation because our elected official knows that reelection is in the bag, whether they listen to you or not. You see this a lot with Republican representatives voting for the American Healthcare Act which most of their constituents don’t want at all. It’s very clear, the House couldn’t have passed that bill if gerrymandering wasn’t involved.
You feel like you don’t need to vote because the candidate who won the primary will win the election anyway.- When one party has manipulated the system to ensure they hold the majority in specific districts, the election itself becomes a mere formality.
The dominant party’s candidates are more worried about a primary challenger than the opposition candidate.- When elected party officials pay more attention to the primary than the general election, they become more extreme since their focus is scoring points against the other party than solve problems most important to Americans. We should also understand that primaries are held on many different dates, generate less attention, and attract disproportionate shares of hardcore, ideological party activists to the polls. In 2014, only 14.6% of eligible voters participated in congressional primaries which was a record low. This means a tiny fraction of voters who are the most hardened partisans are essentially electing 90% of Congressional members.
Your representatives support policies most constituents in your district oppose.- Despite that political polarization is strong in America, there are still plenty of issues most voters can agree upon. One recent example of this is Republican healthcare plan to replace Obamacare which faces strong opposition from the American public across the political spectrum and in all 50 states. However, that didn’t stop congressional Republicans from passing the American Healthcare Act in May. They were able to pass such egregious legislation because they either didn’t feel they needed to listen to their constituents’ viewpoints and/or knew that voting the way their constituents wanted them to would result in their party or donors throwing their support to a more extreme primary challenger. The fact so many congressional Republicans avoided holding townhalls when the AHCA was up for debate strongly suggest the latter.

Why Gerrymandering Is Bad:

In recent years, Republicans have greatly benefited from gerrymandering as seen in this graph. And because of this, many cities aren’t well represented at all.

Undermines the democratic process by putting the majority party at an unfair advantage.– With gerrymandering, your representatives pick the voters most likely to reelect them again and again. That’s not how democracy is supposed to work. We the voters should choose our politicians, not the other way around. We deserve fair elections and a transparent process for determining our districts. If not, then elections just become mere formalities.
Takes power away from voters to hold their representatives accountable.-When districts have been drawn to avoid competition and to ensure one party’s candidate wins, our representatives don’t really need to worry about listening to constituents with differing political viewpoints Because they’re virtually guaranteed reelection simply because of their party affiliation and ideology. This can be very frustrating if your representative isn’t in your party and doesn’t support the same views as you do.
Significant vote wastage from the other side which leads to partisan distortion.– The advantaged party will have voters in packed districts whose votes go for naught. And they will have more than 50%+1 in cracked districts to be reasonably sure of winning. 55-45% or a 10 point partisan advantage is often the target but it can be more. And sometimes it may turn out to be less. Wasted votes are almost always expected in elections. But significant vote wastage in several district may result in representatives that may reflect the interests of slightly more than 50% of their district’s voters. This might not seem much, but when you take the votes altogether, it can really add up. But a high amount of wasted votes means that vast swaths of the American electorate aren’t being represented in Congress or state legislatures at all.
Reinforces and increases hyper-partisanship and polarization in government.– Forming districts to ensure high levels of partisanship often result in higher levels of partisanship in legislative bodies. Manipulating and stretching congressional districts also pushes incumbents to extremes of the political spectrum. Mostly because fear of a primary challenger drives incumbents focus on maintaining ideological purity than legislative pragmatism. If a substantial number of districts are designed to be polarized, then their representatives will act in a heavily partisan manner, creating and perpetuating partisan gridlock. Nevertheless, redistricting has become a major front in the permanent campaign between parties. Party members, Congress members, and state legislators find their own interests in reelection and majority status importantly connected to these redistricting efforts. This makes them even more inclined to cooperate with partisan team play that it drains the policy-making process of its capacity to negotiate and compromise. Thus, even well-meaning politicians can’t do their jobs representing spread-out communities with different needs and priorities, effectively maintaining offices across wide geographic areas, or solve problems that affect us all.
Fewer competitive districts and more safe incumbents.– Incumbents are far more likely to be reelected under gerrymandering and are more likely to be of the majority party orchestrating the gerrymander. Thus, incumbents are usually easily renominated in subsequent elections, even if they are in the minority party. California’s 2000 redistricting effort redrew congressional district lines in ways that all but guaranteed incumbent victories. As a result California only saw congressional seat change hands between 2000 and 2010. Not to mention, if districts become increasingly stretched out, candidates must pay increased costs for transportation and campaign advertising. The incumbent’s advantage of securing funds will certainly give them a significant advantage. In many districts, some representatives could run unopposed.
Reduces political power in minority groups.- Gerrymandering may be advocated to improve representation within legislatures among otherwise underrepresented minority groups by packing them into a single district. But the practices is controversial for good reason. First, being confined to a single district may lead minority groups to remain marginalized because candidates outside their district no longer need to represent them to win elections.
Emboldens politicians to enact unpopular policies.– Whenever gerrymandering ensures guaranteed victories to your representative, they will have less incentive to represent their constituents’ interests, even when those interests have majority support across the electorate. And they’re much more beholden to their party establishment and wealthy donors. After all, why go to a town hall while reelection’s already in the bag? As a result, your representative more likely to support bills you won’t like whether they belong in your party or not. The passage of the AHCA by congressional Republicans is a perfect example of this since most of the American public strongly opposed it. And even now, it’s very likely many of Republicans who voted for this morally indefensible bill will be reelected anyway.
Encourages redistricting practices that create inaccurate pictures of community populations.– One practice that exists today is prison-based gerrymandering. Now the Census Bureau counts incarcerated people as residents of towns where they’re confined which is used to draw legislative districts. This interferes with equal representation in virtually every state and skews demographics. This phenomenon violates the idea of one person, one vote for 3 reasons. First, these prisoners are disenfranchised in 48 states and can’t vote in local elections anyway. Second, prisons are disproportionately built in rural areas while most incarcerated people call urban areas home. Counting urban prisoners as “residents” of rural districts artificially inflates political representation in rural districts containing large prisons at expense of voters in all other places without them, especially communities bearing the most direct costs of crime. Third, counting large populations of prisoners as local residents leads to misleading conclusions about community size and growth.
Drives down voter turnout.– Since gerrymandering often results in incumbents able to win elections either lopsided or unopposed, many people get disenchanted with the electoral process and not vote. After all, your vote from the opposition will probably be wasted anyway.
Allows outside money and influence control parties’ agendas.– This makes representatives more beholden to party ideology and wealthy donors as well as makes it easier for extremists to gain control of the party. What happened to the GOP during the 2016 Election is a perfect example of this.

How to Detect, Handle, and Prevent Gerrymandering:

Here’s a rough map on what the United States would look like if the districts were redrawn for compactness. By the way, this is done by a computer.

Calculating the Efficiency Gap to determine whether either party enjoyed a systematic advantage in turning votes into seats.– This is the difference of the wasted votes between political parties summed all over the districts divided by the number of votes expressed by this equation:

Efficiency Gap = (Total Democratic Wasted Votes – Total Republican Wasted Votes) ÷ Total Votes

When each party wins a district election in rough proportion to its popularity, the efficiency gap is near zero. But if a district plan is above a certain threshold a gap of 2 or more seats in congressional elections or a gap of 8% or greater for state legislature races, then there’s a constitutional problem.

Ensure that each plan must meet neutral redistricting criteria.- The US Supreme Court has held that if a jurisdiction’s redistricting plan violates the Equal Protection Clause or the Voting Rights Act of 1965, then a federal court must order the jurisdiction to propose a new redistricting plan that remedies the gerrymandering. If that jurisdiction fails to do so, then the court itself must draw a redistricting plan that cures the violation and use its equitable powers to impose the plan on the jurisdiction. At the state level, courts may impose redistricting plans on jurisdictions where legislatures have to follow standards such as partisan fairness.
Establish non-partisan redistricting commissions instead of politicians.– After all, if elected legislators want to increase their own political influence, then state legislatures shouldn’t control redistricting. After all, you wouldn’t let athletes serve as referees during their own games. So far, states like California, Hawaii, Washington, New Jersey, and Arizona have resorted to creating standing committees for redistricting since the 2010 census. These commissions’ new maps don’t have to be approved by state legislatures. Yet, they’re not necessarily non-partisan per se since they all have seats for Democratic and Republican appointees. Yet, some have additional seats reserved for independent and non-partisan figures. Letting computers to redraw districts more fairly based on the recent Census.
Stop counting prisoners as residents like the Census Bureau does for redistricting state and local legislatures.– Counting prisoners as residents leads to prison-based gerrymandering which gives certain communities disproportionate representation. States can correct this by creating a special state-level census collecting home addresses of people in prison and then adjusts the US Census counts prior to redistricting. Legislation in part modeled after how Kansas changes where the US counts students and the military has also been passed in California, Delaware, Maryland, and New York. Another thing states can do is standardize collecting home address information when people are shipped off to the state pen. Over time, this will generate a complete home address information dataset for use in future redistricting or the Census Bureau to use directly. States can also prohibit state, county, and municipal legislative districts from using prison populations as padding. Those at correctional facilities should be declared as living as “addresses unknown” and not included in the redistricting data, except where the home address data exists and a state agency can adjust the Census Bureau’s redistricting data to reflect those counted at home. Such solutions can eliminate electoral harm caused by prison-based gerrymandering and provide a complete solution counting everyone in the correct location by next Census.
Increase transparency regulations in the redistricting process.– When a single political party controls both the legislative houses in a state during redistricting, both Democrats and Republicans have displayed a marked propensity for conducting the process in secrecy with no oversight or standards of fairness. A 2012 investigation by the Center for Public Integrity reviewed every state’s redistricting processes for both transparency and potential for public input, assigning 24 states grades of either D or F. So the need for transparency in redistricting is clear. In response, redistricting legislation has been introduced to Congress a number of times in recent years, including Redistricting Transparency Acts of 2010, 2011, and 2013. The merit on increasing transparency in redistricting is based largely on the idea that lawmakers would be less inclined to draw gerrymandered districts if they had to defend such districts in public.
Outlaw voter profiling.– In recent years, advancements in technology have led to elaborate voter datasets and special districting software has made gerrymandering a more precise science. Using such databases, gerrymandering politicians can predict voting behavior of each potential district with an astonishing degree of precision, leaving little chance for accidentally creating a competitive district. If we want redistricting based on neutral criteria, then this practice should be done away with since it’s basically the representatives choosing the voters.
Experiment with alternative voting systems.– The predominant voting system in the US is a first-past-the-post system requiring single member districts to exist. Various alternative district-based voting systems that minimally rely on redistricting or not at all. These typically involve at-large elections or multimember districts. Examples include the single-transferable vote, cumulative voting, and limited voting. There are also proportional voting systems used in most European countries no districts are present, and the party that gets, for example, 30% of the votes gets roughly 30% of the seats in the legislature. Since the US has a 2 party system, that threshold could be about 45-50%. However, proportional voting systems might break the strong constituency link that’s an American election cornerstone.

And so I end this post with a rough guide to gerrymandering in Pennsylvania. Still, this is a major problem in American democracy that affect us all. We need to do something about it.

Rally Around the Flag – Or Not

Posted by historymaniacmegan on July 30, 2015

You might remember me talking about the US Flag in my “How to Treat an American Flag” article a I posted earlier this year. Or you might’ve read my longer and more serious article of why the Confederate Flag should be removed as well as debunked the most common claims of keeping it around. However, this is a post about flags, because after all they’re quite important emblems of certain groups and entities whether they be countries, states, provinces, cities, or what not. Thus, in many ways they tend to be symbols. A well designed flag will inspire pride than one made otherwise. There’s also a study of flag design called Vexillology and people in this field believe that a well-designed flag should fit these criteria (from the Portland Flag Association).

Keep It Simple. The flag should be so simple that a child can draw it from memory…
Use Meaningful Symbolism. The flag’s images, colors, or patterns should relate to what it symbolizes…
Use 2 or 3 Basic Colors. Limit the number of colors on the flag to three which contrast well and come from the standard color set…
No Lettering or Seals. Never use writing on any kind or an organization’s seal…
Be Distinctive or Be Related. Avoid duplicating other flags, but use similarities to show connections…

Now I can go on and on about all the great flags out there. But you’d be bored to tears sh I’ll show you a collection of designs that made people wonder, what the hell they were thinking? Because when you have great flags inspiring patriotism and pride, there are others that lead people to keep them as far away from the public spotlight as possible. So for your reading pleasure, here are some not so great flags from around the world. By the way, if I insult anyone’s flag, I deeply apologize.

1. Venice, Italy

Granted, this was derived from the old flag of the Venice Republic. But still, while the winged lion with a book is actually cool, it’s surrounded by too many border designs. Also, on the borders are 7 tiny little flags or coats of arms. I can’t tell. I’d more or less expect such design to be on a box for a D&D game.

2. Chimbu, Papua New Guinea

Now I think the stars and the bird are fine. But with the crossed branches over a circle? I think the province is kind of overdoing it. A plain green sash would’ve been fine. Really.

3. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, Canada

This is a tiny island territory off the coast of Newfoundland. The three flags on the left are supposed to represent the Basques, Bretons, and Normans. However, the boat seems to be drawn straight from a Saturday morning cartoon. Or an educational cartoon about Christopher Columbus from the 1970s.

4. Louisiana, United States

For one, the comma is missing between, “union and “justice.” However, while the image appears initially wholesome of a mother pelican feeding her babies, it gets quite disturbing when you realize that she’s feeding them with her own blood. Yikes! Seriously, what’s the matter with you, Louisiana? And those drops of blood were only added in 2006. Really.

5. Ishikawa, Japan

Apparently, Japanese Kanji doesn’t translate well into certain fonts. From looking at this, Americans might get the impression that Ishikawa is an obscure Japanese auto corporation instead of a civic entity that it really is.

6. Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada

Now this is for a homeland in northern Labrador in Canada. The symbol is supposed to be derived in Inukshuk origin. However, to many it resembles an abstract art rendition of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. Must give a lot of Inuk children nightmares.

7. Glarus, Switzerland

Now this consists of a frowning monk with a halo, a staff resembling an antenna, and a book all in yellow. Guess this guy’s frowning due to his inability to bring the word of God to the extraterrestrials.

8. Marijampole, Lithuania

I know the guy is supposed to be sowing seeds, but I can’t help but look at this and get the impression of the Quaker Oats guy throwing out Rice Krispies. Also, the border does little to give this flag any dignity whatsoever.

9. Connacht, Ireland

Guess the inspiration for this one was a major disagreement between whether the a black eagle or an arm with sword would be more badass. The factions settled on a compromise and got this. Yeah, should’ve went with one or the other.

10. Buddhism

For one, Buddhism has a flag? Secondly, this resembles a TV test pattern that’s usually accompanied by a high pitched beep at 4 a.m. But I’m sure the designer didn’t know that.

11. Benin Empire

Now this was the flag for the Pre-Colonial Benin Empire situated in modern Nigeria which lasted from 1440-1897. From looking at this flag I guess their motto was, “Get in my personal space and I’ll cut your bloody head off!” Yeah, decapitation is just a wonderful flag motif.

12. Guam, United States

Think of it as a cross between a cheap souvenir T-shirt from the Bahamas and a Georgia O’Keefe painting. Now imagine if such combination was drawn by a third grader. Sorry, Guam, but your flag is just ugly.

13. Fryslan, the Netherlands

For some reason, I can’t help looking at this flag and imagine it being a pattern on somebody’s underwear. I just don’t know why.

14. Isle of Man, Great Britain

It’s said that the three-legged triskelion was a symbol in Mycenae and Lycia back in Ancient Greece. However, I think it’s rather creepy as hell if you ask me. Three detached legs with no body doesn’t look right to me for some reason.

15. Antwerp, Belgium

Either this is a closeup image from MS Paint or a NASCAR flag on acid. Any way you put it, it’s quite horrendous if you get my drift.

16. Mozambique

Now the hoe and the book convey the best interests Mozambique wants for its people. But an AK-47? Could you imagine anything worse than that on a flag for an African nation? Seriously, why?

17. Swaziland

While the colors schemes are fine, I’m not sure about the weapons. Yes, shields and spears are part of that country’s traditional African culture, but still. Having weapons on your flag kind of sends the wrong message. And given the highly negative stereotypes about Africa, Swaziland ought to know better.

18. Northern Marianas Islands, United States

Well, there’s at least someone in the Northern Marianas Island who knows how to use a computer. Unfortunately, the inhabitants didn’t realize that designing a flag from clip art isn’t a great idea.

19. U. S. Virgin Islands, United States

Now I have to admit, this flag would look great as a design for a license plate. But as an actual flag? Not so much. Also, I’m sure that eagle emblem came straight out of clip art.

20. Lombardy, Italy

No, this isn’t a flag from Comic Con or for a video game competition. It’s from a region in Italy that probably invented jacks or the paperweight. If neither, then I’m not sure why they’d design their flag that way.

21. Antarctica

Yes, Antarctica has a flag. It has no inhabitants, no government, and no culture. But it has a flag with its landmass on it. Should’ve went with a penguin instead.

22. Bermuda

Hmmm….a flag with a picture of a lion holding a picture of a shipwreck mid-plunge. Granted, it was discovered this way by a ship en route to Virginia. Kind of suggests that self-governance isn’t Bermuda’s strong suit. As for me, Bermuda should’ve used a flag depicting a pair of Bermuda shorts.

23. Alo Island, Wallis and Futuna, France

Basically this is for a French territory in the South Pacific. It also commemorates the murder of Catholic missionary Father Chanel who was savagely clubbed and axed to death by natives in the 19th century. To be fair, I can see why the natives didn’t care for colonialism and the cultural loss it entails. However, I’m not sure that a savage murder of a priest should really be a historic event a South Pacific island should take pride in. Even if the priest was a complete asshole. Also the style resembles MS Paint.

24. Cardiff, Wales, Great Britain

Hmmm….dragon dancing around a leek. Guess the badass dragon flag of Wales was already taken. Still, dragon flag dancing with a flowering wild onion? Is there anything more stupid for a flag emblem?

25. Brown County, Nebraska, United States

As Bad Flags would say: ” this flag seems to have been designed by a 3rd grader with severe astygmatism using Microsoft Paint circa 1995.” Yeah, I’m sure it has about the kind of artistic merit you’d see in a local commercial.

26. Drnis, Croatia

This flag is supposed to be of the shepherd Saint Roch with a leg wound. Beside him is a dog with a loaf of bread in its mouth. According to legend it’s said that Saint Roch cut his leg from a rock so he could feed the dog. But the dog found bread instead. What the significance of that event is to an obscure town in Croatia I’ll never know. Also, the guy seems to be licking the staff.

27. Oceanside, California, United States

Seems more appropriate for a tourist advertisement than a city flag. Seriously, I could easily see it on their brochures, if not T-shirts.

28. Vina del Mar, Chile

Yes, this is an actual flag. No, it’s not a beach towel design. But I suppose this place probably has its flag on souvenir beach towels as well.

29. Rome, Italy

Seems like Rome tends to be in agreement with the Cleveland Browns as far as color schemes go. Still, if you’re doing a two color flag, at least pick better colors. And no, brown shouldn’t be one of them.

30. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Now this flag is actually quite decent. However, that doesn’t explain the presence of the disembodied arm holding the scales. Seriously, that’s fucked up. Yeah, kind of an example in which one weird detail can mess up everything.

