Missouri Fun Facts

The state of Missouri was named after a tribe of Sioux Indians of the state called the Missouris. The word "Missouri" means "wooden canoe people" or "he of the big canoe."


Missouri is home to more than 6,100 known caves. Missouri is known as “the cave state.” Richland, Missouri, is the only city in the U.S. with a cave restaurant


St. Louis, Missouri hosted the the first Olympic Games ever held in the United States. Chicago, Illinois originally won the bid to host the 1904 Summer Olympics, but the organizers of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis began to plan for its own sports activities, threatening to eclipse the Olympic Games unless they were moved to St. Louis. Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic movement, gave in and moved the games to St. Louis. It was the first time that the Olympic Games were held in a majority English language nation, and the first time that they were held outside of Europe. Almost half of the marathon runners got heat stroke, and the first-place winner cheated by hitching a car ride from mile for 10 miles.


At the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, the ice cream cone was invented. An ice cream vendor ran out of cups and asked a waffle vendor to help by rolling up waffles to hold ice cream. Also introduced at the fair were cotton candy, iced tea, and Dr Pepper.



The first successful parachute jump from a moving plane was made above the Jefferson Barracks military post, near St. Louis, on March 1, 1912. U.S. Army Captain Albert Berry climbed to 1,500 feet in a Benoist aircraft and jumped



Kansas City, Missouri has more fountains than any city in the world except Rome.



Kansas City's Country Club Plaza, built in the 1920s, was America's first suburban shopping center. The elegant area now boasts nearly 250 shops, stores and restaurants



In 1873, Susan Elizabeth Blow opened the first public kindergarten in the United States in St. Louis after having become interested in the kindergarten methods of philosopher Friedrich Froebel while traveling in Germany a few years earlier. Blow later established a training school for kindergarten teachers



The most powerful earthquake to strike the United States occurred in 1811, centered in New Madrid. It shook more than one million square miles and was felt 1,000 miles away.