204 Fun Facts About Florida

Which sports drink was invented in 1965 for a Florida college football team wilting in the heat?

Gatorade began when an assistant coach asked kidney specialist Robert Cade why his players lost so much weight in games yet rarely needed the restroom; Cade's team mixed a drink to replace the water and salts they sweated out.

Which drink did Florida's legislature name the official state beverage in 1967?

Orange juice became the state beverage in 1967; wartime scientists had worked out how to concentrate it, and frozen concentrate then turned Florida's oranges into a multi-billion-dollar juice industry.

What is the nickname of Florida?

The Sunshine State has been Florida's official nickname since 1970; from 1910 to 1986 one evening newspaper backed the boast by giving its edition away free after any sunless day, 296 times in all.

Which inventor wintered in Fort Myers for decades, next door to his friend Henry Ford?

Thomas Edison bought his Fort Myers riverfront in 1885, and Henry Ford, who had once worked for an Edison company, bought the house next door in 1916; Edison later ran a laboratory there hunting for a homegrown supply of rubber.

Which space shuttle lifted off from Florida in April 1981 on the program's first orbital flight?

Columbia flew first, on April 12, 1981; the earlier test shuttle Enterprise had been built without engines or a working heat shield and could never reach space.

Which legend is Juan Ponce de León popularly, though wrongly, said to have chased to Florida?

The Fountain of Youth appears nowhere in Ponce de León's own surviving letters; a Spanish chronicler tied him to it in 1535, fourteen years after his death, in an account that painted him as a fool.

Which NASA facility on Merritt Island has been the agency's primary orbital launch site since 1968?

Kennedy Space Center sits on Florida's east coast so rockets can head out over the open Atlantic and borrow speed from Earth's spin, which is fastest toward the equator.

Which animal is Florida's official state marine mammal?

The manatee was named Florida's state marine mammal in 1975; cold water can kill one, so each winter manatees crowd into warm springs and the outflows of power plants.

Which Florida spring has staged live mermaid shows in an underwater theater since 1947?

Weeki Wachee Springs built its show on a trick of stunt swimmer Newt Perry: the performers breathe from underwater air hoses instead of wearing tanks, while the audience watches through windows set below the surface.

Which February NASCAR race on Florida's Atlantic coast is the sport's biggest event yet opens the season?

The Daytona 500 has opened the Cup season since 1982; until 1958 the town's big stock car race was run on the beach itself, down the hard sand and back along the coast road.

Which national park, within sight of Miami's skyline, is about 95 percent water?

Biscayne National Park is 95 percent water, so although it lies within sight of downtown Miami, most of its reefs, islands and mangrove shore can be reached only by boat.

Which invasive snake species has become a major ecological threat in South Florida's wetlands?

The Burmese python, descended from escaped or released pets, has bred in the Everglades since at least 2000 and is linked to sharp declines in raccoons, rabbits and other native mammals there.

Which Walt Disney World hotel, open since day one in 1971, has monorail trains running through its main building?

Contemporary Resort opened with Walt Disney World on October 1, 1971; its rooms were built elsewhere as finished modules and lifted into the A-frame by crane, with the monorail running straight through the building.

Which gem did Florida adopt in 1970 to honor the astronauts launched from its shores?

Moonstone was chosen a year after the first lunar landing lifted off from Florida, a tribute with a catch: the stone is found naturally neither in Florida nor on the Moon.

Which NFL team completed the only perfect season in league history in 1972?

The Miami Dolphins finished 17-0 by winning Super Bowl VII, and did most of it with a 38-year-old backup: Earl Morrall took over at quarterback when Bob Griese broke his ankle in the fifth game.

Which Miami neighborhood is centered on Calle Ocho, where regulars gather daily to play at Domino Park?

Little Havana took its name in the 1960s, when Cuban exiles filled what had been a largely Southern and Jewish neighborhood; Calle Ocho is simply Spanish for Eighth Street.

Which road carries US Route 1 across 42 bridges to the end of the Florida Keys?

The Overseas Highway opened in 1938 on the right-of-way of the Florida East Coast Railway's Key West Extension, which the 1935 Labor Day hurricane had destroyed.

What nickname is given to the northerners who spend each winter in Florida and head home in spring?

Snowbirds share their name with juncos and snow buntings, birds that winter where it snows; the human kind does the opposite, fleeing the cold for the Sun Belt.

Which Panhandle beach town marketed itself to college students as the 'Spring Break Capital of the World'?

Panama City Beach began advertising to spring breakers in the late 1990s, hoping to win the crowds that older spring-break towns had driven away with new restrictions.

Which state entered the Union as the 28th in December 1845, months after Florida became the 27th?

Texas followed Florida into the Union on December 29, 1845, and arrived by an unusual route: it had been an independent republic for nearly a decade and was never a US territory.

Which architect designed Florida Southern College's 'Child of the Sun' campus, the largest single-site collection of his buildings?

Frank Lloyd Wright drew up 18 buildings for the cash-poor college, and its students built the first five themselves, trading their labor for part of their tuition.

Which author's 1930s Florida Keys house is now a museum famous for its polydactyl cats?

Ernest Hemingway's Key West house is home to nearly 60 cats, about half of them six-toed; the museum says they descend from Snow White, a white six-toed cat given to him by a ship's captain.

Which 1928 road across the Everglades is named for the two cities it was built to link?

Tamiami Trail joins Tampa and Miami in one word; the 13-year job nearly stalled until millionaire Barron Collier agreed to finish it if the state named a new county after him, which it did in 1923.

Which inlet south of St. Augustine is where Spanish troops killed hundreds of shipwrecked French soldiers in 1565?

Matanzas is Spanish for 'slaughters': a hurricane had wrecked the French fleet sent to attack St. Augustine, and the Spanish put the castaways who surrendered at the inlet to the sword.

