147 Fun Facts About Rhode Island

Rhode Island is the smallest state; which state is second smallest by area?

Delaware covers about 2,490 square miles, making it second smallest; Rhode Island totals just 1,545, and roughly a third of that is water.

Which animated sitcom is set in a fictional Rhode Island town full of real Providence landmarks?

Family Guy was dreamed up in 1995 while Seth MacFarlane was studying animation at the Rhode Island School of Design, which is why the Griffins' hometown borrows so many local landmarks.

What single word is Rhode Island's official state motto?

Hope is fixed in state law as the motto and sits on the state seal; the word is thought to echo a verse in the biblical Letter to the Hebrews.

What flower was officially adopted as Rhode Island's state flower in 1968?

The violet had been voted in by schoolchildren back in 1897, but the state did not make it official until 1968, the last state in the country to adopt a flower.

What tree is recognized as Rhode Island's official state tree?

Red Maple won a vote of Rhode Island's schoolchildren in the 1890s, but the state took until 1964 to make the choice official.

What official nickname has Rhode Island earned through its bays and long coastline?

The Ocean State fits because the sea is never far away: the smallest state is just 48 miles long, yet it has about 400 miles of coastline.

Which minister, banished from Massachusetts Bay for his 'dangerous opinions', founded Providence in 1636?

Roger Williams slipped away in a blizzard in January 1636, days before the sheriff came for him, wintered with the Wampanoag and founded Providence that spring.

Which Rhode Island city, home to the state's main airport, grew from Samuel Gorton's 1642 Shawomet purchase?

Warwick was called Shawomet until Samuel Gorton renamed it in gratitude to the Earl of Warwick, whose letter of protection got him home safely past the Massachusetts authorities.

Which word did Rhode Island voters strike from the state's official name in 2020?

Plantations went when 53 percent of voters shortened 'State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations'; ten years earlier, 78 percent had voted to keep the long name.

Which river forms the southern stretch of the Rhode Island–Connecticut border at Westerly?

The Pawcatuck River runs between Westerly and the Connecticut village of Pawcatuck, which face each other across a bridge, so a stroll downtown can cross a state line.

What is the highest natural point in Rhode Island?

Jerimoth Hill is only 812 feet high, yet for decades it was among the hardest state high points to reach, because the trail crossed land whose owner chased hikers away.

What 1938 disaster is Providence's Fox Point barrier built to stop?

Hurricane surge funnelled up the bay in 1938 and put downtown Providence under water; after Hurricane Carol flooded it again in 1954, the barrier went up across the river in the 1960s.

Which exiled Massachusetts dissenter settled Aquidneck Island in 1638, founding what became Portsmouth?

Anne Hutchinson was tried and banished for her religious teaching; five years later she and most of her household were killed in New Netherland, where she had moved from Rhode Island.

Rhode Island renounced allegiance to George III two months before which document was adopted?

The Declaration of Independence came two months after Rhode Island's assembly renounced the king on May 4, 1776, a date state law sets aside each year as Rhode Island Independence Day.

Which fish did Rhode Island designate its official state fish in 2000?

Striped bass, the 'stripers' prized by New England anglers, leave the sea to spawn in fresh water; Rhode Island made the fish a state symbol in 2000.

Which Newport mansion, built for a railroad heir in the 1890s, is the grandest of the city's Gilded Age 'cottages'?

The Breakers has 70 rooms, yet Newport's Gilded Age rich called such palaces 'cottages' because they used them only as summer homes.

Which Ivy League university was chartered in 1764 as the college of the Rhode Island colony?

Brown began in the town of Warren, moved to Providence in 1770 and took its present name in 1804 from Nicholas Brown, the businessman whose gifts made him its great benefactor.

Which seafood dish became Rhode Island's official state appetizer in 2014?

Calamari won the title because Rhode Island has the largest squid-fishing fleet on the East Coast, and the dish starred in the state's roll-call video at the 2020 Democratic convention.

Which facial-hair style takes its name, with the syllables flipped, from a Civil War general who became Rhode Island's governor?

Sideburns are 'burnsides' turned around: Ambrose Burnside's bushy side-whiskers were famous in the Union Army, and he went on to serve Rhode Island as governor and US senator.

