Category: American History

As the name might suggest, something constitutional happened at the convention in Philadelphia. The Founding Fathers wrote the holiest of holies – the Constitution. It took them from May to September, so it’s lucky that it was so brief, as often when you lock a bunch of crusty old men into the conference center of a Motel 6 for a few months, they come up with a bloated collection of random thoughts and power point slides.

Maybe it was because they had to write everything by hand that the Constitution is so refreshingly short, or maybe they were all busy partying at night and just snoozing in the day for the first 100 days, and then realized that they had to get something to show for the expense accounts to be validated when they got back home.

In the beginning (the one after the people who already lived here got the boot) there were thirteen colonies, or states. Since everyone had just piled off scurvy-encrusted wooden boats after some 2,000 treacherous miles of sailing, they couldn’t be bothered to go far into the interior, preferring instead the Eastern seaboard – except for Florida, probably because of all the alligators and ostrich-sized mosquitoes. So if you’re stumped, just think of an East Coast state. If you’re looking for three, you might choose all the ones that begin with New for example:

• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New York

If you want the first 3 original states of the USA, they would be

• Delaware
• Pennsylvania
• New Jersey

– these are the podium winners in the state olympics.

If you don’t go for the first set of three,  you might go for one of the harder ones like these ten:

1. Massachussets
2. Rhode Island
3. Connecticut
4. Pennsylvania
5. Delaware
6. Maryland
7. Virginia
8. North Carolina
9. South Carolina
10. Georgia