31. Provo, Utah, United States

Seem this flag makes Provo look like some obscure corporation that sells camera equipment, vitamins, or chemicals. Fortunately, their city council saw the light and unanimously approved a new design this year.

32. Siauliai, Lithuania

Now I’m fine with the horned bull an the ferocious bear. But I’m not so sure about the eye pyramid. Might draw in a great many conspiracy theorists, especially those who talk about the Illuminati.

33. Belgrade, Serbia

Hate to break it to you, Belgrade. But your flag gives us the impression that your waterways are full of blood. It’s kind of terrifying to think about that.

34. Irkutsk, Russia

Look, Irkutsk, I know that animal predation is a normal part of nature. But that doesn’t mean that a predator with an animal carcass in its mouth makes a great flag motif. Seriously, why?

35. Ibiza, Spain

Reminds me of a map from a 1990s video game. Particularly one developed with the magic of MS paint. Also, the stripes are too much here.

36. Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Seems like Calgary can’t seem to tell the difference between what makes an appropriate flag motif and what makes an appropriate sports logo. And when I see this, I think of some college football team in Texas for some reason, not a Canadian city.

37. Mississippi, United States

That banner in the corner is said to represent a time in Mississippi when was the state with the most millionaires (which was around 1860). Of course, anyone familiar with US race relations and history can explain why. It’s also used as a symbol for white supremacy through any means necessary, even terrorism or secession from the union just to keep black people in a state of uncompensated involuntary servitude.

38. Virginia, United States

Let’s see. This flag seems to symbolize Virginia’s victory over the Brits in the American Revolution. Of course, I’m not sure why they’d include a woman with an exposed breast killing a crowned guy in a purple outfit. I mean violence and partial nudity aren’t stuff you’d want on a flag.

39. Asku, Kazakhstan

Seems like a more appropriate flag for someone like Jadis, the White Witch or for someone off Game of Thrones. Yeah, that’s the most intimidating snowbird I’ve ever seen.

40. Hanover Park, Chicago, Illinois, United States

This flag is for a neighborhood in Chicago. From Bad Flags: “Hanover Park is home to the world’s strongest man, who can lift a pyramid of eight stick figures above his head.” Also, the logo looks as if it was taken straight out of non-profit organization designed to reach out to economically disadvantaged kids.

41. Herimoncourt, Doubs, Franche-Comte, France

So I guess the badass bat logo was already taken by Batman, no less. Still, the place should’ve used a better font than Times New Roman. Seriously, a creepier font might do a better job attracting tourists.

42. Hezbollah

If I was a member of this Shitte paramilitary organization in Lebanon, I’d be embarrassed to have a flag like this. Now I can understand the hand holding an AK-47. But I don’t think what’s left of the arm resembles anything of a minaret or a rocket to me. To be discreet here, you might want to call a focus group.

43. Greene County, Ohio, United States

“Dammit, Orville, watch out for that clock tower.” Seriously, this flag looks like it was designed from the computer program my mom uses to make birthday cards. That clock tower is totally clip art for sure.

44. Greene County, Virginia, United States

I swear this flag’s insignia was probably designed by the same person who did the Mr. Yuck sticker. Well, at least the border anyway. Still, it was probably designed on the back of a cocktail napkin anyway.

45. Irribarren, Venezuela

There’s a better way to mix royalty, grayscale, caution symbols, and shark attacks. But this isn’t it. Not sure what’s that thing in the bottom middle. Wonder who could design a mess like this?

46. Yap, Micronesia

That’s supposed to resemble a canoe with a sail unfurled, carrying a large Rai. However, to me it looks like a circle with a jet pilot helmet they use in the military.

47. Jainism

Now Jainism is an ancient religion in India which has its own monks, teachers, scriptures, and souls. However, while the color scheme and some of the symbols are nice, there’s just one little point of contention. Let’s just say two decades of putzes wearing armbands in Germany can taint this flag’s 1,000 year legacy forever. Sorry that Nazism and WWII have to ruin everything for you, Jains.

48. Baie-James, Quebec, Canada

Since when does a city in Canada think that having Hedwig electrocuted would make a great design for a flag? Really, that just makes Harry Potter cry. Also, the set up looks like it’s straight from a tourist ad or brochure.

49. Kvalsund, Norway

Seems like the fish up there are very into 3 way make out sessions. Still, who would’ve thought that Norwegians were tri-sexual pescatarians? Yeah, that’s pretty messed up.

50. Kyrgyzstan

Seems the national symbol for this country is a radiating tennis ball. Oh, it's said to represent a yurt. Doesn't look like one to me.

Seems the national symbol for this country is a giant flaming tennis ball in the sky. Oh, it’s said to represent a yurt. Doesn’t look like one to me. More like an appropriate logo for Serena Williams.

51. Libya (1977-2011)

I'm sure the government of Libya wanted something fancier. But Muammar Ghadafi insisted that the country's flag match his palace drapes. Seriously, Libya has an amazing history and all they could come up with was a green sheet! Oh, wait, I've heard they might've changed it a few years ago.

I’m sure the government of Libya wanted something fancier. But Moamar Gaddafi insisted that the country’s flag match his palace drapes. Seriously, Libya has an amazing history and all they could come up with was a green sheet! Oh, wait, I’ve heard they might’ve changed it a few years ago.

52. Jekabpils, Latvia

Wonder what that lynx is doing under this tree. Probably going about its business. By the way, do they even have lynxes in Latvia? I think they do. But I’ve always seen them as a primarily North American feline though.

53. Masoy, Finmark, Norway

I understand the hammer and sickle were already taken. But seriously, a halapik? As Bad Flags says: ” It’s an ingenious creation meant to bring total destruction to the wicked baby seal at the business end. As both a bludgenoning tool to smash the seal’s sull and and hacking tool, to drag away the freshly killed cottony soft carcass, you kill two birds (or one innocent infant seal) with one blow.” Seriously, a baby seal bludgeoning and ripping tool. Real nice. Maybe they should redesign it with something less medieval weaponish and less controversial. Let’s not glorify baby seal killing shall we?

54. Matruh, Egypt

It’s supposed to be a goat, which might be cool to some. But I’m not sure it’s a flag worthy creature. Also, seems to be running way from a yellow brick wall.

55. Mauensee, Lucerne, Switzerland

Now I’ve heard of flying fish. But I’m kind of sure they don’t have feathers. Is it supposed to be an angel fish? If not, then why the hell does this fish have feathered wings?

56. Mont-Laureir, Quebec, Canada

Hate to say this but this looks more like a logo for a 1980s computer company nobody has heard about since. Seriously, I think I saw such similar imagery on hospital buildings or corporate headquarters.

57. Penza Oblast, Russia

Seems like this obscure area in Russia seems to be a fan of resting bitchface Jesus about to overturn changing tables in the Temple of Jerusalem. Not a great example of Russian Orthodox iconography.

58. Inglewood, California, United States

Now this centennial flag doesn’t really resemble something you’d fly at city hall. Rather, it resembles some agricultural company logo celebrating its anniversary. Seriously, photoshop? Why?

59. Poperinge, Belgium

I guess this place is really into artichokes. Or are those hops or Brussels sprouts? Perhaps they’re turtles or cockroaches. Wouldn’t see why any place would want to put such designs on its flag.

60. Sicily, Italy

Now what’s freakier than a flag with 3 disembodied legs? Well, a flag with 3 disembodied leg triskelion and a face on it. Add 3 stalks of wheat and a pair of wings coming out as well. Now that’s what I called freaky. Yeah, wonder what the Sicily’s flag designer was on when he came up with that idea.

61. Southland, New Zealand

This doesn’t look like a flag motif at all. The setup seems to resemble the kind of motivational posters you’d see in a school library. More like, “Enjoy the adventure of reading” type of message there.

62. Ulan Bator, Mongolia

Now this is supposed to be an anthropomorphic Garuda bird, a mythological creature in Buddhism. However, to me, this is one really ugly flying monkey. He also seems a bit tubby, no offense.

63. St. Moritz, Switerland

Now this is supposed to be Saint Mauritius, a Roman soldier from the 3rd century who refused to kill Christians at the behest of Emperor Maximilian. Thus, he and his legion were martyred. Still, as Bad Flags put it: “It looks like a tribute to the first Swedish knight with a pageboy haircut to walk on the moon.” Yeah, pretty cartoonish if you ask me.

64. Szabolcs-Szatmar-Bereg, Hungary

Well, aside from the airmail envelope border, there seems to be a lot of crap on this flag. Guess one place wanted a flag that symbolized the most stuff. Still, it’s quite a bit overboard to say the least.

65. Long Beach, Mississippi, United States

To be fair, this Gulf Coast city has been through a lot of crap like Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwaer Horizon oil spill. However, it’s known for growing radishes. Yet, what they have here resembles purple carrots. Oh, wait they actually grew radishes like that? Now I feel bad. Still, from that insignia, they seem to be desperate for tourists.

66. Wallonia, Belgium

Now Walloons have a deep reverence for the French Chanticleer rooster, which is from a children’s fable. It’s said to appear in a movie called Rock-a-Doodle. Yeah, not something you’d want on a flag. You can see why many emblems tend to have eagles on them. Eagles are cool. Chickens not so much.

67. Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia

Jesus Christ, a bear with an halberd. Only a matter of time until he learns to use an AK-47 which is a Russian built. Also, it’s newly bipedal with oppose able thumbs. Yeah, Russian outdoors people might want to stay away from bears bearing medieval weaponry.

68. Georgia

This was the state flag of Georgia from the 1950s to 2001. Its reason to have a Confederate flag on its emblem stems from the racist white legislators trying to send a message against desegregation. Luckily, it was replaced with a less racist design in 2001.

69. Orange County, California, United States

Seems like a more appropriate logo for a company that grows oranges. And I sure as hell wouldn’t think California as an appropriate place to grow them this time of year. Especially since the state’s in drought. Nevertheless, Orange County is a rich person’s area that sometimes tends to hoard water for themselves and their golf courses. What a waste.

70. Chiapas, Mexico

From Bad Flags: “The center seal tells the story of two lion lovers. The first lion, Eduardo, lives in the palace. The other lion, Timoteo, is stuck on the other side of a rushing river from his love. A deep chasm keeps apart their love. One day, as Eduardo uses his castle as a scratching post, Timoteo gets an idea. If he scratched that palm tree enough, he may be able to break it down and bridge the gap and run to his lover’s open paws. Unfortunately, the tree is just a little short, and Timoteo plunges to his untimely death.” Now that’s a horrible story. Still, please let it be a joke. Seriously, why would a place in Mexico want a flag depicting such events is beyond me.

71. Perm, Russia

Pretty sure I won’t trust a bear on a book. This is especially the case when the book is most likely the Bible in question. Of course, it’s pretty obvious that’s the book in question on this flag.

72. Greenburgh, New York, United States

Motto is either “Who wants chili?” or “Eye of newt and tongue of shrew, feast your eyes on this witches’ brew.” Uh, let’s hope it’s just chili.

73. Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front

This is a revolutionary movement at the Horn of Africa seeking to unite Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djbouti under the gun and torch. Yeah, doesn’t seem democratic to me either. Seriously, with an AK-47 what do you expect me to think of these guys? Possible terrorists?

74. Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

Now the place name translates to “Land of Fire.” However, it’s actually a pretty cold place and one of the southernmost inhabited areas in the world. Still, doesn’t make me understand why part of the flag is tangerine and includes a seagull. Yeah, a bird that can be found practically anywhere even in a parking lot in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Also, looks like it was designed by a 7 year old.

75. North Caucasian Emirate, Russia (1918-1921)

Now this consists of 3 stars making an eye and a nose along with a smiley face mouth. Might have something to do with the whimsical religion of Islam. Of course, the region it represents didn’t last.

76. Tamil Eelam

This is a flag a of a proposed Tamil state located in what’s currently north and east Sri Lanka. Of course, while the image is badass, it also seems more like an emblem for some armed insurgent organization. Yeah, I think the crossed guns have to go.

77. New Jersey, United States

Now New Jersey’s flag looks quite decent with the exception of the color. And the horses’ head. Doesn’t help that it’s been the setting of two award winning HBO crime shows like The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire.

78. Pocatello, Idaho, United States

Okay, this is a flag of a city in Idaho. However, it looks more like an emblem designed for a local auto dealership with shitty commercials. I heard they changed it in 2008. Let’s hope it’s not something that’s looks straight out of some printing program.

79. Tampa Bay, Florida, United States

Now that’s a very tacky flag. I mean not only does it have a seal in the middle but that colors are so distracting. Of course, it kind of embodies the spirit of the city. If not, then Florida.

80. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States

This was actually voted among the 5 worst flags of the North American Vexillogical Association. Still, it’s been the city’s flag since the 1950s and seems to have way too much on it. Perhaps a flag depicting cheap beer would’ve been more appropriate. Still, you have wonder what kind of art schools the city has to produce a horrible flag like this.

Strange Easter Traditions Around the World

Posted by historymaniacmegan on March 16, 2015

As with Christmas, Easter is celebrated around the world as well since it’s also a religious holiday. So while some countries celebrate Easter, others may not even among Christians who might consider it too pagan like the Quakers, Puritans, and Jehovah Witnesses. Now also like Christmas, no two countries celebrate Easter the same way possibly due to seasonal patterns, old traditions, and other factors. And sometimes with American eyes, many of these traditions may seem strange. Not to mention, Easter didn’t really become a mainstream secular holiday until recently but students don’t get as many days off. Nevertheless, here are some of the strange Easter traditions you may see from around the world.

1. Czech Republic and Slovakia

Women living in some parts of Eastern Europe should expect to get their asses whipped by the fellas this Easter since it’s said that such actions make them healthy and beautiful. Yeah, I know what outsiders are thinking.

If you’re a woman living in either of these countries, expect to be chased around by men hitting with handmade whips this Easter Monday. Of course, those who aren’t into BDSM shouldn’t be disappointed because they’re not intended to be painful. It’s also believed that whipping women on Easter is supposed to make them more healthy and beautiful.

2. Finland

Those visiting the Nordic countries might wonder whether the Scandinavians, Icelanders, and Finns have gotten their Easter mixed up with Halloween since they have bonfires as well as kids dressed as witches going door to door for candy. But no, it’s just their tradition.

It’s a popular superstition in Finland that all Finnish witches fly down to Germany to party with the devil on Easter. This has given rise to the tradition of children dressing up as witches with broomsticks hanging around their necks and wander around door to door to ask for treats. They also lit bonfires to keep satanic forces away that supposedly roam around this day. So Easter in Finland is kind of like Halloween. In Sweden, little girls take part in this tradition on April 30th known as Walburgis night as well as in Denmark where the children give out willow branches in exchange for candy. Another Easter tradition in Finland is watching grass grow to signify the start of spring. Once mature, children would decorate it with painted eggs and paper bunnies.

3. Russia

While the US and Germany have chocolate bunnies, those in Russia have the the Easter lamb made from butter since it’s believe Satan can’t transform as one. But eating a butter lamb can leave to high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease.

Instead of chocolate bunnies, Russians usually dig into a large piece of butter that’s in the shape of a lamb. This tradition is based on the religious idea that lambs are lucky since they’re the only animals whose form Satan couldn’t take.

4. Papua New Guinea

In this tropical country, you will find trees outside churches decorated with sticks of tobacco and cigarettes in the days leading to Easter. After the Easter Sunday church services, smokes are handed out and everyone lights up.

5. France

Every Easter in Haux, the villagers gather all their eggs to put in a large frying pan in the square. The result is perhaps the world’s largest omelet.

On Easter Monday, people in the town of Haux gather together taking all the eggs from their houses and bringing them to the town square. There, they put their eggs in a massive pan used to cook a giant omelet that could feed 1,000 people and contains over 4,500 eggs.

6. New Zealand

While the US has a furry, cute Easter Bunny bringing children eggs, in New Zealand it’s rabbit season with the Great Bunny Hunt. Some 20,000 bunnies are killed a year in New Zealand on Easter. They probably should just stick to Orcs.

While the US has the cute, furry, Easter Bunny, if there’s a place Peter Cottontail should avoid this Easter, New Zealand would be it. And it’s not because of Orcs. Because on Easter, New Zealanders go out to hunt rabbits with a prize of $NZ 3,500 to who kills the most bunnies. Every year as many 20,000 rabbits are killed in this country.

7. Poland

One Easter Sunday, men aren’t allowed to cook or even stand in the kitchen or else his mustache will go gray and the Easter bread dough will fail to rise. They also believe that swallowing a willow catkin from a branch consecrated by a priest would bring health.

As for processions on Good Friday, Polish miners don ceremonial uniforms and at the Wieliczka Salt Mine where they perform the Underground Way of the Holy Cross. They march to an underground salt monument of Pope John Paul II in the underground Kinga Chapel, a place he once visited.

8. Hungary

In other parts of Eastern Europe women in traditional garb should expect to be doused by water on their way to their Easter Sunday mass. Priests should expect wet pews in their churches.

On Easter, women dress in traditional garb for Sunday Mass while men jump out and pour buckets of water at them as part of a “purifying ritual.”

9. Australia

Instead of an Easter Bunny, Australia has an Easter Bilby which is a native endangered marsupial that resembles a mouse. Also, they hate rabbits which they consider pests.

While the US has the Easter Bunny, Australia has the Easter Bilby bringing the eggs. One of the reasons behind this change is to create awareness of the bilby which is an endangered species. Also, there’s a strong dislike for bunnies which are considered pests that destroy crops.

10. Colombia

For their Easter dinner, instead of eggs and chocolate, the Colombians dine on iguana, turtles, and big rodents.

11. Germany

Instead of hiding their colored eggs, the Germans hang their decorated eggs out in the open on trees for all to see. Seems like the Germans have to have trees for everything.

While children in other countries look for hidden Easter eggs, the Germans display their Easter eggs are displayed on trees and prominently in the streets. Some will have thousands of multi colored eggs hanged on them. This might be that these symbolize new life and the resurrection. They also burn their Christmas trees on Easter Sunday and eat a lot of green foods and spinach on Holy Thursday.

Germany is also home to the Oberammergau Passion Play in the village that bears its name which is performed every 10 years from May to October starting at 9:30 a.m. and continuing with a 12:15-3:00 p. m. lunch break before finally finishing at 6:00 p.m. However, the villagers do this as a thank you from God for saving them from a plague in 1633 and put a large painting of Jesus to show this. But nearly everyone in the village takes part in the play either as one of the actors or behind the scenes, making clothes and props to run it. Still, this play is very popular all over the world that bookings take place for many years before the play is performed.

12. Greece

While some countries have multi colored eggs, in Greece the eggs are only painted red to represent the blood of Christ and used for making Easter bread as well as banged on their neighbor’s heads.

In the town of Corfu, it’s tradition for the people to throw out their crockery and pots out the window on Easter Saturday. We’re not sure why they do this. Some say it’s to symbolize the rejection of Judas. Others think it’s simply the exuberance of having a smashing time after the penitential season of Lent. There are other theories of symbolism such as getting rid of evil or the change of seasons in which the old pots of last year’s harvest are exchanged for new ones. Some think it’s adopted from the old Venetian tradition of throwing out one’s winter things for new ones for spring.

