Facts about Pennsylvania

Tamanend, a Lenni-Lenape chief, played a prominent role in peaceful relations between Native tribes and white settlers in Pennsylvania during this time.

The Pennsylvania Dutch region in south-central Pennsylvania is a favorite for sightseers.

Pennsylvania is 170 miles (274 km) north to south and 283 miles (455 km) east to west.

Pennsylvania has 51 miles (82 kilometers) of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles (92 km) of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary.

Pennsylvania re-organized its higher education into the Pennsylvania State University system, with the State College campus as the flagship.

A number of smaller engagements were also fought in Pennsylvania, including the Battle of Hanover, Battle of Carlisle, Battle of Hunterstown, and the Battle of Fairfield, all during the Gettysburg Campaign.

Writer Murray Rothbard in his four-volume history of the U.S., Conceived in Liberty, refers to the years of 1681–1690 as "Pennsylvania's Anarchist Experiment."

Philadelphia is the largest city in Pennsylvania and ranks sixth in population among cities in the United States.

Penn called the area Sylvania (Latin for woods), which Charles changed to Pennsylvania in honor of the elder Penn.

Pennsylvania offers a number of notable, and historically significant, amusement parks, including Dutch Wonderland, Idlewild Park, and Kennywood Park in Pittsburgh.

A report from The Center for Rural Pennsylvania (a legislative agency of the Pennsylvania General Assembly) reported that hunting, fishing, and trapping generated a total of $9.6 billion statewide.

Pennsylvania's Quaker beginnings led to the earliest anti-slavery movement in the colonies; in 1780, the Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition Act was the first law passed in the US for emancipation.

Extreme southeastern Pennsylvania, around Philadelphia, borders into a humid subtropical climate with milder winters and hot, humid summers.

Pennsylvania has had five constitutions during its statehood: 1776, 1790, 1838, 1874, and 1968.

William Penn founded the Province of Pennsylvania as a British North American colony on land he had been granted by King Charles II of England, as repayment of a debt to Penn's father.

The five largest ancestry groups self-reported in Pennsylvania are: German (27.66 percent), Irish (17.66 percent), Italian (12.82 percent), English (8.89 percent) and Polish (7.23 percent).

Pennsylvanians originally supported the idea of common action, and sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress in 1765.

Before white settlement in what was to become Pennsylvania, the area was home to the Delaware (also known as Lenni Lenape), Susquehannock, Iroquois, Erie, Shawnee, and other Native American tribes.

Pennsylvania's nickname, the Keystone State, is quite apt, because the state forms a geographic bridge both between the Northeastern states and the Southern states, and between the Atlantic seaboard and the Midwest.

Most of Pennsylvania's residents generally supported the protests and dismay common to all 13 colonies after the Proclamation of 1763 and the Stamp Act.

Pennsylvania remains an important source of coal, petroleum and natural gas.

Pennsylvania, and particularly Philadelphia, played a key role in the forming of what was to become the United States, then referred to as the United Colonies of America.

Pennsylvania is noted for having the highest concentration of an Amish population in the United States.

Municipalities in Pennsylvania are incorporated as cities, boroughs, or townships.

Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, five days after Delaware became the first.

Pennsylvania has three general climate regions, which is determined by altitude more than latitude or distance from the oceans.

Central Pennsylvania is the anthracite coal region, with the characteristic anticline-syncline topography of tightly folded sedimentary layers.

In all, Pennsylvania is home to 49 Fortune 500 companies.

Pennsylvania was the target of several raids by the Confederate States Army, including cavalry raids in 1862 and 1863 by J.E.B.

During part of the nineteenth century, the building of the Pennsylvania Canal and later the Pennsylvania Railroad, allowed Harrisburg to become one of the most industrialized cities in the Northeastern United States.

Pennsylvania's 2005 total gross state product (GSP) of $430.31 billion ranks the state 6th in the nation.

Pennsylvania has a bicameral legislature set up by state's constitution in 1790.

A small subsector of manufacturing that flourishes in Pennsylvania is specialty foods production.

The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia includes the famous Wharton School of Business, founded on the principles of Benjamin Franklin, is a private university, as is Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.

All judges in Pennsylvania are elected; the Chief Justice is determined by seniority.

Pennsylvania's per-capita GSP of $34,619 ranks 26th among the 50 states.

The US chocolate industry is centered in Hershey, Pennsylvania, with Mars and Wilbur Chocolate Company nearby.

Pennsylvania is an important source of food products.

New Sweden's best known governor, Johan Bjцrnsson Printz, moved his residence to what is now Tinicum Township, Pennsylvania, nearer to the center of the settlements.

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is the final appellate court.

Once the leading producer of steel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Pennsylvania's steel industry has declined significantly.

Pennsylvania draws 2.1 percent of the Gross State Product from accommodation and food services.

Of all the colonies, only in Rhode Island was religious freedom so secure as in Pennsylvania - and one result was an incredible religious diversity that continues to this day.

Pennsylvania's factories and workshops manufacture 16.1 percent of the Gross State Product (GSP); only ten states are more industrialized.

School Districts in Pennsylvania are subdivided into 29 Intermediate units.

The ten most populous cities in Pennsylvania are, in order: Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, Reading, Scranton, Bethlehem, Lancaster, Harrisburg, and Altoona.

Pennsylvania also saw the Battle of Gettysburg, near Gettysburg.

The state government launched an extensive tourism campaign in 2003 under the direction of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.

According to people such as Saint Augustine and Confucius, this kind of freedom can reach a point at which it always produces goodness.

Dickinson then wrote "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, To the Inhabitants of the British Colonies," which were published in the Pennsylvania Chronicle between December 2, 1767, and February 15, 1768.

Pennsylvania is represented in the US Congress by two Senators and 19 Representatives.

Prior to that, the province of Pennsylvania was governed for a century by a Frame of Government, of which there were four versions: 1682, 1683, 1696, and 1701.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a state located in the Middle Atlantic region of the United States of America.

Sport in Luxembourg encompasses a number of sports, both team and individual, and over 100,000 people in Luxembourg are licensed members of one sports federation or another.

Pennsylvania, bordering the south, played an important role in the operation of the Underground Railroad prior to the Civil War.

The center of population of Pennsylvania is located in Perry County, in the borough of Duncannon.

School Districts in Pennsylvania are subdivided into 29 Intermediate units.

Foreign-born Pennsylvanians are largely from Asia (36.0 percent), Europe (35.9 percent), Latin America (30.6 percent), 5 percent coming from Africa, 3.1 percent coming from North America, and 0.4 percent coming from Oceania.

Pennsylvania is home to the nation's first zoo, the Philadelphia Zoo.

The colony's reputation of religious freedom also attracted significant populations of German and Scots-Irish settlers who helped to shape colonial Pennsylvania and later went on to populate the neighboring states further west.

After the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, Delegate John Dickinson of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania wrote the Declaration of Rights and Grievances.