45 Fun Facts About Delaware

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

It acted five days ahead of the next state. The nickname was only made official in 2002.

What is the capital of Delaware?

Dover is only the state's second-largest city, with about 38,000 people. Wilmington, with about 70,000, is the biggest.

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

Rhode Island is the only state smaller than Delaware, which covers about 2,490 square miles; Delaware also has the lowest mean elevation of any state, about 60 feet.

How many counties does Delaware have?

Delaware has just three counties, the fewest of any state; Rhode Island and Hawaii, the next fewest, each have five.

Delaware takes its name from Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, who was the colonial governor of where?

De La Warr governed the Virginia colony, arriving at Jamestown in 1610 and staying barely a year; the bay was named for him first, then the river, the state and the people the English called Delaware Indians.

Which state lies directly south of Delaware?

Maryland wraps around Delaware's western and southern borders on the Delmarva Peninsula; New Jersey lies across the Delaware River and Bay to the east.

Roughly what share of Fortune 500 companies are legally incorporated in tiny Delaware?

Business-friendly courts and laws, not physical offices, draw them in.

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?

The colonists arrived aboard the Kalmar Nyckel and Fogel Grip and named the fort after their queen. It became the capital of the New Sweden colony.

Until 1776 Delaware's three counties shared a governor with which neighbouring colony?

Known as the Lower Counties on the Delaware, they shared Pennsylvania's governor but had their own assembly from 1704; on June 15, 1776 that assembly broke with both Britain and Pennsylvania.

Which Delaware delegate rode 70 miles overnight in July 1776 to break his delegation's tie on independence?

Caesar Rodney rode through a storm from Dover to Philadelphia to vote with Thomas McKean against George Read; he hid facial cancer behind a green scarf, and his ride appears on the 1999 Delaware quarter.

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

Captain Jonathan Caldwell's men were nicknamed the 'Blue Hen's Chickens' after their gamecocks. The chicken became the official state bird on April 14, 1939, and University of Delaware teams are the Blue Hens.

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

DuPont began as Éleuthère Irénée du Pont's Eleutherian Mills gunpowder works in 1802; the company later gave the world neoprene, Teflon and Kevlar.

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

Nylon was first made at DuPont's Experimental Station under Wallace Carothers, who died before it was announced; its first commercial use was toothbrush bristles in 1938, and stockings followed in 1940.

Winterthur, the 175-room mansion and museum north of Wilmington, was the estate of which family?

Henry Francis, an heir of the family, opened it to the public in 1951. Its 90,000 objects make it the largest museum of American furniture and decorative arts in the world.

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 his Senate seat in 1972 aged 29 and held it until becoming vice president in 2009; his family had moved from Scranton to Claymont, Delaware, when he was ten, and he became the 46th president.

Reggae star Bob Marley briefly lived in Wilmington, Delaware in 1966, working at which local employers?

He was near his mother's home and used the alias Donald Marley on the Chrysler assembly line in Newark. He soon went back to Jamaica and the Wailers.

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

Delaware Bay's horseshoe crabs, little changed in 400 million years, spawn on its beaches each May, when migrating red knots gorge on their eggs; the horseshoe crab is the state marine animal.

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

The Cape May–Lewes Ferry has crossed the 17-mile mouth of the bay since 1964; Cape Henlopen beside Lewes and Cape May in New Jersey frame the entrance.

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

The first span opened in 1951 and the second in 1968, briefly making it the world's second-longest twin suspension bridge. Because of the Twelve-Mile Circle, almost the whole crossing is in Delaware.

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

The one-mile concrete oval is the Monster Mile; Miles the Monster has been its mascot since 2000, a 46-foot statue of him greets fans, and the track opened in 1969 alongside a harness-racing course.

At Georgetown, Delaware's post-election 'Return Day', what do winners and losers do together?

Winners and losers literally bury a hatchet in a tub of sand, a tradition dating from 1792 when voters returned to Georgetown two days after polling to hear the results; rivals share carriages and an ox roast.

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

Sam Calagione opened Dogfish Head as a brewpub in Rehoboth Beach in June 1995; its 60 Minute and 90 Minute IPAs made it one of America's best-known craft brewers, with a larger brewery in Milton.

What happened to Cecile Steele in 1923 that led her to found the US broiler chicken industry?

She raised the surplus birds in a coal-heated barn and her husband sold them for 62 cents a pound. Neighbours copied her, and by 1935 the Steeles were raising 35,000 broilers a year.

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 state high point lower than Delaware's 448-foot Ebright Azimuth, a benchmark on a suburban street near the Pennsylvania line named after the Ebright family.

What is Delaware's official state flower?

The peach blossom was adopted in 1895, when Delaware orchards held hundreds of thousands of peach trees; peach pie became the state dessert in 2009, and the state tree is the American holly.

What did Delaware make its official state beverage in 1983?

Milk became Delaware's state beverage in 1983, a nod to the state's dairy farms; the state fish is the weakfish and the state fruit, since 2010, the strawberry.

What is Delaware's state motto?

'Liberty and Independence' appears on the state seal and flag; 'The Small Wonder' and 'The Diamond State' are nicknames, and the state song is 'Our Delaware', adopted in 1925.

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

She played April Ludgate on the show and later earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for The White Lotus.

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

The University of Delaware's main campus is in Newark, about 12 miles south-west of Wilmington; the school traces its roots to a 1743 academy and its teams are the Fightin' Blue Hens.

The Zwaanendael Museum, commemorating the 1631 Dutch colony, stands in which Delaware town?

The museum stands in Lewes, which sits at the mouth of Delaware Bay beside Cape Henlopen; it was built in 1931 for the colony's tercentenary, modelled on the town hall of Hoorn in the Netherlands.

Which canal across northern Delaware lets ships avoid sailing around the Delmarva Peninsula?

The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal opened in 1829 and runs about 14 miles between Delaware City and Chesapeake City, Maryland; the US Army Corps of Engineers has operated it since 1919.

Where does Delaware rank among the 50 states by population?

Delaware is the sixth-least populous state, with about one million people; only Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota and South Dakota have fewer, yet its corporate registry lists more business entities than residents.

Which Kent County town has hosted the Delaware State Fair every summer since 1920?

The Delaware State Fair has been held in Harrington since 1920, running for ten days each July with livestock shows, a carnival midway and grandstand concerts.

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

The Unami Lenape became middlemen in the fur trade with their old enemy the Minqua; the Nanticoke held much of the southern Delmarva Peninsula.

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

The arc is drawn 12 miles from the cupola of the old New Castle Court House, the colonial capitol where Delaware's assembly voted to separate from Britain and Pennsylvania in June 1776.

How long is Delaware from north to south?

Delaware measures 96 miles from north to south and only 9 to 35 miles across, giving it a total area of about 2,490 square miles.

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?

The Court of Chancery, created in 1792, hears equity cases without juries; the great majority involve mergers, acquisitions and shareholder disputes, which is why corporate lawyers watch its rulings closely.

In June 2018 Delaware beat New Jersey to become the first state outside Nevada offering what?

Delaware opened full sports betting on 5 June 2018, three weeks after the Supreme Court struck down the 1992 federal ban known as PASPA and nine days before New Jersey followed.

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.