What is the official state shell of Rhode Island?

The quahaug is a hard-shelled clam; its name comes from the Narragansett word poquauhock, and its shells were once worked into wampum beads.

The Newport Casino, a Gilded Age social club, now houses which sport's international hall of fame?

Tennis arrived with the club itself: the first US national championships were played on the Casino's courts in 1881, and that tournament grew into the US Open.

Rhode Island's state mineral, bowenite, is a green serpentine often passed off as which more precious stone?

Jade is what bowenite is often sold as, under trade names such as 'Suzhou jade'; the mineral is really a hard serpentine, named for George Bowen, who analysed it in 1822.

Rhode Island's State House is crowned by one of the world's largest self-supporting domes of which material?

Marble from Georgia clads the whole State House, and its dome is grand enough that the building stood in for the US Capitol in the 1997 film Amistad.

What is Rhode Island's only telephone area code?

401 has covered all of Rhode Island since the first area codes were drawn up in 1947, and the number has become local shorthand: the state's annual charity drive is called 401Gives.

Cumberlandite, Rhode Island's state rock, is known for which unusual property?

Magnetism comes from magnetite, an iron ore that with ilmenite makes up as much as 70 percent of cumberlandite and makes the rock unusually heavy.

Rhode Island was the last original state to ratify what?

The US Constitution won Rhode Island's approval only in May 1790, after the state was threatened with being treated as a foreign country; it had sent no delegates to the convention that wrote it.

Yachts raced for the America's Cup off Newport until 1983, when which country ended a 132-year American winning streak?

Australia's yacht Australia II beat the American defender off Newport in 1983, and the next contest moved to Fremantle, ending the city's long run as host.

Providence is home to the oldest congregation in the United States of which Protestant denomination, gathered in 1638?

Baptist worship in America began in a Providence home, where the town's founder led services for nearly a year before the group became a Baptist church in 1638.

What 1772 event saw colonists burn a British customs schooner in Narragansett Bay?

The Gaspee Affair began when the schooner ran aground chasing a packet boat; Providence men rowed out that night, shot and wounded its commander, and burned the ship to the waterline.

What is the gilded statue atop the Rhode Island State House dome called?

The Independent Man has stood on the dome since 1899; in December 2023 a crane lifted him down for restoration after drone footage showed damage to the base beneath him.

Which Providence art event lights dozens of bonfires on the three rivers that run through downtown?

WaterFire began on New Year's Eve 1994 as a one-off piece by artist Barnaby Evans with just 11 braziers; it grew into a regular event that now burns more than 80.

Which famous American author, known for his horror fiction, was born in Providence, Rhode Island?

H.P. Lovecraft spent most of his life in Providence, and in 1977 fans paid for a headstone carved with a line from one of his letters: 'I am Providence'.

What body of water separates Aquidneck Island from Rhode Island's mainland to the east?

The Sakonnet River is no river at all: it is a saltwater tidal strait, about 14 miles long, that opens straight into the sea.

Rhode Islanders call the beach-lined region around Westerly and Charlestown by what unofficial name?

South County is what Rhode Islanders call Washington County; the official name dates from 1781, when the assembly dropped 'Kings County' in the middle of the Revolution.

Which travel company counts two Rhode Island School of Design graduates among its founders?

Airbnb began in 2007 when Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, short of rent in San Francisco, put air mattresses on their floor for visitors to a design conference.

Which body of water forms Rhode Island's southern border?

The Atlantic Ocean meets the state through Block Island Sound and Rhode Island Sound, and its inlet Narragansett Bay runs 28 miles north, almost cutting Rhode Island in two.

Newport's round stone tower, once claimed as the work of Vikings, was most likely built as what?

A windmill is the accepted answer: a colonial governor who owned the land mentioned 'my stone built Wind Mill' in his will of 1677.

Which two states share a land border with Rhode Island?

Connecticut and Massachusetts are the only land neighbours; the eastern line shifted in 1747, when the Crown transferred several towns from Massachusetts to Rhode Island.

Providence's 'Mile of History' of colonial and Federal-style buildings lines which street?

Benefit Street grew out of a back lane behind the main road; in the 1950s the newly founded Providence Preservation Society stopped its old houses being cleared as slums.

