60 Fun Facts About Long Island

Long Island stretches how far east from New York Harbor into the Atlantic?

At its widest the island is only 23 miles across, which is why locals give directions purely in terms of 'north shore' and 'south shore.'

Long Island's eight million-plus people are roughly what share of New York State's population?

That makes it the most populous island in any US state or territory, and it would rank around 12th among the states if it were one.

Which two of Long Island's four counties are also boroughs of New York City?

Kings County is Brooklyn. Nassau and Suffolk make up what most people mean when they say 'the Island.'

The 1650s Dutch name for the island, 't Lange Eylandt, was paired on maps with what Native American name?

Walt Whitman preferred the Algonquian name Paumanok, which he used in his poetry.

Long Island's two east-west ridges, the Harbor Hill and Ronkonkoma moraines, were left behind by what?

The debris dates from the last pulses of Wisconsin glaciation about 21,000 years ago; the same ice scooped out the kettle lakes Ronkonkoma and Success.

What is the highest natural point on Long Island, at a modest 401 feet?

It sits in West Hills near the Nassau-Suffolk line, a short walk from Walt Whitman's birthplace.

Why are the island's northern beaches rocky while its southern beaches are fine white sand?

The South Shore's sand is fronted by a chain of barrier islands, including Fire Island and Jones Beach Island.

In United States v. Maine (1985), the Supreme Court ruled Long Island is legally what?

The ruling turned Long Island Sound into a 'juridical bay', though the Board on Geographic Names still calls it an island because it is surrounded by water.

The far eastern tip of the North Fork, where the ferry to New London departs, is called what?

The two forks split near the county seat; the North Fork is now better known for its wineries than its potato farms.

The Battle of Long Island, fought on August 27, 1776, holds what distinction in the Revolutionary War?

It was also the first major battle after the Declaration of Independence; the British held New York and Long Island until 1783.

How did Washington save his army after losing the Battle of Long Island?

About 9,000 men were ferried to Manhattan under cover of darkness and fog without a single loss of life.

The Long Island Rail Road, chartered in 1834, is the oldest US railroad still doing what?

It was originally meant to be part of a New York-to-Boston route via a ferry from Greenport, not a commuter line.

The LIRR gained a second Manhattan terminal in January 2023. What is it called?

The East Side Access project took more than a decade and gave the busiest commuter railroad in North America a direct route to Grand Central.

Levittown, the prototype postwar suburb, was called what when Levitt & Sons broke ground in 1947?

By July 1948 the company was finishing 30 houses a day, and its ranch homes sold for $7,990 in 1949.

Levittown's original leases contained a covenant restricting occupancy to whom?

Sales agents also turned away Black, Asian and Jewish families; the town stayed nearly all-white for decades after Brown v. Board.

Which industrialist's Long Island estate, Oheka Castle, is the second-largest US private home?

The name is built from his initials, Otto Hermann Kahn; the 127-room house later doubled as Xanadu in Citizen Kane and starred in Taylor Swift's 'Blank Space' video.

Roughly how many Gold Coast mansions went up on the North Shore during its Gilded Age building spree?

Around 300 were torn down after World War II; the survivors include Old Westbury Gardens and the Vanderbilt Museum.

Which real Long Island peninsula, where Fitzgerald lived from 1922 to 1924, was the model for Gatsby's West Egg?

Old-money East Egg was Sands Point across Manhasset Bay; the 'valley of ashes' between them and the city was the Corona ash dumps, later Flushing Meadows.

Charles Lindbergh took off for Paris in 1927 from which Long Island airfield, now a shopping mall site?

The field was renamed in 1919 for Theodore Roosevelt's son Quentin, killed in air combat in World War I; it closed in 1951.

Long Island's cluster of early airfields earned it what nickname by the mid-1920s?

The museum of that name in Garden City holds a real Lunar Module, LM-13, built for the cancelled Apollo 19 mission.

The Apollo Lunar Module was assembled in which Long Island town?

Grumman had moved there in 1939 after starting out in a Baldwin garage; the same plant later built the F-14 Tomcat.

For how many hours was Apollo 13's lunar module Aquarius designed to support two astronauts?

Grumman engineers reportedly joked about sending North American Rockwell a towing bill for the command module.

Which Long Island lab, on the old Camp Upton army base, produced Tennis for Two in 1958?

Seven Nobel Prizes have come out of work done there, and it now runs the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.

Which Long Island institution was run for decades by James Watson and counts eight Nobel laureates?

Its darkest chapter was hosting the Eugenics Record Office from 1910 to 1939.

Theodore Roosevelt's home Sagamore Hill overlooks which Long Island harbor?

He died there on January 6, 1919 and is buried nearby at Youngs Memorial Cemetery.

Which poet was born in 1819 in a West Hills farmhouse and moved to Brooklyn at age five?

The house is a state historic site; a nearby shopping mall borrows his name too.

The Montauk Point Light, completed in 1796, was authorized under which president?

It was New York's first lighthouse and is the fourth-oldest still active in the country.

The 168-foot Fire Island Lighthouse, lit in 1858, was decommissioned in 1974 and then what?

It was the first sight of America for generations of immigrants arriving by ship, and later played a cameo in Men in Black II.

Fire Island National Seashore was created in 1964 largely in response to protests against what?

Most of the 31-mile barrier island is still car-free; residents haul groceries in wagons along boardwalks.

Which Fire Island community calls itself 'America's First Gay and Lesbian Town'?

Cherry Grove and neighboring Fire Island Pines were established LGBT havens by the 1950s.

