40 Fun Facts About St. Thomas (U.S. Virgin Islands)

Which road rule, kept since before the 1917 handover, sets St. Thomas apart from every US state?

Driving on the left is the rule on St. Thomas, part of the only US jurisdiction that does it. Most cars are imported from the mainland, so the steering wheel sits on the left too.

Which sitcom star, a multiple Emmy winner for playing a psychiatrist, was born on St. Thomas?

Kelsey Grammer was born on St. Thomas in 1955, where his father owned a coffee shop and edited a local magazine. He later voiced Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons.

What covers the floor of the historic St. Thomas Synagogue, a feature shared by only a handful of synagogues worldwide?

Sand covers the floor of the synagogue, one of only five in the world to keep the custom. One account links it to Jews who prayed in cellars during the Inquisition and used it to muffle the sound.

Which pirate's name now clings to Skytsborg, a 1679 Danish watchtower on Government Hill in Charlotte Amalie?

Blackbeard, the pirate Edward Teach, is said in island lore to have used the tower as his own lookout. Nobody knows when the nickname replaced the tower's original name.

When Denmark sold St. Thomas and its sister islands to the United States in 1917, the $25 million was paid in what?

Gold worth $25 million bought all three islands, about $295 an acre. An earlier American offer of $7.5 million in the 1860s had failed to win ratification.

Which painter, the only artist shown at all eight Paris Impressionist exhibitions, was born in Charlotte Amalie?

Camille Pissarro was born in Charlotte Amalie in 1830, the son of a merchant who ran a family hardware store. He was sent to boarding school in France at twelve.

Mountain Top, a lookout bar high on St. Peter Mountain on St. Thomas, calls itself the birthplace of which cocktail?

Banana daiquiri is the drink Mountain Top claims as its own. Visitors sip it on an observation deck that looks out toward Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands.

Charlotte Amalie was founded as Taphus, a Danish name that pointed to which businesses crowding the harbor town?

Beer halls gave the town its first name, literally Danish for tap house. It was renamed in 1691 in honor of Charlotte Amalie, the wife of Denmark's King Christian V.

Which St. Thomas beach did financier Arthur Fairchild give to the public in 1946, on condition no hotel be built there?

Magens Bay was Fairchild's gift, and his terms also ruled out a casino. The sheltered north-shore beach now draws about 300,000 visitors a year.

Which explorer sighted St. Thomas in 1493 and named the island group after Saint Ursula's legendary virgins?

Christopher Columbus sighted the island on his second voyage and named the chain for Saint Ursula and her 11,000 virgins. The long Spanish name was later shortened to The Virgins.

The United States bought St. Thomas during the First World War partly to help guard which newly opened waterway?

Panama Canal security drove the deal. Washington feared Germany might overrun Denmark and gain a foothold on the sea approaches from the Atlantic.

A replica of which American icon stands in Emancipation Garden, a Charlotte Amalie park marking slavery's 1848 end?

The Liberty Bell replica shares the park with a bronze bust of a freed slave blowing a conch shell. The shade trees are lignum vitae, among the hardest and slowest-growing on earth.

Which aviator landed at Mosquito Bay on St. Thomas, leading the bay beside today's airport to take his name?

Charles Lindbergh brought the Spirit of St. Louis down there, and the airstrip beside the renamed bay grew into the island's airport.

Which MTV reality series filmed its 2012 season in a house on Hassel Island, just off St. Thomas?

The Real World moved seven strangers onto the tiny harbor island in 2012 for its twenty-seventh season, housing them in the old Royal Mail building.

Which nickname do locals give hilly St. Thomas, a name a hit-making hip-hop duo of island brothers shortened for itself?

Rock City is the island's nickname, and brothers Theron and Timothy Thomas trimmed it to R. City for their duo. Their single Locked Away reached the US top ten in 2015.

St. Thomas's airport, now named for former governor Cyril E. King, earlier honored which occupant of the White House?

Harry S. Truman gave his name to the terminal, a converted military hangar. The airport was renamed for Cyril King in 1984.

On St. Thomas, what name is given to the open-air taxis with bench seats mounted on the back of pickup trucks?

Safaris are the island's signature ride. Locals ride them along a set route for a dollar or two, which earned those runs the name dollar taxis.

Which jazz saxophonist built his famous tune St. Thomas on a song his island-born mother sang to him?

Sonny Rollins recorded St. Thomas in 1956 for his album Saxophone Colossus, and it became one of the most recognizable instrumentals he ever played.

Which Elizabethan privateer does local lore place on a St. Thomas hilltop lookout, scanning the sea for enemy ships?

Sir Francis Drake is said to have watched for ships from the spot now called Drake's Seat. A green bench marks the lookout, which faces the island's north shore.

Which St. Thomas marine park beside Coki Beach has sent visitors down an underwater observatory tower since 1978?

Coral World lowers visitors 20 feet beneath the surface to watch the reef. Hurricanes wrecked or damaged the park in 1989, 1995 and 2017, and it was rebuilt each time.