In the Greek village of Vrontados, Easter is celebrated with a fireworks war between the two Greek Orthodox parishes. Parishioners make their own rockets for this. Of course, it attracts thousands of tourists.

In the village of Vrontados on the island of Chios, the two Orthodox churches face off every Easter with parishioners making their own rockets and teenagers leading the war against each other. It’s said to be a century old tradition which apparently started when some Greek villagers tried to scare away the Turkish army using fireworks. Some say that it started when some Greek sailors met Chinese men who taught them how to make fireworks. Anyway thousands of rockets are used and it attracts tourists every year on Easter, boosting the town’s economy.

13. Ethiopia

On the Easter festival, the people of Ethiopia celebrate a noble feast featuring a large loaf of sourdough bread called, “Dabo.” During the day, visitors are greeted with a slice of “Dabo” to honor the crucifixion of Christ. They also wear white to exemplify purity and display headbands from palm leaves which symbolize the palm leaves Jesus’s followers greeted him with during his passage into Jerusalem before his crucifixion.

14. Switzerland

For Easter, the Swiss have an age old tradition of decorating the fountains with spring flowers and colored eggs, which creates a rather stunning sight.

The Frankonian Swiss have an old Easter tradition of decorating wells with painted eggs and spring flowers to celebrate the gift of life.

Switzerland is not a fan of the Easter Bunny so the Easter Cuckoo is credited with bringing children eggs instead. Yet, they still sell chocolate bunnies though.

15. Great Britain

In the town of Bacup in Northern England, Easter Saturday is celebrated with the Nutter’s Dance which has been performed since the 18th century. It’s said to originate with Moorish sailors who somehow ended up in the area but why it’s performed on Easter Saturday, there’s no explanation. It’s a strange dance led by a Whiffer (or Whipper In), who cracks a whip to drive away evil spirits represented by a group of men with blackened faces in red, black, and white costumes and neck garlands.

The English village of Hallaton in Lancashire where the villagers play a game called bottle kicking which is a no rules rugby game played with barrels. Ambulances stand by for this due to obvious reasons.

The village of Hallaton in Leicestershire celebrates Easter with a game of bottle kicking which is essentially a no rules rugby game played with 3 beer barrels and a pitch spread over a mile of cross country land. Ambulances are on standby every year there.

On Holy Thursday, it was once used as the day when the monarchs showed their humility and washed the poor’s feet. It was symbolic of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, though only a select few poor got their feet washed. However, this was later changed with the ascension of the Protestant William and Mary in 1689. Nowadays the Queen just gives out money, usually the same amount as her age.

During the Easter season, the English village of Hungerford has what’s known as the Hockside festival. This begins each year when the new police constable blows his horn calling all men to the Hockside court. Two men are selected and they parade through the streets giving women oranges in exchange for kisses.

Another English Easter tradition is Morris dancing which involves guys dancing in ribbons, clogs, and sometimes funny hats. According to Blackadder, it’s a very lame dance and one he doesn’t like.

Britain also celebrates Easter with an Easter egg roll in which people try to roll colored hardboiled eggs on a hill. While this has taken hold in countries like the US, the Brits tend to be pretty competitive about it. Other strange Easter customs include Pace Egg plays mostly depicting Saint George and the dragon as well as Morris dancing which is an English folk dance said to originate through druidic rites but is better known to Americans as being mercilessly ripped on the first season of Blackadder. Let’s just say the Great Britain has a lot of strange Easter traditions and leave it at that.

16. Norway

On Easter in Norway, most of the businesses and public services are closed while the day is devoted to crime stories that even the milk cartons have their own mysteries on them.

In Norway, Easter is a 5 day bank holiday in which all the businesses close save the grocery store on the Saturday before. During this time Norwegians celebrate by reading crime novels known as Påskekrimmen as well as watching crime thrillers on TV. There are even mystery stories on milk cartons and magazines. Of course, why Norwegians celebrate Easter with this crime stuff is just one of those mysteries.

17. Netherlands, Belgium, and France

While Americans have the Easter Bunny, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands have the Easter Bells which is said to depart from the churches to Rome on Holy Week only to come back bringing eggs and candies for the kids. Seems like something from a bad acid trip doesn’t it? But I’m not making this up.

In these countries, it’s said that the church bells fly to Rome for a few days on Holy Week and only return on Easter morning bringing back colored eggs and chocolate rabbits. It’s said the tradition started because all church bells are silent as a sign of mourning Jesus for several days before Easter. In the Netherlands and Flemish speaking Belgium, the bells fly away on Holy Saturday. In France and French speaking Belgium on Holy Thursday. Either way, replacing Santa Claus with metal bells seems like a bad acid trip to those who may never heard of it. Seriously, I’m not making this up.

18. Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Mexico as well as Latin America

A big tradition in Catholic and Orthodox countries is Judas burning in which an effigy of Judas is tried, hanged, and burned. While it’s under fire for being anti-Semitic, people also burn effigies of politicians they don’t like as well.

In some communities in these countries, it’s customary to burn an effigy of Judas on Easter, typically depicted as hung by the neck after a fake trial. Sometimes they’d make effigies of unpopular politicians and filling the Judas effigy with fireworks. It was once practiced all over Europe before it went into decline due to it’s possible association with being called, “the burning of the Jew,” especially in Latin America. However, the Orthodox Church has since defended the practice.

19. Philippines

In the Philippines, it’s not unusual pn Holy Week for some devout Catholic men to show their adoration for Christ through self-crucifixion and self-flagellation. Yes, this is insane that even the Roman Catholic Church has tried to discourage the practice there but to no avail. Please don’t try this at home.

In the Philippines, many devout Catholics practice self-crucifixion on Easter replicating Jesus’s suffering. The idea behind this act of insanity was this morbid ritual is to help watch the sins of the world and self-purification. The Roman Catholic Church tried to discourage this for obvious reasons but with little success. It’s also said that it’s just one manifestation of old Filipino religions that require self-flagellation. Other theories suggest it sprang out of a misinterpretation of St. Paul’s Romans 8:13, “If you live after the flesh, you shall die, but if through the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live.” Of course, while some people may equate self-mortification with purification, I’d suggest you don’t try this at home, please.

20. Bermuda

Bermudans celebrate Good Friday with flying homemade kites, as well as eating codfish cakes and hot cross buns. It’s said that the tradition started when a local teacher from the British Army had difficulty explaining Christ’s ascension to his Sunday school class and made a kite to illustrate it as a result. They also hold kite contests as well.

21.Haiti

In Hati, Holy Week is celebrated with a mixture of Catholic and Voodoo traditions such as colorful parades and traditional “rara” music played on bamboo trumpets, maracas, drums, and coffee cans. Voodoo believers would make pilgrimages to the village of Souvenance, showing devotion to the spirits with drumming, chanting, and animal sacrifices.

22. Europe

In parts of Northwestern Europe, a key tradition is lighting up huge bonfires called Easter Fires on Easter Sunday and Monday. A most common explanation for this is said to originate with the Saxons as a tale of how spring triumphs over winter. However, today it just brings communities together with heavy consumption of lager, gin, and snacks. Egg tapping or knocking is also popular.

23. Cyprus

While the people of Cyprus also paint and hide eggs on Easter for the younger children to find, teenage boys follow this up with a rather violent contest of scouring for scraps of wood to use on a communal bonfire. The neighborhood with the largest bonfire at the end of the day gets the Easter bragging rights until next year. However, since there’s a limited supply of scraps among the teenage boys, it’s not uncommon for police being called in breaking fights over wood scraps or to help put out out-of-control bonfires.

24. Italy

In Florence, Easter is celebrated with a Rube Goldberg machine being carried on a cart, stuffed with explosives, and being set on fire. The result is a 20 minute fireworks show that would make Michael Bay weep.

In Florence, Easter is celebrated with building a Rube Goldberg machine containing shards from the Holy Sepulchre to symbolize the resurrection of Jesus. Called “the holy fire,” it’s placed on a candle as well as dragged through the streets on a massive cart which is over 30ft tall and has been used for well over 300 years before reaching its destination where priests and local officials carry it to the cathedral square. Once there, it’s stuffed with explosives and topped with a fuse and a fake dove when everything is ready. The Cardinal of Florence sets the fake dove ablaze while the bells of Giotto’s campanile ring out to signal that the show is about to start. What follows is 20 minutes of nonstop explosions in the city’s cathedral which would send Michael Bay weeping with adulation. If everything goes according to plan, then the fireworks signify a year of good harvests and successful business.

In Rome on Good Friday, the Pope commemorates the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) at the Colosseum. During this a huge cross with burning torches illuminates the sky as the 14 Stations of the Cross are described in several languages. However, Americans unfamiliar with this ritual and this significance might interpret this tradition quite differently and with great offense, especially since they’re more likely to link giant burning crosses with white supremacist violence against African Americans. On Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, Mass is celebrated with thousands of visitors in St. Peter’s Square to

25. Spain

On Holy Thursday, the streets of Verges set the stage for the macabre “Dansa de la Mort” or “Dance of Death.” In a procession traveling through the town, 5 people dress up in skeletons grab the lime light as they move to the sound of drum beats. Each skeleton carries different items with one holding a scythe, a clock without hands, and a banner warning that death could come at any time while two carry a box of ashes. Not the kind of warm sunny Easter most of us would imagine.

Relax, NAACP, these are just Catholic brotherhoods dressed in their robes and hoods for the Holy Week processions in Spain, not a white supremacist Klu Klux Klan meeting. There’s a lot of pride taking part in the Spanish Easter festivities that Antonio Banderas joins his brotherhood in his hometown every year. Seriously, Spanish have been doing this for far longer than KKK has been in existence. Costume similarities are purely coincidental.

This isn’t to say that there are a lot of Easter processions in Spain dating to the Middle Ages. This is performed by many Catholic brotherhoods wearing different colored robes to tell each other apart. However, they also don conical hoods to retain their anonymity, even though they tend to scare the bejesus out of any African American tourist and it doesn’t help that some of these take place at night under candlelight. The music tends to vary according to days consisting of mournful music accompanied by dramatic drum beats on Holy Thursday, utter silence on Good Friday, to celebratory music on Easter Sunday. Many tend to walk barefoot as well as wear shackles on their feet with brotherhoods carrying floats of different scenes related to the Passion of the Christ or the Sorrows of the Virgin Mary. And there is great pride for taking part and it’s said that Antonio Banderas travels to his Malaga hometown every year to take part in this with his brotherhood, “Tears and Favors”, becoming the star attraction.

26. Japan

Though western holidays like Halloween, Christmas, and Saint Patrick’s Day have become rather popular in Japan, Easter is relatively obscure since the country doesn’t have a lot of Christians. However, this doesn’t stop companies from organizing Easter themed promotions in the spring and sometimes even the summer. Tokyo Disneyland hosts an annual “Easter Wonderland” which sometimes runs well into June.

27. Latvia

A known tradition in Latvia is an Easter game played by children which is like conkers but with eggs. Players pair off and used hardboiled colored eggs joined together with string. Competitors bang the ends of the eggs together until one player’s egg breaks. The winner is the one with the stronger egg. Sounds a bit messy to say the least.

28. Guatemala

In Guatemala, the village streets are lined with rugs made from saw dust for the Easter procession which creates trail of powdery rainbows in their wake.

Each Easter in Guatemala, the people lace the streets of their villages with colorful sawdust carpets. On their way to Mass, the procession of faithful walk over the vibrant carpet leaving a trail of powdery rainbows in their wake.

29. Bulgaria

While Bulgarians decorate their Easter eggs, they’re also known to fight with them by pair. The last surviving one is called a “borak.”

30. Argentina

In Argentina, there’s a kitschy theme park called Tierra Santa which is devoted to telling the story of Jesus. On Holy Week, they reenact the Passion within the parks walls. It’s said to attract a lot of tourists.

In Argentina, there is a kitsch theme park dedicated to telling the story of Jesus which unsurprisingly goes into overdrive on Easter. There’s a plastic Jesus that’s resurrected every hour and plastic statues depicting the Passion which is already a must see for the devout with hundreds gathering each hour to watch the statue emerge from a rocky outcrop to survey the crowds. On Easter, actors take up the role to bring the passion to life, carrying the cross through the park and being crucified by Roman soldiers. Sure it’s probably in bad taste but it’s a huge hit in Latin America nevertheless.

In Northern Argentina, there’s an elaborate carnival that begins on Ash Wednesday and lasts all through Lent. In this, mothers and grandmothers gather around a decorated arch and exchange dolls in a ceremony believed to unite women in an eternal bond. On Sunday in an Argentinian version of the Easter Parade, women dress up in colorful ruffled skirts and white hats in masks made with starch and water. Riding on horseback, they singing folksongs on their way to a dance honoring Pukllay, the Spirit of the Carnival. After the ceremony, the burn a large effigy of the Pukllay to signify the end of the celebration a la Burning Man.

31. Jamaica

While Good Friday is a somber time in the Easter season of Holy Week, it pays host to Kingston’s biggest annual street carnival complete with a parade, requisite debaucheries, and even preachers. Also predict the future with egg whites on water.

32. El Salvador

In the town of Texistepeque, there’s a ritual on Easter called “Talciguines” which is supposed to symbolize the fight between Jesus and Satan. Of course, Jesus is always the winner.

33. Wales

On Palm Sunday, the Welsh visit their relatives’ graves to lay flowers as well as stage Welsh singing contests called Gymafa Gan where choirs from various chapels in festivities take part and prominent conductors are invited.

34. United States

For 130 years, the White House has sponsored the Easter egg roll on its South Lawn, which provides a lot of activities for the kids.

For 130 years, the White House has hosted the Easter Egg Roll on its South Lawn. This mainly consists of rolling a colored hardboiled egg with a large serving spoon. But nowadays an egg hunt is included as well along with other sports and crafts.

In Texas, the people of Fredericksburg hold an event called the Easter Fires of Fredericksburg Pageant, where the town gets together to celebrate an 1840 peace treaty with the Comanche and the significance with Easter by reinventing this story. It’s said that the Comanche would light fires in the hills of Fredericksburg to signify that there was no hostility between the settlers and the indigenous people. But as the fires burned the German immigrant children grew worried and to calm them down their parents told them that the fires were the Easter Bunny burning eggs in preparation for the festivities.

New York’s Easter parade from 5th Avenue to 57th Street has a lot of fun festivities with people wearing outlandish Easter outfits and donning their wackiest Easter bonnets.

In New York City, you have the Easter parade that dates back to the 1870s and one of the city’s most significant seasonal celebrations. It begins at the famous Fifth Avenue and finishes north up 57th street. There you’ll find visitors and New Yorkers alike done their most elaborate Easter bonnets.

In Southern Michigan, on Easter tens of thousands of marshmallows are dumped onto by helicopters and are rewarded candy afterwards. This tradition has spread to other areas.

Strange Christmas Traditions from Around the World

Posted by historymaniacmegan on December 15, 2014

While Thanksgiving in November is basically a national holiday in the United States, you can’t say the same about Christmas, which is celebrated around the world either as a religious holiday or otherwise. Now no two countries celebrate Christmas the same way which may be due seasonal patterns, old traditions, and other factors. In fact, while there are plenty of places that do celebrate Christmas some don’t at all. Yet, as for those that do, many may have certain holiday customs that may seem strange to American eyes or those in Europe. And there are even some mainstream Christmas traditions that were strictly national customs until quite recently. For instance, Christmas didn’t really become the mainstream secular holiday we celebrate now until the Victorian Era. And before Queen Victoria and Prince Albert got hitched, the notion of the Christmas tree was most strictly a German tradition. Not to mention, in early America, while you’d find people such as the Catholics, Episcopalians, and Lutherans celebrating Christmas, you’d be pressed to see any house in Puritan Boston with Christmas decorations because for a time it was banned. Nevertheless, here is a list of some of the strange Christmas customs you’d see from around the world during the season.

1. The Netherlands (and to a lesser extent, Belgium)

And you thought the United States has problems with race relations. Still, I’m sure a Barack Obama visit in the Low Countries during the Saint Nicholas season wouldn’t go very well at all.

I’ll start the Dutch here. Now we all know that the Netherlands is one of the most tolerant countries on Earth as well as has legalized pot and prostitution. However, during the Christmas season, people in this country (and Belgium) open their gifts in early December for Saint Nicholas Day, where children leave their shoes out for St. Nick to deliver presents for every child. In the days leading up to December 5th, St. Nick arrives through ship in on Dutch shores in mid-November and goes to each kid’s house on a white horse. However, now while having Saint Nick dress up in a bishop’s robes isn’t unusual (though it’s a carry-over from his previous job as Bishop of Turkey) but what’s strange is that he has helpers ranging from 6 to 8 black men (including a guy named, Zhwart Piet or “Black Peter”). Anyone familiar with world history can easily figure out what these guys started out as in this tradition but they’re known now as St. Nicholas’s “friends” (even if we don’t know how many of them are). Oh, and there’s another folk tradition about St. Nicholas Day regarding bad children such as kicking and beating them with switches (or pretending to) or kidnapping and sending them back to Spain in a sack (his home). Also, when you see Saint Nicholas appears on the street, you’ll see his helpers in blackface and in a fashion that many African Americans would view as virulently racist.

This tradition was made famous by David Sedaris’ commentary on the subject in his essay called, “6 to 8 Black Men.”

https://thejesuitpost.org/2013/12/worth-listening-david-sedariss-six-to-eight-black-men/

2. India

Now I don’t think I’m used to this. Also looks pretty freaky.

While India only has 2.3% of a Christian population, you need to consider that this consists of 25 million people here, which is more than some countries’ entire populations. While many Christian Indians celebrate Christmas with gift-giving and possibly midnight Mass like much of the Western world, yet they don’t have the fir or pine trees that more temperate areas in Europe and North America have. So these Christian Indians have to improvise with decorating banana and mango trees instead and sometimes they even use the leaves from those trees to decorate their houses.

3. Czech Republic and Slovakia

In these two countries, people who are still single but don’t want to remain so tend to stand with their backs toward the door and throw a shoe over their shoulders. Those about to get married soon will have their shoe toes pointing to the door. However, there’s no clue as to how long you’d meet the person of your dreams though.

Another marriage superstition in the Czech Republic in which woman place a cherry tree twig under water. If it blooms, it means she’ll marry next year.

In Slovakia, there’s also a curious tradition in which the family patriarch fills his spoon with loksa (a type of pudding), and flings it to the ceiling. The more he can get to stick up there, the better his harvest will be next year.

4. Japan

Yes, Japanese people spend Christmas at KFC that they need to make reservations well in advance. However, I’m sure that Kentucky Fried Chicken Christmas tradition can’t be good for the arteries.

Japan has a few Christmas traditions that you’d find are strange. And while only a few are practicing Christians, it’s a very popular secular holiday (and sometimes celebrated more like a wintertime Valentine’s Day). The first relates to a marketing campaign from more than 40 years ago that pertains to Japanese families eating KFC for Christmas dinner. This consist of KFC selling over 240,000 barrels of chicken which is 5 to 10 time its monthly sales. However, it’s unclear on how many years it takes off the lives of your average Japanese citizen as well as how much KFC for Christmas will increase their chances for cardiovascular disease, but I bet either is entirely possible.

Another Japanese tradition is the notion of Christmas cake which is a sponge cake that contains whipped cream, chocolate, and strawberries. These are ordered months in advance and are eaten on Christmas Eve. Any cake not sold after the 25th is unwanted. For the same reason, this is partly to explain why Japanese women over 25 were referred to as “Christmas Cake” if they weren’t married by their 26th birthday (this, until relatively recent times).

