94 Fun Facts About Delaware

Delaware is nicknamed 'The First State' because it was the first to do what?

Ratify the US Constitution: Delaware did so on December 7, 1787, but the nickname became official only in 2002, after a first-grade class at a local elementary school asked for it.

What is the capital of Delaware?

Dover took over as capital in 1777, chosen for its central location and because it was safer from British raiders on the Delaware River than the old riverside capital.

Which US state is the only one smaller in area than Delaware?

Rhode Island, the smallest state, was officially the 'State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations' until voters cut 'and Providence Plantations' from the name in 2020.

How many counties does Delaware have?

Three is the fewest of any state, and the southernmost got its present name when the colony's new proprietor called it after his home county of Sussex in England.

Delaware takes its name from Thomas West, Baron De La Warr, who became governor of which English colony?

Virginia's starving settlers had abandoned Jamestown and were sailing away in June 1610 when De La Warr's relief ships arrived and turned them back; the bay, river and state later took his name.

Which state lies directly south of Delaware?

Maryland wraps around Delaware's western and southern sides, which is how the peninsula they share got its name: Delmarva is a clipped blend of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

Most Fortune 500 companies use tiny Delaware for which purpose?

Legal incorporation takes only a registered agent's address, so one low building at 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington was listed in 2012 as home to at least 285,000 companies.

Delaware is one of only five US states with no statewide what?

Delaware levies no sales tax, a distinction it shares with Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon; tax-free shopping draws visitors from neighbouring states.

Most of Delaware's northern border is a rare curved boundary called what?

The Twelve-Mile Circle dates from William Penn's 1681 charter, which fixed the boundary at a 12-mile radius; within the arc Delaware owns the river out to New Jersey's low-tide mark.

Fort Christina, founded at present-day Wilmington in 1638, was the first North American settlement of which nation?

Sweden's settlers named the fort for their queen, and the colony is often said to have brought the log cabin to America, where it became the typical pioneer home.

Until 1776 Delaware shared a governor with which other colony?

Pennsylvania's governor still had to sign the laws of the 'Lower Counties', which had kept their own assembly since 1704; in June 1776 that assembly cut ties with both Britain and its neighbour.

Which Delaware delegate rode overnight through a storm in July 1776 to break his delegation's tie on independence?

Caesar Rodney arrived still booted and spurred to side with Thomas McKean against George Read, despite a facial cancer; his ride is on Delaware's 1999 quarter.

Delaware's state bird, the Blue Hen, gets its name from what?

Fighting cocks carried by Revolutionary soldiers were said to be the brood of one famous blue hen, and Captain Jonathan Caldwell's men fought so well that they too were called the Blue Hen's Chickens.

Which chemical company was founded in 1802 as a gunpowder mill on the Brandywine Creek near Wilmington?

DuPont's founder had learned powder-making in France under the chemist Lavoisier; the story goes that a hunting trip with poor American gunpowder convinced him to build his own mill.

Which synthetic fibre was first produced at a Wilmington research station on February 28, 1935?

Nylon came out of Wallace Carothers's laboratory, though he died in 1937 before it reached the public; it first went on sale as toothbrush bristles in 1938, ahead of the famous stockings.

Fort Delaware, on Pea Patch Island, is best remembered for which Civil War role?

Prison for Confederate captives was not the plan: the fort was built to protect the ports of Philadelphia and Wilmington, yet it ended up holding many of the men captured at Gettysburg.

Wilmington was renamed in 1739 after Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, who held which office?

Spencer Compton was British prime minister from 1742 to 1743, succeeding Walpole; he took his title from Wilmington in Sussex, and Thomas Penn renamed Willingtown in his honour in 1739.

A 1981 Delaware law scrapping usury limits made Wilmington a national centre for which industry?

The Financial Center Development Act of 1981 lifted interest-rate caps, drawing credit-card banks such as Chase and MBNA, and later Barclays, to Wilmington; corporate law and banking underpin the state's economy.

Which future president represented Delaware in the US Senate from 1973 to 2009?

Joe Biden won the seat at 29, the youngest person elected to the Senate since 1934 and too young to serve: he reached the required age of 30 only two weeks after the election.