What is the highest natural point in Florida?

Britton Hill tops out at just 345 feet, the lowest high point of any state; Miami's tallest towers rise more than twice as high.

Which NBA team won back-to-back championships in 2012 and 2013?

The Miami Heat won the second title only after trailing by three with seconds left in Game 6 of the 2013 Finals; Ray Allen's three-pointer forced overtime, and Miami took the series in seven.

Which porous rock underlies almost all of Florida, feeding its springs and opening its sinkholes?

Limestone under Florida is riddled with water-filled cavities, which makes its aquifer one of the most productive in the world; where the rock dissolves and a cavern roof gives way, a sinkhole opens.

Which US president made a Florida Keys commandant's quarters his 'Little White House'?

Harry S. Truman first came in November 1946, when his doctor ordered the exhausted president to take a warm rest; he returned ten more times and spent 175 days of his presidency there.

Which game fish is Florida's official state saltwater fish?

Sailfish became the state saltwater fish in 1975; they roam warm oceans worldwide, but winter cold fronts send them south along Florida's Atlantic coast, which makes the colder months the famous season off Miami and the Keys.

Which Florida university's football team is known as the Gators?

University of Florida teams owe the name, by the school's account, to a Gainesville shopkeeper who in 1908 ordered pennants bearing an alligator before the school had any mascot; by 1911 the football team was the Gators.

Which Florida city is home to the Salvador Dalí Museum?

St. Petersburg won the collection of Ohio couple Reynolds and Eleanor Morse after a newspaper headline, 'U.S. Art World Dillydallies Over Dalí', spurred the community to offer it a home, which opened in 1982.

What is "Florida Man" in internet culture?

'Florida Man' is a meme built on bizarre news headlines; Florida's broad public-records laws give reporters fast access to police reports, which helps explain the flood of such stories.

Which 1969 mission, launched from Florida's east coast, first landed humans on the Moon?

Apollo 11 left Florida on July 16, 1969 with an estimated one million people watching from nearby beaches and highways; four days later Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon.

Which company launched astronauts to orbit from Florida in 2020, the first crewed launch from US soil since 2011?

SpaceX's Crew Dragon carried two NASA astronauts to orbit on May 30, 2020, ending nine years in which Americans could reach the space station only in seats bought on Russian Soyuz rockets.

Which coastal Florida highway gave Jimmy Buffett an album title and gets a shout-out in Vanilla Ice's 'Ice Ice Baby'?

A1A started out in 1945 as State Road 1; a year and a half later the state renumbered it to end confusion with US 1, the federal highway running parallel to it.

Which is the only US state with a longer coastline than Florida?

Alaska has roughly five times Florida's 1,350 miles of coastline; Florida still leads the lower 48, well ahead of California's 840 miles.

In 1914 the first scheduled airline to fly airplanes linked St. Petersburg and Tampa using what kind of craft?

A flying boat, the Benoist Model 14, made the 23-minute hop across the bay on January 1, 1914; a former St. Petersburg mayor paid $400 at auction to be its first passenger.

What type of tree is Florida's official state tree?

The sabal palm, also called the cabbage palm for its edible heart, became the state tree in 1953; harvesting that heart kills the palm, because it grows from a single bud.

Which organisms make Florida's lagoons sparkle blue around kayaks on summer nights?

Dinoflagellates are single-celled plankton that flash when the water around them is disturbed; the light is thought to act as a burglar alarm, exposing whatever is eating them to its own predators.

Which singer, ordered by a Florida judge in 1956 to tame his act, stood still and wiggled only a finger?

Elvis Presley played the Florida Theatre in Jacksonville while Judge Marion Gooding held arrest warrants ready in case he moved his hips; Elvis answered by wiggling just one finger.

Which bacterial disease, spread by a psyllid insect, has devastated Florida's orange groves since 2005?

Citrus greening, or huanglongbing, was first found in Florida in 2005 and spread across the state within a decade; the disease shrinks the fruit, cuts yields and eventually kills the tree.

Which theme park opened in 2011 in Winter Haven on the site of the former Cypress Gardens?

Legoland Florida kept the botanical gardens of Cypress Gardens, billed in 1936 as Florida's first commercial theme park, along with a banyan planted there in 1939 as a seedling in a five-gallon bucket.

What does the name of the Florida city Boca Raton literally mean in Spanish?

Mouse mouth is the literal reading, but 'boca' meant an inlet to Spanish sailors; early maps gave the name Boca de Ratones to an inlet near present-day Miami before mapmakers shifted it north by mistake.

What struck the original Sunshine Skyway Bridge in a 1980 squall, collapsing its roadway?

The freighter MV Summit Venture hit a support pier in a blinding squall on May 9, 1980; 35 people died as vehicles, including a Greyhound bus, fell into Tampa Bay. The cable-stayed replacement opened in 1987.

Which Florida tribe claims to be the only one never to have signed a peace treaty with the US government?

The Seminole call themselves the Unconquered People: rather than accept removal, some retreated into South Florida's swamps and were never conquered.

Off which Florida Key does the bronze statue Christ of the Abyss stand in about 25 feet of water?

Key Largo's Christ of the Abyss is a twin of a statue sunk off Italy's coast in 1954; cast from the same mold, it was lowered onto a reef here in 1965.

Which NBC crime drama followed undercover detectives Crockett and Tubbs?

Miami Vice starred Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as Crockett and Tubbs for five seasons from 1984; its makers banned earth tones from the screen, which is why the show glows in pastels.

Which Category 5 hurricane flattened Homestead, south of Miami, in August 1992?

Andrew destroyed nearly every mobile home in Homestead; in its wake Florida replaced more than 400 local building codes with a single, stricter statewide code.

