The Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers have had several star players who shared surnames with U.S. presidents, including running back Keith Lincoln, wide receiver John Jefferson, and offensive lineman Russ Washington.
Steve Van Buren, no relation to the 8th president, was the greatest running back of the post-war years. Cut by his high school team, he quit school, then returned after two years, made the team, got an LSU scholarship, and played three years as a blocking back before they let him carry the ball.
LSU, Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is perhaps the better-known Louisiana universities, but NFL Hall of Famer and 4x Super Bowl champion Terry Bradshaw attended Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana, some 220 miles to the northwest.
Map, Louisiana Tech University to Louisiana State University >>
Google Maps.
The Louisiana Supreme Court is unique in that it has two official courthouses, one in the state capital, Baton Rouge, and the other in the state’s biggest city, New Orleans.
The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 nearly doubled the size of the US. 828,000 sq mi (530,000,000 acres) was acquired for land bounded roughly on the east by the Mississippi River, and then on the west by the Sabine River, the Red River, and the Arkansas River as finalized by the 1819 Adams–Onís Treaty with Spain. The northern borders of the purchase were adjusted by the Treaty of 1818 with Britain.
The Arkansas River changes name at the state lines. In Colorado and Arkansas, it is pronounced like the state or Arkansas, but where it flows through Kansas, it is pronounced Ar-KAN-zus.
The Arkansas River, a major tributary of the Mississippi River, starts near Leadville CO in the Rocky Mountains at the confluence of the East Fork Arkansas River and Tennessee Creek and drops nearly 10,000 feet over the course of its nearly 1,500 miles.
The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819 set the Arkansas River as part of the frontier between the United States and Spanish Mexico.
The word “Arkansas” is a French pronunciation (“Arcansas”) of a Quapaw (a related “Kaw” tribe) word, akakaze, meaning “land of downriver people” or the Sioux word akakaze meaning “people of the south wind”.
Although Chicago is known as the ‘Windy City’, according to a list produced by the US National Climatic Data Center, Dodge City, Kansas is the windiest city, with an annual average wind speed of 14.0 mph.
In Alaska the term “cheechako” means ‘newcomer’ or ‘tenderfoot’, first used extensively during the Klondike gold rush. Some sources used to claim that the term came from local Natives’ interpretation of ‘Chicago’, but the word is actually from Chinook jargon.
There are several different theories as to how Chicago historically came by the nickname “the Windy City.” It’s almost certainly not from the weather: Windy City (nickname) - Wikipedia
Compared to Dodge City’s 14 mph, the average wind speed at Mt. Washington, new Hampshire, is 32 mph. Mt. Washington holds the world record, with a straight wind of 231 mph, the highest ever recorded not associated with a cyclonic event.
George Washington’s false teeth were not made of wood, as is commonly believed, but of a mix of human and animal teeth. Several sets of them still exist.
George “Boomer” Scott was a first baseman for several Major League Baseball teams in the late 1960s and 1970s, including the Kansas City Royals, Boston Red Sox, Milwaukee Brewers, and New York Yankees.
Scott was known for his personality, and sense of humor – he sometimes wore a necklace, which he described as being made from “second basemen’s teeth.”
A “boomer” is a ballistic missile submarine capable of deploying ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. In US naval slang, ballistic missile submarines are called boomers. In Britain, they are known as bombers.
Boomer Scott is the best-known MLB player whose state of birth has counties matching his first and last names – Mississippi has a George County and a Scott County. Another more recent one is Texas-born Austin Jackson.
Scott Joplin was an African American composer who popularized the ragtime genre early in the 20th century. His composition “Maple Leaf Rag”, released in 1899, was the first and most influential hit of the genre. During his lifetime, he wrote 44 ragtime pieces, two operas and one ragtime ballet. Sadly, Joplin developed dementia due to syphilis and died at age 48.
Interesting!
In play: The state with the most counties is, unsurprisingly, Texas, with 254. Delaware, with 3 counties, has the fewest. The largest state in area, Alaska, has just 27 counties.
Technically, of course, Louisiana has zero counties…but it does contain 64 parishes.
ETA: Scott Joplin was born in Texarkana, a city in Bowie County, Texas.
Nitpick: Alaska has zero counties, but it does contain 19 organized boroughs and one unorganized borough. The unorganized borough contains 10 census districts, which means 29 county equivalents.
Mea culpa. Alaska does indeed contain boroughs rather than counties.
The Unorganized Borough encompasses nearly half of Alaska’s land area, is larger than any other state, and is larger than the land area of the smallest 16 states combined.