200 Cool Facts About Missouri

200 Interesting Facts About Missouri

Missouri is known as the “Show Me State”.
The state animal is the Missouri mule.
The state bird is the bluebird.
The state tree is the flowering dogwood.
The state insect is the honeybee.
The state flower is the hawthorn.
State bird–native Bluebird March 30, 1927
State insect–honey bee July 3, 1985.
Its postal code is MO.
The largest city in Missouri is Kansas City.
State folk dance: square dance
State musical instrument: fiddle
Missouri is the 21st largest state in terms of surface area.
It is the 18th most populous state in the United States. It is home to more than six million people.
Kansas City and St Louis are home to more than half of the population of Missouri.
People from the state are called Missourians.
It is located in the Midwest of the US.
The state of Missouri contains 114 counties.
Missouri is sometimes nicknamed the Mother of the West.
Mozarkite was adopted as the official state rock on July 21, 1967, by the 74th General Assembly.
On July 21, 1967, the mineral galena was adopted as the official mineral of Missouri.
Charleston holds the Dogwood-Azalea Festival annually on the 3rd weekend of April. “Charleston becomes a blooming wonderland.”
Jefferson City, Missouri, the state’s capital, was named for Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States.
Missouri’s oldest community, Saint Genevieve, was founded as early as 1735.
In 1812 Missouri was organized as a territory and later admitted the 24th state of the Union on August 10, 1821.
In 1865 Missouri became the first slave state to free its slaves.
Hermann, Missouri is a storybook German village with a rich wine-making and riverboat history that is proudly displayed in area museums. Built in 1836 as the “New Fatherland” for German settlers, the town has achieved national recognition because of its quality wines and distinctive heritage.
Auguste Chouteau founded Saint Louis in 1764.
Laura Elizabeth Ingalls, writer of Little House on the Prairie grew up in Missouri.
Another event that year: climbing a greased pole.
Missouri is one of 12 states with its own official horse. The Missouri Fox Trotter is a mid-sized muscular breed from the Ozarks that's popular on ranches.
Earthquakes aren't just for California. Four of the largest in North American history—up to a moment magnitude of 8.0—occurred from December 1811 to February 1812 in New Madrid, Missouri.
Missouri is also home to the most destructive tornado in U.S. history. The Tri-State tornado, which set down on March 18, 1925, killed 695 people, injured 2027 people, and demolished an estimated 15,000 homes throughout Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. Annapolis, Missouri, was 90 percent destroyed.
During Abraham Lincoln’s campaign for the presidency, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat named Valentine Tapley from Pike County, Missouri, swore that he would never shave again if Abe were elected. Tapley kept his word and his chin whiskers went unshorn from November 1860 until he died in 1910, attaining a length of twelve feet six inches.
President Harry S. Truman was born in Lamar, May 8, 1884.
The first train of the Atlantic-Pacific Railway, which became the St.Louis-San Francisco Railway, or “Frisco,” arrived in 1870.
Callaway County was organized on November 25, 1820 and named for Captain James Callaway who was killed in a fight with Indians near Loutre Creek.
Missouri was named after a tribe called Missouri Indians; meaning “town of the large canoes”
Human settlement has been recorded in the region for at least 12,000 years ago.
Did you know that between December 16, 1811, and late April 1812, over two-thousand earthquakes tremors occurred on the Mississippi River valley? During this period, three of the strongest earthquakes (between 7.5 and 8.8 on today’s Richter Scale) in U.S. history hit Missouri near New Madrid. The earthquake caused a so-called fluvial tsunami in the Mississippi River, actually making the river run backward for several hours.
The name of the state the “Show Me State” came into being when Missouri Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver, in an 1899 speech in Philadelphia, said, “For thy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”
Missouri was once an important hub for transportation and commerce in early America.
The state is sometimes called “the Mother of the West.”
Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet were the first Europeans to set foot on the land in 1673 while traveling down the Mississippi River.
Missouri has the largest beer producing plant in the country as it houses the maker of Budweiser beer–the Anheuser-Busch.
Kansas City has more miles of boulevards than Paris and more fountains than any city except Rome.
Kansas City has more miles of freeway per capita than any metro area with more than 1 million residents.
Jefferson National Expansion Memorial consists of the Gateway Arch, the Museum of Westward Expansion, and St. Louis’ Old Courthouse. During a nationwide competition in 1947-48, architect Eero Saarinen’s inspired design for a 630-foot stainless steel arch was chosen as a perfect monument to the spirit of the western pioneers. Construction of the Arch began in 1963 and was completed on October 28, 1965.

