1Hard Rock Cafe Owner
The entire Hard Rock Cafe company is owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
2. Brightline is a Florida-based rail service which currently operates between Miami and West Palm Beach. It is also the nation’s deadliest railroad with more than 40 people being killed at its rail crossings in its first 2 years of operation.
3. Florida Highway Patrol has a semi-truck as a patrol vehicle and occasionally makes traffic stops.
4. Florida Everglades is the only place on earth where crocodiles and alligators co-exist.
5. 100% of Florida’s orange trees are infected with a deadly fungus and face extinction.
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6Moonstone Gemstone
Despite being Florida's official state gemstone, moonstone does not naturally occur in Florida.
7. Panama City, Florida was named after the original Panama City (Panama) basically as a scam to "spur more real estate in the county."
8. Florida is second to Alaska for the highest number of breeding pairs of Bald Eagles in the US. Hawaii is the only state where you can’t find Bald Eagles.
9. The city of Boca Raton in Florida doesn’t translate to “Rat’s Mouth.” An investigation of old Spanish maritime dictionaries shows, “a shallow inlet of sharp-pointed rocks which scrape a ship’s cables.”
10. The strongest magnet ever built resides at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. It is 22-feet tall, weighs 34 tons and has a strength of 45 Tesla.
11Brevard County Area Code
The area code for Brevard County in Florida which is home to the Kennedy Space Center is 321. This code was given deliberately in reference to the countdown heard before every space launch.
12. Give Kids the World Village is a totally free resort in Kissimmee (Orlando) for children facing life-threatening illnesses and their families. It was founded by Henri Landwirth, a childhood Holocaust survivor.
13. In 2017, Florida officials had to bring in 2 Irula tribesmen from India to catch the invasive Burmese pythons in Florida. About 1000 hunters before them were able to catch just 106 snakes. The duo who were brought in caught 27 snakes in just 4 weeks, including a 16 feet long female.
14. In the early 80s, The Mutiny Hotel in Miami was a cocaine-fueled hotspot in the city where CIA partied side by side with notorious drug traffickers, celebrities, and politicians.
15. In 1987, the city of Hialeah in Florida passed an ordinance making it illegal to kill any animals in an attempt to curtail the practices of a Santeria church. This law however exempted slaughterhouses, pest control, and the feeding of live rabbits to greyhounds.
16Orlando Disney World
Disney World in Orlando is its own city. It was built between two counties. Disney petitioned the Florida State legislature to let the company govern its own land, essentially making Disney World a separate city.
17. One of the most dangerous trees in the world, the manchineel, is found in Florida and the Caribbean. Its sap is so poisonous and acidic that merest contact with human skin causes a breakout of blisters, and blindness can occur if it touches a person’s eyes.
18. If you draw a line directly south from Jacksonville, Florida, the entire continent of South America is east of that line.
19. Chemical castration is mandatory in Florida and California for pedophiles convicted of their second offense.
20. The Devil's Chair is a graveside bench in a cemetery in Cassadaga, Florida. According to local legend, an unopened beer left on the chair will be empty by morning. The Devil is sometimes said to appear to anyone bold enough to sit in the chair.
21Gainesville Fried Chicken Ordinance
In 1961, the city of Gainesville in Florida established a city wide ordinance that to this day prohibits diners from eating fried chicken with anything other than their bare hands.
22. Murder rates in Miami, Florida were so high during the 1970s and 1980s that the Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office had to rent a refrigerated trailer from Burger King to handle the overflow of corpses.
23. There is a bog in Florida that was an ancient burial pond and it contains human remains that were buried almost 2000 years before the first pyramids. The skeletal remains were preserved so well that researchers have managed to collect soft brain tissue from the skulls.
24. The state of Florida does not allow married couples to divorce while one of the partners is pregnant.
25. Lake Okeechobee, despite being Florida's largest freshwater lake and covering an area of 730 square miles, has an average depth of just 9 feet.