Colonial Newport's candle makers grew rich on candles made from which whale product?

Spermaceti, a wax from the sperm whale's head, made such steady candles that 'candlepower' was later defined by one; Newport's Aaron Lopez and eight other merchants formed a trust in 1761 to control the trade.

Which locally developed fruit variety became Rhode Island's official state fruit in 1991?

The Greening Apple is said to have begun with a colonial tavern keeper named Green, who gave away so many cuttings from his tree to visitors that the original died.

The official seal of Rhode Island prominently features what maritime symbol?

The anchor has been Rhode Island's emblem since the first colonial seal of 1647 and was probably inspired by the 'anchor of the soul' line in the biblical Letter to the Hebrews.

Rhode Island is the second-most densely populated state in the U.S. after which other state?

New Jersey is the only state more crowded than Rhode Island: at the 2020 census the smallest state held about 1.1 million people, more than Alaska, the largest.

The University of Rhode Island has its main campus not in Providence but in which village?

Kingston became a college village in 1888, when the 140-acre Oliver Watson farm was bought for $5,000 to start an agricultural school; the farmhouse still stands on campus.

Unlike the blue of many US state flags, Rhode Island's flag has a field of which colour?

White returned with the 1897 redesign, which took its colours from flags Rhode Island's regiments carried in the Revolution; the version it replaced, adopted in 1882, was blue.

Rhode Island's first governor under its 1663 charter was the great-grandfather and namesake of which Revolutionary War general?

Benedict Arnold the governor led the colony for eleven years in all; his great-grandson and namesake, born in Connecticut in 1741, became the Revolution's most famous turncoat.

Which reservoir, created by flooding several villages, supplies drinking water to most Rhode Islanders?

Scituate Reservoir drowned five villages when Providence dammed a branch of the Pawtuxet: 1,195 buildings came down, and its water now reaches more than 60 percent of the state.

What is the official state marine mammal of Rhode Island?

The Harbor Seal turns up in Narragansett Bay only in the cold months, so summer beachgoers rarely meet the animal the state honoured in 2016.

Rhode Island's johnnycakes are griddle cakes made from which ground grain?

Corn, ground to meal and mixed with little more than salt and hot water or milk, makes a johnnycake; Native Americans, who grew it as a staple, taught the recipe to colonists.

Block Island is a single Rhode Island town that goes by what official name?

New Shoreham is the English name the islanders took when their town was incorporated in 1672; the island keeps the name of Adriaen Block, the Dutch explorer who charted it in 1614.

What national milestone did a five-turbine project off Block Island reach in 2016?

The Block Island Wind Farm, five turbines totaling 30 MW, began operating in December 2016 as the first commercial offshore wind farm in the United States; its cable also ended the island's reliance on diesel generators.

Which Block Island cliffs are said to be named for raiders from Connecticut who were driven over the edge?

Mohegan Bluffs are said to mark where the island's Niantic people forced a Mohegan war party over the cliffs; erosion has since eaten so far in that the lighthouse on top was moved back in 1993.

Which kind of music drew crowds to the Newport Casino in 1954 for a now-famous annual festival?

Jazz came to Newport when Elaine and Louis Lorillard put up the money and hired George Wein, who ran a Boston jazz club, to organise a festival in their home town.

Whose electric set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival shaped later folk rock?

Bob Dylan plugged in on 25 July 1965 with members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band; parts of the crowd booed, and the set is remembered as a turning point toward folk rock.

Newport's Touro, dedicated in 1763, is the oldest surviving example in the United States of what kind of building?

Synagogue: Touro was dedicated by Newport's Jeshuat Israel congregation, and George Washington's 1790 letter to its members is still read aloud there every year.

The Claiborne Pell Bridge to Newport is New England's longest bridge of what type?

Suspension cables carry its 1,601-foot main span; before the bridge opened in 1969, the only way from Jamestown to Newport was a ferry, a crossing that dated back to the 1670s.

The Dorr Rebellion of 1841-42 was an attempt to force what change in Rhode Island?

The Dorr Rebellion sought broader voting rights: Rhode Island's 1663 charter limited the vote to landholders and their eldest sons, and the constitution adopted after the uprising widened suffrage.

