Today is the 50 th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood. I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about it.
On a different note, this is the longest the US has gone without adding another state. There was a gap of just under 47 years between Arizona in February 1912 and Alaska in January 1959, which I think was the previous record.
Except for Ohio, which was formally admitted to the Union in 1953, retroactively and with a bunch of hyuk-hyuks about it, when, in researching the history of admission for Ohio’s sesquicentennial of statehood, they discovered that they’d skipped one step in the 1803 admission – the actual Congressional resolution admitting Ohio as a state. Cecil’s article on the bizarreries of income tax protesters goes into some detail on this.
Well, at least you know it’s a state!
:eek:
There is a pretty nice postage stamp commemorating the anniversary, though.
With this kind of confusion, the Hawai’ian monarchist and independence movements must be reaping some advantage, no?
Even if true, it wouldn’t affect my statement about the current gap being the longest. They might conceivavly have erred in the date of Ohio’s statehood, but the 1803-1953 gap isn’t relevant. This would just cut the previous gap between state admissions from 47 years to 41.
No, not really. Sadly. Embarrassing grab by the US gov’t. 
Better us than some other imperialist nation.
And they’d be eating borsch with their poi today.
The conclusion looked unfair to me, because they said they asked whether Hawai’i was in the USA, not whether it was a state of the USA. That could easily be understood geographically and not politically. There are two trick European questions related to just this kind of difference, one being the most southerly EU nation and the other the closest country to Canada after the USA. In both cases the answer is France, since French Guiane in South America is counted as a Metropolitan Department and so is a tiny island near Newfoundland.
I think Alaska got in just because they were in line before Hawaii, not because they were ready, population-wise. Could have stayed a territory a while longer.
Hawaii’s a state? Really? Next thing you know they’ll be claiming that New Mexico is a state.
We are due for adding another state. Since Hawaii was only made a state so Dole wouldn’t have to pay import tariffs on pineapples, maybe we should make Iraq a state so we can claim the oil.
If we get rid of Alaska, we won’t need to make new flags.