History UsefulNotes / TheSeveralStates

'''Number of representatives:''' 26 (15 D, 10 R, 1 vacancy)[[note]]Brian Higgins (D) resigned from the House in February 2024 to take a private-sector job in Buffalo; a special election is being held on April 30, 2024.[[/note]]

'''Number of representatives:''' 12 (9 D, 3 R)

'''Number of representatives:''' 26 (15 D, 10 R, 1 vacancy)[[note]]Brian Higgins (D) resigned from the House in February 2024 to take a private-sector job in Buffalo; a special election will be held in spring 2024.[[/note]]

'''Number of representatives:''' 52 (40 D, 12 R)[[note]]Kevin [=McCarthy=] (R) will resign on December 31, 2023. His seat will be filled by a special election in early 2024.[[/note]]

'''Number of representatives:''' 8 (5 D, 3 R)

Wilmington, arguably North Carolina's most prominent coastal city, is the home of one of the largest film and television production studio outside of California (though it's been overshadowed by Atlanta in recent years), which produced ''Series/DawsonsCreek'', ''Series/OneTreeHill'', ''Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1990'', and ''Film/TheCrow'' (so, yes, Brandon Lee died here). It's also notable outside entertainment as the hometown of UsefulNotes/MichaelJordan.[[note]]Although he was born in Brooklyn while his father, an [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks Air Force]] veteran who grew up not far from Wilmington, was attending trade school; Michael came to North Carolina as a toddler, and he's now associated with the Charlotte Hornets since purchasing the team.[[/note]] Colonial-era capital city New Bern is considered to be the birthplace of Pepsi-Cola, though the company only seems to care about that when marketing the beverage to this particular state. Asheville, nestled in a river valley in the middle of the Appalachians, has gained a reputation in recent years as a UsefulNotes/NewAge mecca and is also a major center for Appalachian folk art.\\\

'''Capital:''' UsefulNotes/{{Nashville}}[[note]]The state's Supreme Court is constitutionally required to sit in ''three'' locations, one in each of the state's "Grand Divisions"--Nashville, Knoxville, and Jackson. It will sit in other cities as well.[[/note]]\\
'''Largest City:''' Memphis\\
'''Other Cities of Note:''' Knoxville, Chattanooga, Tri-Cities (Bristol–Johnson City–Kingsport), Clarksville, Lynchburg\\

'''Capital:''' Baton Rouge\\

'''Capital:''' UsefulNotes/{{Nashville}}\\

'''Capital:''' Juneau\\

'''Capital:''' Sacramento\\

The state is also home to the the U.S.'s only captive Geyser, the Soda Springs Geyser, and Rigby is where the world's first fully functional and complete all-electronic television was invented by Philo Taylor Farnsworth.\\\

Some good ones for quiz night: the town of Riverside is where [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries James T. Kirk]] [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble will be]] born in 2233. Radar O'Reilly from ''Series/{{MASH}}'' had his hometown in Ottumwa. Travel writer Creator/BillBryson came from Des Moines, the state capital (somebody had to). Heavy metal band Music/{{Slipknot}} is from Iowa (also from Des Moines), and their second album is even named after their home state. ''Theatre/TheMusicMan'' takes place here, as does ''Film/FieldOfDreams'' (which was actually filmed on location outside of Dyersville). ''Series/{{Buffy|TheVampireSlayer}}'' writer Jane Espenson is from Ames, while Davenport is home to Wrestling/{{WWE}} wrestler Wrestling/SethRollins. Probably the highest-profile Iowan in 2024 is UsefulNotes/CaitlinClark, who during her college career at Iowa became possibly the most famous woman ever to play the sport. Lastly, the state has produced one President: UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover, with Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon also living in the state (though, ironically, all three later became more associated with California).