Still, if you want to send a Christmas card in Japan, avoid sending any one with red unless they are bereaved. Any Christmas cards with red colors should be avoided but good luck finding a redless Christmas card at your local Hallmark store. Also, their Santa Claus or “Santa Kurohsu”, has eyes in the back of his head to keep an eye on naughty children.

5. New Zealand

Rather than using the traditional conifer, New Zealanders decorate Pohutukawa trees for Christmas.

6. Cuba

Every December, the city of Remedios hosts the Parrandas festival in which the city divides in two halves with each building a themed sculpture from light bulbs, in preparation for Christmas Eve.

7. Finland

Of course, I’m not sure if going to a cemetery to light candles for dead relatives is my idea for a great Christmas Eve. But, hey, that’s what the Finns do.

Now while you think the Japanese tradition of eating sponge cakes and KFC is kind of weird, you should check out on what the Finns do on Christmas Eve. Now Christmas Eve is the time of year when Finnish families head to their home saunas since it’s believed that a sauna “elf” lives there to protect it and make sure people behave themselves. Thus, families would head to their sauna, strip to their toes, and enjoy a nice good naked soak, before visiting the graves of their dead relatives and lighting candles in their memory on the sites after sunset. And if they can’t, they go to a nearby cemetery instead as well as placed candles for those relatives buried elsewhere.

Oh, and it’s said that kids in Finland sleep on the floor on Christmas Eve so the dead can use their beds.

8. Venezuela

In Caracas, it’s customary for young children to go to bed with one end of a string tied to their big toe and leaving the other end outside their bedroom window. This is because before 8 a. m., the streets are closed to cars on Christmas so people had to get up nice and early to roller skate to “Early Morning Mass” as well as proceed to tug the strings that are still hanging to wake up the kids. Still, bet roller skating to Mass wouldn’t go well in my neck of the woods though (too many hills).

9. Sweden

While the Christmas goat is a Christianized Christmas tradition taken from the Norse, the Galve Goat has been a prime target for vandalism and arson since it first burned down around midnight on Christmas Day in 1966.

From its first erection and 1966 Christmas Eve burning, the people of Galve build this 13 meter tall straw goat as vandals keep trying to burn it down. As of 2011, it’s been burned 25 times and by 1988 burning the goat happened so often that people began taking bets for its survival ever since. However, just so you know the people of Galve don’t want their goat burned down since an American tourist served time in jail for successfully doing so in 2011.

Another tradition in Sweden is families gathering around the TV at 3 PM on Christmas Eve to watch Donald Duck cartoons from a 1958 Disney program From All of Us to You (or as it’s called there “Donald Duck and his friends wish you a Merry Christmas.”). None of these cartoons have anything to do with Christmas, yet many Swedes could recite the dubbed lines by heart. And it basically started in 1959 when there were just enough TVs in Sweden’s population but only a couple of channels to watch from.

There’s also a Swedish Christmas tradition in which pertains to the serving of rice pudding around Smorgasbord in which one peeled almond is hidden in it. The person who gets the almond is said to be married within a year.

10. Ukraine

No, this isn’t Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas tree. Ukranians actually decorate their Christmas tree with spiders since they think it would bring them luck.

You may think that the notion of decorating a Christmas tree with spider webs seems to be straight from The Nightmare Before Christmas, but in Ukraine it’s a tradition based on local folklore. The tradition starts from a story of a poor woman who couldn’t afford to decorate her Christmas tree for her kids. So some friendly spiders decided to spin webs on the tree instead. When the kids woke up the next morning, they saw the first light turn this cobweb laden tree into silver and gold. Thus, not only the children had a great Christmas, but the family was never left poor again. So, in Ukraine to decorate your tree with spider webs will ensure you good luck and fortune in the coming year. And you thought that was something you’d see Jack Skellington do.

11. Philippines

The Philippines consists of 80% Christians in its huge country with Catholicism as the most prominent denomination. In this country, Christmas celebrations last all the way into January. However, unlike a lot of countries, children leave their polished shoes out for the The Three Kings when they pass through the houses that night for the Feast of the Epiphany, marking the end of the Christmas season.

12. Great Britain

Now this is what the Brits call Christmas pudding. I know it doesn’t look like something you’d get from your pudding mix back in the States. Looks more like cake.

Now a lot of Christmas traditions come from the Brits, yet there are few that don’t. For one, they don’t have Santa Claus but Father Christmas that now looks like Santa but in previous years was the Ghost of Christmas Present. One of them has to do with the notion of Christmas Pudding served on Christmas Day. Of course, as the pudding is stirred clockwise, every member of the family makes a wish. Sometimes it’s said that people put coins, rings, and thimbles to the mix which can symbolize wealth, marriage, and good luck for life. Still, for Americans unfamiliar with the notion of pudding in the British world of cuisine, understand that British pudding looks nothing like the creamy stuff you’d find in cups at the grocery store.

Another tradition in Great Britain has to do with children writing their Christmas wish list burning them in the back of the fireplace, hoping that the draft would carry them to the North Pole. Too bad that they haven’t heard of actually mailing them. Yet, if the letter catches fire before being sent up the chimney, the kiddie must write a new one.

Oh, and in London, it’s said that a group of competitors gather on the shore of Serpentine Lake to take part in a 100 yard race through the freezing water.

13. Canada

Yes, you can really write to Santa at H0H 0H0 and the Canada Post will assist him. Yes, I mean Canada.

Want to send that letter to Santa but don’t know how to get it to the North Pole. Well, you’re in luck since Santa has his own postal code that consists of H0H 0H0 where it will be sent to Canada. So while Santa’s elves help with making those Christmas toys, for the past 30 years, it’s been the Canada Post volunteers who have helped Santa reply to millions of letters each year from children around the world in different languages, including Braille.

14. Spain

Now Spain is home to a lot of weird Christmas traditions but none is crazier than Catalonia’s Caga Tio, which is a magic Yule log that grows and shits presents. Believe me, I’m not making this up.

With the exception of the peeing on the snow sweaters and the pooping reindeer, the thought of holiday fun and bodily functions usually don’t go together. However, the sole exception to this is in Catalonia, Spain, home to the extremely odd Caga Tio, which translates to “pooping log.” And no, he’s not a character from South Park. He’s a hollowed out, smiley-faced piece of wood bringing laughter and joy to Catalonian children in a long established cherished tradition of him pooping out presents. Honest to God, I’m not making this up.

Beginning on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8), Caga Tio is placed on the fireplace, covered in a blanket, and treated as a pet. Each evening, the kiddies feed the log fruits, nuts, and chocolate in hopes that it’ll grow bigger. Meanwhile, the parents secretly swap out the log with a progressively bigger one until, it’s magically full grown by Christmas (again, I’m not making this up).

On Christmas Day, the family gathers around Caga Tio and sing songs to urge it to release its loot, which translate as, “Poop log, poop candy! If you don’t poop well, I’ll hit you with a stick. Poop log!” The brats then proceed to beat the log with sticks in order to force it to defecate traditional Christmas presents like Turon nougat candy, small toys, and coins. Now that’s the craziest shit I’ve ever heard so far.

Catalonia is also known for a certain defecating figurine known as a “El Caganer” or “The Shitter,” which is put in the back of a nativity scene. And as you can tell, there are many types you can choose from.

Catalonia also has another Christmas tradition relating to defecation in the form of a Caganer which sits in the back of every traditional Catalan nativity scene (for at least 2 centuries). It’s a figurine of a man with his trousers down pooping, which represents fertility and good fortune. Recently, businesses have many figurines that resemble celebrities. Still, while putting a Caganer in a nativity scene is perfectly acceptable in Catalonia, it would probably be seen as something deeply sacrilegious to so in a manger scene in Kentucky. It’s also a tradition in the rest of Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy.

After Christmas, Spain has a holiday known as the Day of Innocents on December 28, which is it’s April Fool’s Day with the pranks and a day in which kids go from door to door asking for sweets, similar to Halloween, though they tend to make noise as well.Of course, this is a day to commemorate the lives of those young children slaughtered by King Herod. In Valencia, this day is celebrated with people throwing flour at each other.

Oh, and on New Year’s Eve, it’s customary for Spanish to wear red underwear and there’s even a race of people wearing only that in La Font Figuera. People of all ages participate in it.

15. Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, it’s said that the shepherds were playing ganna when they heard about Jesus’s birth. Of course, despite Christmas being about “Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men,” this sport is anything but peaceful.

Ethiopians celebrate Christmas by playing a game called ganna on Christmas Eve. This stems from the tradition of shepherds playing it when they first heard of the birth of Jesus. However, this ball and stick game is anything but peaceful. The balls are made from olive wood or leather which can easily injure a player. And because there’s no rules on the field sizes, the goals are sometimes so far apart that neither team scores by nightfall on Christmas Eve.

16. Germany

How would you like to hear that every year on Christmas? Apparently, Christmas isn’t much a “Silent Night,” in Bavaria.

While the glass pickle tradition in which a child who finds it gets an extra present may be mere rumor (it’s actually American), the tradition of the Bavarian Highlanders firing handheld mortars into air every year in traditional dress isn’t.

Yes, these are straw devils from Bavaria. And yes, they look pretty creepy.

Also, in Bavaria around Christmastime, a group of people dress up as “straw devils” and run through the city of Bischofswiesen scaring the inhabitants.

In some German communities, during the celebrations, a fair haired girl would be anointed as, “Christ Child” in which she’d wear a crown of candles and visit nearby houses with a basket of presents.

And in most of Germany, kids leave their shoes outside their bedrooms for Saint Nicholas on December 5. In the morning, if they’ve been good, they’ll find a tree branch covered with sweets. If not, they’ll only find a branch, and we know what that’s going to be used for.

17. Greece

According to Greek folklore, subterranean goblins called Kallikantzaroi surface once every during the 12 days of Christmas and spend the rest of the year underground sawing the World Tree so that it would collapse and the Earth along with it. Yet, just as they’re about to make the final cuts, Christmas comes along causing them to forget about their mission so they decide to terrorize humanity. Yet, after the Christmas season, they find that the tree has healed itself and they have to start their sinister work all over again.

In northern Greece, there’s a tradition in which men get dressed in animal carcasses and carry swords, sing Christmas carols, and gather small gifts from the homes they visited. And if two different groups meet, they start a “war” until one of them surrenders.

18. Former Yugoslavia

2 weeks prior to Christmas, it’s become a tradition in the former Yugoslavia for children to sneak up to their mother and tie her feet to a chair. Then they dance and sing, “Mother’s Day, Mother’s Day, what will you pay to get away?” She then gives them presents yet even that’s not enough to satisfy their materialistic appetites. So the next week they do the same thing to their father.

19. European Alpine Region

Man, I wonder if all these guys dressing up as the Krampus have something to do with the Furry fandom. Then again, why haven’t I heard of this tradition from The Sound of Music?

Now I’ve written quite a bit about the Krampus in my series on mythological creatures, which is part of a Christmas tradition in parts of Germany, Austria, and Hungary. Now while we have Santa who delivers presents to good little boys and girls, it’s the Krampus who handles the bad kids, who looks like an evil creature from a 1980s fantasy film. Now his job is to wreak general havoc and dish out well-deserved punishments to the bad little children of the world. Carrying a large wicker basket on his back, similar to Santa’s sack, he kidnaps the naughtiest children and sends them straight to Hell. With less naughty kids, he simply whips them. Still, though of pagan origin, he’s been part of the Alpine Christmas tradition at least since 1600 with Krampus festivals going on since the 1800s. And now his popularity is spreading across the major US cities as an excuse to wear Krampus costumes and through bacchanal parties. Not to mention, there’s a Krampusnacht in early December in which some men dress as this demonic walking carpet, get drunk, and parade around town.

They also have a female Krampus called Perchta and when she gets her hands on naughty children, she’s said to rip open their abdomens, pull out their guts, and fill them with straw. Sweet dreams, children!

20. Switzerland

In Samnaun, Switzerland, you have ClauWau or the Santa Claus World Championships where red suited people gather from around the world to compete in Christmas themed contests. Though it’s officially to see who’s the best Santa team, the laughs are the real goal in this competition.

Switzerland is home to two crazy Christmas traditions in two towns that might as well put places like the Netherlands, Japan, Finland, the Alps, and Catalonia to shame. First, the little town of Samnaun is home to what’s known as the Santa Claus World Championships or ClauWau. Here, teams from all over the world dressed in their bright red and white Santa suits meet at a local ski resort to compete in Christmas themed contests. These events consists of relay races, a wooden rocking horse obstacle course, a gingerbread decorating contest, a chimney climbing contest where St. Nicks throw bags of toys over their backs and race to ring the bell at the top of the chimney, and more, all with the goal of crowning the best Santa team. Of course, at this holly-jolly event, gaining some holiday inspired laughs is the real goal here.

On December 5th, the Swiss town of Kussnacht has Klausjagan, or “Chasing of the Claus,” which is a 2 hour festival of villagers chasing Santa Claus with 8 foot whips as well as having locals dressed in giant illuminated stained glass bishop hats in a procession. Also have people loudly blasting cowbells, instruments, and horns.

In another Swiss town called Kussnacht, an age old pagan celebration to ward off evil spirits has evolved into the tradition of Klausjagan, translating into, “chasing the Klaus.” This 2 hour festival begins on December 5th and celebrated as Saint Nicholas Day with villagers proceeding by cracking 8ft long whips all with the intention of harassing Santa Claus. And I’m not making this up. Afterwards, there’s a procession of 200 locals dressed in giant illuminated stained glass bishop hats in an ogle of 200,000. And the festival concludes with a march of over 1,000 locals loudly blasting cowbells, instruments, and horns. Sure it may make sense as a ritual to ward off evil spirits, but directing the focus on Santa Claus since Christianization is just plain weird. Then again, merging Christian theology with old pagan rituals is how many of these traditions were created in the first place.

21. Italy

Every Epiphany Eve, the witch La Befana goes to houses where she drops gifts for the children in Italy. Of course, despite looking like an old hag, she’s said to be a very nice lady.

In addition to Santa Claus, Italian children also have another Christmas gift giver named La Befana who’s an old haggard witch on a broom, bestowing gifts to good Italian kids on the eve of Epiphany January 5. And like Santa Claus, she brings coal to the bad kids too as well as goes down chimneys. Like many Christmas rituals and despite looking like a Halloween caricature, La Befana was once a pagan figure of a woman on a pyre to symbolize death and rebirth. She was recreated in the 13th century with Christianity in mind with an established legend as well. In it, she’s said to have turned down an invite from the Three Wise Men to visit Baby Jesus in the manger. Wracked with guilt and regret, she now travels the world on the eve to deliver presents in order to make up for the mistake. Yet, I’m sure that only Italy got the memo. Then again, there’s a similar figure named Babouschka in Russia.

Also, Italians don’t have Christmas trees, but use small wooden pyramids covered in fruit instead.

22. Ireland

In Ireland, it’s a tradition to leave mince pies and a bottle of Guinness for Santa Claus.

The Irish also have a strange tradition of men caroling in straw costumes and carrying dead wrens on sticks.

23. Mexico

In Oaxacca, they have Night of the Radishes on December 23, in which artisans carve oversized radish art to compete in the local contest.

In the region of Oaxaca has a Christmas tradition known as La Noche de Rabanos on December 23 or “Night of the Radishes,” which has been going on for over 116 years. This was started by 16th century Spanish Missionaries who decided to incorporate the local native carving practices into the conversion. This tradition involves a surreal arts festival in which artisans compete by carving oversized root festivals with cash prizes for the best radish sculpture. Today this contests attracts a hundred annual competitors as well as thousands of tourists.

Oaxaca is also a place where the Christmas festivities begin with a parade with people walking down the lantern-lit streets, and knocking on every door to re-enact Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter. Then they break ceramic plates near the cathedral to signify the year’s end.

Mexico is also the native range of the Poinsettia which is the standard flower for Christmas. This became incorporated in the US traditions around the time of the Mexican War.

Mexico is also the native range for the poinsettia and the reason why it’s a Christmas tradition in the United States since the Mexican War. According to local legend, a poverty-stricken brother and sister left a bouquet of weedy branches as a gift to the Christ Child at their church. Other children laughed at their meager offering a cluster of red star shaped flowers began to bloom from the branches and they became known as Flores de Noche Buena or “Flowers of the Holy Night,” and would be named after US Ambassador to Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett.

24. Norway

Norway’s Christmas seems to be regarded share some parallels with Halloween, such as a night when evil spirits taunt the living. It’s believed in Norway that on Christmas, witches come out searching for brooms to steal from hapless citizens before flying off into the cold, dark night. Thus, before Christmas, it was said that Norwegian women would hide all the household brooms and mops while the men fire guns outside to scare away the evil entities. Not to mention, it’s said that some Norwegians engage in Julebukking or “Christmas-goating” where they dress up in goat masks while visiting people. Let’s just say that Christmas in Norway is anything but silent night if you ask me. And you thought that country was just known for Lutefisk.

25. North Korea

Sure North Korea is an atheistic and communist state as mandated in which most of the residents don’t have access to electricity. Yet, the state has its own way of celebrating the Christmas season-by threatening to declare war on South Korea whenever it erects a Christmas tree near the border. Of course, North Korea said that the illuminated Christmas tree is “propaganda” that might convince people on the North Korean border that South Korea may be a better place (it is).

26. South Africa

A common Christmas dish in this country is deep fried Emperor Moth caterpillar. Doesn’t exactly look like a gourmet treat but maybe it tastes delicious.

Children are also told about the story of Danny, a young boy who angered his grandmother by eating the cookies left for Santa. She killed him in a rage and he’s said to haunt homes at Christmas.

27. Greenland

A traditional Christmas dish in this area is Kiviaq, which is better explained by one BBC commentator quoted from the Huffington Post:

“The delicacy is created by first preparing a seal skin: all the meat is removed and only a thick layer of fat remains. The skin is then sewn into a bag shape, which is stuffed with 300-500 little auk birds. Once full and airtight, the skin is sewn up and seal fat is smeared over all over the join, which acts as a repellent to flies. The seal skin is then left under a pile of rocks to ferment for a minimum of three months to a maximum of 18 months.”

Disgusting.

28. Iceland

Iceland has a Yule Cat who’s not very nice and is said to devour lazy children without clothes for Christmas. You can see why Icelanders work so hard.

While Italy has La Befana and Catalonia has Cago Tio, Iceland has Jólakötturinn the Yule or Christmas Cat. However, he’s not a nice cat and could possibly eat you. In many Icelandic families, those who finished all their work on time receive new clothes on Christmas, slackers didn’t (though this might be a threat). So to encourage kids to work hard, parents tell their kids that Jólakötturinn can distinguish lazy children by the fact they don’t have at least one new item of clothing for Christmas. And these children would be sacrificed to him. You can see why Icelanders put in more overtime hours than most Europeans.

Here is a chart on the 13 Yule Lads and their parents. Each of them has a name in which they’re best known for doing. But, let’s just say they really mellowed with the coming of Santa Claus.

