41 Fun Facts About Cape Cod

Cape Cod forms the southern boundary of which body of water that stretches northeast to Nova Scotia?

Gulf of Maine: stretching from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, it warmed faster than 99% of the world's oceans after 2004, making its water too warm for cod.

Which English explorer coined the name Cape Cod in 1602?

Bartholomew Gosnold's crew took aboard a great store of codfish off the Cape in 1602, and five years later he helped found Jamestown in Virginia.

What agreement did the Pilgrims sign aboard their ship off Cape Cod's tip in November 1620?

The Mayflower Compact: storms had carried the ship outside the Virginia Company's jurisdiction, so with some passengers threatening to go their own way, 41 men signed to form a government.

What juice goes into a Cape Codder cocktail?

Cranberry: the Cape Codder is named for the peninsula, which is known for growing cranberries.

The Whydah, whose wreck and treasure were found off Cape Cod in 1984, sank in 1717 as what kind of ship?

A pirate ship: the Whydah had carried enslaved Africans until Black Sam Bellamy's crew seized it and made it their flagship.

Compared with the nearby mainland, what is Cape Cod's weather usually like?

Warmer winters and cooler summers: the surrounding ocean moderates the Cape's climate, so its seasons are milder than on the mainland.

The Cape Cod Canal opened in July 1914, just weeks ahead of which other canal?

Panama Canal: the Cape Cod Canal began as a private toll route, until the federal government bought it and made it free.

Which playwright got his start when the Provincetown Players staged his sea play Bound East for Cardiff in 1916?

Eugene O'Neill: the troupe performed it in a fish house on a wharf over the water, and that fall the Players moved to New York City.

What architectural distinction does the Pilgrim Monument at Cape Cod's tip hold?

At 252 feet, the Pilgrim Monument, the tallest all-granite structure in the United States, marks the Pilgrims' first landing at Provincetown, before they settled Plymouth.

Which Italian tower served as the model for the Pilgrim Monument?

Torre del Mangia in Siena: architect Willard T. Sears patterned the monument on it, and President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone in 1907.

In 1961, what kind of federal park did Congress create on the outer Cape?

A national seashore: President John F. Kennedy signed the act creating the Cape Cod National Seashore that August, protecting the outer Cape's dunes and marshes.

In which Cape Cod village is the Kennedy Compound, JFK's 'summer White House'?

Hyannis Port: in 2012 the Kennedy family gave the compound's main house to an institute.

From which Cape Cod town did Marconi make the first US transatlantic wireless transmission?

Wellfleet: on January 18, 1903, Marconi's station at South Wellfleet relayed messages between President Theodore Roosevelt and King Edward VII.

Which was the first lighthouse built on Cape Cod?

Highland Light: George Washington authorized it to warn ships away from the dangerous waters off Truro.

Why were two of Cape Cod's lighthouses moved in 1996?

Coastal erosion threatened to topple them, so house movers rolled each tower back from the crumbling bluff in one piece rather than let the sea take it.

Which Cape Cod town, founded in 1637, is the oldest on the Cape?

Sandwich: families who had been living in Saugus, north of Boston, moved to the Cape and founded it in 1637.

Which Cape Cod town is home to a federally recognized Wampanoag tribe?

Mashpee: a jury in the tribe's 1977-78 land-claim suit found it was not a tribe, but the federal government recognized the Mashpee Wampanoag in 2007.

Which famous ocean-research organization, founded in 1930, is based in a village of Falmouth on Cape Cod?

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: in 1977 scientists in its submersible Alvin found deep-sea vents whose life runs on chemical energy instead of sunlight.

Robert Ballard of Cape Cod's famous ocean-research institution co-led the 1985 expedition that found which famous wreck?

RMS Titanic: its bow and stern lie about 2,000 feet apart on the seabed, showing that the ship broke in two as it sank.

What kind of bats does the Cape Cod Baseball League use?

Wooden: the Cape League dropped aluminum bats for wood, and pro scouts come to watch its hitters use professional equipment.

Bartender Tommy Leonard dreamed up the Falmouth Road Race after watching which runner's 1972 Olympic marathon?

