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, we’ll be buying a new umbrella – not because we lost the old one, but because it actually wore out from constant use – as we visit Washington. So let’s get started…

• Washington became the 42nd state on November 11, 1889. The state’s name was chosen as a long-overdue honor to America’s first President… and because “wood-toothed wig-wearer” sounded a bit clunky as a state name.
• Seattle is home to the world’s first revolving restaurant, “The Top of the Needle,” completed in 1961. Victims of a recent salmonella outbreak at the restaurant were buried in the nearby revolving cemetery “The Bottom of the Gravel Pit.”
• Washington’s license plate has black lettering over a light blue mountain design, and features the state motto, “First 5,000 tourists receive a free umbrella!”
• Washington produces more apples than any other state in the nation. For some reason, Bill Gates gets twitchy when you say that in front of him.
• Starbucks Coffee was founded in Seattle, Washington, in 1987. It saved the Filthy Hippie Protester industry from bankruptcy by giving it a target for its senseless anger during the debilitating peace between the two Gulf Wars.
• Washington has more glaciers than all the other 47 contiguous states combined. This tends to scare tourists away from the state, since everyone knows that if a glacier bites you, you’ll slowly go insane with global warming paranoia. If you don’t believe me, check Al Gore’s neck for bite marks sometime.
• Washington’s capitol building was the last state capitol to be built with a rotunda. State capitol buildings constructed since then have used more modern architectural features, like cantilevered ceilings and indoor water slides.
• Everett, Washington is home to the world’s largest building – Boeing’s final assembly plant. It encloses nearly 500 million cubic feet – enough to hold every Muslim terrorist in the world… if you chopped them into little pieces first… which, frankly, I don’t have a problem with.
• Medina, Washington is the home of Microsoft founder and multi-billionaire Bill Gates. Who just happens to own a blender big enough to chop every Muslim terrorist in the world into little pieces.
• Software giant Microsoft is headquartered in Redmond, Washington. An aerial view of the corporate campus shows that the buildings are colored and arranged to form the world’s largest Blue Screen of Death.
• King County – Washington’s largest county – was originally named in 1852 after William Rufus King, vice president under president Franklin Pierce. In 1986 it was “re-named” in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King. Between those times it may also have been named in honor of Stephen King, Rodney King, Billie Jean King, and possibly even Sgt. Preston’s dog, for all we know.
• The state flower of Washington is mildew.
• Washington was the birthplace of both Jimi Hendrix (Seattle) and Bing Crosby (Tacoma). Although representing vastly different music styles, they DID collaborate to record the holiday classic, “Purple Christmas.”
• The oldest continually operating gas station in the U.S. is located in Zillah, Washington. It hasn’t changed much since it opened in 1873, and still accepts payments by either cash, check, or beaver pelt.
• The world’s first soft-serve ice cream machine is located in an Olympia, Washington Dairy Queen. It was installed in 1940 as a way to cater to a growing demand for something cold, bland, and containing more air than actual substance. Much the same desire that drove Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
• Residents of Washington are properly referred to as “Washingtonians”, despite the widespread use of the less-favored term, “Starbucks-swilling Nirvana-moshers.”
• Washington is home to the only rainforests in the U.S. Sadly, these rainforests contain nothing but wet trees, and don’t meet the minimum requirements for malaria and naked savages that would make environmentalists give a crap about them.
• Europeans first landed in Washington when the Spanish ship Santiago visited briefly in 1775. The captain’s log entry that day consisted only of the terse and cryptic phrase, “Smells like teen spirit.”
• Lewis & Clark visited Washington 30 years later in 1805. Their report was, “Smells like mid-life crisis.”
• Tumwater, Washington was the state’s first colonial settlement. It was founded by Canadians seeking the religious freedom to worship coffee and donuts, which was forbidden by Canada’s repressive Tea & Crumpetist regime.
• Washington is home to such internet giants as Amazon.com, Classmates.com, and Whitepages.com, which explains why the state song is “DAMMIT! ANOTHER POP-UP!”
• In the early 1900’s, Aberdeen, Washington was known as “the roughest town west of the Mississippi,” as it was a haven for violence, saloons, whorehouses, and gambling establishments. It was also rated the #1 tourist destination for both sailors and the Irish.
• The Grand Coulee Dam on Washington’s Columbia river is the largest concrete structure ever built. It contains over 12 million cubic yards of concrete – nearly enough to build a life-size statue of Ted Kennedy’s drinking problem.
• In 1980, Washington’s Mount St. Helens volcano erupted with such violence that the top 1600 feet of the mountain were completely blown away. The sudden, cataclysmic destruction of over $1 billion in economic resources was rumored to have given Bill Gates the idea for Microsoft Windows.
• Washington has a higher percentage of non-religious people than any other state, which is why so many cars there have window signs saying “Blasphemer On Board.”
• Washington ranks first in the nation in the production of apples, cherries, pears, and grapes, earning it the nickname of “America’s Fruit Basket.” The city of San Francisco has the same nickname, although for an entirely different reason.
• Pictionary was invented by Ron Angel of Seattle, Washington, in 1986. According to numerous scientific studies, the game is responsible for more bad art than Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and the National Endowment for the Arts combined.
• The state marine mammal of Washington is the Orca. Although some small-minded, bigoted racists refer to them as “killer whales,” the term is more properly translated as “whales of peace.”
• The fact that they frequently kidnap and behead seals in the name of their God, Poseidon, is no excuse for not respecting their cultural differences.
• Maybe those seals should ask themselves why the orcas hate them.
• Actor Adam West – who played Batman in the 1960’s TV series – was born in Walla Walla, Washington, in 1928. He’s been quoted as saying that his least favorite part about playing the Caped Crusader was “Batpole burn.”

That wraps up the Washington edition of Fun Facts About the 50 States. Next week we’ll be doing genealogy research as we travel through the gene puddle of West Virginia.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go book my vacation to Aberdeen.

[The complete e-book version of “Fun Facts About the 50 States” is now available at Amazon.com. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can download free Kindle apps for your web browser, smartphone, computer, or tablet from Amazon.com]