Which future music legend worked on a Chrysler assembly line while living near his mother in Wilmington in the 1960s?

Bob Marley's mother had moved to Delaware, and on stays with her he worked as a lab assistant and on the Chrysler line under the alias Donald Marley.

Delaware Bay holds the world's largest population of which ancient marine animal?

Horseshoe crab eggs, laid on the bay's beaches each spring, feed vast flocks of migrating red knots, and a compound in the crabs' blood is used to check vaccines and medicines for bacterial toxins.

Which ferry links southern Delaware with New Jersey across the mouth of Delaware Bay?

The Cape May–Lewes Ferry officially counts as part of US Route 9: the highway stops at one terminal and picks up again 17 miles away on the far shore.

The Delaware Memorial Bridge to New Jersey is a pair of twin what?

Suspension bridges both, the twin spans are a war memorial, hence the name: they honour soldiers from Delaware and New Jersey killed in the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War.

Dover Motor Speedway, a concrete NASCAR oval in Delaware, is nicknamed what?

The Monster Mile has a mascot to match: Miles the Monster, a creature made of concrete who has fronted the one-mile track since 2000 and was inspired by its surface.

At Georgetown, Delaware's post-election 'Return Day', what do rival party leaders do together?

Party leaders bury a hatchet in sand after winners and losers parade together in horse-drawn carriages, and an ox roast feeds the crowd.

Which craft brewery was founded in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in 1995?

Dogfish Head began, by its own account, as the smallest commercial brewery in America: co-founder Sam Calagione brewed the first batches in little kegs over propane burners.

Which Delaware industry began in 1923 when Cecile Steele was sent ten times the order she had placed?

Broiler chickens were an accident: Steele ordered 50 chicks for her laying flock, received 500, raised them for meat instead, and her neighbours soon copied her.

Which is the only state whose highest point is lower than Delaware's Ebright Azimuth?

Florida's Britton Hill, at 345 feet, is the only lower state summit; Delaware's 448-foot high point is just a survey marker at a suburban road junction, at the entrance to a housing development.

What is Delaware's official state flower?

Peach blossom won the title in 1895 because Delaware was then nicknamed the Peach State for its vast commercial orchards.

What did Delaware make its official state beverage in 1983?

Milk was joined in 2024 by an official state cocktail, the Orange Crush, even though the drink was invented in a neighbouring state.

What is Delaware's state motto?

'Liberty and Independence' was borrowed from the Society of the Cincinnati, the club of Revolutionary War officers, and was added to the state seal in 1847.

Which Parks and Recreation actress was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1984?

Aubrey Plaza came to the show after a casting director told its creators she had just met 'the weirdest, funniest girl' of her life and that they should meet her.

Which city is home to the University of Delaware's main campus?

Newark became the school's home by 1765; it had begun in 1743 as a Presbyterian minister's small school, and several of its first pupils went on to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Delaware's first European colony, destroyed about a year after its 1631 founding on Delaware Bay, was planted by whom?

The Dutch settlers had put up a tin plate painted with their country's arms; by the account their patron heard, a chief took it to make pipes, and the quarrel that followed destroyed the colony.

The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal saves ships nearly 300 miles around the Delmarva Peninsula between Philadelphia and which port?

Baltimore's shortcut opened in 1829 as a private canal with locks; the federal government bought it in 1919 and dug it down to sea level, reopening it in 1927.

Which of these states had fewer residents than Delaware at the 2020 census?

Vermont counted about 643,000 people to Delaware's 990,000, so that census left each state with just one seat in the US House of Representatives.

Which Native American people, also known as the Delaware, lived along the coast before colonists came?

The Lenape were pushed north and west by settlers and removal policies, so the largest groups of their descendants now live in Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Ontario.

Delaware's curved northern border is an arc drawn from a courthouse in which city?

New Castle's old court house was fixed as the centre of the arc in 1750; the same building was Delaware's colonial capitol, where the assembly voted in June 1776 to break with Britain.

Which interstate crosses Delaware in only about 23 miles?

Interstate 95 runs about 1,900 miles from Miami to the Canadian border but spends only 23 of them in Delaware, where it still charges a toll.

Which bebop trumpeter, born in Wilmington in 1930, died in a car crash aged 25?

