Random State Generator

Fifty states, and nothing else. Washington, D.C. is not a state. Nor are Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa or the Northern Mariana Islands, all of which are US territories whose residents are US citizens or nationals. A list that quietly mixes them in gives the wrong answer to anyone using it for homework.

Capitals are not the biggest city, and usually deliberately so. Albany, not New York. Sacramento, not Los Angeles. Springfield, not Chicago. Nineteenth-century legislatures repeatedly chose smaller, more central towns to keep the seat of government away from the dominant city. Only a handful of states — Arizona, Georgia, Massachusetts among them — put the capital in the largest city.

The order of admission is not the order you would guess. Delaware was first to ratify, in 1787, which is why it calls itself the First State. Alaska and Hawaii both joined in 1959, and no state has been admitted since. Between them sit two centuries of expansion, and the joining year tells you more about a state's history than its region does.

Regions are the Census Bureau's four, not a feeling. Northeast, Midwest, South and West. People argue endlessly about whether Maryland is southern or Missouri is midwestern; using the official grouping means the answer is at least consistent and checkable, even where it does not match local opinion.