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Crossing the icy Delaware River on Christmas night, 1776, allowed George Washington to surprise the British at Trenton, a critical American victory in the Revolutionary War. One of the world's most recognizable natural landmarks, the Grand Canyon, defies the imaginations of the five million people who visit there annually. Pioneer Daniel Boone blazed the Wilderness Trail through Kentucky in 1775 and tamed the wild frontier. The opening of "The Unassigned Lands" in Oklahoma resulted in 50,000 settlers racing across the prairie to grab a stake and claim ownership of a homestead. The discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in 1975 called for an ingenious feat of engineering to transport fuel across 800 miles of icy wilderness.

Ground Hog Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, dates back to 1886 and an ancient European holiday called Candlemass Day. Garrison Keeler and his A Prairie Home Companion radio program export a comic, down-home image of Minnesota to a weekly worldwide audience of over four million listeners. Hawaii is the only state that was once a kingdom and had its throne toppled in 1893 by a handful of meddling foreigners with the aid of the U.S. Navy. Following the world's first submarine attack in 1864, the Confederate sub The Hunley sank mysteriously in Charleston Harbor, but was discovered and raised 131 years later. Montana has long been the world's best source for dinosaur fossils and a recent discovery is shedding new light.

Hurricanes, lightning and alligator-filled swamps made Florida an unwelcome candidate for statehood, yet it continues to draw more and more people annually. In 1900, Indianapolis, not Detroit, was the center of the auto industry, and endurance tests there resulted in the establishment of the Indy 500 in 1911. On May 18, 1980, America's most economically destructive volcanic erupts at Mt. St. Helens and rocks Washington State. Escaping religious persecution, Brigham Young leads twelve thousand Mormons on an exodus into the Utah desert in search of paradise. Roger Williams fled Massachusetts in the 16th century and founded a colony of religious tolerance in Rhode Island.

The Cahokia civilization thrived in the region known today as Illinois, from 700 to 1400 AD, but when the culture mysteriously disappeared, it left behind pyramids that rivaled those of ancient Egypt. Changing with the times, Connecticut's shipbuilders shifted from sails to steam to diesel power, culminating in the construction of the first nuclear submarine. The 1859 discovery of the Comstock Lode, world's largest silver deposit, prompted the Federal government to offer statehood to Nevada, a region it had previously written off as worthless desert. Work chants, gospel and traditional folk music were combined in the Mississippi Delta to create an original American art form--the Blues. The first frontiersmen to report the wonders of Yellowstone, Wyoming, were thought to be either crazy or lying

Virginia was not only the home of the first permanent British colony; it was the birthplace of eight presidents of the United States. "The Gravity Grand Prix" has been an annual event in Akron, Ohio, since the 1930s and today draws 500 young entrants from around the nation. The discovery of gold, then lead, copper, zinc and silver, has made Idaho one of the richest mineral producing states in the nation. Poor hill farmers in Winston County rarely owned slaves and when Alabama seceded from the Union in 1861, Winston County tried to secede from Alabama. Teddy Roosevelt, America's first conservation president, learned valuable lessons about preserving nature while on his North Dakota ranch.