Iceland also has a group of men called the Jólasveinar or Yule Lads who are Icelandic trolls and used to steal things and cause trouble around Christmastime. And like the Yule Cat, were used to scare the kiddies straight. Yet, after the introduction of Santa Claus in the 20th century, these guys have soon mellowed to be nice enough to leave gifts in kids’ shoes. And the gift giving lasts for 13 days straight because there are 13 Jólasveinar, each with their own distinct personality, which is from December 12-24. Yet, it’s said their mom isn’t so nice and is said to stew naughty kids. Oh, and their names are Spoon Licker, Bowl Licker, Door Slammer, Sausage Swiper, Door Sniffer, Window Peeper, Meat Hook and Candle Beggar, just as an example. And it’s said that bad kids end up with a bunch of potatoes which I wouldn’t mind to tell the truth.

29. Latvia

While Mummering is done in a lot of European countries and Newfoundland, it’s very prominent in Latvia. Of course, it’s basically a mix between Christmas caroling and trick or treating.

In Latvia, Christmastime is still associated with pagan European roots as well as often celebrated from December 22nd to the 25th. Now the Latvian Christmas traditions bear a lot of similarities to Halloween in which people dress up as mummers wearing some kind of mask associated with dead animals and go from house to house playing music and bestowing blessings on the places they visited. In return, they’re given food to eat. In a way, this kind of ritual is like a cross between Christmas caroling and Halloween trick-or-treating. Mummering is also done in Newfoundland and other places as well.

30. Iraq

Iraq has only a few Christians but they have an unusual Christmas ceremony with lighting a bonfire from dried thorns outside their houses. The future of the family’s house depends on how the fire burns. If the thorns are reduced to ashes, then the family would have good fortune. And when fire becomes ashes, everyone jumps in to make a wish. Of course, this tradition may be on the decline due to the rise of ISIS and the fact that lighting fire may make Christians easier targets around the holidays. So sad.

31. Estonia

Like the Finns, the Estonians celebrate Christmas with a visit to the local sauna where they usually bathe nude on Christmas Eve. Basically this entails bonding with your folks in a hot room while drinking vodka, sharing stories, and relaxing. Of course, depending on point of view, this could be either a great alternative to the norm or downright horrifying (the latter in my case).

32. Wales

In Wales, we have Mari Lwyd, which is a festival in which a chosen member of the community parades around the street in a dead horse’s skull. Must be traumatizing to the Welsh kiddies.

Well, Mari Lwyd is more of an after Christmas tradition as well as New Year’s but it’s very crazy nevertheless. Each year in some Welsh villages, Christmas caroling takes a twisted turn when a villager is selected to perform Mari Lwyd, which consists of parading around the streets in a decorated mare’s skull (sometimes with a spring loaded jaw to snap at people) fashioned to a wooden pole covered by a white sheet, while villagers sing. Bet you wouldn’t see that in How Green Was My Valley.

33. Australia

While Europe and North America tend to associate Christmas with snow, Australia basically associates the holiday with volleyball, beach parties, “Christmas Bush,” and surfing Santas. After all Christmas is a summer holiday for them.

While people in Europe and North America are dreaming of a white Christmas, that dream is basically impossible in Southern Hemisphere nations like Australia who celebrate Christmas in the summer where temperatures are between 68 to 84 degrees Fahrenheit. So images of Santa pulling up a surfboard are a common sight down under. And instead of decorating a fir or pine tree, they use a native plant known as “Christmas Bush.” Oh, and for Australians, Christmas is a time for picnics, beach parties, swimming, and volleyball, you know, traditions most Americans would associate with the 4th of July.

34. Guatemala

On December 7, Guatemala kicks of the Christmas season with La Quema del Diablo where people sweep their homes and gather trash in a big pile where the burn it with Satan in effigy.

Around December 7, Guatemalans celebrate a holiday known as La Quema del Diablo where they sweep their homes and collect trash from around their property creating a massive heap of refuse on the street. The pile is crowned with a Satan effigy and set ablaze and the Christmas season can begin. No, this isn’t how “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” got started, it’s actually a cleansing ritual said to expunge evil spirits and negative energy from upcoming festivities. Seems similar to the celebration relating to the Aztec goddess Tochi sans the human sacrificing part, of course.

35. Portugal

During Christmas dinner, it’s not unusual for Portuguese families to set extra places at their tables for deceased relatives. It’s thought the practice will ensure the household good fortune.

36. Scotland

While Christmas is treated as a time of quiet reflection with family and friends, their New Year’s Eve is a loud, joyous occasion celebrating the birth of the New Year called Hogamanay. An important tradition relating to New Year’s is called First-Footing. Once midnight sets in, all eyes await the arrival of the year’s first visitor who’s said to be the predictor of good fortune in the year ahead. Tall, dark handsome men like Hugh Jackman, Gregory Peck, and Jon Hamm are preferred while women and blondes are deemed unlucky. It’s also supposed to bring an array of gifts like coins (symbolizing fortune), bread (food), and whiskey (good cheer).

Scotland also has a festival known as Up Helly Aa dating from the 1800s in which young men would mischievously drag flaming barrels of tar into the streets. Nowadays, after the fiery parade, participants gather and toss their torches into replica Viking long ship. Then they hold private parties in flamboyant costumes. This celebration signals the end of the Christmas season.

37. Denmark

On Christmas Eve, Danish families leave rice pudding or porridge to make sure the devilish elf Nisse is nice to them. It’s said if they don’t then he may steal presents before the kiddies wake up on Christmas morning.

38. Poland

In some parts of Poland, it’s still tradition for people to make their own elaborate nativity scenes for Christmas with a backdrop of local architecture. Called szopka, these scenes are painstakingly created from materials like cardboard, plastic, and tin foil. This tradition began by local craftsmen to earn extra money on Christmas. In Krakow, there’s even a szopka competition on the first Thursday in December.

39. Belgium

In Belgium, they have two Santas who come around for Saint Nicholas Day which is either Saint Nicholas or Pere Noel depending on what language you speak but they leave either gifts or sticks depending how good the kiddies are. However, they do things a little differently. For instance, while Saint Nicholas goes on a preliminary visit to know how good the kiddies are, Pere Noel just asks Pere Fouettard, whoever he is.

40. Brazil

In Brazil, Santa Claus or they call him Papai Noel, flies down from Greenland where he drops his heavy Santa attire and opts for sleek vacation like duds. Well, what do you expect from a guy carrying a sack of toys in 90 degree heat?

41. Former Soviet Union

Instead of Santa Claus, Eastern Europe has a guy named Ded Moroz who shares many of the big guy in the red suit’s characteristics. Of course, in his earliest tales, he’s a cruel sorcerer who froze people and kidnapped children. And the parents had to give presents to him to get their kids back.

While Ded Moroz “Father Frost” has been present in Russian folklore since the 17th century, he would be reinvented by the Communists as a symbol for the New Year along with “Snow Maiden” and “New Year Boy.” Originally considered an enemy by the Communist regime, Ded Moroz was said to be an ally of the “priests and boyars” Ded Moroz was quickly adopted as New Year symbol or the Soviet replacement Christmas since the communists either hated Christmas’ religious significance or how it’s embroiled in the reckless consumerism and commercialization in the United States. But he was in a lot of Soviet style nativity scenes. Now after the fall of the Soviet Union, Ded Moroz is now a Christian Symbol once more as well as relatively popular.

42. United States

The United States isn’t above holding strange Christmas traditions either as I’ll list the following that covers certain areas:

If my relatives sent me a Christmas card like this, I would wonder what the hell was wrong with them. Seriously, this is just wrong on so many levels.

Now the state of Arizona is known for right wing politics and a distaste for gun control. The Scottsville Gun Club in Scottsdale, Arizona has an event called “Santa and Machine Guns” which allows families (even those with children and babies) take their pick of weaponry from a large arsenal of pistols, shotguns, AK-47s, grenade launchers, and machine guns and use them as props in a cozy Christmas photo op with Santa Claus. Elves give gun safety instructions to the uninitiated before the picture is taken and the pictures are put on Christmas cards to send to families (one of them I put in a Christmas card post last year). Disturbingly enough (especially in the wake of Newtown), it’s a very popular event attracting hundreds lining up.

From the 16th to 19th centuries in the United States, Britain, and Canada, it wasn’t uncommon to play snap dragon around the Christmas season which people tried snatching raisins out of a bowl of burning brandy in which people would pop into the mouth to extinguish them. Successful players would be seen with their hands and mouths dripping with blue flames. It has died out for obvious reasons regarding fire safety.

Another odd US Christmas tradition that has really taken off is SantaCon, which is a time when people dress up as Santa, elves, and reindeer, sing Christmas songs, and go on bar crawls.

Since 1994, the Cacophony Society in San Francisco has hosted the annual SantaCon. Originally created as a thinking man’s demonstration as a lighthearted protests on Christmas consumerism and commercialism, it’s become a worldwide Christmas convention where thousands of followers dress up as Santa Claus, elf, or reindeer and travel around a given city in massive packs bursting into Christmas songs, stopping at local bars, and stunning passersby. It’s also evolved into an elaborate party and drinking event with widespread rowdiness and public drunkenness like on Saint Patrick’s Day. Lately, it’s become a worldwide phenomenon and sometimes called, “The Running of the Santas.”

This is just a primer on Festivus for those unfamiliar with it. Of course, this was a holiday invented by a father of one of the Seinfeld writers as a parody for Christmas.

And let’s not forget the old tradition of Festivus, a parody Christmas tradition popularized by Seinfeld that takes place on December 23rd. Ironically, this tradition was started by the father of one of the show’s writers. Now this includes a Festivus dinner that includes, an unadorned Festivus pole. It includes practices with the “Airing of Grievances” with each person lashing out words at others and the world about how they’ve been disappointed this year as well as the “Feats of Strength” with the head of household selecting a person at the Festivus celebration and challenging them to wrestling match. And it’s said that Festivus isn’t over until the household head is pinned. Then there’s the notion of “Festivus Miracles” which pertain to easily explainable events. Since the 1997 Seinfeld episode, “The Strike,” it’s gained a widespread adoption.

People in Southern Louisiana are known to have massive bonfires to light up the Mississippi River so that the French Papa Noel can find their houses.

In New York since 1966, TV station WPIX basically broadcasts of a Yule log burning for 24 hours on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

For more: http://www.whychristmas.com/cultures/

In These United States: Part 5 – South Dakota to Wyoming

Posted by historymaniacmegan on August 16, 2014

Of course, this is my final post pertaining to these United States because we’re down to the final ten. Of course, for those upset at me for not including Puerto Rico and Washington D. C., they would probably have to be under a post of US Territories and Districts which I’m not willing to do right now mostly because I can’t really find many celebrities from Guam or American Samoa. In this selection, I’ll cover the states from South Dakota to Wyoming in this final installment. First, we have South Dakota, home to Mount Rushmore and a lot nasty clashes with Indians including the Wounded Knee Massacre. Second, on to Tennessee best known for the Grand ole Opry in Nashville and Graceland in Memphis as well as the site of the Scopes Monkey Trial and the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination. Third, comes the large state of Texas where everything’s bigger they say as well as known for their cowboy culture, the Alamo, and executing more convicts than any other state in America. After that, we have Utah famous for a lot of natural wonders and Mormons. Well, mostly Mormons to put it mildly. Then there’s Vermont, known for the Green Mountains, Ben & Jerry, and a lot of ski resorts. Next, it’s on to Virginia home to a lot of America’s Founding Fathers, presidential mansions, a lot of Civil War battlefields, Williamsburg, and where my sister goes to college. After that, we go to Washington best known for the Space Needle, Grand Coolie Dam, Starbucks, Microsoft, Mt. Saint Helens, grunge music, and Mount Rainier. Then we have West Virginia the site of John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry that left his body a moldering in his grave as well as for its notorious coal industry that has led to mountaintop removal, air and water pollution, mining disasters, and other things turn this state into a hazardous environmental disaster area. Next, it’s on to Wisconsin famous for its dairy industry and being the birthplace of American Beer as well as home to that one troublesome senator. And no, I don’t mean Russ Feingold over campaign financing. In fact, it’s Joe McCarthy himself who led a mass witch hunt on alleged Communists and has a mass 1950s Red Scare that bears his name. Finally, it’s off to Wyoming, a sparsely populated state that’s home to one of America’s most famous National Parks, Yellowstone.

41. South Dakota

South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore is one of America’s most iconic National sites. However, while most Americans see Guzton Borglum’s work as the main reason they go there, it’s not without its share of controversy. Rather a lot of members of the Lakota Sioux tribe view the idea of carving four presidents into a sacred site of theirs as desecration a holy shrine.

Abbreviation: SD
Nickname: “Coyote State,” “Mount Rushmore State”
Capital: Pierre
Largest City: Sioux Falls
Entered Union: November 2, 1889
Bird: Chinese Ring-Necked Pheasant
Flower: Pasqueflower
Tree: Black Hills Spruce

Celebrities: Bob Barker, Black Elk, Tom Brokaw, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Tom Daschle, Mary Hart, George McGovern, January Jones, Mary GrandPre, Russell Means, Red Cloud, Hubert H. Humphrey, Ernest O. Lawrence, Gary Owens, Pat O’Brien, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane

Sports Teams: South Dakota Coyotes (NCAA Div. I).

Indian Tribes: Mound builders, Arikara, Yankton Sioux, Dakota, Mandan, and Sioux. Inhabited for several thousand years at least.

Best Known Moments: Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark Expedition, Indian Wars, Ghost Dance, Wounded Knee Massacre, and others.

Often Associated With: Mount Rushmore, coyotes, North by Northwest, Rocky Mountains, Plains Indians, Missouri River, mountains, mining, gold rushes, Lutherans, Scandinavians, Rapid City, Black Hills, Deadwood, cowboys, Badlands National Park, Keystone, Harney Peak, Hot Springs, Wind Cave, Deadwood, Jewel Cave, Great Lakes of South Dakota, Reptile Gardens, Chapel in the Hills, Bear Country USA, Great Plains Zoo, coyotes, cattle ranching, farming, Wounded Knee

42. Tennessee

Tennessee is home to the Sun Records Studio in Memphs which was the place where a lot of very influential 1950s musicians that would lay the foundations of late 20th century rock n’ roll. Notable artists include Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Abbreviation: TN
Nickname: “Volunteer State”
Capital: Nashville
Largest City: Memphis
Entered Union: June 1, 1796
Bird: Mockingbird
Flower: Iris
Tree: Tulip

Celebrities: Andrew Jackson, Davy Crockett, Andrew Johnson, Elvis Presley, Al Gore, Michael Oher, Kenney Chesney, David Farragut, Aretha Franklin, Dolly Parton, Alex Haley, Minnie Pearl, James Knox Polk, Wilma Rudolph, Dinah Shore, Bessie Smith, Justin Timberlake, Fred Thompson, Tina Turner, Alvin York, James Agee, Roy Acuff, Duane and Greg Allman, Chet Atkins, Kathy Bates, Bill Belichick, Pat Boone, Hattie Carraway, June Carter Cash, Roseanne Cash, John Cullum, Lester Flatt, Ric Flair, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Morgan Freeman, Sam Houston, Samuel L. Jackson, Delbert Mann, Cormac McCarthy, Michael McDonald, Patricia Neal, Bettie Page, Chris Parnell, Carl Perkins, Leonidas Polk, Pat Robertson, Sequoyah, Cybill Shepherd, Lynn Swann, Quentin Tarantino, Usher, Sonny Boy Williamson, Reese Witherspoon

Sports Teams: Tennessee Titans (NFL), Memphis Grizzlies (NBA), Nashville Predators (NHL), and Tennessee Volunteers (NCAA Div. I)

Indian Tribes: Mississippian culture later Creek, Yuchi, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee. Kicked out due to 1830s Indian Removal. May have been inhabited 20,000 years ago.

Best Known Moments: Northwest Territory, American Revolution, Trail of Tears, saw a lot of Civil War Battles like Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga, Sultana disaster and Great Train Wreck of 1918, Scopes Trial, TVA, a major hot spot for the Civil Rights Movement and saw the King Assassination, and others.

Often Associated With: Grand Ole Opry, Dollywood, Nashville, Elvis, Graceland, the Civil Rights Movement, country music, Great Smoky Mountains, poverty, heartless state government, Southern Unionists, rednecks, Appalachia, moonshiners, creationism vs. evolution controversies, Bible Belt, Blue Ridge Mountains, Chattanooga, Shiloh, Trail of Tears, Christian jerkasses, Oak Ridge, Cumberland Gap, mosque “controversies,” racism, Knoxville, Lookout Mountain, Murfeesboro, blues, FedEx, AutoZone, loose gun laws, NASCAR racing, Mississippi River, rock n’ roll, conservatism, Sergeant York, The Blindside, bluegrass, Big South Fork, cotton, slavery, Tennessee River, TVA, Shiloh, Ruby Falls, Sweetwater, Lost Sea, Columbia, The Hermitage, Belle Meade Plantation, Parthenon replica, Pigeon Forge, Henning, Casey Jones Village, Bristol Motor Speedway, “The Tennessee Waltz,” Iroquois Steeplechase, Ryman Auditorium, Sun Records

43. Texas

“Remember the Alamo” is an often repeated catch phrase in Texas legend. Yet, nevertheless, this San Antonio icon has gone down in history as the place where Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie along with 600 Texans met their deaths to the Mexican Army after a 13 day siege during the Texas Revolution. Of course, the reason why we know so much about the Alamo in the US is that Texas is a big influential market in the American textbook trade so most textbook companies try to curry favor to them in this fashion.

Abbreviation: TX
Nickname: “Lone Star State”
Capital: Austin
Largest City: Houston
Entered Union: December 29, 1845
Bird: Mockingbird
Flower: Bluebonnet
Tree: Pecan

Celebrities: LBJ, Bill Moyers, Owen and Luke Wilson, George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, Willie Nelson, Kinky Friedman, Lance Armstrong, Sam Houston, Stephen F. Austin, Carol Burnett, James Bowie, Howard Hughes, Tommy Lee Jones, Janis Joplin, Beyonce, Matthew McConaughey, Ross Perot, Katherine Ann Porter, Dan Rather, Sandra Day O’Connor, Joan Crawford, Babe Zaharis, Sissy Spacek, George Strait, Jesse Chisolm, John Bell Hood, Doris Miller, Chester Nimitz, Audie Murphy, Oliver North, Jeb Bush, Laura Bush, Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, Ima Hogg, Barbara Jordan, W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, Ken Starr, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Melinda Gates, Lady Bird Johnson, Cyd Charisse, Bebe Daniels, Ginger Rogers, Tila Tequila, F. Murray Abraham, Dana Andrews, Wes Anderson, Tex Avery, Don Bluth, Gary Busey, Kat Capshaw, Thomas Haden Church, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Larry Hagman, Farrah Fawcett, Woody Harrelson, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jamie Foxx, Greer Garson, Melora Hardin, Randy and Dennis Quaid, Debbie Reynolds, Bill Paxton, Ethan Hawke, Ted Healy, Katherine Helmond, Sherman Helmsley, Michelle Rodriguez, Brent Spiner, Patrick Swayze, Sharon Tate, Eva Longoria, Terrence Malick, Rip Torn, Steve Martin, Forrest Whittaker, Renee Zellweger, Tom Mix, Pola Negri, Chuck Norris, Lee Pace, Jim Parsons, Aaron Spelling, King Vidor, Isaiah Washington, Peter Weller, JoBeth Williams, Dooley Wilson, Robin Wright, Wyatt Cenac, Bill Hicks, Gene Autry, Buddy Holly, T-Bone Burnett, Waylon Jennings, Kelly Clarkson, Scott Joplin, Jimmy Dean, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Mathis, Steve Earle, Meat Loaf, Roy Orbison, Kenny Rogers, Woody Guthrie, Jessica Simpson, Stephen Stills, Don Henley, Usher, Vanilla Ice, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Norah Jones, Edgar Winter, Michael Nesmith, Phil Ochs, Buck Owens, Billy Preston, Tex Ritter, Boz Scaggs, Barry White, Roger Clemens, Robert Griffin III, Casey Hampton, Aaron Ross, Vince Young, Tara Lipinski, Michael Dell, Carly Fiorina, Charles Goodnight, Bette Nesmith Graham, T. Boone Pickens, Roy Bean, Patricia Highsmith, Walter Cronkite, Sam Donaldson, Molly Ivins, Jim Lehrer, Stone Phillips, Gail Borden, Jack Kilby, Rick Husband, Wiley Post, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, Mark David Chapman, John Wesley Hardin, John Hinckley Jr., Jack Ruby, Belle Starr, Karen Silkwood, Abraham Zapruder, ZZ Top

Sports Teams: Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans (NFL), Dallas Mavericks, San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets (NBA), Texas Rangers and Houston Astros (MLB), Dallas Stars (NHL), Baylor Bears, Texas Longhorns, TCU Horned Frogs, Texas Tech Red Raiders, Texas A&M Aggies, Houston Cougars, and SMU Mustangs (NCAA Div. I)

Indian Tribes: Coahuiltecan, Karankawa, Caddo, Jumano, Apache, Wichita, Comanche, Choctaw, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Alabama, Coushatta, Hasinai, Jumano, Cherokee, and Tonkawa. May have been inhabited for at least 12,000 years.

