Joining the likes of Loch Ness and Lake Champlain, Erie has its own lake monster. The first recorded sighting of Bessie occurred in 1793, with witnesses describing the creature as 30 to 40 feet long and grayish in color. There have been further sightings over the years, and locals seem to have embraced the elusive cryptid, with the American League hockey team in Cleveland calling itself the Lake Erie Monsters.

Nearly 22 million pounds of plastic pollution end up in the Great Lakes every year, more than half of which pours into Lake Michigan.

The Battle of Lake Erie, sometimes called the Battle of Put-in-Bay, was fought on 10 September 1813, on Lake Erie off the coast of Ohio during the War of 1812. Nine vessels of the United States Navy defeated and captured six vessels of the British Royal Navy, forcing the British to abandon Detroit.

Lake Erie, with an average depth of only 62 feet (19 metres), is the shallowest of the Great Lakes. At its deepest point, it is 210 feet (64 metres) deep.

Rough weather and shipwrecks are endemic to the Great Lakes, but one triangular swath of Lake Michigan is especially associated with mysterious occurrences--unexplained ship disappearances and missing planes. Some believe the lake's mysterious underwater Stonehenge is somehow related to the disappearances.

The disaster of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald is one of the best-known in the history of Great Lakes shipping. The sinking led to changes in shipping regulations and practices that included mandatory survival suits, depth finders, positioning systems, increased freeboard, and more frequent inspection of vessels.

Michigan is the only state in the U.S. that borders four of the five Great Lakes.

The Iroquois lent their language to the naming of Ontario, which means "beautiful lake."

If not for the the Straits of Mackinac, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron might be considered one lake.

Because it is surrounded by the Great Lakes, Michigan has 3,288 miles of shoreline, more than any other state except Alaska.