DID YA KNOW...
The first people settled in what’s now Kansas at least 12,200 years ago. Archaeologists know this because they’ve found the bones of mammoths and other animals with markings from human tools on them, a sign that humans had hunted the creatures.
Kansas is among the most productive states for high yields of soybeans, sorghum, corn, and the largest producer of wheat in the country. Just about one-fifth of the wheat grown in the U.S. comes from Kansas. It has been stated that enough wheat is produced to feed everyone across the globe for roughly two weeks.
Built in 1939, the Rock Island Railroad bridge is located northeast of Liberal, Kansas. It has been dubbed, the “Sampson of the Cimarron". It spans 1269 feet (more than the length of four football fields) across the Cimarron River and towers 113 feet above the river. Even though it's more than 85 years old, it is still in use today.
In 1953, Frank Stoeber, a local farmer, started creating his ball of Sisal twine. Kept at Cawker City, Kansas, this ball of twine currently measures more than 40 feet in circumference and weighs more than 20,000 pounds. Locals and visitors alike continue adding twine to the ball.
Omar Knedlik, owner of the Coffeyville, Kansas Dairy Queen, made the first Icee drink in the 1960s, (He partially froze some soft drinks by accident, but decided to serve them to customers anyway). He called his "invention" the Icee, which became a massive cultural (and financial), success!
Knedlik had no formal engineering training, but yet he designed and built the prototype Icee dispenser using an old ice cream machine and parts from a car’s air conditioning unit.
Numerous Native American tribes once called Kansas home. They settled in the area way before 1541, when Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, the European explorer, arrived. The name of the state came from the Kansas River, which got its name from the Kansa tribe, whose name means “people of the south wind.”
Amelia Earhart was from Atchison, Kansas and is a renowned aviation pioneer. She was the first woman to be granted a pilot’s license and the first woman to fly over the Atlantic Ocean solo. Sadly, while attempting to be the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, she disappeared July 2, 1937 and was declared dead January 5, 1939. She is, without a doubt, one of the most celebrated figures of early flight.
While driving on Highway 281, just a few miles to the northwest of Lebanon, Kansas, you will find a Historical Marker (a limestone rock base with U.S. and Kansas flags) that declares you are in the geographic center of the 48 contiguous United States.
After Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as new states in 1959, a point about 20 miles north of Belle Fourche, Montana was determined to be the center of all of the 50 United States.
Helium was first discovered on Earth in 1903 while drilling for oil and gas on the William Greenwell farm, near Dexter, Kansas.
Workers struck a pocket of gas that extinguished flames instead of burning. Two professors from the University of Kansas ultimately determined that it was helium, which became a vital industrial-use gas throughout the twentieth-century.
Kansas had the highest percentage of casualties during the Civil War—more than 8500 casualties of the 20,000 soldiers sent to the war were from Kansas. The high casualty rate was largely due to fierce internal divisions and intense guerrilla warfare within regions of the state before and during the war.
The First Black Combat Regiment famously engaged at the Battle of Island Mound in Missouri, were the first African-American troops to see combat for the Union, suffering several casualties.
Kansas has had some strange laws:
- You weren't allowed to catch whales in Kansas
- It used to be against the law to serve ice cream on top of cherry pie
- In Topeka, it was illegal to sing the Alphabet Song in public
- You couldn't use mules to hunt duck or shoot rabbits from motorboats
George Washington Carver was born into slavery in Missouri. In 1877 he moved to Fort Scott, Kansas and finished school in Minneapolis, Kansas.
He discovered over 300 uses for peanuts, including dyes, plastics, and gasoline, but not peanut butter. He also devised a crop rotation method for corn and cotton and was an internationally renowned botanist and teacher.
Carver died in 1943 around age 78 after becoming the first African American to have a national monument created in his honor.