Which astronaut lifted off from Cape Canaveral in 1962 to become the first American to orbit Earth?

John Glenn circled Earth three times aboard Friendship 7; the two Americans who flew before him, Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom, had made only short up-and-down hops that never reached orbit.

How many square miles does Florida cover in total area?

Florida covers 65,758 square miles of total area, ranking 22nd among the states; roughly 12,000 of those square miles are water.

Which Spanish phrase for the Easter season likely gave the state its name?

Pascua Florida, Spain's flowery Easter season, was under way when Juan Ponce de León reached the coast in 1513; Florida still marks April 2 each year as Pascua Florida Day, its official state day.

Which admiral founded St. Augustine in 1565?

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés named the town for St. Augustine because his fleet first sighted the Florida coast on August 28, the saint's feast day, eleven days before he came ashore to found it.

Which French Huguenot outpost near present-day Jacksonville did Spanish troops destroy in 1565?

Fort Caroline fell in a dawn attack: a hurricane had scattered the French fleet sent against St. Augustine, so the Spanish marched overland and found the fort weakly guarded.

Which settlement, founded near St. Augustine in 1738, was the first legally sanctioned free Black town in the future United States?

Fort Mose, established in 1738 just north of St. Augustine, sheltered escaped slaves from the British colonies, who gained freedom in exchange for Catholic conversion and militia service.

Which captured Caribbean port did Britain hand back to Spain in 1763 in exchange for Florida?

Havana had fallen to the British in 1762; to get it back Spain gave up all of Florida, then evacuated the colony, leaving it almost empty of Spaniards.

What was the settlement of Jacksonville called before it took its present name in 1822?

Cow Ford was the British name for the narrow point on the river where cattle were driven across; the Seminole knew the same crossing as Wacca Pilatka.

What did the 1810 Republic of West Florida flag, later the 'Bonnie Blue', depict?

The West Florida rebels who seized the Spanish fort at Baton Rouge in September 1810 flew a blue flag bearing a single white star, a design revived in 1861 as the Confederate 'Bonnie Blue Flag'.

Which 1819 agreement transferred Florida from Spain to the United States?

The Adams-Onís Treaty brought Spain no payment: the United States agreed only to assume up to $5 million in claims, and the handover of Florida took effect in 1821.

Which future president served as military commissioner of the new Florida territory in 1821?

Andrew Jackson took the post only on condition that he could quit once a government was organized; he accepted Florida from Spain at Pensacola in July 1821 and sent in his resignation that November.

The 1832 Treaty of Payne's Landing ordered Florida's Seminoles to move west to land in which present-day state?

Oklahoma, then Indian Territory, was the destination; the treaty allowed three years for the move, and the Seminoles' refusal to go set off a war that lasted from 1835 to 1842.

Which president was in his final full day in office when Florida became a state on March 3, 1845?

John Tyler had a crowded last day: besides seeing Florida admitted, he watched Congress override one of his vetoes, the first time any president had been overruled that way.

Which two foodstuffs did Florida chiefly supply to the Confederacy?

Salt and beef were Florida's main contributions: coastal salt works boiled seawater, and cattle driven north from the peninsula became vital after the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863 cut the eastern armies off from western supplies.

Which February 1864 clash was Florida's largest Civil War engagement?

Olustee ended a Union push to cut the Confederacy off from Florida's food; the 54th Massachusetts, the Black regiment later portrayed in the film Glory, helped cover the retreat.

Which pest devastated Florida's cotton crops in the early 20th century?

The boll weevil, a beetle that spread from Mexico, had infested every cotton-growing region of the United States by the 1920s; long-fibered Sea Island cotton proved especially vulnerable.

Which Miami building processed Cuban refugees and was called the 'Ellis Island of the South'?

Freedom Tower was built in 1925 as a newspaper's headquarters and printing plant, modeled on Seville's Giralda tower; from 1962 to 1974 the old press building served as the federal Cuban Assistance Center.

Students at which university organized a 1956 Tallahassee bus boycott?

Florida A&M students Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson were arrested in May 1956 for sitting in the whites-only section; the seven-month boycott that followed led the city to repeal its bus segregation rule in January 1957.

Which 2017 hurricane devastated Puerto Rico and sent tens of thousands of its residents to Florida?

Maria hit Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017 as a high-end Category 4 storm and knocked out power for months, the worst blackout in US history, which drove an exodus to the mainland.

Which beachfront town near Miami saw a 12-story condominium tower partly collapse in June 2021, killing 98 people?

Surfside's Champlain Towers South partly collapsed on June 24, 2021; in response Florida now requires structural 'milestone' inspections of older condo buildings three stories or taller.

Which two states are the only ones with more water area than Florida?

Florida's roughly 12,000 square miles of water area rank third among the states, behind only Alaska (about 94,700 square miles) and Michigan (about 40,000, counting its Great Lakes waters).

Which songwriter gave Florida its state song, 'Old Folks at Home', without ever seeing the Suwannee River?

Stephen Foster wanted a two-syllable Southern river for his 1851 song and settled on 'Swanee' because it fit the tune; he never set foot in Florida, which made the song its own in 1935.

Which is the longest river entirely within Florida?

The St. Johns River flows north to the Atlantic near Jacksonville and drops less than 30 feet along the way, so it moves at about a third of a mile an hour and is often called lazy.

Which Great Lake is the only freshwater lake entirely within the lower 48 larger than Okeechobee?

Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake lying entirely inside the United States; the other four straddle the Canadian border, leaving Okeechobee the largest freshwater lake wholly in the lower 48 after Michigan.

Which is the only other state besides Florida to have a tropical climate?

Hawaii is the only other state with a tropical climate, and in Florida only the southern end qualifies; the north and center of the state are classed as humid subtropical.

