English settlement began in the early 1730s after James Oglethorpe, a Member of Parliament, proposed that the area be colonized with the "worthy poor" of England to provide an alternative to the overcrowded debtors' prisons. The misconception that Georgia was founded as a penal colony persists due to the numerous English convicts who were later sentenced to transportation to Georgia.

The George Bush Center for Intelligence is the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, located in the unincorporated community of Langley in Fairfax County, Virginia. It was the world's largest intelligence headquarters from 1959 until 2019 when it was surpassed by Germany's BND headquarters.

Colorado contains a treasure trove of dinosaur fossils and provided the first specimens of several species, including Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Jesse "The Body" Ventura served as the 38th governor of Minnesota from 1999 to 2003. During his tenure, supporters proudly displayed bumper stickers declaring "My governor can beat up your governor."

Beignets are puffy square French doughnuts made from deep-fried choux pastry and covered in powdered sugar. They were brought to New Orleans in the 18th century by French colonists and became an important part of home-style Creole cooking. Café du Monde in the French Quarter is famous for its beignets.

Grant Wood was inspired to paint American Gothic when he passed through Eldon, Iowa in 1930. He made sketches of an actual house, along with the kind of people he fancied should live in that house. His painting depicts a farmer standing beside his daughter--often mistakenly assumed to be his wife. The painting is named for the house's architectural style.

Area 51, officially called Homey Airport or Groom Lake, is a highly classified United States Air Force facility located within the Nevada Test and Training Range. The intense secrecy surrounding the base has made it the frequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component of UFO folklore.

On February 7, 2013, Mississippi officially became the last state to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment--147 years after it became law.

In the wake of Virginia's secession from the Union, a convention of delegates from western Virginia met in Wheeling in 1861 for the purpose of forming the "State of Kanawha". The name honored a Native American tribe and a major state river of the same name. When the constitution for the proposed state was finalized in 1862, however, the name had been changed to West Virginia.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn, also commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The battle, which resulted in the defeat of U.S. forces, was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. It took place on June 25-26, 1876, along the Little Bighorn River in the Crow Indian Reservation in southeastern Montana Territory.