Jones Beach State Park's 188-foot water tower was modeled on the bell tower of which European landmark?

Robert Moses opened the park in August 1929; it now draws around nine million visitors a year.

Jones Beach is named after Major Thomas Jones, who ran what kind of business on the outer beach in the 1600s?

The Shinnecock people were the region's original whalers; in the 1800s hardly a whaling ship left the East End without one aboard.

The Power Broker alleged Robert Moses built parkway bridges deliberately low to keep out what?

The claim was that it kept poorer families without cars away from Jones Beach; Moses himself never learned to drive.

The Long Island Expressway, Interstate 495, ends in which Suffolk town at its eastern terminus?

Chronic jams earned it the nickname 'the world's longest parking lot' long before its HOV lanes.

Nassau County was carved out in 1899 from the eastern 70 percent of which existing county?

Its orange-and-blue colors come from the Dutch House of Orange-Nassau, and its Town of Hempstead is the most populous town in the country.

Suffolk County, one of New York's twelve original counties of 1683, has its county seat where?

Most county offices are actually in Hauppauge, but Riverhead has kept the title, and the two forks split right there.

Long Island's first commercial vinifera vineyard of the 20th century was planted in 1973 in which hamlet?

The Hargraves planted on old potato land; the region now has three AVAs and is known for merlot and chardonnay.

According to the usual origin story, the Long Island Iced Tea was invented in 1972 for a contest at which bar?

Bartender Robert 'Rosebud' Butt gets the credit, though a Prohibition-era 'Old Man Bishop' of Kingsport, Tennessee has a rival claim. Either way, there is no tea in it.

Which five spirits go into a Long Island Iced Tea alongside a splash of cola?

The mix lands around 22 percent alcohol, several times a normal highball, which is why bartenders wince when you order a second.

What architectural term for a symbol-shaped building comes from a 1931 bird-shaped shop in Suffolk County?

Venturi and Scott Brown coined it in Learning from Las Vegas; the bird's eyes are Model T taillights and it is now on the National Register.

In what year did the nine Pekin ducks that founded the Long Island duck breed arrive in New York from Shanghai?

Only four of the original birds went on to found the breed; more than half of all ducks raised for meat in the US are now Pekins.

What record, still unmatched in major North American sports, did the 1980-83 Islanders set with four straight Cups?

The team was created in 1972 mainly to keep the rival WHA out of the brand-new Nassau Coliseum.

The Islanders' widely mocked 1995 logo, which earned the team the nickname 'fishsticks', showed what?

It lasted two seasons before the team went back to the classic map-of-Long-Island crest.

Since 2021 the Islanders have played at UBS Arena, built next to which famous Long Island racetrack?

Belmont Park in Elmont hosts the third leg of the Triple Crown, the mile-and-a-half 'Test of the Champion.'

Secretariat won the 1973 Belmont Stakes by how many lengths, in a still-standing record of 2:24?

The winner of the Belmont gets a blanket of about 700 white carnations, hence its other name, the Run for the Carnations.

The Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, opened in 1972, sits on 63 acres of what former facility?

The Grateful Dead played it 42 times, more than any other act, and Billy Joel closed it before its 2015 renovation and reopened it in 2017.

Which ABA team, led by Julius Erving, won two championships at the Nassau Coliseum in the 1970s?

Erving is a Roosevelt, Long Island native; the Nets left for New Jersey right after the ABA-NBA merger.

Billy Joel was born in the Bronx but grew up in the Levittown section of which Long Island community?

His 'The Downeaster Alexa' is about the struggles of Long Island's commercial fishermen; he has sold more than 160 million records.

Stony Brook University was founded in 1957 in which North Shore village?

Philanthropist Ward Melville donated the 400-plus acres in Stony Brook; the university now co-manages Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The Amityville Horror house at 112 Ocean Avenue was the scene of six murders in November 1974 by whom?

The Lutz family bought the house a year later for $80,000 and fled after 28 days; the address has since been changed to deter sightseers.

The 'Montauk Project' conspiracy theory inspired which Netflix series, originally titled Montauk?

Its authors said readers could take the material 'as science fiction or non-fiction'; the show moved the setting to Indiana.

The Shinnecock Indian Nation of Southampton won federal recognition in what year?

Its Labor Day powwow is one of the largest in the country, and its land claim covers the Shinnecock Hills golf course, which the tribe calls ancestral burial ground.

The Hamptons occupy which part of Long Island?

The two towns are Southampton and East Hampton; the string runs from Westhampton out to Montauk at the tip.

Which body of water lies along the North Shore, separating Nassau and Suffolk from Connecticut?

The barrier islands on the south side shelter the Great South Bay; the Peconic sits between the two forks.

With 1,401 square miles of land, Long Island is the largest island in what?

Only islands in Hawaii and Alaska are bigger, and none of those has eight million people on it.

The Indigenous name Paumanok is said to mean the place that does what?

Another Lenape-derived name, Sewanhacky, referred to wampum shell beads.

Which town was the first English settlement on Long Island proper, established on 21 October 1640?

Hempstead followed in 1644, East Hampton in 1648 and Huntington in 1653.

Until 1883, the only way to travel between Long Island and the rest of the US was by boat. What changed that?

The island now has nine major bridges and thirteen traffic tunnels linking Brooklyn and Queens to the other boroughs.

In 1910 a New York court decree pronounced which Long Island tribe extinct, despite members testifying in court?

The Shinnecock Nation of Southampton later won federal recognition in 2010.

Long Island splits into its North and South Forks east of Riverhead. Which bay lies between them?

Vineyards on the North Fork have largely replaced the old potato fields.