Missouri facts for students

The Arch has foundations sunken 60 feet into the ground, and is built to withstand earthquakes and high winds. It sways up to one inch in a 20 mph wind, and is built to sway up to 18 inches.
help by rolling up waffles to hold ice cream.
Missouri ties with Tennessee as the most neighborly state in the union, bordered by 8 states.
St. Louis; is also called, “The Gateway to the West” and “Home of the Blues”.
Warsaw holds the state record for the low temperature of -40 degrees on February 13, 1905.
Warsaw holds the state record for the high temperature recorded, 118 degrees on July 14, 1954.
The crinoid became the state’s official fossil on June 16, 1989, after a group of Lee’s Summit school students worked through the legislative process to promote it as a state symbol.
On June 20, 1955, the flowering dogwood (Cornus Florida L.) became Missouri’s official tree.
To appeal to as many voters as possible, politicians sometimes pronounce "Missouri" two different ways—Missouree and Missouruh—in the same speech. At one time, pronunciation correlated with geography, with the -uh sound being more prevalent in rural areas. Now it's more of a generational difference.
Maybe we should call it the Read Me State. Famous Missourian writers include T.S. Eliot, Maya Angelou, Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, and Sara Teasdale.
With more than 6,000 known caves, Missouri's also known as The Cave State.
Richland, Missouri, is the only city in the U.S. with a cave restaurant. (Don't worry: There aren't any bats.)
Harry Truman was the only U.S. President to hail from Missouri. After he left the White House in 1953, he and his wife Bess moved back to the Independence home they shared with his mother-in-law and lived off his $112.56 monthly Army pension.
The present Capitol completed in 1917 and occupied the following year is the third Capitol in Jefferson City and the sixth in Missouri history. The first seat of state government was housed in the Mansion House, Third and Vine Streets, St. Louis; the second was in the Missouri Hotel, Maine and Morgan Streets, also in St. Louis. St. Charles was designated as temporary capital of the state in 1821 and remained the seat of government until 1826 when Jefferson City became the permanent capital city.
The first Capitol in Jefferson City burned in 1837 and a second structure completed in 1840 burned when the dome was struck by lightning on February 5, 1911.
Saint Louis University received a formal charter from the state of Missouri in 1832, making it the oldest University west of the Mississippi.
In 1889, Aunt Jemima pancake flour, invented at St. Joseph, Missouri, was the first self-rising flour for pancakes and the first ready-mix food ever to be introduced commercially.
The tallest man in documented medical history was Robert Pershing Wadlow from St. Louis. He was 8 feet, 11.1 inches tall
Creve Coeur’s name means broken heart in French, comes from nearby Creve Coeur Lake. Legend has it that an Indian princess fell in love with a French fur trapper, but the love was not returned. According to the story, she then leapt from a ledge overlooking Creve Coeur Lake; the lake then formed itself into a broken heart.
St. Charles, a restored city situated on Missouri River welcomes guests thanks to its strategic location and entry to the Louisiana Purchase, a western territory. Historic characters including Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark played an important role in shaping the town into what it is today. These brave pioneers left exploits at the historical sites of St. Charles.
According to Money Magazine St. Peters is the best place to live in Missouri and among the top 100 residential areas in America. Houses are quite affordable in St. Peters and the schools here do better than the state’s average scores especially in Math and languages.
Did you know that a mail delivery system called the “Pony Express” existed between April 1860 and October 1861? The system used nearly 200 relief stations across what is now Missouri and California. Lone horsemen were employed to carry the mails and switch the shipment between the stations. The relay system enabled the mail to cross the frontier in record time. The Pony Express had an average delivery time of just 10 days. However, their best came in March 1861, when riders carried the inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln from Nebraska to California in just seven days, 17 hours.
The “Missouri Gazette”, the first newspaper in Missouri, was founded in Missouri in 1808 by Joseph Charles.
Mark Twain, a world’s renowned influential writer, was born in Missouri in 1835.
In 1849, a cholera epidemic struck St. Louis, killing over 4,000 people.
In 1911, a lightning strike on Missouri State Capitol that resulted in a fire destroyed the building completely.
Missouri is named after the Missouri River, which was named after the indigenous Missouri Indians. The Missouri River is the longest river in the USA.
The first successful parachute jump to be made from a moving airplane was made by Captain Berry at St. Louis, in 1912.
The most destructive tornado on record occurred in Annapolis. In 3 hours, it tore through the town on March 18, 1925 leaving a 980-foot wide trail of demolished buildings, uprooted trees, and overturned cars. It left 823 people dead and almost 3,000 injured.
At the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, Richard Blechyden, served tea with ice and invented iced tea.
Missouri is a leading lead-producing state. The deposit of the metal fostered the first European settlement in the state in about 1750.
Ice cream cones made from waffles were first invented in Missouri in the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 when an ice cream vendor ran out of cups to supply the ice cream. The vendor asked a waffle vendor to roll waffles to supply the ice cream, and hence the birth of the cone took place.
The first parachute jump from a plane was also made at Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis on March 1, 1912.
Harry S. Truman (33rd president of the U.S.) was the only president of the United States born in Missouri. Independence, the town where President Harry S. Truman grew up, holds the history of the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Visitors come here to learn the regional importance of Missouri during the 19th Century at the historic museums including Harry S. Truman Library and Museum and National Frontier Trails Museum.
Kansas City, Missouri, is home to more than 200 fountains. The city is only behind Rome in the total number of fountains. It is also nicknamed “the City of Fountains”. Other nicknames of Kansas City include Heart of America and America’s Creative Crossroads.

