Canada has the longest coastline of any country in the world at 243,977 kilometers – 151,600 miles
After Canada, the four countries with the next longest coastlines according to Wiki are, in order, Indonesia, Russia, Philippines, and Japan. However if you add the coastline lengths of those four countries, that sum is still less than Canada’s coastline.
The flags of seven of Canada’s ten provinces bear symbols derived either directly or indirectly from British flags and heraldry.
Benny Benson, 13, designed the Alaskan state flag in a contest in 1927.
The two countries whose flags are square-shaped are Switzerland and the Vatican.
The flag of Nepal is the only national flag in the world that not a rectangle. The flag is a simplified combination of two single pennants.
In the Royal Navy and other navies of Europe and the Commonwealth of Nations, ships are identified by pennant number (an internationalisation of pendant number, which it was called before 1948). Historically, naval ships flew a flag that identified a flotilla or type of vessel. For example, the Royal Navy used a red burgee for torpedo boats and a pennant with an H for torpedo boat destroyers. Adding a number to the type-identifying flag uniquely identified each ship.
In the current system, a letter prefix, called a flag superior, identifies the type of ship, and numerical suffix, called a flag inferior, uniquely identifies an individual ship. Not all pennant numbers have a flag superior.
The flag of Ohio is a pennant or burgee, probably inspired by U.S. military cavalry guidons. It is the only non-rectangular American state flag.
A method of folding the non-rectangular flag of Ohio was created by Alex Weinstock, an Ohio Boy Scout, for his Eagle Scout service project. The procedure was signed into law by Governor Bob Taft on February 15, 2005. It requires 17 folds which symbolizes that Ohio was the 17th state admitted to the Union.
IIRC it was recently discovered that the paperwork for Ohio’s admission to the Union was never correctly processed, or some such thing, and maybe the problem was corrected, but the miserable place was not really and truly a state until the correction was made, thus casting doubt on any law which relied on the support of Ohio and its representatives.
What concerns me most is that Prohibition might still be in force, which would make a felon out of me and [del]most[/del] all the people I know.
Cecil sez: Is U.S. income tax invalid because Ohio wasn’t legally a state when the 16th amendment was ratified?
Yeah, Ohio’s non-statehood is an old, old urban legend.
In addition to Cecil, see State v. Bob Manashian Painting (p. 5, para 13): http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/98/2002/2002-Ohio-7444.pdf
Maya Lin, a Chinese American, was born in Athens, Ohio. Her parents migrated to the United States from China in 1948 and settled in Ohio in 1958, one year before Maya was born. Her father, Henry Huan Lin, was a ceramist and former dean of the Ohio University College of Fine Arts. Her mother, Julia Chang Lin, is a poet and taught literature at the Ohio University. She is the grand-niece of Lin Huiyin, who is said to be the first female architect in China.
She is best known for designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that is now one of themost visited sites in Washington, DC. Rather astonishingly, she was only 21 when she submitted what would become the winning design.
The much larger Ohio State University prefers to distinguish itself from Ohio University by prominently and invariably using the prefix (officially capitalized) of “The,” as in, “The Ohio State University.”
Which many Ohioans find tiresome and/or laughable.
The first graduating class, of six men, from Ohio State was in 1878. That is also when the University and the state changed its name to include the “The,” under governor Rutherford B. Hayes.
Ernest Rutherford was a New Zealand-born British physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics. Encyclopædia Britannica considers him to be the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday.
In early work he discovered the concept of radioactive half-life, proved that radioactivity involved the transmutation of one chemical element to another, and also differentiated and named alpha and beta radiation. It is the basis for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry he was awarded in 1908.
Rutherford moved in 1907 to the University of Manchester in the UK, where he and Thomas Royds proved that alpha radiation is helium nuclei. Rutherford performed his most famous work after he became a Nobel laureate. In 1911, although he could not prove that it was positive or negative, he theorized that atoms have their charge concentrated in a very small nucleus, and thereby pioneered the Rutherford model of the atom.
After his death in 1937, he was honoured by being interred with the greatest scientists of the United Kingdom, near Sir Isaac Newton’s tomb in Westminster Abbey. The chemical element rutherfordium (element 104) was named after him in 1997.
Rutherford B. Hayes served as a U.S. Army general during the Civil War and as Governor of Ohio before being elected President of the United States in the hotly-contested election of 1876. He pledged to serve only a single term, and did. His was the first presidential library ever established (although not with Federal funds), and is still open in Fremont, Ohio, adjoining his family home, Spiegel Grove.
President Hayes may be better remembered in Paraguay than the US, because of his arbitration that ended the 1864-70 War of the Triple Alliance against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Paraguay lost an estimated 70% of its adult male population, as well as roughly half its territory, but not its existence. Villa Hayes is the capital of the Paraguayan department of Presidente Hayes.
Cities With State Names: some US cities / towns have the same names as a US state. Not a comprehensive list, here are some of them:
Alabama NY
Alaska MI
California GA
California MI
California PA
Delaware MI
Delaware OH (birthplace of President Rutherford B. Hayes)
Delaware PA
Florida OH
Georgia KS
Indiana IN
Indiana PA (birthplace of actor Jimmy Stewart)
Kansas VT
Louisiana MO
Maryland LA
Maryland TX
Minnesota CA
Nevada IA
Nevada TX
New York FL
Ohio TX
Pennsylvania AL
Texas MD
Vermont IN
Washington MI
Wyoming MI
Wyoming MN
Wyoming NY
Some cities / towns include a state in their names:
California City CA
Kansas City KS
Kansas City MO
Missouri City TX
New Georgia GA
Oklahoma City OK
Texas Acres NV
Texas City TX
Vermontville MI
Arkansas City, Kansas, is on the Arkansas River. The final s is pronounced in both names, with the accent on the second syllable, unlike in the name of the state further downstream.