50 Fun Facts About US Territories

Which European country sold the US Virgin Islands to the United States for $25 million in 1917?

Denmark was paid in gold coin for the islands. Washington pushed the deal through during World War I, fearing an enemy navy might seize the harbours as a submarine base.

Which road rule makes the US Virgin Islands unique among every state and territory of the United States?

Driving on the left survived the 1917 handover to the United States. Most cars are imported from the mainland, though, so the steering wheel sits on the left as well.

Which tiny frog, an unofficial symbol of Puerto Rico, is named after the loud call males make at night?

Coquí frogs never swim as tadpoles. They hatch from their eggs as tiny, fully formed frogs, skipping the free-living larval stage altogether.

Which invasive reptile reached Guam by accident after World War II and wiped out most of Guam's native forest birds?

The brown tree snake met almost no natural predators on Guam, so its numbers exploded. It has also caused thousands of power outages across the island.

People born in American Samoa, unlike those born in Guam or Puerto Rico, hold which legal status at birth?

As US nationals, American Samoans may live and work anywhere in the country, and they can apply for full citizenship after three months of residency in a state.

Which country beat American Samoa 31–0 in 2001, the widest winning margin ever recorded in international soccer?

Australia striker Archie Thompson scored 13 of the goals, itself a record for one player in an international match. The rout pushed FIFA to bring back a preliminary round.

Which US founding father spent his teenage years on St. Croix, clerking for a firm that traded with New York?

Alexander Hamilton proved so capable that he was left in charge of the trading firm for five months while still a teenager. He later sailed north to study in New York.

US citizens living in Guam or Puerto Rico are shut out of the general election for which office?

President is off the ballot in the territories each November, yet their voters still help pick each party's nominee in the primaries.

Which creamy rum cocktail did Puerto Rico proclaim as its official drink in 1978?

Piña colada means strained pineapple. A hotel and a restaurant on the island each still claim that one of their bartenders mixed the very first one.

Which 2017 hurricane destroyed Puerto Rico's power grid and caused the worst blackout in US history?

Maria had weakened only to a high-end Category 4 storm when it struck, and it left all 3.4 million residents without electricity.

Puerto Rico and Guam both passed to the United States under the treaty that ended which war?

The Spanish–American War reached Guam before the news did. The garrison there had no idea fighting had begun and surrendered to a single US cruiser without resistance.

Which Puerto Rican capital, founded in 1521, is the oldest European-established city under the US flag?

San Juan was originally the name of the whole island, while the city was called Ciudad de Puerto Rico. Visiting traders gradually swapped the two names around.

Which Portuguese navigator became the first European to reach Guam, sighting the island in March 1521?

Ferdinand Magellan was sailing for the King of Spain on the first voyage around the world. Even so, Spain did not officially claim Guam until 1565.

Which explorer named the Virgin Islands in 1493 after Saint Ursula and her legendary 11,000 followers?

Christopher Columbus sighted the islands on his second voyage and gave them a long name honouring the saint. It was later shortened to the Virgin Islands.

American Samoa is the only inhabited US territory lying south of which imaginary line?

The Equator runs about fourteen degrees north of American Samoa, the southernmost reach of the United States. Uninhabited Jarvis Island is the only other territory below the line.

Which Puerto Rican baseball star died in a 1972 plane crash while flying earthquake relief to Nicaragua?

Roberto Clemente had collected his 3,000th hit in his final regular-season at-bat three months earlier. The Hall of Fame changed its waiting rule so he could be inducted quickly.

Which Puerto Rican singer joined the boy band Menudo at twelve and later topped charts with Livin' la Vida Loca?

Ricky Martin was already a screen veteran when he joined the group, having appeared in television commercials from the age of nine.

The name Puerto Rico, which US officials long spelled Porto Rico, translates into English as what?

Rich port is the literal meaning, though many islanders call themselves Boricua, a word drawn from the island's Indigenous name, Borinquen.

Which US territory won statehood in August 1959, a few months after Alaska was admitted to the Union?

Hawaii had been an independent republic until the United States annexed it in 1898, the same year the country gained Guam and Puerto Rico.

Which Asian archipelago was a US territory from 1898 until its independence was recognised on July 4, 1946?

The Philippines now marks its independence on June 12 instead, the anniversary of a declaration made in 1898 before American rule began.

Amelia Earhart vanished in 1937 while trying to reach which tiny, uninhabited US outpost in the central Pacific?

Howland Island had airstrips built specially for her refuelling stop. They were never used for it, and a stone tower on the shore is still called Earhart Light.

From which island in the Northern Mariana Islands did the Enola Gay take off to bomb Hiroshima in 1945?

Tinian was almost entirely covered by the largest airbase of World War II. Navy builders laid out its roads like the streets of Manhattan.

Which seabed depression, about 190 miles southwest of Guam, is the deepest known point in Earth's oceans?

Challenger Deep is named after HMS Challenger, a British survey ship that sounded it in 1875 after contrary winds stopped the crew from landing at Guam.

Guam is the largest island in which Pacific region, which also takes in Palau and the Marshall Islands?

Micronesia is made up of about 2,000 small islands. Guam, the biggest of them, is also the westernmost territory of the United States.

Monica Puig won Puerto Rico's first Olympic gold medal in 2016 by competing in which sport?

Tennis gold came against the odds. Puig was unseeded in Rio, and no unseeded woman had won the singles since the sport returned to the Games in 1988.