Why did Apalachicola's John Gorrie build the ice machine he patented in 1851?

To cool fever patients: Gorrie, a doctor, chilled sickrooms with basins of ice hung from the ceiling, but ice had to come by boat from northern lakes, so he built a machine to make it; the venture ruined him.

Which region of the state is known as the lightning capital of the United States?

Central Florida is squeezed between two coasts: on summer afternoons, sea breezes push inland from both the Gulf and the Atlantic and collide over it, setting off thunderstorms.

Which hurricane flattened Mexico Beach in the Florida Panhandle in October 2018?

Michael came ashore near Mexico Beach rated a Category 4; six months later forecasters reviewing the data upgraded it to Category 5, the first on record to strike the Panhandle.

Which 2005 storm first crossed South Florida as a Category 1 hurricane, then became the costliest US weather disaster yet?

Katrina reached hurricane strength only two hours before landfall north of Miami; days later it exploded over the Gulf's warm Loop Current from Category 3 to Category 5 in nine hours.

Which is the only bird species found in Florida and nowhere else on Earth?

The Florida scrub jay lives in family groups: young birds stay with their parents for a year or more as helpers, raising later broods and defending the territory, before breeding themselves at two or three.

South Florida is the only place where alligators live alongside which crocodile?

American crocodile reaches the northern limit of its range in South Florida, which is why the two overlap only there; the crocodile keeps to salty coastal water, the alligator mostly to fresh.

Which state park was the first underwater park in the United States?

John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park honors the Miami Herald editor who led the campaign to protect the Keys' reef after souvenir hunters began hammering and chiseling away its coral.

Which Florida region holds the largest rock phosphate deposits in the United States?

Bone Valley spreads across Polk, Hardee and Hillsborough counties, where huge draglines, each bucket big enough to hold a truck, strip its phosphate pebble for fertilizer.

Which Florida city's 1981 sinkhole swallowed a house and several cars within a day?

Winter Park's sinkhole opened beside Mae Rose Williams's home on May 8, 1981, and took the house the next day; once plugged and stabilized, the crater filled to become a small city lake.

Why are earthquakes rare in Florida?

It's far from plate boundaries: Florida lies deep inside the North American Plate, so it shares with North Dakota the fewest earthquakes of any state.

Which employee-owned supermarket chain, founded in Winter Haven in 1930, is based in Lakeland?

Publix began when George Jenkins left his job managing a Piggly Wiggly to open a store of his own; it has grown into the largest employee-owned company in the United States.

Which state did Florida overtake in population in December 2014?

New York slipped to fourth when 2014 estimates put Florida at 19.9 million; Florida had been adding about 800 residents a day, nearly six times New York's pace.

Which Caribbean nation is the homeland of Florida's largest non-Hispanic West Indian community?

Haiti: so many Haitians live around Miami's Little Haiti that Miami-Dade County sends out official notices in Haitian Creole as well as English and Spanish.

In what year was English affirmed as Florida's official language in the state constitution?

Voters approved a constitutional amendment making English Florida's official language in November 1988; roughly one in five Floridians speaks Spanish at home.

Which Miami native became the first woman to serve as US attorney general in 1993?

Janet Reno, Miami's chief prosecutor for 15 years, got the job after Bill Clinton's first two choices fell through, then held it until 2001, longer than anyone else in the 20th century.

Which county is consolidated with the City of Jacksonville?

Duval County merged its government with Jacksonville's in 1968, after a grand jury indicted 11 local officials for bribery and larceny and every public high school lost its accreditation.

Which tax is Florida one of only a few states to go without?

Personal income tax is one Florida does without; sales tax is the state's biggest earner instead, and property tax is charged by local governments, not by the state.

Which Florida inmate's handwritten appeal led the Supreme Court to guarantee lawyers for poor defendants in 1963?

Clarence Gideon wrote his petition in pencil on prison stationery after a Florida judge refused him a lawyer; retried with one in 1963, he was acquitted within an hour.

Which method of casting ballots did Florida ban in April 2022?

Governor DeSantis signed an election law in April 2022 that barred ranked-choice voting in any Florida election, pre-empting local adoption; the same bill created a state election-crimes office.

Which Supreme Court case settled the disputed 2000 Florida recount?

Bush v. Gore, decided on December 12, 2000, halted the Florida recount and left George W. Bush's certified margin of 537 votes, handing him the state's 25 electoral votes and the presidency.

Which interstate, linking Tampa, Orlando and Daytona Beach, gave its name to Florida's famous swing-vote corridor?

I-4 runs 132 miles across the middle of the state, home to so many undecided voters that presidential campaigns long treated its corridor as the place where Florida was won or lost.

Which rock star was born in Gainesville and formed his first bands there?

Tom Petty turned a teenage group called the Epics into Mudcrutch, and when that band split he built the Heartbreakers in 1976 from the same hometown circle.

Which Democrat did Ron DeSantis narrowly beat for governor in 2018?

Ron DeSantis beat Democrat Andrew Gillum, the Tallahassee mayor, by about 32,000 votes (0.4 percent) in November 2018, a margin that triggered a statewide machine recount.

Which Florida port is nicknamed the 'Cruise Capital of the World'?

PortMiami bills itself the 'Cruise Capital of the World' with reason: cruise giants Carnival and Royal Caribbean both have their headquarters in Miami-Dade County, Royal Caribbean's at the port itself.

Which theme park is the world's most visited?

Magic Kingdom has led the world's theme parks in attendance every year for well over a decade, through 2024; its guests walk on the second story, above service tunnels that Florida's high water table kept at ground level.

Which toll road, opened in 1957, runs from the Miami area north to Wildwood in the middle of the state?

Florida's Turnpike was first pictured as a toll road from Miami all the way to Jacksonville; it never got there, and the mainline that opened in 1957 now turns inland to end at Wildwood.

