Today is Kansas Day! The day where, in the before-times, students would suspend the normal school day and color pictures of sunflowers and American bison. Time for some KANSAS FACTS.
State bird: Western Meadowlark
State animal: American bison
State flower: Sunflower
State tree: Cottonwood
Home of the best US state motto: Ad Astra Per Aspera
State animal: American bison
State flower: Sunflower
State tree: Cottonwood
Home of the best US state motto: Ad Astra Per Aspera
But those are BORING. It’s time for INTERESTING FACTS.
Here are 34 facts about the 34th state on its 162nd birthday.
1. The state is named for the Kansa Tribe, but the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, Osage, Pawnee, and Wichita are also considered tribes native to the land we call Kansas.
2. Today, Kansas is home to four reservations: Iowa, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, and Sac and Fox.
3. Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto, is a KU alum.
4. Helium was confirmed to be one of the most common elements on earth by KU faculty.
5. The geographic center of the United States is in Lebanon, KS.
6. From 1897 to 1905, Freedom Colony was a socialist commune in Bourbon County, KS. It faded in its last few years, but its infrastructure was burned to the ground in 1905. It was thought to be arson, but the perpetrators were never found.
7. Girard, KS was considered a Socialist hub in the early 20th century, being home to the socialist newspaper “Appeal to Reason.”
8. Bleeding Kansas was the period before the Civil War that consisted of bloody battles between pro-slavery forces from Missouri and Kansas abolitionists, which is why to this day Mizzou can go to hell. #rockchalk
9. The first ICEE was made in Coffeyville, KS. (For real! kansas.com/news/local/new…)
10. Wheat Jesus. www2.ljworld.com/news/2009/aug/…
11. Nicodemus, KS was the first Black community west of the Mississippi, founded by former slaves after the Civil War. nps.gov/nico/index.htm
12. Lawrence, KS was torched by pro-slavery raiders in May 1856. John Brown responded by HACKING TO DEATH five pro-slavery men. Hero.
13. Speaking of John Brown, this is a real mural in the State Capitol building in Topeka. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_Pr…
14. Miss Able, a rhesus macaque, was one of the first two animals to be sent to space and returned safely. Miss Able was born in a zoo in Independence, KS but died a few days after her return from space during a medical procedure to remove an electrode.
15. Not really a Kansas fact, but during seasonal prairie fires, American bison will just HUNKER FUCKING DOWN and let the fire go over them. What.
16. Kansas is the 34th state and Dwight D. Eisenhower is the 34th President of the United States. SPOOPY.
17. Kansas has two state fossils, the Tylosaurus and Pteranodon.
18. Gordon Parks, American photographer, musician, writer and film director, was born in Fort Scott, KS.
19. In addition to rejecting slavery, when adopted the Kansas state constitution gave Kansas women the rights to child custody, married women had property rights, and women could vote in school board elections.
20. Women got full voting rights in the state in 1912.
21. The Supreme Court finally held that “separate is inherently unequal” in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.
22. The Neewollah Festival in Independence, KS is the largest annual festival in the state.
23. L. Frank Baum’s description of Kansas in the Wizard of Oz is actually draught-riddled South Dakota, where he was living at the time.
24. This museum in Lucas, KS is now on my bucket list: The Worlds Largest Collection of the World's Smallest Versions of the World's Largest Things Museum worldslargestthings.com
25. Kansas City, KS stole its name from Kansas City, MO.
26. Kansas State University is the first land-grant university established under the federal land-grant law.
27. There’s a big fucking van Gogh in Goodland, KS kansastravel.org/giantvangogh.h…
28. White Castle started in Wichita, but THERE ARE NO WHITE CASTLES IN KANSAS.
29. There is 10,900 acres of protected prairie in the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve near Strong City, KS.
30. The Kansas state constitution requires the state to fund public education.
31. Lawrence is the official home of the Winchester brothers from Supernatural.
32. Sharice Davids is one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress.
33. Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, was born in Atchison, KS.
34. The Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, KS is home to the real Apollo 13 command module and also a piece of the Berlin Wall for some reason! cosmo.org
Happy Birthday, Kansas!
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