ARIZONA, USA — Arizona might be one of the more recent additions to the United States, but we've still been around for quite a while! As of Valentine's Day, our state is turning 111 years old.
Arizona was admitted into the union on Feb. 14, 1912, by President William Howard Taft, making us the 48th state.
To celebrate some of the things that make the Grand Canyon State so great, we've got some fun facts about Arizona! In no particular order, here are 11 of our favorite facts to wow your friends:
1. The Arizona State Capitol Building recently got a new $870,000 dome made of roughly 1,500 pounds of copper. That's about 4,800,000 pennies!
2. Five different flags have flown over the land that would become Arizona: The Castilian and Burgundian flags of Spain, the Mexican flag, the Confederate flag, and the flag of the United States.
3. Arizona has the biggest Native American population of all 50 states, and the highest percentage of land allocated to Native American reservations: That's roughly 332,273 people and 28% of state land.
4. The City of Phoenix started as a hay camp and horse-resting area for the nearby U.S. Army Post Campe Verde -- which most people now know as Fort McDowell.
5. Women in Arizona were granted the right to vote in 1912, 8 years before national suffrage took effect in 1920. Frances W. Munds led the Arizona suffrage movement, and she became a state senator five years before the 19th Amendment was ratified.
6. Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He spotted the planetoid (sorry y'all, but it's not a planet) on Feb. 18, 1930.
7. It is illegal for donkeys to sleep in bathtubs in Arizona, thanks to an obscure law from 1924. Frankly, we think donkeys should be able to sleep anywhere they please.
8. The largest snowfall ever recorded in Phoenix was a stunning, mindbogglingly huge... One inch. It happened in 1933 and again in 1937.
9. Arizona has 13 different species of rattlesnakes. That's more than any other state!
10. There are no dinosaur fossils at the Grand Canyon... Because those rocks are older than the dinosaurs! Ancient fossils date back to 1,200 million to 740 million years ago, but some of the rocks at the Grand Canyon are upwards of 1.8 billion years old.
11. The most famous gunfight in the American Old West happened in 1881 at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone. It only lasted 30 seconds, despite what the movies would have you believe.
VERSIÓN EN ESPAÑOL: ¡Arizona celebra su cumpleaños número 111! Le mostramos 11 datos divertidos para celebrar al bello estado
WE ❤ ARIZONA
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