Which interstate crosses the Everglades on the toll section called 'Alligator Alley'?

I-75 absorbed Alligator Alley, first built as a two-lane toll road; the four-lane rebuild fenced the highway and added underpasses so panthers and other wildlife could cross beneath the traffic.

Which city just north of Orlando is the southern terminus of Amtrak's Auto Train?

Sanford is where passengers and their cars roll off together after an 855-mile run from Lorton, Virginia; Amtrak revived the idea in 1983, two years after the private Auto-Train Corporation folded.

Which higher-speed passenger train links Miami and Orlando's airport?

Brightline, a privately run railroad, agreed in 2018 to rebrand as Virgin Trains USA, dropped the name in 2020 when the partnership ended, and reached Orlando's airport in 2023 under its original name.

Miami's pro football team began play in 1966 as an expansion club in which league?

AFL expansion gave Miami its team, the American Football League's ninth; its very first play was a 95-yard kickoff return for a touchdown, yet Oakland still won the game.

What is the informal name for MLB spring training in Florida?

Grapefruit League is usually taken as a nod to Florida's citrus groves, but a favorite story credits a 1915 stunt: Brooklyn's manager tried to catch a baseball dropped from an airplane and was splattered by a grapefruit.

Which NFL team became the first to play a Super Bowl in its own home stadium, in February 2021?

Tampa Bay Buccaneers won it, too, beating Kansas City at Raymond James Stadium; the game had been awarded to Tampa years earlier, so the home-field Super Bowl was pure coincidence.

In which Jacksonville suburb is the PGA Tour headquartered?

Ponte Vedra Beach is also home to the Tour's TPC Sawgrass, whose famous island green on the 17th was an accident: builders dug so much sand from the spot that only a crater was left to flood.

Which Florida major-league team began MLS play in 2020?

Inter Miami, co-owned by David Beckham, signed Lionel Messi in 2023 and, soon after his debut, won the Leagues Cup, the club's first major trophy.

Where do the Gators play, in the state's largest football venue?

Ben Hill Griffin Stadium seats 88,548 and is better known as 'The Swamp', the nickname coach Steve Spurrier gave it in 1992 because, he said, a swamp is where Gators live.

Which Florida university was founded in 1963 as Florida Technological University?

UCF was chartered in 1963 as Florida Technological University to supply engineers to the space program and took its current name in 1978; its main campus is in Orange County.

Which songbird, also the state bird of Texas and Tennessee, has been Florida's state bird since 1927?

Northern mockingbird: Florida shares it with four other states, and the 1927 resolution honored a tireless mimic that often sings all night long in spring.

Whose 1947 book cemented the Everglades' nickname 'River of Grass'?

Marjory Stoneman Douglas, a former Miami Herald reporter, published The Everglades: River of Grass in 1947 and campaigned for the wetland's protection until her death at 108 in 1998.

Which crop dominated the farmland carved from the Everglades?

Sugarcane spread across the drained muck soil south of Lake Okeechobee and boomed after 1960, when the United States stopped buying sugar from Cuba and Florida's growers filled the gap.

Which Cleveland native persuaded Flagler to extend his railway to Miami?

Julia Tuttle, a Cleveland widow who owned land on the Miami River, lured Henry Flagler's railroad south in 1896 with land grants and, by legend, a box of fresh orange blossoms; she is called the 'Mother of Miami'.

What does the Muskogean name Tallahassee mean?

Old fields, or 'old town', is the usual translation: newcomers to the area found large tracts of land that Apalachee farmers had cleared and then left behind.

What distinction did Tallahassee hold among Confederate capitals east of the Mississippi?

It was never captured: a Union landing was beaten back at Natural Bridge in March 1865 by a force that included cadets from a local military school, and federal troops entered the city only after the war was over.

Walt Disney World is bigger than which entire New York City borough?

Manhattan covers under 23 square miles, the resort roughly 40; Walt Disney bought so much because cheap motels and neon had crowded in on Disneyland, and he wanted control of the land around his next park.

Beside which natural lake near Orlando did Walt Disney choose to build his Florida resort?

Bay Lake was near the site Walt Disney picked after a flight over the area in November 1963, drawn by its empty land and good highways; the Fort Wilderness campground now sits beside it.

What did the acronym EPCOT originally stand for?

EPCOT stood for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, Walt Disney's plan for a real planned city of about 20,000 residents; after his death it opened in 1982 as a theme park instead.

Which NASA building in Florida has the world's largest doors?

Vehicle Assembly Building doors stand 456 feet high and take about 45 minutes to open; they are that tall because Saturn V rockets were stacked upright inside and rolled out standing.

Which Florida launch complex sent off the Apollo Moon landings, the Space Shuttle and Artemis I?

Complex 39 was built on Merritt Island because the Apollo program outgrew the Cape's older pads; its first launch, the unmanned Apollo 4 in 1967, was also the first flight of the Saturn V.

After whom was Cape Canaveral officially renamed from 1963 to 1973?

Kennedy's name went on the cape by President Lyndon Johnson's executive order soon after the 1963 assassination; in 1973 Florida's legislature voted the 400-year-old name Canaveral back.

Which area code did the Space Coast famously secure?

The Space Coast got area code 321 in 1999 after a local campaign to match a launch countdown, '3-2-1'; it serves Brevard County and also overlays Orlando's 407.

What is Key West's Spanish name?

Cayo Hueso means 'bone key'; the name is said to recall the human bones early visitors found strewn across the island.

Under what name did Key West symbolically secede in 1982?

Key West declared itself the Conch Republic on April 23, 1982 in protest at a Border Patrol roadblock on US 1; the mock secession is celebrated every April with Conch Republic Independence Days.

Which Flagler property now houses Flagler College in St. Augustine?