Clifford Brown co-led a celebrated quintet with drummer Max Roach before dying on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in June 1956; Wilmington honours him with an annual Clifford Brown Jazz Festival.

Which Delaware tribunal, one of the few of its kind left in the US, hears most corporate disputes?

Chancery judges decide cases alone, with no jury, in a court of equity dating from 1792; Twitter sued Elon Musk there in 2022 to make him complete his $44 billion takeover.

In June 2018 Delaware became the first state outside Nevada to offer full-scale what, weeks after a federal ban fell?

Sports betting had a head start there: the 1992 federal ban had spared Delaware's lottery-run NFL parlay cards, so once the Supreme Court struck the law down the lottery simply added single-game bets.

What is Delaware's official state sport?

Bicycling became the official state sport in 2014, a nod to Delaware's flat terrain and its network of cycling trails; with no major-league franchises, residents follow Philadelphia or Baltimore teams instead.

Which Japanese prefecture has been Delaware's 'sister state' since 1997?

Miyagi Prefecture, whose capital is Sendai, has been Delaware's sister state since 1997; student exchanges paused after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the prefecture's coast.

Delaware became a state on December 7, a calendar date it shares with which Second World War event?

Attack on Pearl Harbor fell on Delaware's 154th birthday in 1941. The state flag carries the date December 7, 1787 beneath its coat of arms.

What do Delaware drivers trade as status symbols, with one example selling for $675,000 in 2008?

Low-number license plates can be transferred between owners in Delaware, so the scarce digits became positional goods: the number 6 tag went for $675,000.

Which Robin Williams film was shot almost entirely at St. Andrew's School near Middletown, Delaware?

Dead Poets Society used the Delaware campus as Welton Academy, the story's boarding school in Vermont, and built a replica classroom on a Wilmington soundstage.

Which famous outfits were made in Delaware by ILC, a branch of the company later known as Playtex?

Apollo spacesuits, including the one Neil Armstrong wore for the first moonwalk, came from ILC, which won the contract in 1965 with its flexible joint design.

Dole makes the Port of Wilmington, Delaware the largest US facility for importing which fruit?

Bananas have flowed through Wilmington since 1972, when Del Monte made it a principal North American port of discharge for its tropical fruit.

Which surgeon, born in Wilmington, Delaware, first described his anti-choking thrusts in 1974?

Henry Heimlich said he first used the manoeuvre on a real choking victim in 2016, aged 96, reportedly saving a fellow resident of his senior living community.

Until a 2013 proclamation, Delaware was the last state to lack which federal designation?

National park site status reached Delaware last of all: Barack Obama proclaimed First State National Monument, which Congress made a historical park in 2014.

Delaware was the last state to outlaw which punishment, long dealt out at its notorious Red Hannah?

Flogging stayed on Delaware's books until 1972, long after it stopped in practice: the last whipping was in 1952, and a 1963 sentence was commuted.

What did teams hurl with catapults and air cannons at a World Championship held in Delaware?

Pumpkins set the championship record in 2013, when the air-powered American Chunker fired one 4,694 feet at the World Championship Punkin Chunkin in Bridgeville.

Second-graders from Milford, Delaware persuaded lawmakers to honour which insect as a state symbol?

Ladybug became Delaware's state bug on April 25, 1974, when legislators rewarded an intensive campaign by a class from Lulu M. Ross Elementary School.

Wilmington, Delaware chemist Stephanie Kwolek invented which fibre, five times stronger than steel by weight?

Kevlar came from a cloudy solution that would usually have been thrown away. Kwolek persuaded a technician to spin it anyway, and the thread refused to break.

Which future Super Bowl MVP quarterback transferred from Pittsburgh to play college football at Delaware?

Joe Flacco had to pay his own way at first because Pittsburgh would not release his scholarship. He later won Super Bowl XLVII with the Baltimore Ravens.

Which blues-rock guitarist from Wilmington formed a band in 1973 called the Delaware Destroyers?

George Thorogood also played semi-professional baseball as an infielder, and his group later trimmed its name to simply the Destroyers.

The Bobbie, a signature sandwich of Capriotti's, founded in Wilmington, Delaware, recreates which holiday meal?

