President James Madison approved Indiana's admission into the union as the nineteenth state on December 11, 1816.

Indiana's flag has a blue background with a torch in the center. The torch is surrounded by nineteen stars: the thirteen in the outer ring representing the original colonies, the five in the inner ring representing the next five states admitted (prior to Indiana), and the one on top of the torch representing Indiana.

In the 1830s, canals were dug linking the Great Lakes to Indiana's river systems. The canals proved to be a financial disaster. Indiana's first major railroad line was completed in 1847 and made the canal system obsolete even before its completion.

The various highways intersecting in and around Indianapolis, along with its historical status as a major railroad hub, and the canals that once crossed Indiana, are the source of the state's motto: "The Crossroads of America".

Meredith Willson's 1957 Broadway musical The Music Man features the song "Gary, Indiana", in which lead character (and con man) Professor Harold Hill wistfully recalls his purported hometown.

A resident of Indiana is officially known as a Hoosier. The etymology of this term is disputed, but the leading theory, advanced by the Indiana Historical Bureau and the Indiana Historical Society, has its origin in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee as a term for a backwoodsman.

John Chapman (1774-1845), better known as Johnny Appleseed, was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ontario, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and West Virginia. His grave is located along the St. Joseph River in Fort Wayne, Indiana in the middle of Johnny Appleseed Park, where a giant festival is held every year in his honor. The gravestone reads "Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman) - He lived for others."

One of America's favorite backyard birds, the northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) was once prized as a pet, but its sale as a cage bird was banned in the United States by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

Before he became president of the United States, Benjamin Harrison served as the U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1881 to 1887.

Located in Alexandria, Indiana, the world's largest ball of paint hangs from an industrial-size hook. The Ball is the vision of Michael Carmichael and is slung from a steel beam in a custom-built Ball House next to the Carmichael home. It began on January 1, 1977, when Michael encouraged his toddler son to cover a baseball with a coat of pastel blue house paint (A photograph in the Ball House preserves that fateful moment). That baseball is at the heart of a behemoth that is now over 14 feet in circumference and weighs 2.5 tons.