Ponce de Leon Hotel, opened in 1888, was taken over in World War II as a Coast Guard training center, then went back to hosting guests until the college moved in in 1968.

Which company did Henry Flagler help found before turning to Florida?

Henry Flagler was a founding partner of Standard Oil with John D. Rockefeller in 1870; the fortune he made there financed his Florida railway and hotels.

Which Upper Keys village was obliterated when the 1935 Labor Day hurricane came ashore just to its southwest?

Islamorada was flattened when the storm struck near Long Key at 892 millibars, the most intense landfall on record in the United States; more than 400 people died in the Keys, over half of them veterans from road-building camps.

Florida's tiny, endangered Key deer is the smallest subspecies of which North American animal?

White-tailed deer of the Keys were poached almost to extinction by the 1950s; a refuge created for them in 1957 has since brought the herd back to several hundred.

Which span on the Overseas Highway leads into the town of Marathon?

The full highway opened to traffic on March 29, 1938.

Which levee protects the areas around Lake Okeechobee from overflow?

The Herbert Hoover Dike, about 143 miles of levee around the lake, was begun in the 1930s after storms in 1926 and 1928 drove the water over its old banks and drowned thousands.

What does the Hitchiti name Okeechobee mean?

Big water renders the Hitchiti oki, 'water', and chubi, 'big'; the name suits a lake too wide to see across, yet it averages only about nine feet deep.

Which NBA team won the 1992 draft lottery and used the first pick on Shaquille O'Neal?

Orlando Magic, only three seasons old, picked ahead of Charlotte and Minnesota, who took Alonzo Mourning and Christian Laettner; O'Neal carried the team to the NBA Finals within three years.

Jacksonville is the largest city in the contiguous U.S. by what measure?

Land area is the measure: Jacksonville's 1968 merger with its county stretched the city limits across almost the whole county, more ground than any other city in the contiguous United States.

Which Tampa district reflects its Cuban and Spanish cigar-making heritage?

Ybor City was founded in 1885 when Vicente Martinez Ybor moved his cigar factory from Key West to Tampa; by 1900 its factories employed thousands of Cuban, Spanish and Italian immigrants.

Which combatant command is headquartered at Tampa's MacDill Air Force Base?

Central Command grew out of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, set up at MacDill in 1980 under the Carter Doctrine to answer crises around the Persian Gulf; it became a full command in 1983.

Which racing promoter founded NASCAR after a 1947 meeting in a Florida hotel bar?

Bill France Sr., a Washington-born filling-station owner, sat down with drivers, mechanics and car owners at the Streamline Hotel that December; NASCAR was formed two months later.

Before his 1513 voyage to Florida, Ponce de León served as the first governor of which island?

Puerto Rico's first governor came back to Florida in 1521 with two hundred colonists, was badly wounded in a fight with the Calusa and died soon afterwards in Havana.

Which unfinished fortress is the centerpiece of Dry Tortugas National Park?

Fort Jefferson swallowed over 16 million bricks and nearly thirty years of work, yet it was never finished, never fully armed and never attacked; the anchorage it guarded was the real prize.

Which Lincoln-conspiracy doctor was imprisoned in the Dry Tortugas?

Samuel Mudd, who had set John Wilkes Booth's broken leg, took over as prison doctor when yellow fever struck the fort in 1867; President Andrew Johnson pardoned him in 1869.

Which soft local stone did the Spanish quarry to build St. Augustine's Castillo de San Marcos?

Coquina, a light, porous rock of compacted shells quarried on Anastasia Island, looked a poor choice for a fort, yet its walls absorbed or deflected cannonballs instead of shattering.

Whose statewide vote in 1982 picked the Florida panther as the state animal?

Schoolchildren chose the most endangered of Florida's symbols, and lawmakers made it official; the panther is the only confirmed cougar population left in the eastern United States.

Which flight demonstration team is based at Naval Air Station Pensacola?

The Blue Angels were formed in 1946 on the order of Admiral Chester Nimitz, who wanted a flight team to raise public interest in naval aviation and lift the Navy's morale.

Which Native American group were the main ancestors of the Seminole?

Muscogee Creeks from what are now Georgia and Alabama moved into Spanish Florida from the early 1700s; their new name came through Creek from the Spanish cimarrón, 'wild' or 'runaway'.

Which restaurant chain did the Seminole Tribe purchase in 2007?

The Seminole Tribe of Florida bought Hard Rock International, including the Hard Rock Café chain, from Rank Group for $965 million in 2007 and has since branded casinos and hotels under the name.

Which social club, founded in 1904, stages Florida's annual Gasparilla pirate invasion?

Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla began as a few costumed civic leaders who staged a surprise 'invasion' on land during a May Day festival; they first arrived by sea only in 1911.

Which ingredient is in a Tampa Cuban sandwich but usually not a South Florida one?

Genoa salami is the Tampa touch, probably picked up from the Italian immigrants who worked beside Cubans and Spaniards in its cigar district; both versions layer ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard.

Which canned ingredient goes into the filling of a Key lime pie?

Condensed milk goes in with lime juice and egg yolks, and the real thing comes out pale yellow, never green; Florida made it the official state pie in 2006.

Which Florida crab is harvested only for its claws, which then grow back?

Stone crab claws must be broken off cleanly at the joint: only then can the crab, back in the water, grow a replacement, which gets bigger with each molt.

What does the name of the Ringling mansion Cà d'Zan mean?

The House of John was as much Mable Ringling's: she worked with the architect on every design detail of the mansion, completed in 1926, and died just three years later.

Which city hosted the Ringling circus's winter quarters from 1927?

Sarasota became the circus's winter home in 1927 on John Ringling's orders; he had owned a bayfront estate in the city since 1911 and built his mansion and art museum there.