Thanksgiving dinner in a roll, the Bobbie layers pulled turkey, cranberry sauce and stuffing, and AOL.com named it the greatest sandwich in America in 2009.

The University of Delaware sent eight students off in 1923 to pioneer which American college tradition?

Study abroad as a formal course began when Professor Raymond Kirkbride took the group to Paris for the fall semester, a model many other institutions later adopted.

Delaware's western edge is part of which boundary, surveyed in the 1760s to end a feud between colonies?

Mason–Dixon line surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon fixed Delaware's north–south border as well as the more famous east–west boundary they began in April 1765.

Each October, Bridgeville, Delaware throws a festival pairing apples with which regional breakfast meat?

Scrapple, a fried mush of pork trimmings and cornmeal first made to avoid wasting butchering leftovers, stars at the Apple Scrapple Festival on October's second weekend.

Which vegetable mascot dances onto the field whenever baseball's Wilmington Blue Rocks score a run?

Celery, in the shape of the mascot Mr. Celery, bursts out to a Blur track after every run, upstaging the Delaware club's blue moose, Rocky Bluewinkle.

Emily Bissell of Wilmington, Delaware brought which charity stamps to America in 1907 to fight tuberculosis?

Christmas Seals began as a bright red one-cent stamp Bissell designed herself, hoping to raise just $300 for a local sanitarium through post offices.

Legend says Thomas Jefferson called Delaware a jewel for its strategic location, inspiring which nickname?

The Diamond State sits beside other Delaware nicknames, including the Blue Hen State and Small Wonder, a nod to its size and outsized contributions.

Which two-time WNBA MVP, a Wilmington high school star, quit UConn after two days and enrolled at Delaware?

Elena Delle Donne, burned out and missing her family, first joined Delaware's volleyball team as a walk-on before returning to basketball.

Which waterproof, breathable fabric did a Delaware company create in 1969 by yanking heated PTFE rods?

Gore-Tex was a happy accident born partly of frustration: instead of stretching the heated material slowly, Bob Gore gave it a sudden, accelerating yank.

Delaware's counties are divided into old English land units, named in property deeds, called what?

Hundreds served as Delaware's voting districts until the 1960s, and names such as Broadkill Hundred and Baltimore Hundred appear on real estate papers.

Folklore says the Delaware River island holding Fort Delaware was named after a ship spilled which cargo?

Peas from the grounded ship supposedly took root, giving Pea Patch Island its name. In the Civil War its fort held Confederate prisoners.

Which Wilmington, Delaware illustrator who taught N.C. Wyeth is credited with the modern pirate look?

Howard Pyle is credited with creating the modern stereotype of pirate dress, and the artists who studied under him became known as the Brandywine School.

Which citrus cocktail, made famous at The Starboard in Dewey Beach, became Delaware's state cocktail in 2024?

Orange Crush blends vodka, triple sec and fresh juice with a splash of lemon-lime soda, and the law that named it says the Dewey Beach bar perfected the drink.

The Delaware town of Cantwell's Bridge renamed itself in the 19th century after which Ukrainian port city?

Odessa replaced a name taken from the toll bridge that a son of Captain Edmund Cantwell opened over Appoquinimink Creek in 1721.

Which red-berried species, one of Delaware's most important forest trees, has been its state tree since 1939?

American holly, also known as evergreen holly, has dark, thorny-leaved foliage and can reach 60 feet in Delaware with a trunk 20 inches across.

Which Cruel Intentions star and former husband of Reese Witherspoon was born in Delaware in 1974?

Ryan Phillippe graduated from Barbizon in Wilmington and broke through on the soap One Life to Live before films such as Crimson Tide and 54.

Which religious community that settled in Kent County in 1915 gives its name to Delaware's largest bike ride?

Amish families west of the state capital saw their settlement almost die out in the 1920s and 30s before it rebounded from the 1960s onward.

Which astronomer, born in Delaware's capital in 1863, is credited with Harvard's scheme for classifying stars?

Annie Jump Cannon worked nearly deaf, a loss often put down to scarlet fever, and her scheme was the first serious attempt to sort stars by temperature and spectral type.

The Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington holds America's largest collection of which English art movement?

Pre-Raphaelites were the passion of Samuel Bancroft, who collected from the 1890s. His estate offered the works in 1931, along with 11 acres for a museum to house them.