After the 1842 uprising, rebel leader Thomas Wilson Dorr was convicted of what crime?

Thomas Dorr was convicted of treason against Rhode Island in 1844 by the state Supreme Court at Newport and sentenced to life at hard labor in solitary confinement; he was freed in 1845.

Which drink beat Del's Lemonade in 1993 to become Rhode Island's official state drink?

Coffee milk grew out of 1930s diners and drugstore counters, where owners are said to have sweetened leftover coffee grounds into a syrup and stirred it into milk; it took the state title in 1993.

Del's frozen lemonade began in 1948 as a pushcart in which Rhode Island city?

Angelo DeLucia opened the first Del's frozen lemonade stand in Cranston in 1948, using a lemon-ice recipe his father Franco had brought from Italy; Cranston stayed the company's home base.

In which Rhode Island town was the Rhode Island Red chicken first bred?

Little Compton marked its famous hen twice: breeders put up a monument in Adamsville in 1925, and locals who thought it belonged on the Tripp farm added a plaque there in 1954.

Which Fortune 500 pharmacy giant has its corporate headquarters in Woonsocket?

CVS Health began in 1963 in Lowell, Massachusetts, as Consumer Value Stores, which is all the three letters stand for; it has long run the business from Woonsocket.

The U.S. Navy's 'Home of Thought', founded 1884 at Newport, is known as what?

The Naval War College, founded by Commodore Stephen B. Luce in 1884, first met in the former Newport Asylum for the Poor on Coasters Harbor Island, a building later named Founders Hall.

Which English mill apprentice memorised Richard Arkwright's spinning machines and rebuilt them in Pawtucket in the 1790s?

Samuel Slater had to hide his trade to leave England, because textile workers were barred from emigrating; back in his home town he was remembered as 'Slater the Traitor'.

Which toy company, founded in Providence in 1923 and long based in Pawtucket, makes Transformers?

Hasbro — short for Hassenfeld Brothers — was founded in Providence in 1923 by Herman, Hillel and Henry Hassenfeld, who sold textile remnants before turning to school supplies and toys.

Which toy, invented by George Lerner in 1949, did a Rhode Island toy maker first sell in 1952?

Mr. Potato Head, the first toy advertised on television, originally came as a kit of plastic face parts to push into a real potato; a plastic body arrived in 1964 and the pipe was dropped in 1987.

The 2003 nightclub fire that killed 100 at a Great White concert was in which town?

The Station nightclub stood on Cowesett Avenue in West Warwick; pyrotechnics ignited flammable acoustic foam on 20 February 2003 and 100 people died, one of the deadliest nightclub fires in U.S. history.

Providence's longest-serving mayor, who also sold his own brand of marinara sauce, was whom?

Vincent 'Buddy' Cianci served over 21 years in two stints, and each ended with a felony: a no-contest plea to assault in 1984, then a racketeering conspiracy conviction in 2002.

Senator Claiborne Pell's name is attached to what federal program for college students?

Need-based grants for college took Pell's name in 1980; Congress barred people in prison from them in 1994, then restored their eligibility from July 2023.

The December 1675 Great Swamp Fight in South Kingstown was the crucial battle of which war?

King Philip's War, begun in June 1675 when Wampanoag men killed colonists at Swansea, Massachusetts, saw New England militia storm the Narragansett fort in the Great Swamp that December.

The 58-foot 'Big Blue Bug' looming over I-95 in Providence depicts what insect?

Nibbles Woodaway is a 58-foot termite on a pest-control company's roof beside I-95; originally painted purple, the colour of a swarming termite, it faded to blue and kept the nickname.

Rhode Island's tallest building, finished in 1928, is nicknamed after which comic-book hero?

The Superman Building, 26 storeys and 428 feet tall, supposedly earned its nickname by resembling the Daily Planet offices in the 1950s TV series; its last tenant, a bank, moved out in 2013.

Which Rhode Island town claims the nation's oldest continuous Fourth of July celebration?

Bristol's Fourth of July Patriotic Exercises, begun in 1785 by Rev. Henry Wight, are billed as the nation's oldest continuous Independence Day celebration; Lafayette had made the town his headquarters in 1778.

Beavertail Lighthouse, the third light in the Thirteen Colonies, stands on which island, home to the town of Jamestown?