Which Florida city is nicknamed the 'Venice of America' for its 165 miles of waterways?

Fort Lauderdale's 165 miles of inland canals earned it the 'Venice of America' nickname; the city was the nation's spring-break capital for decades until it discouraged the crowds in the mid-1980s.

Which South Florida swamp, saved from a jetport, became one of America's first two national preserves in 1974?

Big Cypress was made a preserve, not a park, as a compromise: hunting, off-road vehicles and the Miccosukee and Seminole peoples' traditional use of the land could all continue.

Which heiress bequeathed Mar-a-Lago to the United States on her death in 1973?

Marjorie Merriweather Post, the Post Cereals heiress, left Mar-a-Lago to the federal government on her death in 1973, hoping it would serve as a presidential retreat; the government returned it to her foundation in 1981.

Which Florida resort island was planted with coconuts salvaged from an 1878 shipwreck?

Palm Beach's settlers salvaged the Spanish brig Providencia's cargo and planted the coconuts; by their accounts, the palms that grew gave the island, and later the county, its name.

Which name did Florida's most populous county carry on its own until voters added 'Miami' in 1997?

Dade County was named for Major Francis Dade, a soldier killed in 1835; voters lengthened the name to borrow the international recognition of its biggest city.

Which Florida county takes in the Florida Keys, with more than 70 percent of its area under water?

Monroe County keeps over 99.9% of its residents on the island chain, though its almost empty mainland makes up 87% of the land.

Which Florida county, with Orlando as its seat, began life in 1824 under the name Mosquito County?

Orange County took its new name from the fruit that was its main crop, after an earlier plan to honour President William Henry Harrison came to nothing.

Which Florida county, seated at Tampa, is named for an earl who was Britain's colonial secretary?

Hillsborough County honours Wills Hill, the Earl of Hillsborough, and at the 2020 census was Florida's most populous county outside the Miami metropolitan area.

Which peninsula county, with Clearwater as its seat, is the most densely populated in Florida?

Pinellas takes its name from Punta Pinal, Spanish for 'Point of Pines', the label early explorers gave the peninsula.

Which South Florida county is named for a governor of 1905 to 1909 who championed draining the swamps?

Broward County honours Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, a tugboat captain who smuggled arms aboard his steamer The Three Friends before he became governor.

Which Florida county contains the state capital and takes its name from a Spanish explorer?

Leon County honours Juan Ponce de León, the first European known to reach Florida, while DeSoto and Hernando counties both honour one later conquistador.

Which Florida county stretches 72 miles along the Atlantic and takes in Cape Canaveral?

Brevard County went by the name St. Lucie County until 1855, when it was renamed for the state comptroller Theodore Washington Brevard.

Which Southwest Florida county includes Sanibel and Captiva islands and the city of Bonita Springs?

Lee County, created in 1887 and named for Confederate general Robert E. Lee, once also covered the land of two neighbouring counties.

Which Florida county, seated at Ocala, bred Needles, the first Florida horse to win the Kentucky Derby?

Marion County is named for Francis Marion, the Revolutionary War guerrilla called the Swamp Fox, and its thoroughbred farms made Ocala a self-styled Horse Capital of the World.

Which county at Florida's far western tip was one of the two original counties created in 1821?

Escambia County, named for the Escambia River, at first covered every part of the territory west of the Suwannee River.

Gainesville is the seat of which Florida county, whose name may come from a Timucua word for sinkhole?

Alachua County moved its seat several times before settling on Gainesville, starting at a trading store that grew into the town of Micanopy.

Which Florida county, the state's largest by land area, bears the name of an advertising mogul?

Collier County honours Barron Collier, who made a fortune in streetcar advertising and then bought more than 1.3 million acres of Southwest Florida.

Which Florida county, home to much of The Villages, had America's oldest median age in 2022?

Sumter County's median age reached 68.1 years after The Villages turned a long-rural county into a booming retirement hub.

Which Panhandle county is home to Destin, Fort Walton Beach and Eglin Air Force Base?

Okaloosa means 'black water' in the Choctaw language, and the county was pieced together in 1915 from parts of two neighbours.

Which county in Florida's northeast corner includes Amelia Island, where eight flags have flown?

Nassau County takes its name from a German duchy, and Amelia Island was briefly the seat of a self-declared Republic of the Floridas in 1817.

Which county, nearly named Melon County for its watermelons, became the last of Florida's 67 in 1925?

Gilchrist won out over Melon as a tribute to Albert W. Gilchrist, who had served as Florida's governor from 1909 to 1913.

Which Panhandle county, seated at Port St. Joe, is split between the Eastern and Central time zones?

Gulf County's seat, once called Saint Joseph, hosted the convention that drafted Florida's first constitution in 1838.

Which county's bay at Apalachicola once yielded over 90 percent of Florida's oyster harvest?

Franklin County, named for Benjamin Franklin, is nearly half water: about 48% of its 1,026 square miles lies beyond the shoreline.

Which North Florida county shares its name with the springs where early Tarzan films were shot?

Wakulla Springs, a short drive south of the state capital, also holds the fossil bones of mastodons in full view about 190 feet down.

Which swindler, infamous for a 1920 Boston scheme, later sold Florida swampland during the land boom?

Charles Ponzi named his Charpon Land Syndicate after himself and promised investors 200% returns in 60 days on tiny tracts, some of them underwater.

Which future US president waited at a Florida port with the Rough Riders in 1898 before sailing to war?

Theodore Roosevelt's regiment reached Florida with 1,258 horses and mules, but in the confusion of departure most of the animals and half the men were left behind.

Which Native American war leader was held at Fort Pickens, off the Florida Panhandle, from 1886 to 1887?

Geronimo, the Apache war chief, was imprisoned with several of his warriors in a fort that had stayed in federal hands throughout the Civil War.

