August 10 is the 200th Anniversary of Missouri joining the Union and becoming the 24thstate in the United States of America. Missouri was in a unique and important location in early America because it was located in two major transportation arteries: the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.

In celebration of Missouri’s statehood, here are some interesting facts about Missouri:

When the Missouri Territory first applied for statehood, a debate ensued over the government’s right to restrict slavery. The Missouri Compromise granted Maine entrance into the Union as a free state while allowing Missouri permission to enter without restrictions on slavery. An amendment was added that prohibited slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase territory north of latitude 36°30’, but the Missouri Compromise was ultimately ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1857.
The “Show Me State” nickname came into being when Missouri Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver, in an 1899 speech in Philadelphia, said, “For thy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”
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.
Charles Lindbergh’s flight from Long Island to Paris May 20-21, 1927, took 33 and one half hours to complete and was the first nonstop solo transatlantic flight in history. Lindbergh’s single-engine plane was named The Spirit of St. Louis in recognition of the St. Louis, Missouri, businessmen who funded its construction. It had a 46-foot wingspan and weighed 2,150 pounds when empty.
The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is the country’s tallest manmade monument at 630 feet. The structure was completed in 1965, to commemorate the city’s importance in settling the west following President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
Missouri is the eastern starting point of the Pony Express, which existed between April 1860 and October 1861. The Pony Express had an average delivery time of just 10 days. However, their best came in March 1861, when riders carried the inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln from Nebraska to California in just seven days, 17 hours.
Ice cream cones made from waffles were first invented in Missouri in the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 when an ice cream vendor ran out of cups to supply the ice cream. The vendor asked a waffle vendor to roll waffles to supply the ice cream, and hence the birth of the cone took place.

Date of Statehood: August 10, 1821

Capital: Jefferson City

Population: 6.137 million (2019)

Size: 69,702 square miles

Nickname: Show Me State

State Motto: Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto (“The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law”)

State Tree: Flowering Dogwood

State Flower: White Hawthorn Blossom

State Bird: the bluebird

State Animal: the mule

KPGZ News - Brian Watts contributed to this story