Weird facts about Missouri

Missouri is the home of Budweiser, which operates the largest beer producing plant in the US.
Kansas City, Missouri was the home of the first ever museum dedicated solely to Jazz. It is called the American Jazz Museum.
The first ever person to jump with a parachute from a plane was over the Jefferson Barracks in St Louis, Missouri, in 1912.
The only US president to have been born in Missouri was Harry S Truman, the 33rd President of the US.
Famous writer Mark Twain was born in Missouri in 1835.
Kansas City has more than 200 water fountains, which is why it is often nicknamed the City of Fountains. It is second only to Rome in that respect.
Kansas City is seen as the home of barbecue. It is home to more than 100 barbecue restaurants. Missouri is famous for its barbeque food, it is what the state is best at.
The first European to enter Missouri was Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto, in 1541.
French fur traders settled in St Louis, Missouri in 1764.
Saint Louis University is the oldest university west of the Mississippi; it received a formal charter in 1832.
Between April 1860 and October 1861, a mail delivery system called the Pony Express was put in place between Missouri and California. The system ran with almost 200 relief stations along the way. It took a messenger about 10 days to deliver something, which was very fast for the time.
The state's first newspaper, the Missouri Gazette, was founded in 1808 by Joseph Charles.
St Louis, Missouri, was struck by a cholera pandemic in 1849 which killed over 4,000 people.
At its most distant points, Missouri is 300 miles long and 240 miles long.
Missouri shares a border with eight other states: Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Tennessee. It is joint first with Tennessee in terms of the number of border states.
Missouri once experienced over two thousand earthquake tremors in less than a year, between December 1811 and April 1812.
One of said earthquakes caused a fluvial tsunami in the Mississippi River, making the river run backwards for a period of a few hours.
One of the largest natural springs in the US and in the world is Big Springs in Missouri.
Missouri is also known as the Cave State as it contains more than 6,000 caves. Richland, Missouri is home to the US' only cave restaurant.
Missouri experienced the most destructive tornado in the history of the US. What was called the Tri-State Tornado occurred in 1925 and destroyed 90% of Missouri.
The first ever journalism college degree was launched at the University of Missouri in 1908.
The highest point in Missouri is the Taum Sauk Mountain, which is 1,772 feet high.
Missouri has more than 10,000 farms which occupy more than 66% of the state's total land area.
The average size of a farm in Missouri is 269 acres.
The facts below list just some of the things Missouri is known for, including famous Missouri people who were born in the state!
Famous rapper Eminem is from Missouri.
Writer Maya Angelou is from Missouri.
The state is home to four Nobel prize winners: Jack Kilby (Physics, 2000), Roger D. Kornberg (Chemistry, 2006), T.S. Eliot (Literature, 1948) and Steven Chu (Physics, 1997).
Missouri is a landlocked state and borders eight states. Both Missouri and Tennessee have borders with the most number of states (8 states) in the U.S.
