Fun Florida factoids

Old Folks At Home, popularly known as “Suwannee River”, is Florida’s official state song.

Florida had to wait both times to be admitted to the Union:  in 1845 to be paired with a new non-slave state (Iowa), and from 1865 ’til 1868 to come up with a legislature that would accept the XIV Amendment.

The state capital, Tallahassee, never fell to Union forces during the Civil War. [Texas is the only other former Confederate state to hold control of its capital throughout the war.]

Jacksonville, known as “The city farthest West on the [U.S.] Eastern Seaboard,” is actually further west than Canton, Ohio! Because of its recessed location, ‘Jax’ has been visited by only one hurricane in recorded history.

With a Gross State Product of $320 billion, Florida ranks among the world’s top 15 market economies. The state is home to 13 foreign trade zones. Florida trails only California in aerospace and defense-related businesses. Florida’s labor force [of 6.8 million] is the fourth largest non-farm labor pool in the nation.

The Everglades were originally known (quite sensibly) as the River Glades. A XIX century cartographer’s error somehow became canonized as fact …

How flat was it? — The Henry E. Kinney tunnel, carrying Federal Hwy (US 1) under the New River in downtown Ft Lauderdale, is the only highway tunnel in Florida. It’s said that a 5 meter (16 ft) rise in sea level would remove fully one-fourth of Florida’s land area.

Another force of nature taking big bites out of Florida is the 4,000 or so new sinkholes that appear every year. The largest one known (Winter Park, 1981) grew to 300 ft [90 m] wide and 100 ft [30 m] deep, swallowing a house, six vehicles (mainly Porsches), part of a swimming pool, and a couple respectable stretches of street. In one day.

FPL dished out 41 800 000 000 kWh of electrical energy to residential customers in 1997, more than any other utility in the country. (Maybe this is because people here like to set the air cond. to “stun”.)

Clove cigarettes are illegal in Florida [ or were; read this ] ... but you can buy a water pipe with a carburetor hole, provided you don’t ask for it by “the word that sounds like a bell hit by a mallet”.

Miami-Dade County [note new official name] is half Hispanic (or Spanish, as they say here). Broward County (immediately north of Miami-Dade) is less than 10% Hispanic, mostly Puerto Ricans (Nuyoricans?) rather than the Cubans who dominate in Dade.

The top-rated TV station in the Greater Miami market (Ch 23, Univision) broadcasts exclusively in Spanish.

The first WW II soldier to win the Congressional Medal of Honor was a Ft Lauderdale boy, Alexander Nininger — killed at Bataan in ’42 during a busy day of in-your-face combat.

The last official execution by hanging in the U.S. was during Prohibition, at the Coast Guard base [site now occupied by Bahia Mar Y.C.] on Ft Lauderdale Beach.

Tourists drop over US$ 3 000 000 000 per year (1997 est.) in Ft Lauderdale (population 150 000). So how is it that anyone there is poor?

Up in Daytona Beach, meanwhile, the take is US$ 282 000 000 from Bike Week.

Cruise ship passengers through Ft Lauderdale’s Port Everglades during the last 24 months: about 5 000 000.

Drug seizures, same port, same period: 11.57 metric tons of cocaine and 36.55 metric tons of marijuana. That’s just seizures, not total traffic.

Surely unrelated statistic: South Florida buys nearly one-fourth of the Rolls-Royce motor cars sold in the U.S.

American Airlines reports nearly half of its baggage thefts and pilferage happen at Miami International. (Crooks steal entire USPS mail-drop boxes right off the sidewalks here, folks.)

Famous exports from South Florida include Slim*Fast, the National Enquirer and Marilyn Manson.

Other nationally known names that pop up here: the Baltimore Orioles train at a stadium cast off by the NY Yankees (along Commercial Bl west of I-95); the Miami Dolphins at Nova Southeastern U. (SW 30 St & 75 Ave). A Goodyear blimp is based in nearby Pompano Beach and often floats overhead on test runs. There’s also a Pete Rose sports bar (you betcha), several Don Carter [tenpin] bowling centers, and even a Wilt Chamberlain shopping center. Farther north, Orlando is home to “the world’s largest and most unique McDonald’s” (it’s on Sand Lake Road, as if you cared). Did somebody say Gag Me ?

The town of Deerfield Beach was the first to be designated by FEMA as a storm preparedness lab. A model hurricane-proof house is being built, the high school is being reinforced as an emergency shelter, etc. None of this work was complete in time for the small tornado that hit on the last day of February 1998.

Railroad magnate Henry Flagler gave free land west of the tracks [NOT on the more desirable ocean side] to workers who helped build his railroad. And that is why a hundred years later, along much of Florida’s Atlantic coast, the west side is still the Black part of town. Them that has the gold, makes the rules.

By the way, Florida public schools did not start desegregating until 1959.

Locations in the Florida Keys are measured in miles toward the mainland from the origin point at Whitehead and Fleming streets, Old Town Key West. With street addresses increasing continuously at a pitch of 1000 to the mile, ‘house numbers’ exceed 106500 in Key Largo ! (Does Guinness know about this ?)