Which March 31 holiday on St. Thomas recalls the 1917 afternoon when the Danish flag was lowered for the last time?

Transfer Day marks the end of 251 years of Danish rule. A cannon boomed 21 times as the flag came down, and the Stars and Stripes went up five minutes later.

Which red-walled Charlotte Amalie stronghold, begun in 1672, is the oldest standing structure in the Virgin Islands?

Fort Christian has also served as a government building, a church, a police station and a jail. It reopened as a museum in 2017 after a decade of repairs.

Which peak on St. Thomas, rising 1,555 feet, is the highest point in the whole U.S. Virgin Islands?

Crown Mountain reaches 474 metres, one reason the steep island has so little flat ground. The same mountainous terrain hems in the growth of Charlotte Amalie.

Which small neighbor of St. Thomas stayed out of the 1917 sale to the US and only joined the territory in 1996?

Water Island had been sold to a Danish shipping company in 1905. The US bought it separately in 1944 for $10,000 to protect a submarine base on St. Thomas.

Bricks in Charlotte Amalie's famous 99 Steps first crossed the Atlantic in Danish ships serving what purpose?

Ballast bricks steadied the ships on the voyage out, then were unloaded and reused for building. Despite the name, the stairway actually has 103 steps.

Dronningens Gade, the jewelry-lined shopping spine of downtown Charlotte Amalie, is better known by which English name?

Main Street is the everyday name, though the Danish one means the Queen's Street. Downtown is the only part of St. Thomas where street names are still in Danish.

Only one synagogue building in the United States is older than the 1833 St. Thomas Synagogue; it stands in which state?

Rhode Island is home to Touro Synagogue in Newport, built in 1763. The St. Thomas congregation dates from 1796, founded by Sephardic Jews who financed Atlantic trade.

Frenchtown, Charlotte Amalie's fishing quarter, was settled by migrants fleeing hurricanes and drought on which island?

St. Barts, formally Saint-Barthélemy, sent its French-speaking fishermen to a waterfront district then called Carenage. Many Frenchtown families still trace their roots there.

St. Thomas never adopts daylight saving, so in summer its clocks compare how with those in New York?

The same time shows on both in summer, because the island's zone then matches Eastern Daylight Time. In winter St. Thomas runs an hour ahead of the East Coast.

In 1917 St. Thomas bandleader Alton Adams became the first Black bandmaster in which branch of the US military?

The Navy inducted Adams and his whole Juvenile Band that June. He also co-wrote the Virgin Islands March, which became the territory's official anthem in 1963.

Which St. Thomas-born basketball star was the top pick of the 2023 WNBA draft and a unanimous Rookie of the Year?

Aliyah Boston moved from the island to New England at 12 to live with an aunt. She led South Carolina to the 2022 national title before the Indiana Fever drafted her.

Which Mexican general, president many times over, spent part of his long exile living on St. Thomas?

Santa Anna spent 1855 to 1874 in exile across several countries. On a trip to New York he carried chicle, the tree gum that went on to launch American chewing gum.

Which Pulitzer-winning novelist lived on St. Thomas, where he wrote the comic novel Don't Stop the Carnival?

Herman Wouk set the 1965 satire on a fictional island, where a New York press agent tries his hand at running a hotel. Jimmy Buffett later turned it into a musical.

Denmark Vesey, believed born into slavery on St. Thomas, was hanged in 1822 for plotting a revolt in which US city?

Charleston was where Vesey won a lottery, bought his freedom and worked as a carpenter. He also helped found the church now known as Mother Emanuel.

St. Thomas-born Daryl Homer won individual silver for the United States at the 2016 Olympics in which sport?

Fencing took Homer to three Olympic Games. He moved from St. Thomas to New York City at five and chose the saber because his mentor had fought with it.

St. Thomas-born Edward Wilmot Blyden, a pioneer of Pan-Africanism, emigrated at 18 to which West African country?

Liberia took Blyden in after American theological colleges refused him because of his race. He went on to serve as its secretary of state and as its ambassador to Britain.

St. Thomas-born David Levy Yulee, the first person of Jewish ancestry elected to the US Senate, represented which state?

Florida sent Yulee to the Senate after he had served as its territorial delegate. His rail-building later earned him the nickname Father of Florida Railroads.

Which St. Thomas-born boxer, once a teenage worker in a hat factory, won world titles at welterweight and middleweight?

Emile Griffith was discovered when his boss, a former amateur boxer, saw him working shirtless on a steamy day and took him to a trainer's gym.

Which 1993 comedy sequel sends its two heroes to St. Thomas in search of stolen millions?

Weekend at Bernie's II follows the pair to the island after they find a key to a safe deposit box there. It was filmed on location in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1992.

Quelbe, the traditional scratch-band music heard on St. Thomas, also goes by which name borrowed from a cornmeal dish?

Fungi is both the music and a dish cooked with okra. The bands blend banjos, conga drums, washboards and triangles with instruments made from gourds.