1) The first professional baseball game was played in Fort Wayne on May 4, 1817.
2) Indiana is known as “Cross Roads of American” and has more miles of interstate highway per square mile than any other state.
3) Indiana means “Land of the Indians” but fewer than 8000 Native Americans live there.
4) Indiana was part of the Northwest Territory which also includes present day Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin; and was ceded to U.S. by the British at the end of the Revolutionary War.
5) In
1934 Chicago gangster John Dillinger
escaped from Lake Country Jail in Crown
Point using a “pistol” carved from wood.
6) The only man-made white water raceway is the East Race Waterway in Southbend Indiana.
7) Richard Gatling of Indianapolis invented the machine gun in 1862.
8) Madame C.J. Walker became one of the nation’s first woman millionaires.
9) Fountain City in Wayne County is known as “The Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad.” It provided overnight lodging for over 2000 runaway slaves.
10) In the summer of 1987, 4453 athletes from 39 nations gathered in Indiana for the Pan American Games.
