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Florida

20 Things You Didn't Know About The State Of Florida

By Victoria W | Published May 07, 2015

Some of these facts will have you smiling and some will have you shaking your head, but they’ll all have you thinking “only in Florida.”

1. The Everglades National Park is the only place where alligators and crocodiles coexist.

2. It is also the home of the slowest moving river and the largest mangrove forest in the world.

3. The Florida House is the only embassy for a state in Washington, D.C.

4. Stephen Foster, who wrote our state song, never visited Florida or even saw the Suwannee River.

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5. Florida is the only state with a river name so nice they used it twice (on two different rivers): Withlacoochee.

6. The world’s first scheduled passenger airline flight was piloted by Tony Jannus from St. Petersburg to Tampa on January 1, 1914.

7. Florida is not the southernmost state in the United States. It's actually Hawaii.

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8. Harris Rosen adopted a Florida neighborhood called Tangelo Park. He turned the city around, drastically cutting the crime rate and bringing the high school graduation rate up from 25% to 100%. How did he accomplish this? He provided free daycare, and everyone who graduated high school received a scholarship.

9. Key West has the highest average temperature in the US.

10. In 1982, the mayor of Key West declared war against the United States, immediately surrendered, and applied for foreign aid.

11. Florida has one of only two naturally round lakes in the world. It's located in DeFuniak Springs.

12. The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens is the only museum in the country dedicated purely to the living culture of Japan. It’s located in Delray Beach.

13. Florida has more golf courses than any other state.

14. Flamingos' pink color comes from the shrimp they eat.

15. Miami has the first ATM designed specifically for users on rollerblades.

16. At the Flora-Bama Beach Bar's annual Mullet Toss, thousands of people gather to throw dead fish into Alabama.

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17. The St. John's River is one of the few in the world to run north.

18. Jacksonville was once the “winter film capital of the world,” but its conservative residents disapproved of the film industry and it relocated to Southern California.

19. Florida was home to the fifth oldest tree in the world until a meth addict accidentally burned it down in 2012. It was 3,500 years old and 125 feet tall.

20. Clearwater, FL, has the highest number of lightning strikes per capita in the US.

There are a lot more weird and fun facts about Florida. Please share them if you’ve know some!

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