Some good ones for quiz night: the town of Riverside is where [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries James T. Kirk]] [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble will be]] born in 2233. Radar O'Reilly from ''Series/{{MASH}}'' had his hometown in Ottumwa. Travel writer Creator/BillBryson came from Des Moines, the state capital (somebody had to). Heavy metal band Music/{{Slipknot}} is from Iowa (also from Des Moines), and their second album is even named after their home state. ''Theatre/TheMusicMan'' takes place here, as does ''Film/FieldOfDreams'' (which was actually filmed on location outside of Dyersville). ''Series/{{Buffy|TheVampireSlayer}}'' writer Jane Espenson is from Ames, while Davenport is home to Wrestling/{{WWE}} wrestler Wrestling/SethRollins. Perhaps the highest-profile Iowan in 2024 is UsefulNotes/CaitlinClark, a Des Moines-area native who stayed in-state to play college basketball at Iowa and is arguably the face of the college game (women's ''and'' men's). Lastly, the state has produced one President: UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover, with Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon also living in the state (though, ironically, all three later became more associated with California).

Some good ones for quiz night: the town of Riverside is where [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries James T. Kirk]] [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble will be]] born in 2233. Radar O'Reilly from ''Series/{{MASH}}'' had his hometown in Ottumwa. Travel writer Creator/BillBryson came from Des Moines, the state capital (somebody had to). Heavy metal band Music/{{Slipknot}} is from Iowa (also from Des Moines), and their second album is even named after their home state. ''Theatre/TheMusicMan'' takes place here, as does ''Film/FieldOfDreams'' (which was actually filmed on location outside of Dyersville). ''Series/{{Buffy|TheVampireSlayer}}'' writer Jane Espenson is from Ames, while Davenport is home to Wrestling/{{WWE}} wrestler Wrestling/SethRollins. Perhaps the highest-profile Iowan in 2024 is Caitlin Clark, a Des Moines-area native who stayed in-state to play college basketball at Iowa and is arguably the face of the college game (women's ''and'' men's). Lastly, the state has produced one President: UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover, with Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon also living in the state (though, ironically, all three later became more associated with California).

Some good ones for quiz night: the town of Riverside is where [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries James T. Kirk]] [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble will be]] born in 2233. Radar O'Reilly from ''Series/{{MASH}}'' had his hometown in Ottumwa. Travel writer Creator/BillBryson came from Des Moines, the state capital (somebody had to). Heavy metal band Music/{{Slipknot}} is from Iowa (also from Des Moines), and their second album is even named after their home state. ''Theatre/TheMusicMan'' takes place here, as does ''Film/FieldOfDreams'' (which was actually filmed on location outside of Dyersville). ''Series/{{Buffy|TheVampireSlayer}}'' writer Jane Espenson is from Ames, while Davenport is home to Wrestling/{{WWE}} wrestler Wrestling/SethRollins. Perhaps the highest-profile Iowan in 2024 is Caitlin Clark, a Des Moines-area native who stayed in-state to play college basketball at Iowa and is arguably the face of the college game (women's ''and'' men's). Lastly, the state has produced one President: UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover, with Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon also living in the state (though, ironically, all three later became more associated with California).

'''Number of representatives:''' 26 (15 D, 10 R, 1 vacancy)[[note]]Brian Higgins (D) will resign from the House in February 2024 to take a private-sector job in Buffalo; a special election will be held in spring 2024.[[/note]]

'''Number of representatives:''' 26 (15 D, 10 R, 1 vacancy)[[note]]George Santos (R) was expelled from the House on December 1, 2023 after a scandal-plagued tenure. His seat will be filled in a special election on February 13, 2024. Brian Higgins (D) will resign from the House in February 2024 to take a private-sector job in Buffalo; a special election will be held in spring 2024.[[/note]]