Conanicut Island has had a light at its tip since 1749; British forces leaving Newport in 1779 burned the tower and carried off its lamp, leaving it dark for the rest of the war.

The 1778 Battle of Quaker Hill near Newport is noted for which predominantly Black regiment?

The 1st Rhode Island was rebuilt in 1778 with enslaved men promised their freedom for enlisting; that August it threw back three Hessian charges.

Rhode Island's Quaker general Nathanael Greene commanded which theater of the Revolutionary War for Washington?

Southern command went to Greene in October 1780; fighting a larger British force with hit-and-run tactics, he wore Cornwallis down on the road that ended at Yorktown.

South Kingstown native Oliver Hazard Perry earned his 'Hero' title where in the War of 1812?

Perry's fleet defeated the British squadron on Lake Erie on 10 September 1813, prompting his report 'We have met the enemy and they are ours'; Congress awarded him a gold medal.

Gilbert Stuart's unfinished 1796 portrait of Washington appears on what?

The Athenaeum Portrait, engraved for the one-dollar bill, has appeared on the note for well over a century; Stuart, born in Saunderstown, left it unfinished and painted dozens of copies from it.

Which Providence-born showman wrote 'Over There' and 'You're a Grand Old Flag'?

George M. Cohan, born in Providence on 3 July 1878 to an Irish-American vaudeville family, wrote 'Over There' and 'You're a Grand Old Flag'; James Cagney won an Oscar playing him in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).

EGOT winner Viola Davis grew up and began acting in which Rhode Island city?

Central Falls, a city of barely one square mile, went bankrupt in 2011, and Viola Davis sent money to keep the public library of her childhood from closing.

Which newly restored king granted Rhode Island the charter that governed it until 1843?

Charles II's charter let Rhode Islanders govern themselves and promised that no one would be punished for religious opinions; the state kept it as its constitution for 180 years.

Marble House, the Newport 'cottage' finished in 1892, was built for which couple?

Marble House was William K. Vanderbilt's 39th-birthday gift to Alva, designed by Richard Morris Hunt in the Beaux-Arts style; after their 1895 divorce Alva hosted women's suffrage rallies there.

Which New York Herald publisher, who sent Stanley to find Livingstone, built the Newport Casino around 1880?

James Gordon Bennett Jr. is said to have built the Casino in a huff: legend has it that a friend rode a horse onto the porch of the exclusive Newport Reading Room and lost his guest privileges.

Which future Hall of Famer played for Pawtucket in baseball's longest game, in 1981?

Wade Boggs was Pawtucket's third baseman in the 33-inning game with Rochester, which was suspended in the small hours of April 19 and not finished until the teams met again on June 23.

After 2020, the Pawtucket Red Sox left Rhode Island for which Massachusetts city?

Worcester landed the team after two attempts to replace Pawtucket's McCoy Stadium fell through; the club announced the move in 2018 and began play as the Worcester Red Sox in 2021.

Which wartime prefabricated building is named for the Rhode Island point where it was first made?

The Quonset hut was first made in 1941 near Quonset Point, after the Navy asked for a building that could be shipped anywhere and put up without skilled labour.

Which coach took the Providence Friars to the 1987 Final Four?

Rick Pitino inherited a Providence team that had just gone 11-20 and had it in the Final Four two seasons later, with future NBA coach Billy Donovan at guard.

Which Westerly village has the Flying Horse Carousel and a Taylor Swift mansion?

Watch Hill inherited its Flying Horse Carousel when a travelling carnival left it behind; built around 1876, it is billed as the oldest in the country with horses hung from chains.

What distinguishes Rhode Island clam chowder from the New England and Manhattan styles?

Its broth is clear: Rhode Island clam chowder leaves out both New England's cream and Manhattan's tomatoes, though some local cooks have long added tomato sauce anyway.

Rhode Island's hot wieners are sold at restaurants branded with what city's name?

'New York System' was early-20th-century marketing that borrowed Coney Island's hot dog fame; the wieners come with meat sauce, mustard, onions and celery salt, ordered 'all the way'.

Newport Creamery, the Rhode Island restaurant chain, is famous for what milkshake?