Best Known Moments: War of Texas Independence, Mexican American War, oil boom, Dust Bowl, Kennedy assassination, and others.

Often Associated With: conservatism, executions, cowboys, rednecks, big hair, rednecks, undocumented immigrants, Houston, Dallas, Friday Night Lights, country music, Mexicans, poverty, oppressive law enforcement, chili, the Alamo, San Antonio, El Paso, Baptists, Bible Belt, televangelists, racism, high school football, Dallas, oil, natural gas, Corpus Christi, slavery, cattle ranching, Longhorns, Texas accents, Cowboys fans, suburbs, farming, Fort Worth, megachurches, Spanish Missions, Dell, desert, cacti, multiculturalism, slavery, cotton, “Remember the Alamo,” drought, wildfires, millionaires in cowboy hats and boots, Rio Grande, global warming denial, “Don’t Mess with Texas,” loose gun laws, jerkass school boards, NASCAR racing, “Everything is Bigger in Texas,” egotistical political idiots, weirdos, crime, vultures, coyotes, Johnson Space Center, governors under indictment, Six Flags over Texas, Bernie, San Antonio Missions, Ft. Worth Zoo, Padre Island, Lubbock, Sweetwater, Amarillo, Johnson City, destructive fertilizer plant explosions, San Jacinto, Arlington, prairie, grassland, Big Bend, Sam Rayburn Reservoir, Palo Duro Canyon, Steinhagen Reservoir, Austin City Limits, cattle skulls, Galveston, gushing oil wells, high incarceration, drought, Big oil companies, breakfast burrito, heart attack inducing food

44. Utah

Utah’s most famous national Park is none other than Zion with its most prominent feature 15 mile long Zion Canyon. Since it lies at the junction of the Mojave Desert, Colorado Plateau, the park’s unique geography provides for lovely scenery and numerous plant and animal diversity in its four life zones.

Abbreviation: UT
Nickname: “Beehive State”
Capital: Salt Lake City
Largest City: Same
Entered Union: January 4, 1896
Bird: Sea Gull
Flower: Sego Lily
Tree: Blue Spruce, Quaking Aspen

Celebrities: Brigham Young, George W. Romney, the Osmonds, Maude Adams, Butch Cassidy, Philo T. Farnsworth, J. Willard Marriot, Loretta Young, Hal Asby, Roseanne Barr, Don Bluth, Orrin Hatch, Joe Hill, Ken Jennings, Jewel (Kilcher), Karl Rove, James Woods, Orson Scott Card, Elizabeth Smart, Wallace Stegner

Sports Teams: Utah Jazz (NBA), BYU Cougars, Utah State Aggies, and Utah Utes (NCAA Div. I)

Indian Tribes: Ute, Gosiute, Southern Paiute, Navajo, Anasazi, Fremont, and Shosone.

Best Known Moments: Mexican-American War, Mormon settlement, saw completion of Transcontinental Railroad, Indian Wars, and others.

Often Associated With: Great Salt Lake, Zion National Park, Mormons, Salt Lake City, prudes, polygamous communities, Bryce Canyon, Rainbow Bridge, Arches, Flaming Gorge, whiteness, conservatism, skiing, wilderness, Rocky Mountains, creepy clean cut people, Book of Mormon, snow, Sundance Film Festival, Utah Olympic Park, Continental Divide, Lake Powell, Capitol Reef, Timpanogos Cave, Natural Bridges, Temple Square

45. Vermont

Vermont’s Hildene was a summer home for Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert Todd which he had built by 1905 in Manchester. His descendents would occupy this huge 412 acre estate until 1975. Yet, restoration has begun in 1978 and it has become a site to see. For New England brides who have a love for Honest Abe and a large wedding budget, this is the wedding venue for you.

Abbreviation: VT
Nickname: “Green Mountain State”
Capital: Montpelier
Largest City: Burlington
Entered Union: March 4, 1791
Bird: Hermit Thrush
Flower: Red Clover
Tree: Sugar Maple

Celebrities: Chester A. Arthur, Ethan Allen, John Dewey, Howard Dean, Stephen A. Douglas, James Fisk, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Calvin Coolidge, Pearl S. Buck, Ted Bundy, John Deere, George Dewey, Phineas Gage, Felicity Huffman, John Irving, Bob Keeshan, Melissa Leo, Sinclair Lewis, Elisha Otis, Annie Proulx, Norman Rockwell, Rudy Vallee, Henry Wells, Jody Williams, Bill W., Robert Todd Lincoln

Sports Teams: UVM Catamounts (NCAA Div. I)

Indian Tribes: Abenaki and Mahican. May have been inhabited 10,000 years ago.

Best Known Moments: French and Indian War, the capture of Fort Ticonderoga during the American Revolution, and others.

Often Associated With: hippies, dairy, farming, liberals, hipsters, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Green Mountains, gorgeous scenery, New England, maple syrup, organic farming, tree huggers, fancy foods, King Arthur Flour, NASCAR racing, skiing, snow, whiteness, Burlington, Woodstock, Stowe, Manchester, Killington ski resort, Burke Mountain Ski Area, Bennington Battle Monument, Waterbury, Shelburne Farms, Proctor, ice fishing, Bolton Valley, Smuggler’s Notch, Mad River Glen, Stowe Mountain, Suicide Six, Mount Snow, Bromley, Magic Mountain Ski Area, Jay Peak, Sugarbrush, hiking, bears, wild turkey, hunting, Hildene

46. Virginia

Virginia’s Mount Vernon was George Washington’s plantation home. Though Washington didn’t become the estate’s sole owner till he was in his late twenties, he actually designed the mansion himself in the Palladian style in stages between 1758 to 1778. And yes, he was laying out plans during the American Revolution. Still, you thought Jefferson was the only president to design his own house did you?

Abbreviation: VA
Nickname: “Old Dominion”
Capital: Richmond
Largest City: Virginia Beach
Entered Union: June 25, 1788
Bird: Cardinal
Flower: Dogwood
Tree: Dogwood

Celebrities: George Washington, Pocahontas, John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Woodrow Wilson, William Henry Harrison, George Mason, Jerry Falwell, Arthur Ashe, Sandra Bullock, Richard E. Byrd, Henry Clay, Gabby Douglas, Katie Couric, Patrick Henry, Robert E. Lee, A. P. Hill, Merriwether Lewis and William Clark, George Rogers Clark, George Pickett, Edgar Allan Poe, John Randolph, Walter Reed, Pat Robertson, J. E. B. Stuart, Zachary Taylor, John Tyler, Booker T. Washington, L. Douglas Wilder, Ellen Glasgow, William Styron, Dave Matthews, Jason Mraz, the Carter Family, Missy Elliot, Pharrell Williams, V. C. Andrews, Stephen F. Austin, Nathaniel Bacon, Ronnie and Tiki Barber, Pat Benatar, Connie Britton, Chris Brown, Mika Brzezinski, Patsy Cline, Adrian Cronauer, Jimmy Dean, James Farrior, Roberta Flack, Ella Fitzgerald, David Grohl, Benjamin Harrison V, Richard Henry Lee, “Light Horse Harry” Lee, Sam Houston, Allen Iverson, Wayne LaPierre, Shirley MacLaine, Warren Beatty, John McCain, Heath Miller, Patton Oswalt, Chief Powhatan, Edmund Randolph, R. J. Reynolds, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Mark Ruffalo, Bob Saget, Rick Santorum, Ed Schultz, George C. Scott, Winfield Scott, Henry Thomas, Kate Smith, Margaret Sullavan, Mike Tomlin, Nat Turner, Michael and Marcus Vick, Gene Vincent, Maggie L. Walker, George Wythe, Dave Matthews Band

Sports Teams: Virginia Cavaliers, Virginia Tech Hokies, VCU Rams, VMI Keydets, Richmond Spiders, Virginia State Trojans, and George Mason Patriots (NCAA Div. I).

Indian Tribes: Cherokee, Susquehanna, Nottoway, and Merrihen. Upon the founding of Jamestown, there was a huge confederacy under Chief Powhatan.

Best Known Moments: Founding of Jamestown in 1607, Bacon’s Rebellion, one of the original 13 Colonies, saw a lot of action in the American Revolution, Nat Turner’s Rebellion, Richmond served as capital of the Confederacy, saw a lot of battles during the Civil War, Loving v. Virginia, and the Virginia Tech shooting.

Often Associated With: rich people, slavery, Southern hospitality, tobacco, plantations, presidential mansions, presidents sleeping with slaves, beaches, Confederate nostalgia, Arlington National Cemetery, Norfolk, Richmond, the Pentagon, a lot of celebrities from American history, birthplace of 8 presidents, Chesapeake Bay, Williamsburg, William & Mary, Virginia Tech, the Civil Rights Movement, intellectuals, Colonial America, Mount Vernon, Monticello, Blue Ridge Mountains, Appalachia, Montpelier, a lot of Founding Fathers, Charlottesville, Petersburg, Bull Run, Shenandoah, Appomattox Courthouse, Civil War reenactors, Yorktown, Alexandria, Fredericksburg, Potomac River, Fairfax

47. Washington

Washington’s Mt. Rainier is a massive 14, 411 ft high stratavolcano the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous 48 states in the US. Listed as a Decade Volcano and one of the most dangerous in the world which can produce potential lahars that would make any destruction caused by the 1980 eruption of Mt. Saint Helens seem rather mild by comparison.

Abbreviation: WA
Nickname: “Evergreen State”
Capital: Olympia
Largest City: Seattle
Entered Union: November 11, 1889
Bird: Willow Goldfinch
Flower: Western Rhododendron
Tree: Western Hemlock

Celebrities: Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Glenn Beck, Bing Crosby, Jimi Hendrix, Gary Larson, Edward R. Murrow, Hilary Swank, Adam West, Sherman Alexie, Bob Barker, Ted Bundy, Dyan Cannon, Orson Scott Card, Raymond Carver, Carol Channing, James Caviezel, Kurt Cobain, Judy Collins, Merce Cunningham, John Elway, Frances Farmer, Bryan Fuller, Kenny G, Melissa Harris-Perry, Burl Ives, Chuck Jones, Quincy Jones, Richard Karn, Hank Ketcham, Amanda Knox, Gypsy Rose Lee, Gary Locke, Kenny Loggins, Brandon Lee, Macklemore, Dave Matthews, Darren McGavin, Rose McGowan, Craig T. Nelson, Apolo Ohno, Robert Osbourne, Chuck Palahnuik, Chris Pratt, John Ratzenberger, Dan Savage, Chief Seattle, Tom Skerritt, Alex Smith, Rick Steves, Robert Stroud, Blair Underwood, Eddie Vedder, Brian Urlacher, Ann and Nancy Wilson, Robert Young

Sports Teams: Seattle Seahawks (NFL), Seattle Mariners (MLB), Washington Huskies, and Washington State Cougars (NCAA Div. I)

Indian Tribes: Clovis culture and later Nez Perce, Spokane, Yakima, Cayuse, Okanogan, Walla Walla, Chinook, Nisqually, Collville, Noosak, Callam, Makah, Quinault, and Puyallup. May have been inhabited as early as 11,000 years ago.

Best Known Moments: Lewis and Clark Expedition, part of Oregon Territory, site of many dam projects during the Great Depression, eruption of Mt. St. Helens, and violent WTO street protests.

Often Associated With: Grand Cooley Dam, Mt. Rainer, Mt. St. Helens, volcanoes, Cascade Range, sandlands, Starbucks, Space Needle, Asians, Fraiser, Seattle, Twilight, Tacoma, Spokane, grunge, Microsoft, hipsters, hippies, tree huggers, Vancouver, Northwest Indians, New Agers, multiculturalism, Puget Sound, violent WTO street protests, geographic confusion, pot, legalized euthanasia, evergreen trees, whale watching, Olympic National Park, stoners, intellectuals, weirdos, skiing, Amazon, totem poles

48. West Virginia

West Virginia’s most famous site is the Glade Creek Gristmill which was built in 1976 by combining parts of three other West Virginia Mills as well as serves as a replica of the original nearby Cooper’s Mill. It’s described as a living, working monument to the more than 500 mills that were once located throughout the state.

Abbreviation: WV
Nickname: “Mountain State”
Capital: Charleston
Largest City: Same
Entered Union: June 20, 1863
Bird: Cardinal
Flower: Big Rhododendron
Tree: Sugar Maple

Celebrities: Homer Hickam, Stonewall Jackson, Robert Byrd, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Brad Paisley, Walter Reuther, Chuck Yeager, Don Knotts, Jack Dempsey, Randy Moss, Ted Cassidy, John Corbett, Virginia Fox, Jennifer Garner, Chris Sarandon, Morgan Spurlock, Bill Withers, Frank Yankovic, Patrick Gass, Herbert Morrison, Booker T. Washington, Rick Santorum, John Forbes Nash, John Henry, Anna Jarvis, Nancy Hanks, Sid Hatfield, Mother Jones, Jessica Lynch, Lynndie England, Frank Buckles

Sports Teams: WVU Mountaineers and Marshall Thundering Herd (NCAA Div. I)

Indian Tribes: Sparsely populated and mainly used for hunting grounds though mound building culture and other tribes did reside like the Adena.

Best Known Moments: Part of Virginia, saw John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, split from Virginia to join the Union during the Civil War, and the Matewan strike.

Often Associated With: John Denver, rednecks, couch burnings, mountaintop removal, environmental destruction, water pollution, hillbillies, Harper’s Ferry, WVU, Southern Unionists, “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” racism, unions, Matewan, October Sky, coal mining, We Are Marshall, deadly mining disasters, Appalachia, poverty, Wheeling, Morgantown, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, trailer parks, chemical spills, future Superfund sites, Berkeley Springs, White Sulphur Springs, Greenbriar Resort, Seneca Rocks, New River Gorge, Monongahela National Forest, Charleston, Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, Williamstown, Mountain State Forest Festival, Elkins, railroads, Glade Creek Grist Mill, undrinkable water

49. Wisconsin

Wisconsin is well known for its dairy industry and leads the nation in cheese production. Thus, its no wonder that Green Bay Packers fans wear cheese hats for their team’s games or that they’re known as “cheeseheads.”

Abbreviation: WI
Nickname: “Badger State”
Capital: Madison
Largest City: Milwaukee
Entered Union: May 29, 1848
Bird: American Robin
Flower: Wood Violet
Tree: Sugar Maple

Celebrities: Joseph McCarthy, Robert La Follette Sr., Golda Meir, Paul Ryan, Russ Feingold, Don Ameche, Carrie Chapman Catt, Edna Ferber, Willem Defoe, Liberace, Georgia O’Keefe, Pat O’Brien (actor), Danica Patrick, Les Paul, Deke Slayton, Spencer Tracy, Orson Welles, Thornton Wilder, Frank Lloyd Wright, Tammy Baldwin, Ron Kovic, Ellen Raskin, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Arthur, Walter, and William Davidson, King C. Gillette, Chris Gardner, William S. Harley, Valentin Blatz, Frederick Miller, Frederick Pabst, Joseph Schlitz, Jack Carson, Brian Donlevy, Chris Farley, Howard Hawks, Harry Houdini, Fred MacMurray, Frederic March, Nicholas Ray, Gena Rowlands, Mark Ruffalo, Tony Shalhoub, Zack Snyder, Jane Kaczmarek, Frank Caliendo, Al Jarreau, Pee Wee King, Steve Miller, Stephen Ambrose, Franklin Jackson Turner, Billy Mitchell, Callista Gingrich, Reince Priebus, Frances Willard, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, Jim Lovell, Mike Webster, Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles J. Guiteau, Arthur Bremer, Ed Gein, Aldo Leopold

Sports Teams: Green Bay Packers (NFL), Milwaukee Brewers (MLB), Milwaukee Bucks (NBA), Marquette Golden Eagles, Wisconsin Badgers, and Milwaukee Panthers (NCAA Div. I).

Indian Tribes: Ojibwa, Menominee, Kickapoo, Sauk, Fox, Ioway, Ho-Chunk, and Potawatomi. May have been inhabited since the Ice Age.

Best Known Moments: Northwest Territory, Indian Wars, Robert La Follette’s progressive reforms, electing Joseph McCarthy, and union protests in 2011.

Often Associated With: Mississippi River, Great Lakes, Germans, Poles, Scandinavians, dairy, cheese, Cheeseheads, Packers fans, swing state politics, conservative anti-union governors, angry teachers and public workers, progressive governors who like direct primaries and consumer protection laws, “On Wisconsin,” badgers, That 70s Show, cows, alcoholic red-baiting senators during the 1950s, McCarthyism, unions, Ayn Rand worshipping congressmen, manufacturing, American beer, niceness, Lutherans, red scares, Milwaukee, Happy Days, Green Bay, Harley-Davidson, farming, snow, Kenosha, Wisconsin Dells, Daniel E. Krause Stone Barn, Racine, Eau Claire, Spring Green

50. Wyoming

Of course, Wyoming is best known for Yellowstone National Park which is one of the most famous US tourist attractions. It’s actually the first national park in the world known for its wildlife, Old Faithful, and its many ecosystems. Yet, what people don’t know about this park is that it’s sitting upon a massive active caldera which could practically destroy most of the US as we know it upon eruption.

Abbreviation: WY
Nickname: “Equality State,” “Cowboy State”
Capital: Cheyenne
Largest City: Same
Entered Union: June 10, 1890
Bird: Western Meadowlark
Flower: Indian Paintbrush
Tree: Plains Cottonwood

Celebrities: Dick Cheney, Nellie Tayloe Ross, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Lynne Cheney, Harrison Ford, Esther Hobart Morris, Matthew Shepard

Sports Teams: Wyoming Cowboys (NCAA Div. I)

Indian Tribes: Shoshone, Crow, Ogala Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. May have been inhabited 12,000 years ago.