A Spanish fleet lost in a 1715 storm gave which stretch of Florida's Atlantic shore its nickname?

Treasure Coast caught on after salvagers found the fleet's riches near Sebastian Inlet, and locals wanted a label to set them apart from the Gold Coast farther south.

Which legendary prize did Florida's first European explorer supposedly seek, a tale historians now call a myth?

Fountain of Youth tales placed the healing waters in a land called Bimini, yet no evidence from the explorer's own time shows he ever went looking for them.

Which feature was added to Florida's flag in 1900, reputedly so it would not resemble a truce flag?

A red diagonal cross was reportedly the idea of former governor Francis Fleming; from 1868 the flag had been only the state seal on a plain white field.

Which 1980 exodus brought about 125,000 people from one Caribbean harbor to Florida within seven months?

Mariel boatlift sailings ran from April to October 1980 and stopped only when the two governments agreed to end them.

Which railroad magnate made Tampa his terminus and built the Moorish-style Tampa Bay Hotel there in 1891?

Henry Plant found Tampa a village of a few hundred inhabitants, and his rails, steamships and hotels started the region's tourist industry.

Which people ruled Florida's southwest coast from a capital on Mound Key when Europeans first arrived?

Calusa society grew complex on estuary fishing rather than farming, and the shellfish its people ate piled up into large shell middens.

Which Apalachicola doctor patented an ice-making machine in 1851 after trying to cool fever patients?

John Gorrie first made ice mechanically in 1844, because cooling a sickroom then meant shipping ice by boat from northern lakes.

The 1964 St. Augustine protests, where Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed, helped pass which federal law?

Civil Rights Act opponents saw their Senate filibuster collapse the day before King's arrest; days later a motel manager poured what he called acid into a pool of protesters.

Which future Supreme Court justice defended two of the Groveland Four on appeal?

Thurgood Marshall took the Lake County case to the Supreme Court for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Florida posthumously exonerated all four men in 2021.

A Florida inmate's pencilled petition led to which 1963 ruling guaranteeing lawyers for poor defendants?

Gideon v. Wainwright grew out of a burglary at a Panhandle pool room; Clarence Gideon drafted his appeal on prison stationery using the library at Raiford.

Which educator, founder of a Florida school for Black girls, entered the US Capitol's Statuary Hall in 2022?

Mary McLeod Bethune's marble statue replaced one of a Confederate general, making her the first Black American in the National Statuary Hall Collection.

Which Black town in Levy County was destroyed by a white mob during the first week of January 1923?

Rosewood's survivors and their descendants were compensated by the state after a report the Florida Legislature commissioned in 1993, seventy years after the attack.

Which Central Florida town saw a white mob attack Black residents on Election Day in November 1920?

Ocoee was home to 255 African Americans in the 1920 census; ten years later the count had fallen to just two.

Which Florida NAACP leader was killed when a bomb exploded at his home in Mims on Christmas night 1951?

Harry T. Moore was the first NAACP official assassinated for his activism, and he and his wife Harriette are the only married couple killed for the movement.

Which Florida-born writer and NAACP leader wrote the words to the hymn Lift Every Voice and Sing?

James Weldon Johnson first had it recited by 500 pupils on Lincoln's birthday in 1900, and his younger brother, a composer, set the words to music.

Which labor leader, born in Crescent City, Florida, organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters?

A. Philip Randolph launched it in 1925 as the first successful Black-led labor organization, then went on to head the 1963 March on Washington.

Which Florida governor, against his friends' advice, gave a 1960 speech on the moral case against segregation?

LeRoy Collins had run for office as a defender of segregation, and a 1965 photo of him walking beside Martin Luther King Jr. at Selma was later used against him.

Which Florida city on a barrier island holds the world's largest collection of Art Deco buildings?

Miami Beach put up most of them between the Great Depression and the early 1940s, and the district won historic status in 1979.

Which Central Florida community did the Walt Disney Company develop in the 1990s beside its theme parks?

Celebration saw its first homes go up in the summer of 1996, each designed to follow a pattern book of approved architectural styles.

Which Panhandle city, site of a 1559 colony older than St. Augustine, is nicknamed the City of Five Flags?

Pensacola is also called the Cradle of Naval Aviation, because its naval air station was the first in the United States.

Which Southwest Florida city preserves the side-by-side winter homes of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford?

Fort Myers won Edison over on an 1885 visit, and his good friend Ford bought the adjoining property, The Mangoes, in 1916.

Which Southwest Florida city has over 400 miles of navigable canals, more than any other city on Earth?

Cape Coral's modern history began only in 1957, when two brothers from Baltimore flew over the peninsula; their sales office became its first building.

Which Florida city, where divers from Greece built a sponge industry, is known for its Greek community?

Tarpon Springs took up sponge diving when John Cocoris recruited divers and crews from Greece, and more than one in ten residents has Greek ancestry.

Which city near Miami is home to a 1925 racetrack whose infield lake was stocked with flamingos?

Hialeah Park became so famous for its flocks that the Audubon Society designated the track a sanctuary for the American flamingo.

Which Space Coast city was the setting of the 1960s sitcom I Dream of Jeannie?

Cocoa Beach never hosted the cameras: no episodes were filmed there, and star Barbara Eden visited only twice, both times for publicity in 1969.

Which Central Florida city restocked its lakes with swans sent by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957?

Lakeland's first swans appeared around 1923, but alligators and pets had wiped them out by 1954, so a resident wrote to the Queen for help.

Which city near Miami did aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss found in 1926 with an Arabian Nights theme?

Opa-locka has one of the Western Hemisphere's largest collections of Moorish Revival buildings, plus streets named Sinbad Avenue and Ali Baba Avenue.