The Awful Awful, said to be short for 'awful big and awful good', was invented not in Rhode Island but by Bond's, an out-of-state ice cream chain; Newport Creamery licensed the name and later bought it outright.

Who became Rhode Island's first woman governor in 2015, later U.S. Commerce Secretary?

Gina Raimondo made her name as state treasurer by overhauling Rhode Island's public pension system, then served as governor from 2015 until she joined President Biden's cabinet in 2021.

Often mistaken for a tropical fruit, what actually hangs from the arch over Atwells Avenue on Providence's Federal Hill?

A pine cone, La Pigna, hangs there as a traditional Italian symbol of welcome, abundance and quality, though locals often call it 'the pineapple'; the arch is the gateway to Federal Hill.

Which Newport lighthouse keeper won fame in the 1800s for her sea rescues?

Ida Lewis's rescues by rowboat made her so famous that President Ulysses S. Grant came to meet her; the Lime Rock light she kept now carries her name.

Which Providence hill is a byword for Rhode Island's state legislature?

Smith Hill became shorthand for the General Assembly because the State House stands on its edge, much as 'Capitol Hill' means Congress; 75 representatives and 38 senators meet there.

Rhode Island's Esek Hopkins was the first and only commander-in-chief of which Revolutionary War force?

The Continental Navy grew out of a Rhode Island resolution of 1775, and Congress gave Hopkins its command that December; it dismissed him in 1778 and never named another commander-in-chief.

Rhode Island alone still observes which WWII holiday, officially called 'Victory Day'?

V-J Day, marking Japan's surrender, is still a state holiday in Rhode Island on the second Monday of August; Arkansas, which also made it official, abolished its version in 1975.

Which word do Rhode Islanders share with eastern Wisconsin for the drinking fountain in a school hallway?

Bubbler also survives in Portland, Oregon, where a former Wisconsin resident installed 20 street fountains in the early 1900s that are still called Benson Bubblers.

Which word, better known as a piece of furniture, is Rhode Island's own name for a thick ice cream milkshake?

Cabinet is the Rhode Island word, heard little beyond the state and nearby Massachusetts; the rest of eastern New England says frappe, and a plain milkshake there may hold no ice cream at all.

Which name do Rhode Island sandwich shops, like much of New England, give to a long submarine sandwich?

Grinder may come from the chewing its crusty roll demands, and in parts of New England the word is saved for hot fillings such as meatball or sausage.

What does a Rhode Islander bring home from a run to the 'packie', a shop named for its sealed packages?

Liquor is sold at what Rhode Island formally calls a package store, because alcohol has to leave the premises sealed in its bottle or other container.

What do Rhode Islanders and other New Englanders call the chocolate sprinkles shaken over a scoop of ice cream?

Jimmies is also the word in Philadelphia, and a Pennsylvania candy company claims to have invented them and named them after an employee.

Rhode Island hot wieners ordered 'all the way' get mustard, meat sauce, onions and which sprinkled seasoning?

Celery salt finishes every wiener, which is made from beef, veal and pork and sits in a steamed bun; regulars never call one a hot dog or ask for ketchup.

Which word do Rhode Islanders, like their Boston neighbors, place before an adjective to mean 'very'?

Wicked works as an adverb all over New England, as in a hockey game that was wicked good, though outsiders pin it most firmly on Boston.

Which word do drivers in Rhode Island and the rest of New England use for a circular road junction?

Rotary is the New England name for the full-speed traffic circles that are especially common around Greater Boston.

What nickname do Rhode Islanders give a baked half shell packed with minced shellfish, breadcrumbs and herbs?

Stuffies reflect New England thrift, stretching the meat with breadcrumbs, and often arrive with lemon wedges and a vinegary hot sauce.

Which brand of syrup, made in Rhode Island since the 1930s, is the best-known base for the official state drink?

Autocrat bought its rival Eclipse in 1991, which left it, at the time, the only company in the United States making the syrup.

Which deep-fried Rhode Island shore snack, by local legend, was first served at Aunt Carrie's in Narragansett in 1920?

Clam cakes are eaten dry or dunked in chowder, and legend says Carrie Cooper invented them by adding fresh clams to her fritter batter, though older recipes exist.

Rhode Island's bakery pizza strips are thick dough spread with tomato sauce, served cold and made without which topping?