Best Known Moments: Mexican-American War, stop of the Oregon Trail, Indian Wars, first to give voting rights for women and elected the first female governor, and not much else.

Often Associated With: Yellowstone National Park, Old Faithful, cowboys, Rocky Mountains, Continental Divide, not having a lot of people, bison, elk, wolves, mountains, winter, snow, skiing, large doomsday super volcanoes, grizzly bears, moose, Grand Teton National Park, gorgeous scenery, diverse wildlife, Oregon Trail, Fort Laramie, Fort Bridger, Heaven’s Gate, Devil’s Tower, cattle ranching, the Wild Bunch, Indians, Cheyenne Frontier Days, outdoor stuff, snowmobiles

In These United States: Part 4 – New Mexico to South Carolina

Posted by historymaniacmegan on August 16, 2014

So we’ve been to about 30 states out of this large country while we still have 20 to go. Of course, you probably notice that each state in the American country has its own culture and history as well as its share of celebrities. In this selection, I’ll cover the states from New Mexico to South Carolina. First, we’re off to New Mexico known for its natural desert beauty, vibrant Hispanic and Indian artwork, Spanish Missions, nuclear testing at Los Alamos, and Breaking Bad. Perhaps it was a good thing that Bugs Bunny took that wrong turn at Albuquerque since we know that’s where Walter White lives. Second, we’re on to New York perhaps most famous for New York City which has Broadway, Times Square, network news stations, the Empire State Building, Lady Liberty, and lots of other things. It also has a lot of stuff upstate, too, not that anyone’s interested. Third, we go to North Carolina known for tobacco, Charlotte, Raleigh, Blue Ridge Mountains, Kitty Hawk, the Biltmore, and Duke. Then there’s North Dakota, home of the Badlands, film site for Fargo, and not much else. After that, it’s off to Ohio which is probably the place your dad would go if he went on a business trip and home of the Cleveland Browns. Yet, despite it being the birthplace of 7 presidents as well as a lot of inventors and astronauts, there isn’t much to see aside from their amusement parks like Six Flags and Cedar Point. Then, there’s Oklamoma! where the wind blows sweeping from the plain, and the waving wheat can sure smell sweet when the wind comes right behind the rain. Of course, thanks to Rogers and Hammerstein, you can’t get the song out of your head when you hear about Oklahoma. Next, it’s off to Oregon, which everyone remembers as the destination for the Oregon Trail as well as Portland, the Columbia River, and legal euthanasia. Make sure you don’t end up with dysentery on the way there. After that, we’re off to my home state Pennsylvania known for Pittsburgh and Philadelphia as well as using groundhogs for weather reports. Actually, we have local news to predict the weather for us but sometimes they could be just as wrong as Punxsutawney Phil is every year. Anyway, go Steelers! Then we move on to Rhode Island which isn’t really an island but is home to America’s earliest synagogue as well as served as a popular tourist destination for rich folk. Finally, we get to South Carolina which many of you know was the first state to secede from the Union after the election of 1860 as well as the childhood home of Stephen Colbert that he usually says on his show.

31. New Mexico

New Mexico is home to some of the oldest European buildings in the United States, some of these are over 400 years old and predate Jamestown. The Franciscans built these adobe style churches which have now become resonant with Southwest architecture and the Spanish mission style in the US.

Abbreviation: NM
Nickname: “Land of Enchantment”
Capital: Santa Fe
Largest City: Albuquerque
Entered Union: January 6, 1912
Bird: Greater Roadrunner
Flower: Yucca
Tree: Colorado Pinyon

Celebrities: Billy the Kid, Jeff Bezos, Kit Carson, Neil Patrick Harris, Georgia O’Keefe, Conrad Hilton, Pat Garrett, Cochise, Geronimo, Tony Hillerman, Cormac McCarthy, George R. R. Martin, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Anna Gunn, Val Kilmer, Demi Moore, Freddie Prinze Jr., John Denver, Jim Morrison

Sports Teams: None

Indian Tribes: Clovis culture and later Apache, Navajo, Ute, Pueblo, Hopi, and Comanche.

Best Known Moments: Mexican American War, Indian Wars, and atomic bomb testing at Los Alamos.

Often Associated With: hippies, Mexicans, Breaking Bad, meth, hipsters, cowboys, desert, cacti, canyons, Southwest Indians, adobes, Spanish Missions, atomic testing, Santa Fe Trail, Los Alamos, Little Miss Sunshine, cattle ranches, UFO sightings, Roswell, multiculturalism, water shortages, Indian ruins, mesas, poverty, coyotes, roadrunners, White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns, Lechuguilla Cave, Sky City or Acoma Pueblo, Taos Ski Valley, skiing, Rocky Mountains, Continental Divide, Shiprock, Rio Grande Gorge, Route 66, 1950s cars, Les Paul music, chili peppers, cattle skulls, cattle ranching, New Mexican Spanish, Mexicans, Georgia O’Keefe paintings, neon motel signs

32. New York

No monument in New York has never become so iconic with the state as the Statue of Liberty in New York City’s harbor. This female colossus of 151 ft and an inch has been seen as a beacon of liberty lifting her light beside the golden door for those tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to be free. For many immigrants, her presence reminded that they have come to America.

Abbreviation: NY
Nickname: “Empire State”
Capital: Albany
Largest City: New York City
Entered Union: July 26, 1788
Bird: Bluebird
Flower: Rose
Tree: Sugar Maple

Celebrities: Jimmy Fallon, FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, Tony Bennett, Adrien Brody, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Lucille Ball, Susan B. Anthony, Edgar Allan Poe, Danny Kaye, Alice Faye, James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Alexander Hamilton, Tom Cruise, Francis Ford Coppola, Aaron Copland, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Lou Gehrig, George and Ira Gershwin, Billy Joel, George Eastman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Jackie Gleason, Rudy Giuliani, Julia Ward Howe, Fiorello La Guardia, Henry and William James, Edith Wharton, John Jay, Ed Koch, Jerry Seinfeld, Herman Melville, Dorothy Day, Clarence Day, Richard Dreyfuss, Patty Duke, David Duchovny, Vin Diesel, Nora Ephron, Arthur Miller, Eddie Murphy, Carroll O’ Connor, Colin Powell, Eugene O’Neill, Nancy Reagan, the Rockefellers, Tim Russert, Al Sharpton, J. D. Salinger, Al Smith, Donald Trump, Barbara Striesand, the Three Stooges, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martin Van Buren, Boss Tweed, Luther Vandross, Gore Vidal, Tony Kushner, Jake LaMotta, Regis Philbin, Mario Puzo, the Rosenbergs, Denzel Washington, Walt Whitman, Mark Zuckerberg, Ulysses S. Grant, Elliot Spitzer, Millard Fillmore, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Aaron Burr, Shirley Chisholm, Thomas Dewey, Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, June Allyson, Alan Arkin, Anne Bancroft, Ann Blyth, Clara Bow, James Caan, Beverly Sills, Daniel Sickles, James Cagney, Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson, Claudette Colbert, Claire Danes, Sammy Davis Jr. Kirk Douglas, Matt Dillon, Fran Drescher, Jimmy Durante, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Judy Holliday, Scarlett Johansen, Wolf Blitzer, Jane Fonda, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Paulette Goddard, Harvey Milk, Elliot Gould, Anne Hathaway, Susan Hayward, Rita Hayworth, Veronica Lake, Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Walter Matthau, Ethel Merman, Anthony Perkins, Joseph Barbera, John Zogby, Christopher Reeve, George Raft, Bill Pullman, Thelma Ritter, Mickey Rooney, Ray Romano, Martin Scorsese, Sylvia Sidney, Rod Steiger, Mel Gibson, Oliver Stone, Gene Tierney, Claire Trevor, Mae West, George Carlin, Jay Leno, the Marx Brothers, Rosie O’Donnell, Chris Rock, Demetri Martin, Lady Gaga, Pat Benatar, Fiona Apple, Mary J. Blige, Maria Callas, Mariah Carey, Jay-Z, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Alicia Keys, Carole King, Cyndi Lauper, Jennifer Lopez, Laura Nyro, David Geffen, Lou Reed, Paul Simon, Notorious BIG, 50 Cent, Mos Def, LL Cool J, Nicki Minaj, John Jacob Astor, J. P. Morgan, Bernie Madoff, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Frederick Douglass, Arnold Rothstein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Lennon, Jon Stewart, Terry Gross, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Whoopi Goldberg, Peggy Guggenheim, Alan Greenspan, Oscar Hammerstein II, Gregory Hines, Matt Lauer, Norman Mailer, Ogden Nash, Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Pynchon, Norman Rockwell, Marion Davies, Shirley Booth, William Bendix, Dewitt Clinton, John Gotti, David Sedaris, Gertrude B. Elion, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Mick Foley, Hank Greenberg, Sandy Koufax, Alex Rodriguez, Frank Serpico, Anderson Cooper, Tony Danza, Rodney Dangerfield, Larry David, Neil Diamond, Timothy McVeigh, Elena Kagan, Harry Houdini, Margaret Sanger, and many I can’t include here.

Sports Teams: Buffalo Bills (NFL), Brooklyn Nets and New York Knicks (NBA), Buffalo Sabres, New York Rangers, and New York Islanders (NHL), New York Yankees and New York Mets (MLB), Columbia Lions and Syracuse Orangemen (NCAA Div. I)

Indian Tribes: Mahican, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. Headquarters for the Iroquois Confederacy.

Best Known Moments: Founded by Dutch as New Netherland, seized by the British in the 1600s, one of the original 13 Colonies, saw action in the French and Indian War with the debacle at Fort William Henry, saw battles during the American Revolution most famously Saratoga, site of the Burr-Hamilton duel, gateway for a lot of European immigrants, Seneca Falls, had draft riots during the Civil War, Tammany Hall political machine, Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in the early 1900s, Harlem Renaissance, 1929 stock market crash, Woodstock, 9/11, and Hurricane Sandy

Often Associated With: New York City, “New York, New York,” Frank Sinatra, crime, a lot of movies, books, plays, and TV shows, Broadway, theater, NYPD, network news, NBC, Empire State Building, 9/11, Chrysler Building, rudeness, swearing, the Met Museum, the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Washington Square, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Madison Square Gardens, the Bronx Zoo, high end stores, multiculturalism, folk music, New York accents, Jews, Italians, inner city poverty, Wall Street, Hudson River, the Catskills, Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty, Buffalo, Syracuse, lots of celebrities, Erie Canal, subway system, traffic, Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central Station, Penn Station, Adirondacks, Saratoga Race Course, intellectuals, Long Island, suburbs, unions, dirty construction workers, bad mouthing cops, Irish cops, Tammany Hall, Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow, Knickerbocker Tales, corruption, Tarrytown, Yankees fans, Mets fans, Hyde Park, Sagamore Hill, Roosevelts, Oyster Bay, Woody Allen, Billy Joel, gangsters, old mansions, skyscrapers, dirtiness, Puerto Ricans, Harlem, liberals, Lake Placid, World Trade Center, Niagara Falls, Sing Sing, water pollution, Love Canal, Grant’s Tomb, West Point, gays, hipsters, hippies, Occupy Wall Street protesters, riots, Columbia, Cornell, Syracuse, NYU, Gershwin, jazz, Harlem Globetrotters, rich people, high fashion, Central Park, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Fort Ticonderoga, weirdos, pizza, skiing, Fire Island, the Hamptons, expensive real estate, magazines, publishing companies, gorgeous scenery, wilderness, farming, Finger Lakes, NYSE, Yonkers, New York Times, New York Post, New York Daily News, Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Belmont Stakes, Rochester religious revivals, comic books, governors soliciting hookers, hookers, vice president shooting well known statesman who’s on the $10 bill in a duel, Cooperstown, Sunnyside, Philipsburg Manor, Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Staten Island ferry, Hell’s Kitchen, Harlem, Greenwich Village, Alphabet City, sexting congressmen with funny names, Woodstock, Chautauqua

33. North Carolina

It was at today’s Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina where two Dayton, Ohio bicycle mechanics known as the Wright Brothers made their first controlled powered airplane flights on December 17, 1903. After the flights, the two walked to Kitty Hawk and sent a telegram to the Weather Bureau informing of their success. Of course, Kitty Hawk became world-famous because it was the nearest settlement to the site at the time.

Abbreviation: NC
Nickname: “Tar Heel State,” “Old North State”
Capital: Raleigh
Largest City: Charlotte
Entered Union: November 21, 1789
Bird: Cardinal
Flower: Dogwood
Tree: Pine

Celebrities: Charlie Rose, David Brinkley, John Coltrane, Ava Gardner, Bob and Elizabeth Dole, John Edwards, both Dale Earnhardts, Billy Graham, Andy Griffith, O. Henry, Andrew Johnson, Michael Jordan, Dolley Madison, Thelonious Monk, Richard Petty, Edward R. Murrow, Carl Sandburg, James K. Polk, James Taylor, Billy Strayhorn, Doc Watson, Roberta Flack, Clay Aiken, William Blount, Braxton Bragg, Robert Byrd, the Greensboro Four, Edward Snowden, Cecil B. DeMille, Zach Galifianakis, David Sedaris, Amy Sedaris, Kathryn Grayson, Michael C. Hall, Ken Jeong, Star Jones, Vince McMahon, Julianne Moore, Jaime Pressley, Soupy Sales, Tori Amos, George Clinton, Charlie Daniels, Earl Scruggs, Nina Simone, Loudon Wainwright III, Howard Cosell, Nicholas Sparks, Willie Parker, Brandon Tate, Virginia Dare, Richard Jordan Gatling, Afeni Shakur, Maya Angelou, Chang and Eng Bunker, Orson Scott Card, Ric Flair, Blackbeard, John Tesh, Kristi Yamaguchi

Sports Teams: Carolina Panthers (NFL), Charlotte Hornets (NBA), Carolina Hurricanes (NHL), Duke University Blue Devils, North Carolina Tar Heels, North Carolina Spartans, and North Carolina State Wolfpack (NCAA Div. I)

Indian Tribes: Mississippian culture, later Chowanoke, Roanoke, Pamlico, Coree, Cape Fear Indians, Meherrin, Cherokee, Tuscarora, Cheraw, Waxhaw, Saponi, Waccamaw, and Catawba. If not killed with war and small pox, then kicked out by Indian Removal during the 1830s.

Best Known Moments: Roanoke settlement, one of the original 13 Colonies, saw action at King’s Mountain and Guilford Courthouse, Trail of Tears, saw the first flight at Kitty Hawk, the Civil Rights Movement sit-ins at Greensboro, and others.

Often Associated With: rich people, rednecks, military personnel, Duke, Great Smoky Mountains, Guilford Courthouse, beaches, Roanoke, Kitty Hawk, King’s Mountain, tobacco, Atlantic Beach, NASCAR racing, golfing, plantation mansions, slavery, racism, bluegrass, politeness, Southern hospitality, Southern Gothic Literature, Golden Age piracy, intellectuals, Charlotte, lighthouses, swing state politics, Krispy Kreme, Outer Banks, Biltmore House Gardens, presidential candidates cheating on cancer stricken wives and fathering love children, hurricanes, Roanoke Island, Fort Bragg, barbecue, lighthouses, Cherohala Skyway, Old Fort, military bases, Graveyard Fields, Atlantic Beach, Flat Rock, Fort Macon, Winston-Salem, Wilmington, Asheboro, Greensboro, Durham, Kill Devil Hills, Moore’s Creek, Ft. Raleigh

34. North Dakota

North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park is home to its legendary badlands in the western part of the state. Teddy Roosevelt came to these Badlands to hunt bison during his 1883 trip and returned in 1884 to heal from one of the darkest moments of his life after experiencing the loss of his wife and mother on the same day. His hunting trips and ranching out West in the 1880s would be very influential to Roosevelt’s beliefs in conservation.

Abbreviation: ND
Nickname: “Peace Garden State”
Capital: Bismarck
Largest City: Fargo
Entered Union: November 2, 1889
Bird: Western Meadowlark
Flower: Wild Prairie Rose
Tree: American Elm

Celebrities: Maxwell Anderson, Angie Dickinson, Louis L’Amor, Roger Maris, Lawrence Welk, Louise Erdich, Peggy Lee, Phil Jackson, Sacagawea, Ann Sothern, Wiz Khalifa, Bobby Vee

Sports Teams: North Dakota State Bison (NCAA Div. I)

Indian Tribes: Mandan, Dakota, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Chippewa, Arikara, Hidasta, and Yanktoni. May have been inhabited as early as 11,000 years ago.

Best Known Moments: Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark Expedition, Indian Wars, and not much else.

Often Associated With: Fargo, Badlands, Fargo, oil and gas drilling, not having a lot of people, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Scandinavians, Plains Indians, Lutherans, ice fishing, skiing, whiteness, snowmobiles, snow, not much happening, Bonanzaville, Ft. Union Trading Post, International Peace Gardens, Elkhorn Ranch, Knife River Indian Village, Dunseith, Minden, Great Plains, moose, Lake Sakakawea, more men than women, New Salem, Painted Canyon, bison, dinosaur fossils, wild horses, elk, prairie dogs, prairie, grassland, bighorn sheep

35. Ohio

Ohio is home to the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus. This glass botanical palace was built in 1895 and now serves as a horticultural and educational institution showcasing exotic plant collections, special exhibitions and artworks by renown glass sculptor Dave Chihuly. Contains over 400 species in all.

