Today In History: New Hampshire Admitted As 9th US State

New Hampshire was one of the original Thirteen Colonies and became the ninth state to ratify the United States Constitution in 1788. New Hampshire was the first U.S. state to have its own state constitution, and is the only state with neither a general sales tax nor an income tax. Its license plates carry the state motto: “Live Free or Die.” The state nickname is “The Granite State”, in reference both to its geology and to its tradition of self-sufficiency. Several other official nicknames exist but are rarely used.

NH is my neighbor to the north and it was also my home while I was in college at Plymouth State University. It is also home to Mount Washington which holds the record for the highest recorded surface wind gust in the world at 231 mph.

The Old Man of the Mountain, also known as the great stone face, was a series of five granite cliff ledges on Cannon Mountain in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, that, when viewed from the correct angle, appeared to be the jagged profile of a face. The first recorded discovery of the Old Man was in 1805. The outcrop was 1,200 feet above Profile Lake, and measured 40 feet tall and 25 feet wide. It collapsed on May 3, 2003 after centuries of wind, snow, and rain, as well as freezing and thawing cycles, finally caught up with it.

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