Welcome to Fun Facts About the 50 States, where – week by week – I’ll be taking you on a tour around this great nation of ours, providing you with interesting, yet completely useless and probably untrue, information about each of the 50 states.

This week, it’s time to do a little digging into where all those Yankees in King Arthur’s Court keep coming from as we visit Connecticut, so let’s get started…

• Connecticut is a small state in the northeastern U.S. and is best known for being the place that beer cans land after New Yorkers throw them out of their car windows.
• The highest point in Connecticut is Mt. Frissel, at 2,380 feet, which is where Connecticut residents go to throw the empty beer cans back into New York.
• Connecticut has only 2 interstate highways, neither of which gets you out of the state fast enough.
• Connecticut is an Algonquin Indian word meaning “yuppie scum.”
• Although Connecticut borders Massachusetts, no Kennedys live there because Connecticut liquor stores all close at 8pm.
• Many areas of Connecticut are plagued by foraging herds of white tail deer that destroy crops and gardens. The only way for residents to keep the deer at bay is pay “protection money” to Don Bambi, head of the deer mafia.
• The New England Patriots football team almost moved to Hartford, Connecticut, but declined to do so because the deal included renaming the team to the Hartford Homos.
• The fuchsia & chartreuse uniforms WERE tempting, though.
• The official insect of Connecticut is the Praying Mantis – an obvious violation of the separation of church and state.
• Connecticut is populated mainly by people who couldn’t decide whether they wanted to live further away from Boston or New York City.
• Connecticut is called the “nutmeg state” because the early Connecticut colonists would sell fake nutmegs to unsuspecting tourists. This is somewhat analogous to referring to the Kennedys as the “designated driver family.”
• The state motto of Connecticut is “As close to New York as New Jersey is, but with less toxic waste.”
• In terms of distance, Connecticut is the closest state in the US to France, which is why most people in Connecticut face east when they spit.
• George W. Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut on July 6, 1946, but moved to Texas as a teenager to pursue his dream of stealing oil.
• Although Connecticut ranks 48th among the states in terms of size, it ranks a close second behind Massachusetts in terms of snooty, upper-class arrogance.
• Connecticut become the 5th state on January 9th, 1788. It would’ve joined sooner, but everyone was out skiing in Vermont.
• Despite the state’s small size, it DOES have a state college – the University of Connecticut or UCONN – which should NOT be confused with the popular rat poison.
• The state flag of Connecticut consists of a blue background, a white shield, 3 grapevines, and a Latin motto meaning “He who transplanted sustains us.” Officially, it refers to early colonists coming in from Boston, but that doesn’t explain the large number of tourists who wake up in a tub of ice, missing a kidney.
• The official state song of Connecticut is Yankee Doodle, which was originally written in 1750 to honor the official state pasta.
• Being a small state, Connecticut has only one radio station, which plays nothing but different versions of Yankee Doodle 24 hours a day. The most popular being Snoop Dogg’s “Yo Yo Yizzle Dizzle.”
• The world’s first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, was built in Groton, Connecticut in 1954, after which it turned on its creators and went on a fearsome, building-destroying rampage through the city.
• The practice of branding farm animals began in Connecticut, where farmers were required by law to mark their pigs, which is why Michael Moore will never visit the state.
• The Hartford Courant, established in 1764, is America’s oldest newspaper. A glance through some of the earliest editions shows that, even back then, Doonesbury wasn’t funny.
• Seriously, when is Trudeau gonna stop recycling that “Thomas Paine lied, people died” line?
• The Polaroid camera was invented in Connecticut in 1934. Blackmailing people with compromising photographs was invented about 60 seconds later.
• The first English settlers arrived in Hartford in 1636 and were tricked into staying in the area by settlers from Boston who promised them that the Patriots would move there “any day now.”

That wraps up the Connecticut edition of Fun Facts About the 50 States. Next week we’ll discover that crossing the river wearing a tri-cornered hat actually had nothing to do with the state as we look at Delaware.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go step on a Praying Mantis to protect my freedom of religion.

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