Cheese is left off, and locals also call the strips bakery pizza or party pizza, cut from a large rectangular pan and eaten at room temperature.

Al Forno, the Providence restaurant opened by two artists in 1980, is known as the birthplace of which style of pizza?

Grilled pizza helped the husband-and-wife founders win a top national cooking award in 1993 as the best chefs in the Northeast.

Walter Scott's horse-drawn food wagon, serving Providence Journal staff in 1872, was a forerunner of which eatery?

The diner grew from lunch wagons like his, and Haven Brothers, founded as a horse-drawn cart, still parks beside Providence City Hall each evening.

Which TV chef graduated from Johnson & Wales University in Providence after turning down a music scholarship?

Emeril Lagasse was a gifted percussionist who passed up the New England Conservatory of Music to train as a chef instead.

In which 1970s sea thriller does Captain Quint crush a can of Narragansett, a Rhode Island lager first brewed in 1890?

Jaws made the can famous enough that the brewery reissued its 1975 design in 2012 and later put actor Robert Shaw's likeness in its marketing.

Which Rhode Island amusement park on Narragansett Bay, closed in 1995, had a Shore Dinner Hall seating over 4,000?

Rocky Point was serving dinners by 1847, and its seawater swimming pool hosted tryouts for the 1936 Summer Olympics.

Linguiça, chouriço and malasadas are Rhode Island staples thanks to a large community with roots in which country?

Portugal also gave Rhode Island caldo verde soup and sweet bread, dishes found wherever New England's Portuguese Americans settled.

Which explosive name is given around Woonsocket, Rhode Island, to a sloppy joe-style sandwich with bell peppers?

Dynamite is the local cousin of the sloppy joe, a sandwich that one origin story traces to a Havana bar owner nicknamed Sloppy Joe in 1917.

The Arcade in Providence, Rhode Island, built in 1828 behind Greek Revival columns, was America's first example of what?

The shopping mall idea arrived as a skylit lane of shops copied from European cities, and the restored building now mixes stores with residences.

Which poet's romance with Sarah Helen Whitman ended inside the Providence Athenaeum in Rhode Island in December 1848?

Edgar Allan Poe had promised to stay sober during their engagement, a vow he broke within days; the couple had even picked December 25 as a wedding date.

Which future president's September 1953 wedding took place at St. Mary's Church in Newport, Rhode Island?

John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier held their reception at Hammersmith Farm, her family's summer home, which he later used as his presidential summer retreat.

Until 1900, Newport, Rhode Island, shared which official role with Providence?

State capital duties once rotated among five towns before narrowing to two in 1854, and a 1900 amendment then kept the legislature in Providence alone.

Which river supplied the water power for the textile mills of both Woonsocket and Pawtucket, Rhode Island?

Blackstone water was worked so hard by industry that a 1990 federal report called the river the most polluted in the country for its toxic sediments.

Which language, brought by millworkers, once filled the newspapers, radio and movie houses of Woonsocket, Rhode Island?

French Canadians made up three-quarters of the city by the 1930s, and Woonsocket has called itself the most French city in the United States.

Which 3.5-mile public path in Newport, Rhode Island, runs between the sea and the back lawns of Gilded Age mansions?

Cliff Walk rests on a 1663 charter promise that colonists could fish along the shore, a public claim mansion owners have fought with fences, boulders and walls.

Which 1974 Robert Redford film shot its ballroom scenes at Rosecliff, a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island?

The Great Gatsby used a house that its architect modeled on the Grand Trianon at Versailles; True Lies and Amistad later filmed there too.

By the 1960s, trade magazines were hailing Providence, Rhode Island, as the world center of which manufacturing trade?

Jewelry, costume pieces above all, grew into a dominant local industry, and the old factory quarter beside downtown is still called the Jewelry District.

Which band's 1977 concert at Narragansett Park led Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to rename a street in its honor in 2017?

The Beach Boys played there on September 2, 1977, and two music historians later had the street where the stage stood renamed Beach Boys Way.

Which feature of counties in most states have Rhode Island's five counties gone without since the 1840s?

Their own government was abolished in the 1840s, so the state and its cities and towns now do the work that counties handle elsewhere.