The Mississippi and the Missouri River are the two longest rivers of the state.
Missouri is one of the leading producers of transportation equipment.
The University of Missouri is the first college in the world to grant a journalism degree. It opened on September 14, 1908.
Union Station – the second-largest working train station in the U.S. behind the Grand Central terminal is in Kansas City, Missouri. It was built in 1914.
The American Jazz Museum – the first museum solely dedicated to Jazz music is also located in Kansas City, Missouri.
Big Springs, Missouri is one of the largest springs in the U.S. and the world. The spring has an average flow of 470 cubic feet (13,000 L) of water per second.
Did you know this interesting fact about Missouri? Missouri has the country’s tallest monument – the Gateway Arch – in St Louis. It is 630 feet high and 630 feet wide at the base. It was completed on October 28, 1965. The monument is known as the “Gateway to the West.” This architectural marvel provides a perfect vantage point to view 30 miles of the landscape from every direction. The structure was designed to withstand earthquakes and can sway 18 inches.
Missouri, along with Illinois and Indiana, also witnessed the deadliest tornado in U.S. history – The Tri-State Tornado. The tornado killed 695 people which is more than twice as many as the second deadliest in the U.S. history.
Missouri is also known as the Cave State. It has more than 6,000 caves.
Kansas City and St. Louis are home to more than half of the state’s population.
Regarded as a home of barbecue, Kansas City boasts more than 100 BBQ restaurants, offering delicacies from ribs, burnt ends, and pork. The city hosts one of the greatest barbecue events- the American Royal BBQ- from September through November. Activities range from BBQ competitions, vendor fairs, kids fun days, and live music.
Missouri is home to almost 10,000 farms which cover 66% of the state’s total land area. The average size of a farm in Missouri is 269 acres and they are generally family owned and operated. Soybean and corn are the state’s top crops.
Springfield, MO is a renaissance city for youths. It is a good place for scholars, offering 22 colleges plus a leading public university in the state of Missouri. Most of the old buildings have been restored and turned into coffee shops, lofts, music venues, offices, boutiques, and restaurants.
Columbia, the fourth most populous city in Missouri was once a home of Mound Builders during the prehistoric era. This was a large community of native Americans that built mounds from Mississippi River to the mountains of Appalachian. Most of the mounds they managed to create are found in Ohio and Mississippi.
Known for Arch Nemesis, the city of O’Fallon offers unique pizzas that are not made with the usual Provel cheese which many people crave for. Rather, the pizza sold in O’Fallon restaurants is cooked with Zesty Pizza Loaf, a less flavorful, and a less expensive option.
Lee’s Summit began as a small town of Strother with 11 blocks adjacent to Missouri Pacific Railroad tracks. Today, Lee’s Summit has a well-developed downtown that came out of the 11 blocks. Major events happen in the Downtown District including Lee’s Summit Farmers Market.
Eight different states border Missouri. Name them correctly without a map to win ... our undying respect.

