Delaware is named after the Lord De La Warr, who, like the state, never actually existed.
I personally live just outside of Rehoboth Beach, which comes from a Hebrew word meaning “room for all.” And when the gays came in, the townspeople summarily regretted the name.
Sussex County, my home county, is not actually named after the county in England. Rather, it was christened by a horny Englishman who was slightly drunk and had an unfortunate stuttering problem. "I’m going to call it… um… buggerit… su…se… Sussex!
One of the most illustrious towns in Delaware is Gumboro. This is, of course, referring to the famous Battle of Killdaire, wherein the noble townspeople decided to fight the Torys by sneaking in their encampment after a late night of drinking (on both accounts, needless to say) and buried all of their weapons. The current pronunciation is a whim of the local dialect.
Incidentally, the first town in the first state was the Dutch-settled Zwannendael, which was summarily wiped out by the fictitious Native Americans. On the bright side, there is now a lovely museum which commemorates the event.
I love history.
And everyone knows Delaware is the Constitution State. Which means that Delaware being fictitious, so is the United States Constitution. Which, following the reasoning of the Ohio argument, means that income taxes are illegal.
I would argue that Ohio is illegal.
Incidentally, Delaware is known as the Diamond State and the First State (home of tax-free shopping!), but not the Constitution state.
Regardless, however, let us continue with the history: [sub]and feel free to contribute![/sub]
The first vibrator was steam powered.
The Sphinx’s missing nose is actually the result of a game of keep-away gone awry. Approximately 5000 years ago, a group of prepubescent Egyptians were picking on that poor kid Kali (there’s one in every crowd, you know) and that bully who never did come to any good threw a scarab too high, disturbing the workman who was carving the face. After this incident, the boy was sent to reform school and it was generally agreed that he was bloody stupid anyway.
Every great work of art throughout civilization is in some way related to sex.
Um…Queen Victoria was this old woman who lived on a boat called Britannia, and made rules about how the waves had to be.
The US didn’t like that, so we fought the Revolutionary war.
But then, the British had to leave so they could go fight Hitler, who wore a stupid mustache. Hitler was killed when he ate pop rocks and soda at the same time.
The Dark Ages were called that because there were so many knights running around, but that ended when Henry Ford invented the electric light, which he put in his cars, so you’d know when the door was open. Henry Ford made all sorts of cars, but they all had to be black, until World War II came around. Then General Motors, who was in charge of the army, made him paint them different colors.
Queen Elizabeth was actually the daughter of Shakespeare.
Susan B. Anthony was born in Syracuse and burned in Effigy.