Which other state is divided into exactly five counties, tying Rhode Island for the second-fewest in the nation?

Hawaii reaches five only by counting Kalawao, a former leprosy settlement with no elected government that operates as a judicial district of Maui County.

Rhode Island's Washington County was created in 1729 under which royal name, dropped in 1781 to honor a general?

Kings County was renamed for General Washington in October 1781, and Block Island was moved into it from Newport County as late as 1963.

Which Rhode Island county seat, founded in 1677, lent its courthouse to the state legislature until 1854?

East Greenwich was plain Greenwich until 1741, when its rural western three-quarters became a separate town; the old courthouse is now the town hall.

Which Rhode Island town, the state's largest by land area, preserves the 1770 homestead of General Nathanael Greene?

Coventry was Greene's home from 1770, when he built the house known as Spell Hall, and his family lived there through the Revolutionary War.

Which rural Washington County town in Rhode Island is known to folklorists for an 1892 vampire exhumation?

Exeter neighbors blamed the undead for a family's tuberculosis deaths, burned a dead daughter's heart and fed the ashes to her sick brother, who died two months later.

Which mill city was a town in Rhode Island's Newport County for six years until an 1862 border settlement?

Fall River's Rhode Island half was split from the town of Tiverton in 1856, then handed over in the deal that ended a long boundary dispute.

Which Providence County town in Rhode Island, created in 1871, was named in honor of an assassinated president?

Lincoln was carved out six years after the president's death, and its limestone quarries at Lime Rock have been worked since colonial times.

Which Providence County town in Rhode Island gained Bryant University after Tupperware's inventor donated his estate?

Smithfield got the campus in 1971 after alumnus Earl Tupper gave 428 acres of hillside, and the grateful school named the campus after him.

Which Rhode Island county, split from Providence County in 1750, takes its name from a county in southeast England?

Kent took the lower third of its parent county and was the last of Rhode Island's five counties to be created.

Rhode Island has no unincorporated land, so every resident lives in one of how many cities and towns?

39 is the full count, eight cities and 31 towns, and a community requires only a special act of the legislature to join them, with no minimum population.

Which fishing village in Narragansett, Rhode Island, home port of the Block Island ferry, takes its name from the Bible?

Galilee was named in 1902, the story goes, by a fisherman from Nova Scotia, and the settlement across the channel then became Jerusalem.

Which Rhode Island waterfront village of 18th-century houses did John Updike use as the model for a witch-haunted town?

Wickford became Eastwick in Updike's 1984 novel, though the popular legend that the novelist came from the village is false: he grew up in Pennsylvania.

Which western state shares its name with a mill village on the Wood River in Richmond, Rhode Island?

Wyoming, Rhode Island, was settled in 1757 around water-powered ironworks and mills, and it spills across the river into a second town.

In which Rhode Island village was Betty the Learned Elephant shot in 1826, a death still marked there each May 25?

Chepachet has kept May 25 as Elephant Day since a 1976 proclamation; the traveling-show star was killed while crossing the village bridge.

Which village of East Providence, Rhode Island, takes its present name from a baking powder once made there?

Rumford Chemical Works was co-founded in 1859 by a Harvard chemist who developed the first practical calcium phosphate baking powder.

Which Rhode Island town was the state's last 'dry' community until its council approved two alcohol shops in 2011?

Barrington began as a settlement of Congregationalist separatists and stayed a quiet farming town until brickmaking companies arrived in the 1850s.

Which Rhode Island town, divided from its other half in 1723, was the birthplace of portrait painter Gilbert Stuart?

North Kingstown kept the original 1674 founding date in the split, and Stuart's birthplace there is now a museum with working grist and snuff mills.

Which Rhode Island town was the original home, in 1764, of the Ivy League university now found in Providence?

Warren housed the college for its first years: it registered its first students there in 1765, then moved to Providence in 1770.

Which Rhode Island mill village did industrialist Rowland Hazard name in 1793 in honor of his wife, Mary?

Peace Dale's founder was the first woolen manufacturer to combine every process, from carding through dyeing, under one roof.

Which word do Rhode Islanders and other eastern New Englanders often use for the basement of a house?

Cellar also gives the region the phrase down cellar, meaning down to, or down in, the basement.