Abbreviation: OH
Nickname: “Buckeye State”
Capital: Columbus
Largest City: Same
Entered Union: March 1, 1803
Bird: Cardinal
Flower: Scarlet Carnation
Tree: Buckeye

Celebrities: Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, Warren G. Harding, William Howard Taft, the first two John D. Rockefellers, John Glenn, Annie Oakley, Dean Martin, Jesse Owens, Drew Carey, the Wright Brothers, Bob Hope, Hart Crane, George Armstrong Custer, Erma Bombeck, Halle Berry, Clarence Darrow, Maya Lin, Toni Morrison, Pete Rose, Roy Rogers, Steven Spielberg, James A. Garfield, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, William Henry Harrison, Clark Gable, Thomas Edison, Zane Grey, William Dean Howells, Eddie Rickenbacker, Pontiac, Jack Paar, Paul Newman, Jack Nicklaus, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., William Tecumseh Sherman, Gloria Steinem, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Tecumseh, James Thurber, Jerry Springer, Ted Turner, Neil Armstrong, Sherwood Anderson, Ambrose Bierce, Martin Mull, Harlan Ellison, Wes Craven, P. J. O’Rourke, David Pogue, Jerry Seigel and Joe Schuster, Lowell Thomas, R. L. Stine, Lou Wasserman, Jack Warner, John Dean, John Boehner, Dennis Kucinich, Clement Vallandingham, Victoria Woodhull, George Bellows, Theda Bara, Teri Garr, Arsenio Hall, Margaret Hamilton, Woody Harrelson, Steve Harvey, Patricia Heaton, Ed O’Neil, Eleanor Parker, Sarah Jessica Parker, Dan Patrick, Anne Heche, Hal Holbrook, Katie Holmes, Terrence Howard, Chrissie Hynde, Alison Janney, Tyrone Power, George Clooney, Tim Conway, Dorothy Dandridge, Doris Day, Phyllis Diller, Phil Donahue, Brian Donlevy, Ted Levine, John Lithgow, Rob Lowe, Paul Lynde, Hugh Downs, Carmen Electra, Jamie Farr, Alan Freed, Burgess Meredith, Debra Monk, Fred Williard, Debra Winger, Jonathan Winters, Jack Hanna, the Naked Cowboy, Dave Grohl, Phil Ochs, Pure Prairie League, the O’Jays, Jim Brickman, Tracy Chapman, Isley Brothers, Boz Scaggs, Billy Strayhorn, Devo, Marilyn Manson, John Legend, Danny Thomas, Joe Walsh, Frank Yankovic, Philip Sheridan, Harvey Firestone, Jim Lovell, Charles Kettering, Judith Resnick, Chad Billingsley, Ken Griffey Jr., James Harrison, LeBron James, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Chuck Noll, Ben Roethlisberger, Randy Walker, Cy Young, Herbert H. Dow, Charles Keating, George Steinbrenner, Roger Ailes, Larry Flynt, John Brown, Elizabeth Blackwell, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ariel Castro, Charles Manson, Norman Vincent Peale, Tenskwatawa, Langston Hughes, George Remus, Macy Gray

Sports Teams: Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals (NFL), Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Indians (MLB), Cleveland Cavaliers (NBA), Columbus Blue Jackets (NHL), Ohio State Buckeyes, Ohio Bobcats, Cincinnati Bearcats, Kent State Golden Flashes, Akron Zips, Miami Redhawks, and Toledo Rockets (NCAA Div. I)

Indian Tribes: Early Mississippian culture. Adena, Hopewell, Wyandot, Miami, Shawnee, Ottawa, Mingo, and Delaware. May have been inhabited 11,000 years ago.

Best Known Moments: Northwest Territory, Pontiac’s Rebellion, saw action in the War of 1812 with Oliver Hazard Perry’s victory in Lake Erie, industrialization, Kent State shooting, and others.

Often Associated With: Cleveland, Cincinnati, Kent State, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, birthplace of 7 presidents, a lot of inventors, and several astronauts, Cedar Point, Amish Country, Toledo, Dayton, Six Flags, Steubenville, Great Lakes, Ohio River, Kings Island, OSU, businessmen, manufacturing, Rust Belt, swing state politics, golfing, suburbs, corruption, skyscrapers, unions, farming, rednecks, Erie Canal, Franklin Park Conservatory, Wapakoneta, Lake Erie Islands, Marietta, Copperhead lawyers who accidentally shoot themselves dead while defending a client

36. Oklahoma

Oklahoma is known as the “Sooner State” because many of its white settlers from the South came to parts of this state before they were officially opened to them. Of course, since this area was once known as Indian Territory, you can imagine that the Indian tribes who were forced reside there decades before were not happy.

Abbreviation: OK
Nickname: “Sooner State”
Capital: Oklahoma City
Largest City: Same
Entered Union: November 16, 1907
Bird: Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher
Flower: Mistletoe
Tree: Redbud

Celebrities: Will Rogers, Gene Autry, Garth Brooks, Lon Chaney Jr. Gordon Cooper, Ralph Ellison, John Hope Franklin, James Garner, Vince Gill, Woody Guthrie, Ron Howard, Louis L’Amour, Shannon Lucid, Mickey Mantle, Reba McEntire, Wiley Post, Tony Randall, Oral Roberts, Jim Thorpe, Carrie Underwood, Pretty Boy Floyd, Wilma Mankiller, Sequoyah, Tommy Franks, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Kristin Chenoweth, Joan Crawford, Blake Edwards, Bill Hader, Van Heflin, James Mardsen, Rue McClanahan, Lee Pace, Vera Miles, Tim Blake Nelson, Chuck Norris, Brad Pitt, Mary Kay Place, Hoyt Axton, Chet Baker, J. J. Cale, Eddie Cochran, Patti Page, Leon Russell, Blake Shelton, Paul Harvey, Bill Moyers, Dr. Phil McGraw, Mary Hart, Dan Rowan, Judy Woodruff, Rick Bayless, Sylvan Goldman, T. Boone Pickens Jr., Sam Walton, Tony Hillerman, S. E. Hinton, Barry Sanders, Willie Stargell, Belle Starr, Anita Hill, Cornel West

Sports Teams: Oklahoma City Thunder (NBA), Oklahoma Stat Cowboys, and Oklahoma Sooners (NCAA Div. I).

Indian Tribes: Mississippian culture. Wichita, Osage, Quapaw, and Caddo. May have been inhabited as early as the Ice Age. Those Indians native there were bound to have company in the 1830s. Now home to at least 39 federally recognized tribes.

Best Known Moments: Louisiana Purchase, receiving place for Indians at the Trail of Tears, contention between Indians and whites after the Civil War, race riots in the early 1900s, the Dust Bowl, and the Oklahoma City bombings.

Often Associated With: Oklahoma!, Indians, oil and gas drilling, race riots, tornadoes, cowboys, cattle ranching, Tulsa, The Grapes of Wrath, Southern hospitality, Dust Bowl, multiculturalism, bison, Sooners, Okies, rednecks, country music, lady golf, trailer parks, Wichita Mountains, Sallisaw, Norman, Ouachita Mountains, Medicine Park, Oklahoma City bombings, Ozarks, Tahlequah, Waurika Lake

37. Oregon

Oregon's Mt. Hood is a 11,249 ft stratavolcano on the Cascade Range's Volcanic Arc. It's Oregon's highest mountain as well as one of the loftiest peaks in the US. It is home to 12 named glaciers and snowfields and is considered the Oregon volcano most likely to erupt but not explosively.

Oregon’s Mt. Hood is a 11,249 ft tall stratavolcano on the Cascade Range’s Volcanic Arc. It’s Oregon’s highest mountain as well as one of the loftiest peaks in the US. It is home to 12 named glaciers and snowfields and is considered the Oregon volcano most likely to erupt but not explosively.

Abbreviation: OR
Nickname: “Beaver State”
Capital: Salem
Largest City: Portland
Entered Union: February 14, 1859
Bird: Western Meadowlark
Flower: Oregon Grape
Tree: Douglas Fir

Celebrities: Ty Burrell, Beverly Cleary, Matt Groening, Chief Joseph, Linus Pauling, Jack Reed, Jean M. Auel, Chris Botti, Ann Curry, Sam Elliot, Tony Harding, Herbert Hoover, Terry Irwin, John Krakauer, Courtney Love, Chuck Palahnuik, River Phoenix, Johnnie Ray, David Ogden Stiers

Sports Teams: Portland Trail Blazers (NBA), Oregon Ducks, and Portland State Vikings (NCAA Div. I)

Indian Tribes: Inhabited by more than 100 Indian tribes including the Nez Perce, Coquille, Bannock, Chasta, Kalapuya, Molala, Takelma, Tillamook, Umpqua, Yakima, Chinook, Cayuse, and Modoc. May have been inhabited as early as 15,000 years.

Best Known Moments: Oregon Territory, Lewis and Clark Expedition, destination for Oregon Trail, and site of many dam projects during the Great Depression.

Often Associated With: Oregon Trail, hippies, hipsters, tree huggers, Portland, Portlandia, New Agers, wilderness, Cascade Range, dysentery, Bonneville Dam, hydroelectric power, forests, Columbia River, Mount Hood, legal euthanasia laws, high tech industry, diverse wildlife, fishing, corporate headquarters, Nike, Intel, no sales tax, revenue limits, pioneers on covered wagons, hiking, Crater Lake, Oregon Caves, Astoria Column, Timberline Lodge, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon Dunes, Ft. Clatstop, International Rose Test Garden, Ashland, Multnomah Falls, volcanoes, mountains, snow, skiing, Newport, Kalimiopsis Wilderness, snow capped peaks, Eugene, totem poles

38. Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was a city of industry that has managed to successfully turn itself around after the 1980s as a leading city of the 21st century. Its high culture, beautiful skylines, business friendly environment, technological innovation, and decent standard of living, Pittsburgh is now a top world destination and more of a leading contender than it ever could be in the 19th century.

Abbreviation: PA
Nickname: “Keystone State”
Capital: Harrisburg
Largest City: Philadelphia
Entered Union: December 12, 1787
Bird: Ruffed Grouse
Flower: Mountain Laurel
Tree: Hemlock

Celebrities: Benjamin Franklin, James Buchanan, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, H. J. Heinz, Fred Rogers and much of the cast of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, Arnold Palmer, Dan Marino, Zachary Quinto, Marian Anderson, Kobe Bryant, Bill Cosby, Will Smith, Wilt Chamberlain, Rachel Carson, Perry Como, Noam Chomsky, Joe Biden, Tina Fey, Stephen Foster, Robert Fulton, Martha Graham, Gene Kelly, Grace Kelly, William Powell, Margaret Mead, Joe Namath, both Ken Griffeys, Russ Grimm, Joe Montana, Andrew W. Mellon, Robert E. Peary, Alecia Moore (a. k. a. Pink), Sharon Stone, Tom Ridge, Robert Morris, James Wilson, Gouveneur Morris, Jimmy Stewart, Thaddeus Stevens, Jim Thorpe, Benjamin West, Honus Wagner, John Updike, George Benson, Shirley Jones, Kevin Bacon, the original Barrymores, Mario Andretti, Julie Benz, Peter Boyle, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Bronson, Jeff Goldblum, Bradley Cooper, Dolores Costello, Broderick Crawford, Mario Lemieux, Barbara Feldon, W.C. Fields, Larry Fine, Richard Gere, Scott Glenn, Jamie Kennedy, Jack Klugman, Jeannette MacDonald, Frances McDormand, Hugh Marlowe, Adolphe Menjou, James A. Michener, Dennis Miller, Tom Mix, Jack Palance, Jon Polito, George Romero, Bob Saget, David O. Selznick, M. Night Shyamalan, Mary Cassatt, George Catlin, Thomas Eakins, Andy Warhol, Andrew Wyeth, Guion S. Bluford, Joe Amato, Bill Cowher, Ernie Davis, Floyd Landis, Stan Musial, Jerry Sandusky, Johnny Unitas, Louisa May Alcott, Oscar Hammerstein II, David McCullough, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Daniel Boone, Ida Tarbell, Wallace Stevens, John Edgar Wideman, Dr. Jonas Salk, the Sundance Kid, Thomas Midgley Jr., Milton S. Hershey, Lee Iacocca, Charles M. Schwab, Jeffrey Skilling, Sidney Lumet, Christina Aguilera, Frankie Avalon, Wiz Khalifa, Boyz II Men, Solomon Burke, John Dickinson, Chubby Checker, John Coltrane, Jim Croce, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Hall & Oates, Joan Jett, Henry Mancini, the Roots, Robert Bork, Bob Casey Jr., Rick Santorum, Arlen Specter, Alexander Haig, Orrin Hatch, Ron Paul, Benjamin Netanyahu, A. Mitchell Palmer, Robert Reich, Jim Cramer, Billy Mays, F. Murray Abraham, the Warner Brothers, Michael Chabon, Nellie Bly, Mark Cuban, Joe Paterno, Randy Pausch, Herb Morrison, George C. Marshall, Dick Clark, Blythe Danner, Benjamin Guggenheim, George B. McClellan, George Meade, Ed Bradley, Patti LaBelle, Teddy Pendergrass, Edwin Drake, Joseph D. Pistone (a. k. a. Donnie Brasco)

Sports Teams: Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles (NFL), Pittsburg Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers (NHL), Philadelphia 76ers (NBA), Pittsburgh Panthers, Penn State Nittany Lions, Temple Owls, Villanova Wildcats, and La Salle Explorers (NCAA Div. I)

Indian Tribes: Lenni Lenape, Shawnee, Susquehannock, Erie, and Seneca. Probably wiped out by war and smallpox.

Best Known Moments: Its founding by William Penn, French and Indian War would start at Fort Necessity and would later see Bushy Run, Braddock’s defeat as well as the capture of Fort Duquesne, one of the original 13 Colonies, Philadelphia was site of the Declaration of Independence signing and the Constitutional Convention, would see several incidents during the American Revolution like Washington crossing the Delaware, Battles of Brandywine and Germantown, and Valley Forge, industrialization, saw the Battle of Gettysburg during Civil War, Gettysburg Address, the Homestead Strike, the Johnstown Flood, Three Mile Island, Flight 93, and “Kids for Cash.”

Often Associated With: Pittsburgh, Philly, Philly cheesesteak, drinking, swearing, die hard sports fans, steel, Rustbelt, Pitt, Penn State, Delaware River, Ohio River, Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, “yinz,” Appalachian Mountains, rednecks, Valley Forge, Hershey chocolate, Heinz 57 Varieties, Steeler fans, Fallingwater, Pocono Mountains, Flight 93, Gettysburg, Amish Country, Johnstown Flood, coal mining, Susquehanna River, “Kids for Cash,” Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Rolling Rock, pierogies, kielbasa, Poles, Italians, manufacturing, unions, glass, KDKA, The Office, Three Mile Island, horrendous road conditions, unpredictable winters, Groundhog Day, Quakers, Methodists, mushrooms, swing state politics, deer hunting, white tail deer, wild turkey, black bears, a lot of amusement parks, tunnels, motorcross, pretzels, snack foods, Sauerkraut, Andy Warhol, Pittsburghese, smog, idyllic farm country, Punxsutawney Phil, Groundhog Day, predicting 6 week weather conditions using rodents, Lake Erie, ketchup, Pine Creek Gorge, “Pennsylvania Polka,” polka music, Gettysburg, Scranton, Allentown, Erie, Wilkes-Barre, Bethlehem, Carlisle, Johnstown, King of Prussia, Snyder’s of Berlin, Rocky, Utz, Snyder’s of Hanover

39. Rhode Island

Rhode Island is a popular New England tourist destination because of its many ocean front beaches and harbors many rich people can sail their yachts in. Of course, this was in the Gilded Age but still, it makes money from vacationing New Englanders nevertheless.

Abbreviation: RI

Nickname: “Little Rhody,” “Ocean State”
Capital: Providence
Largest City: Same
Entered Union: May 29, 1790
Bird: Rhode Island Red Chicken
Flower: Violet
Tree: Red Maple

Celebrities: Nathanael Greene, George M. Cohan, Gilbert Stuart, Nelson Eddy, Ambrose Burnside, Cormac McCarthy, John McLaughlin, Matthew C. and Oliver Hazard Perry, Meredith Vieira, H. P. Lovecraft, David Macaulay, Marilyn Chambers, Viola Davis, the Farrelly Brothers, Richard Jenkins, Van Johnson, Seth McFarlane, Ted Knight, George Macready, Louis B. Mayer, James Woods, A. O. Scott, Sullivan Ballou, Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson

Sports Teams: Brown Bears, Providence College Friars, Bryant Bulldogs, and Rhode Island Rams (NCAA Div. I).

Indian Tribes: Narragansett, Niantic, Nipmuc, Wampanoag, and Pequot. Probably died from war and small pox.

Best Known Moments: Founded by Roger Williams in the 1600s, King Philip’s War, was heavily involved with the slave trade as well as known for religious toleration, one of the original 13 Colonies, American Revolution, industrialization, and not much else.

Often Associated With: New England, beaches, whaling, small landmass, geographic confusion, boats, lighthouses, not a lot of crime, Brown, rich people, intellectuals, seafood, shellfish, clam chowder, Newport, Pawtucket, Providence, Touro Synagogue, mansions, Narragansett, harbor, Block Island Mansions, Cliff Walk, Slater Mill, Pawtucket, Sanderstown, ferry boat, Block Island Sound

40. South Carolina

South Carolina’s Magnolia Plantation and Gardens is one of the oldest plantations in the South and is located near Charleston. Though originally a rice plantation, it’s now a tourist attraction as well as a great wedding destination for the bride who really wants her big day to appear something like she’d seen in a Southern Gothic novel minus the weird stuff happening.

Abbreviation: SC
Nickname: “Palmetto State”
Capital: Columbia
Largest City: Same
Entered Union: May 23, 1788
Bird: Carolina Wren
Flower: Yellow Jessamine
Tree: Palmetto

Celebrities: Stephen Colbert, Strom Thurmond, John C. Calhoun, Marian Wright Edleman, Jesse Jackson, “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, Andie McDowell, Francis Marion, Preston Brooks, Mary MacLeod Bethune, James Brown, Joe Frazier, Althea Gibson, Dizzy Gillespie, Thomas Hayward Jr., Eartha Kitt, James “Pete” Longstreet, Thomas Lynch Jr., Melvin Purvis, Joel Roberts Poinsett, Edward Rutledge, Mickey Spillane, William C. Westmoreland, John B. Watson, Aziz Ansari, Chubby Checker, Pat Conroy, Viola Davis, Andy Dick, Stanley Donen, John Edwards, Shepard Fairey, Mary-Louise Parker, Chris Rock

Sports Teams: South Carolina Gamecocks, South Carolina State Bulldogs, and Clemson Tigers (NCAA Div. I)
Indian Tribes: Inhabited by 30 tribes including the Cherokee, Catawba, and Muskogean. Kicked out in the 1830s with Indian Removal.

Best Known Moments: One of the Original 13 Colonies, saw a lot of action during the American Revolution with Cowpens and Kings Mountain, started the Nullification Crisis, Trail of Tears, first state to secede from the Union and saw the beginning of the Civil War at Ft. Sumter as well as Sherman’s March to the Sea,

Often Associated With: Charleston, slavery, racism, South Carolina primary, governors “hiking the Appalachian Trail,” governors basically going missing to carry on an extramarital affair on Father’s Day, rednecks, messed up politics, indigo, cotton, rice, racist senators having illegitimate black love children, Myrtle Beach, plantations, southern belles, Southern Gothic Literature, palmettos, salt marshes, swamp, Blue Ridge Mountains, hurricanes, Confederate flag displays, Confederate nostalgia, conservatism, pro-slavery congressmen caning anti-slavery senators from Massachusetts, Bob Jones University, Kings Mountain, Cowpens, videotaped Breathalyzer tests, strict laws on alcohol, Fort Sumter, poverty, poinsettias, Baptists, Bible Belt, brightly painted houses, plantations, Magnolia Plantation, Cypress Gardens, Boone Hall Plantation and Gardens, Riverbanks Zoo, Moncks Corner, swamp, Brookgreen Gardens, Hilton Head Island, Drayton Hall, Murrells Inlet, beaches, cypress, Middleton Place, Waterfront Park

	Alex on To Have and to Hold Wedding Ca…
	Amy on Death Notices with the Last Wo…
	Diana on The Second Life of Jewelr…
	Sandy on Fall in Love with These Valent…
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The Lone Girl in a Crowd

The thoughts and perceptions of an aspiring writer on life and the world around her

Tag Archives: Geography

The Geography of Game of Thrones: Part 4 – The Stormlands

The Geography of Game of Thrones: Part 3 – The Crownlands

The Geography of Game of Thrones: Part 2 – The Westerlands

The Geography of Game of Thrones: Part 1 – The North

The Matter of Gerrymandering

Rally Around the Flag – Or Not

Strange Easter Traditions Around the World

Strange Christmas Traditions from Around the World

In These United States: Part 5 – South Dakota to Wyoming

In These United States: Part 4 – New Mexico to South Carolina