Knowledge Ninja

💡

💡

Portland, OR was named after Portland, ME instead of Boston, MA based on the flip of a penny by two early residents

Sep 23, 2022•1 min read

Fun Fact: Portland, OR was named after Portland, ME instead of Boston, MA based on the flip of a penny by two early residents

Source

britannica.com

Share this fascinating fact! 🥷

Share on X Discover more facts

💡More Fun Facts

Keep exploring and learning

In 1859, a two-hour telegraph conversation between Portland and Boston was possible without the need for any battery power, thanks to the electric current generated by an aurora borealis in the telegraph wires.

that Lynyrd Skynyrd based the group’s name as a mocking tribute to a P.E. teacher named Leonard Skinner at Robert E. Lee High School, who disciplined two of the band’s members for letting their hair grow long.

the term patient 0 is based on a misunderstanding. An early HIV patients was named patient O , standing for patient OUT of California . People misinterpreted this letter as the numeral 0, leading to its wide usage today.

Jamaica (in Queens) and Jamaica (in the Caribbean) are named after two unrelated Native American words, with the former meaning beaver to the Lenape, and the latter land of wood and water to the Arawak

in 1818, the US began building a fort near the New York-Quebec border to defend against invasions from Canada. After two years of construction, they realized the fort was actually on the Canadian side. They abandoned it and named it Fort Blunder.

that the Pokemon Kadabra stopped appearing in the trading card games due to a lawsuit filed by magician Uri Geller in the early 2000s. Geller claimed that Nintendo based Kadabra on him because he also has a spoon-bending act and its Japanese name Yungeller sounds similar to his own.

Explore All Fun Facts