Frank Shorter: Leonard's wish to get him to race on Cape Cod came true in 1975, when Shorter ran the Falmouth race and won it.

Which singer's 1957 record 'Old Cape Cod' became the peninsula's unofficial anthem?

Patti Page had never set foot on Cape Cod when she recorded 'Old Cape Cod', and only visited after the song became a hit.

Which naturalist wrote the book Cape Cod, published in 1865, three years after his death?

Henry David Thoreau had published only two books, Walden among them, when he died in 1862; Cape Cod was one of several that came out afterward.

Which American painter built a summer house in South Truro on Cape Cod in 1934?

Edward Hopper: he and his wife had summered in a rented South Truro cottage since 1930 before he designed a house of their own.

Kalmus Beach on the Mid-Cape is named after Herbert Kalmus, co-founder of which film company?

Technicolor: the company Kalmus co-founded developed the three-color process used to film the Oz scenes of The Wizard of Oz.

Which Cape Cod town has become known as a hub of great white shark activity?

Chatham: in 1952 a four-man lifeboat crew from its Coast Guard station rescued the survivors of the broken tanker Pendleton.

Which Cape Cod town contains First Encounter Beach, named for a 1620 run-in between Pilgrim scouts and Native people?

Eastham: the near-battle came during a month the Pilgrims spent scouting Cape Cod, after which they chose to settle Plymouth instead.

Which Cape Cod lighthouse is pictured on bags of Cape Cod Potato Chips?

Nauset Light: the tower was all white until 1940, when its top was painted red to give it a distinctive daymark.

What kind of bridge carries trains across the Cape Cod Canal?

A vertical-lift bridge: it mostly carries trains hauling trash off Cape Cod, along with seasonal passenger trains.

Which French explorer charted a Cape Cod harbor in 1605?

Samuel de Champlain: he explored the New England coast as far south as Cape Cod in 1605 and 1606, and in 1608 he founded Quebec.

Rather than seascapes, what did Charles Hawthorne's Provincetown school teach students to paint outdoors?

Human figures: the school taught figure painting in outdoor light, and in 1914 Hawthorne helped found the Provincetown Art Association.

Which service manned Cape Cod's beach stations until 1915?

Life-Saving Service: its surfmen patrolled the beaches for wrecks and launched their boats from the shore into the surf.

Which national marine sanctuary stretches from just north of Cape Cod's tip to Cape Ann?

Stellwagen Bank: its rich waters draw whales back to feed year after year, and Congress made it a protected sanctuary in 1992.

Which two famous novelists made their homes on Cape Cod, one of them in Provincetown?

Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut: Mailer lived in Provincetown, and Vonnegut, needing money in the 1950s, even opened a Saab car dealership on the Cape.

What did the 1935 Bourne and Sagamore bridges replace?

Drawbridges: as the Army Corps set out to widen the canal, it replaced them with high fixed spans that ships could pass beneath.

Provincetown's 19th-century whaling and fishing boom drew large numbers of fishermen from which country?

Portugal: that heritage is why Provincetown holds a Portuguese Festival each summer.

Which training institution sits in the Bourne village of Buzzards Bay beside the canal?

Massachusetts Maritime Academy, founded in 1891, trains merchant-marine officers on a campus at Taylor's Point in Buzzards Bay, where the canal meets the bay; Bourne split from Sandwich in 1884.

Which president kept a summer home at Gray Gables in Bourne?

Grover Cleveland: in 1893 surgeons secretly removed a growth from his jaw aboard a friend's yacht.

Which Henry Beston book recounts his year in a Cape Cod dune cottage?

The Outermost House: by Beston's own account he built the cottage for summer visits, but a September fortnight there stretched into a year.

Which Cape Cod airport was formerly known as Barnstable Municipal Airport?

Cape Cod Gateway: during World War II, military planes flew antisubmarine patrols from the airport.

What did Pilgrim scouts take from Native stores on Cape Cod in 1620?

Corn, by the Pilgrims' own account: on the same scouting trips they also found fresh water.