Fun Facts about New York

The first American chess tournament was held in New York in 1843. The 641 mile transportation network known as the Governor Thomas E. Dewey Thruway is the longest toll road in the United States. A brewer named Matthew Vassar founded Vassar College in Poughkeepsie in 1861. In 1979 Vassar students were the first from a private college to be granted permission to study in the People’s Republic of China. The Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan is the only school in the world offering a Bachelor of Science Degree with a Major in Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing. Union College in Schenectady is regarded as the Mother of Fraternities because Delta Phi is the oldest continually operating fraternity and Kappa Alpha and Sigma Phi Societies were started on the campus. Dairying is New York’s most important farming activity with over 18,000 cattle and or calves farms. The first railroad in America ran a distance of 11 miles between Albany and Schenectady. Sam Wilson, a meatpacker from Troy who’s caricature Uncle Sam came to personify the United States is buried at Troy’s Oakwood Cemetery. During the War of 1812, he stamped “U.S. Beef” on his products which soldiers interpreted the U.S. abbreviation as meaning Uncle Sam.