New Mexico used to be one of the wildest parts of the Wild West; Cimarron is one of the few towns that really lived up to the hype. The state has working cattle ranches to this day. Also known as the home of Roswell, where, erm... ''[[RoswellThatEndsWell something]]'' happened in 1947, and the birthplace of the first nuke in Project Y of The Manhattan Project as well as the area of the subsequent first nuclear test, Trinity, took place in. Alamogordo is the grave of many copies of ''VideoGame/ETTheExtraTerrestrial'', buried in a landfill there until being recently dug up in 2014. It is also home to White Sands Missile Range (the largest military installation in the US), Holloman Air Force Base (home to the [[UsefulNotes/WeAreNotTheWehrmacht German Air Force]] Flying Training Center and the world's longest and fastest high speed test track), the national parks Carlsbad Caverns (home to the largest cave chamber in North America) and White Sands (where [[Film/{{Transformers}} Scorponok]] attacked those army guys), the New Mexico Museum of Space History, the American Armed Forces Museum, and the Alameda Park Zoo (which is the oldest zoo in the American Southwest). The state puts "New Mexico USA" on its license plates just in case someone thinks it's part of that other Mexico[[note]]Actual [[http://www.plateshack.com/y2k/Mexico4/mexico4.html Mexican license plates]], like their U.S. counterparts, tend to have the state name (eg, Chihuahua), not the country name as the focus[[/note]], though the state does border actual Mexico in the southwest and has the highest population of Hispanics of any state in the U.S. at 48% of the state's population. New Mexicans who travel can attest that this issue is very much TruthInTelevision, to the point where ''New Mexico Magazine'' has a long-running column entitled "One of our Fifty is Missing" devoted to instances of this mistake.[[note]]New Mexico residents don't even have to leave the country, or even their own state, to find out about this mistake. For two examples, see [[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/11/29/las-cruces-resident-prove-new-mexico-statehood-washington-dc/2158889002/ this 2018 story]] about a New Mexico resident who was asked to produce a New Mexico passport to get a marriage license in Washington, D.C., and [[http://articles.latimes.com/1996-03-01/sports/sp-41795_1_summer-olympics-ticket this hilarious 1996 story]] in which a New Mexico resident tried to buy tickets to the Atlanta Olympics over the phone and was told to contact Mexico's Olympic committee.[[/note]]\\\

For a long time, Indiana was one of three states (Arizona and Hawaiʻi being the others) that did not use Daylight Savings Time. It is still split into two time zones--the northwest corner and coast of Lake Michigan, around Gary, is so tied to nearby Chicago by urban sprawl that it was considered inconvenient to be on Eastern Time, and the same holds true for the southwest corner around Evansville, in this case because it's the main economic center for a decent-sized chunk of Illinois and western Kentucky. Discussing the time zone issue--or any other 'Northwest Indiana vs. the Rest of the State' topic--is likely to start a FlameWar. As that implies, Indiana can typically be divided into 4 zones: Northwest Indiana (known to natives as "the Region", which shares its cultural ties with Chicago and is home to Gary, one of the most economically depressed cities in the nation); Northern Indiana, which is primarily represented by the towns of Fort Wayne and South Bend (home to the University of Notre Dame, a massive Catholic school known for its [[Film/KnuteRockneAllAmerican Fighting]] [[Film/{{Rudy}} Irish]] football team]], plus the first openly gay presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg, who rose to national prominence after his tenure as the city's mayor); Central Indiana, which contains the state capital; and Southern Indiana, often referred to as "Kentuckiana", which is best known for having a real life ChristmasTown named SantaClaus (which collects thousands of children's letters to St. Nick and is home to Holiday World, a very successful independent ThemePark known for its world-class roller coasters and free soda). As of the 2020 census, the median center of the United States population is in Gibson County, in the southwest corner of the state and directly north of Evansville.[[labelnote:Definition]]The point through which both north-south and east-west lines divide the country's population in half. See Missouri in the "West North Central" folder for a different definition of the country's center of population.[[/labelnote]] Natives of Indiana are properly referred to as "Hoosiers" (the only state in the country to have a nickname used as the official demonym by the federal government), though the origin of the word has been lost to time.\\\

'''Number of representatives:''' 15 (10 R, 5 D)[[note]]Bill Johnson (R) will resign no later than March 1, 2024 to become president of Youngstown State University. His seat will be filled by a special election in spring 2024.[[/note]]