Which music festival ran from 2012 to 2022 in The Woodlands beside Delaware's NASCAR speedway?

Firefly opened in July 2012 with Jack White, The Killers and The Black Keys as headliners on a 105-acre festival ground.

Delaware's state colours pair colonial blue with which pale shade, said to echo a Continental Army uniform?

Buff fills the centre of the state flag adopted on July 24, 1913. Its designers said both shades were taken from a plate in an official military publication.

Wilmington's Corporation Trust Center was the registered address of roughly how many businesses in 2012?

285,000 or more, American and foreign alike, because every company formed in Delaware must keep an in-state address where legal papers can be served.

Which Delaware Bay wildlife refuge, founded in 1937, has a name corrupted from words for little-tree point?

Bombay Hook began with 12,000 acres of mostly tidal salt marsh, bought as a breeding ground for waterfowl travelling the Atlantic Flyway.

Delaware's 1971 Coastal Zone Act, banning heavy industry along the shore, blocked which company's refinery?

Shell lost a planned $200 million refinery to the Act, which closed a strip of coast covering a fifth of the state to such plants and survived a court challenge.

Arden, Delaware was founded in 1900 on the ideas of which economist, author of Progress and Poverty?

Henry George inspired the village after his followers failed to win over the whole of Delaware, so a sculptor and an architect built a model community instead.

Which 18th-century house, once owned by a Quaker abolitionist, became the Delaware governor's residence in 1965?

Woodburn was first leased to a governor, Jacob Stout, in 1820. Later owner Daniel Cowgill let the people his family had freed meet in its great hall.

A museum in Delaware's capital honours Eldridge Johnson, who founded which record company in 1901?

Victor Talking Machine made Johnson a fortune: he sold it to bankers for $40 million in 1926, and by 1929 it had become RCA Victor.

Which Karate Kid actress, born in Wilmington, Delaware, earned an Oscar nomination for Leaving Las Vegas?

Elisabeth Shue's 1995 role also brought BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations, a long way from Adventures in Babysitting and Cocktail.

Which first baseman, born in Wilmington, Delaware, won the National League MVP award in 2022?

Paul Goldschmidt grew up a Houston Astros fan and had twice finished runner-up in the voting, in 2013 and 2015, before he finally won.

Fourth-graders persuaded Delaware in 2010 to adopt which tree-climbing canid as its state wildlife animal?

Grey fox won the pupils' backing partly because it does not hibernate, which they said keeps it always ready, like the state's soldiers.

Which 1638 colonists' ship has a replica that was launched at Wilmington, Delaware in 1997?

Kalmar Nyckel, meaning Key of Kalmar, reached the Delaware Valley in March 1638. The replica was built on the Christina River near the settlers' original landing site.

Which species, also called sea trout, has been Delaware's official state fish since 1981?

Weakfish, named for the easily torn membrane in its mouth, was chosen to recognise what sport fishing brings to Delaware.

The Delaware Blue Coats, who play at Chase Fieldhouse, are the G League affiliate of which NBA team?

Philadelphia 76ers management acquired the club in 2013 and moved it to Delaware as the 87ers, a play on the parent team's name and the year 1787.

Third-graders who collected specimens on a field trip got which squid-like fossil made a Delaware state symbol?

Belemnite, an extinct mollusc that was in essence a cone-cased squid, became the official fossil on July 2, 1996 at the suggestion of Wilmington pupils.

Which Jazz Age writer rented Ellerslie, a mansion near Wilmington, Delaware, from 1927 to 1929?

F. Scott Fitzgerald arrived with Zelda in March 1927 after two unhappy months in Hollywood, in a house his Princeton roommate John Biggs Jr. helped him find.

A Wilmington, Delaware arts school founded in 1992 is named for which Cotton Club bandleader and scat singer?

Cab Calloway died at a nursing home in Hockessin, Delaware in 1994, a year after the school was formally dedicated in his name.

Which Newport, Delaware inventor built an amphibious steam wagon in 1805, called America's first automobile?

Oliver Evans named the vehicle the Oruktor Amphibolos, though it was too primitive to succeed. He also built America's first high-pressure steam engine.