Funny things about Missouri

Missouri was named after a tribe of Sioux Indians called the Missouris. While often mistranslated as “muddy water,” the word actually means “town of the large canoes.”
The 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis introduced the masses to a number of new treats, including the waffle cone, cotton candy, iced tea, and Dr Pepper.
St. Louis hosted the 1904 Summer Olympics—the first Olympic Games ever held in the U.S.—at the same time as the World's Fair. It was complete chaos. Athletes competed for four and a half months with one event each day of the fair. But only 42 of the 91 events actually included competitors from other countries. The craziest part, though, was the marathon: Almost half of the runners got heat stroke, and the first-place winner cheated by hitching a car ride from mile nine to mile 19.
The first successful parachute jump from a moving plane was made above the Jefferson Barracks military post, near St. Louis, on March 1, 1912. U.S. Army Captain Albert Berry climbed to 1,500 feet in a Benoist aircraft before positioning himself on a trapeze bar attached to the front of the plane, his parachute stored in a conical pack attached to his harness, and jumped. Air & Space magazine reports Berry saying, upon landing, “Never again! I believe I turned five somersaults on my way down … My course downward … was like a crazy arrow.” Berry completed his second jump on March 10.
Aunt Jemima pancake flour was invented in St. Louis in 1889. It was the first ready-mix food to ever be sold commercially. Take that, Betty Crocker.
The ‘Show Me State’ expression may have began in 1899 when Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver stated, “I’m from Missouri and you’ve got to show me.”
Also, at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, the ice cream cone was invented. An ice cream vendor ran out of cups and asked a waffle vendor to
The “Missouri Waltz” became the state song under an act adopted by the General Assembly on June 30, 1949
The most powerful earthquake to strike the United States occurred in 1811, centered in New Madrid, Missouri. The quake shook more than one million square miles, and was felt as far as 1,000 miles away.
Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis, Missouri is the largest beer producing plant in the nation.
Situated within a day’s drive of 50% of the U.S. population, Branson and the Tri-Lakes area serves up to 65,000 visitors daily. Branson has been a “rubber tire” destination with the vast majority of tourists arriving by vehicles, RVs and tour buses. Branson has also become one of America’s top motor coach vacation destinations with an estimated 4,000 buses arriving each year.
“Madonna of the Trail” monument in Lexington tells the story of the brave women who helped conquer the west and is one of 12 placed in every state crossed by the National Old Trails Road, the route of early settlers from Maryland to California.
Soybeans bring in the most cash for Missourians as a crop.
Missouri Day is the third Wednesday in October.
On Sucker Day in Nixa, Missouri, school closes officially and the little town swells to a throng of 15,000 hungry folks. All craving a taste of the much maligned but delicious bottom dweller fish loathed by almost everyone else.
Point of highest elevation: Taum Sauk Mountain, 540 meters (1,772 feet.
The state's capital is Jefferson City. The city is named after the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson.
Missouri became a state on August 10, 1821. It was the 24th state to join the Union.
Its motto is "Salus populi suprema lex esto", which means "let the welfare of the people be the supreme law".
The state is named after the Missouri River, the longest river in the US, which was itself named after a tribe of Sioux Indians. The word roughly translates as "town of the large canoes".
Missouri is one of the leading producers of transport equipment in the US.The state is also one of the biggest producers of lead in the country.
Missouri is one of the only two states which have an official grape. The official grape is the Norton.
The first human settlement in Missouri was recorded more than 12,000 year ago.
Columbia, Missouri was the home of Mound Builders, a native community who built mounds, in prehistoric times.
Missouri is sometimes nicknamed the Show Me State because congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver said in a speech in 1899: "For thy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me."
The Missouri State Capitol building was destroyed by a lightning strike in 1911.
Waffle ice cream cones were invented at the St Louis World's Fair in 1904. They came about when a vendor ran out of cups to serve his ice cream and are now one of the most famous food exports of Missouri.
St Louis, Missouri is home to the tallest manmade monument in the US: the Gateway Arch is 630 feet tall.
The second biggest working train station in the US is Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri. It was built in 1914 and is second only to Grand Central terminal in New York City.

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