Puerto Rico's flag was modelled in 1895 on the flag of which neighbouring country, with the colours inverted?

Cuba and Puerto Rico were both struggling to break from Spain. Puerto Rican exiles adopted the design, with its red and blue swapped, at a meeting in Manhattan.

An 1856 law still lets Americans claim uninhabited islands for the United States if they hold deposits of what?

Guano, the built-up droppings of seabirds, was prized in the 1840s and 1850s as a farm fertilizer and as a source of saltpeter for gunpowder.

Canning which fish is described as the backbone of the economy in American Samoa?

Tuna from the territory's StarKist cannery is shipped to the United States, several hundred million dollars' worth of it each year.

Which capital of American Samoa sits on one of the deepest natural harbours in the South Pacific?

Pago Pago is pronounced roughly pahngo pahngo, because the letter g sounds like ng in Samoan.

Which Indigenous people settled Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands roughly 3,500 years ago?

Chamorro society traditionally ran through the mother's line, with a mother's brothers taking a leading part in raising her children.

Which Indigenous people of Puerto Rico slept in cotton hammocks and were ruled by chiefs called caciques?

Taíno dugout canoes came in many sizes, and the largest could carry as many as 150 people between the islands.

Which Puerto Rican forest is the only tropical rainforest in the US National Forest System?

El Yunque stands in the path of the trade winds, which are forced up its mountains and keep the peaks wrapped in cloud and rain almost constantly.

Which Puerto Rican island, a US Navy bombing range until 2003, is home to a brilliantly bioluminescent bay?

Vieques saw years of protests before the Navy withdrew. Its former ranges are now a national wildlife refuge, though parts stay closed because of unexploded ordnance.

Which Puerto Rican town gave its name to the giant radio telescope that collapsed in December 2020?

Arecibo's dish was the world's largest single-aperture telescope for 53 years, until a Chinese instrument overtook it in 2016.

Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands both carry which word in their official English names?

Commonwealth is a label with no legal weight of its own. Four states, including Kentucky and Virginia, use the same word in their full official names.

Which 1917 law, signed by Woodrow Wilson, made people born in Puerto Rico citizens of the United States?

The Jones Act, formally the Jones–Shafroth Act, also gave the island a bill of rights modelled on the federal one and reshaped its government.

What title is held by Puerto Rico's non-voting member of the US House, who uniquely serves a four-year term?

The Resident Commissioner post was devised in 1900 after a senator argued that an ordinary delegate would imply the island was on the path to statehood.

Which Supreme Court rulings of 1901 held that the Constitution need not apply in full in US territories?

The Insular Cases are so named because the new possessions were islands, run by the War Department's Bureau of Insular Affairs. One ruling created the doctrine of territorial incorporation.

Which Caribbean country disputes the US claim to uninhabited Navassa Island, off its southwestern peninsula?

Haiti traces its claim to an 1801 constitution covering adjacent islands, while the United States has run Navassa as a national wildlife refuge since 1999.

Which kind of seabird is Wisdom, the oldest confirmed wild bird on record, first tagged on Midway Atoll in 1956?

Albatross are so common on the atoll that Pan Am's hotel for flying-boat passengers was nicknamed the Gooneyville Lodge, after the gooney birds.

On which of the US Virgin Islands does a national park cover about 60 percent of the land?

St. John owes its park to Laurance Rockefeller, whose foundation donated its extensive lands there in 1956 on condition that they stay undeveloped.

Charlotte Amalie, capital of the US Virgin Islands, began in 1666 under an older name meaning what?

Beer house, or Taphus, fitted a port town known for its many beer halls. In 1691 it was renamed in honour of the wife of King Christian V.

Which holiday do the US Virgin Islands celebrate every March 31 to mark the start of American rule in 1917?

Transfer Day recalls a ceremony timed to the minute. The old flag came down at 4:48 p.m. after 251 years, and the Stars and Stripes went up five minutes later.

Which of the 19 villages on Guam, among the smallest by population, serves as Guam's capital?

Hagåtña had only 943 residents at the 2020 census. It was officially called Agana until 1998, when lawmakers restored the original Indigenous form of the name.

What name is given to the capped pillars that ancient islanders on Guam used as building supports?

Latte stones narrow towards the top and carry a bowl-shaped capstone with its flat side up. The shape is now an emblem of local identity across the Marianas.

Which Japanese sergeant was found hiding in Guam's jungle in 1972, almost 28 years after US forces retook the island?

Shoichi Yokoi, an apprentice tailor before the war, made his clothes and bedding from native plants and kept them hidden in his cave.

After World War II, the US governed the Northern Mariana Islands as a trust territory on behalf of which body?

The United Nations trusteeship ran from 1947 to 1994. Palau and the Marshall Islands left it as independent states, while the Northern Marianas stayed under US jurisdiction.

To which European power did Spain sell the Northern Mariana Islands in 1899, having just lost Guam to the US?

Germany ran the islands from its colony in New Guinea for only fifteen years, until Japan seized them at the start of World War I.

Which anthropologist based the 1928 book Coming of Age in Samoa on fieldwork on Taʻū in American Samoa?

Margaret Mead spent six to nine months in a village of 600 people, where she interviewed 68 girls and young women for the study.

Which remote US outpost in the Pacific, a Pan Am flying-boat stop from 1935, was seized by Japan in December 1941?

Wake Island had no natural soil, so the airline grew vegetables for its passengers hydroponically, one of the earliest successes for the technique.