Florida is the state with the lowest high point — Britton Hill is the highest natural point in the state at only 345 feet above sea level. In fact, the actual highest point in the state is a building: Panorama Tower in Miami, which stands only 862 feet tall.

The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, is one of the world's leading homes for art by the legendary surrealist. Since its opening in 1982, the museum has displayed famous works such as "The Average Bureaucrat" and "The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory." The museum's glass dome structure, known as "the Enigma," was built in 2011 and is made of 1,062 triangular pieces of glass.

Hemingway moved into his Spanish colonial Key West home in 1931 and lived there for eight productive years. During his stay in south Florida, the author finished works such as "A Farewell to Arms", "Death in the Afternoon” and "To Have and Have Not." While there, he kept cats with extra toes, and today the Hemingway House and Museum keeps nearly 50 polydactyl felines in his honor.

According to the Florida League of Cities, the state has a total of 411 cities, towns, and villages, so they're bound to overlap names with other cities in the world. In addition to the three already mentioned, Florida has its own Hollywood, Naples, Princeton, Panama City, Marathon, Seville, and Memphis. So far, though, there is no Berlin, Florida.

Venice, Italy, is known for its extensive system of canals that run through the city like roads. Found on Florida's southeastern coast, Fort Lauderdale has a similar network of more than 300 miles of inland waterways spreading through its greater metropolitan area. Visitors can hop on a water taxi across the city or even take an authentic gondola ride to experience the full feeling of the nickname.

Biscayne National Park is a group of subtropical islands off the coast of Miami near Key Largo. Dry Tortugas includes historic Fort Jefferson, and is found in the Florida Keys about 70 miles west of Key West. The Everglades are in southern Florida, and contain the largest remaining subtropical wilderness in the contiguous United States. Congaree National Park, on the other hand, is in South Carolina.

With its combination of good weather that allows for year-round play and a large retiree population, Florida is the golf capital of the United States and the world. The Sunshine State has more than 1,000 places to hit the links, including championship courses such as PGA National, Innisbrook, and Bay Hill.

In Florida, you can head to Tampa Bay to see the Buccaneers play, visit Miami for a Dolphins game, or travel to Jacksonville to watch the Jags. If you want to see the Panthers at home, though, you'll have to go north to Charlotte, North Carolina. (Florida does have a different team called the Panthers, but they play hockey in the NHL.) Florida is tied with California as the state with the most NFL teams.

A towering symbol of the Sunshine State, the Sunshine Skyway Bridge is located where Tampa Bay meets the Gulf of Mexico. The cable-stayed concrete bridge is over four miles long — the longest of its kind in the world — and connects the city of St. Petersburg on the Pinellas peninsula to Sarasota and other cities to the south. The current bridge opened in 1987, and replaced the previous bridge that collapsed in 1980.

Florida farmer and self-made conservationist Paul Kroegel took it upon himself to stop hunters from attacking the state’s populations of brown pelicans, which had declined precipitously due to their use in Victorian-era fashion. His efforts attracted attention, and President Theodore Roosevelt signed an executive order in 1903 to make Pelican Island a federal bird reserve and protected area — and the country's first wildlife refuge.

Lake Okeechobee is located in southeastern Florida, at the northern edge of the Everglades, and covers an area of about 730 square miles. That makes it easily the largest lake in the state and also makes it the third-largest freshwater lake in the United States. Its name comes from the indigenous Hitchiti people's word meaning "big water", which is quite accurate.

Spanish explorer Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles founded the city of St. Augustine, on Florida’s northeast coast, in 1565 — more than 200 years before the Declaration of Independence would be written. Predating Jamestown, Plymouth, and even Roanoke, St. Augustine carries the title of the nation's oldest city. In 2020, it celebrated its 455th anniversary, making it the same age as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

With the signing of the Adams-Onís Treaty in 1819, Spain ceded East Florida to the United States and renounced all claims to West Florida. In exchange, the United States agreed to pay $5 million to repair damage done by U.S. citizens who had rebelled against Spain in the area. The treaty also defined the western limits of the Louisiana Purchase and gave Spain sovereignty over Texas, though that would be short-lived.

Since 1975, the Florida manatee has been the state's official marine mammal. Also known as the sea cow, the manatee is a large, gray, plant-eating creature that can grow up to 14 feet long. When the manatee became the state marine mammal, it was listed as an endangered species and only a few hundred were left in the wild, but since then, concerted conservation efforts have taken place.

In 2005, a Florida schoolteacher realized that though the state's official flower was the orange blossom and its official beverage was orange juice, the orange itself was not properly honored. So, a campaign to recognize the orange as Florida's official state fruit was organized and quickly succeeded. More than 90% of America’s orange juice is made with Florida-grown oranges.

In April 1513, Spanish explorer Ponce de León arrived in what is now Florida. His trek marked the first written record about life in Florida from any European. Later, Hernando de Soto, Tristán de Luna y Arellano, and Jean Ribault all attempted to colonize parts of the peninsula for European powers, but they had been preceded by Ponce de León.

Located on Merritt Island on Florida's east coast, the John F. Kennedy Space Center has been the primary American launch center of human spaceflight since 1968. The spaceport is named for President John F. Kennedy, who declared that the United States would put an astronaut on the moon before the end of the 1960s. Apollo 11, the first successful Moon landing mission, launched from KSC in 1969.

Located in northern Florida, Tallahassee is the capital city of the Sunshine State. When the territory became part of the United States in 1821, people assumed the capital would be in either St. Augustine or Pensacola, two of the largest cities in the territory. However, Tallahassee, a former Native American village, was selected because of its more central location, halfway between Pensacola and St. Augustine. It was named the capital in March 1824.

When European explorers made their way to the southern peninsula of the United States in 1513, they named it “Florido,” which means “full of flowers” in Spanish, because it was a land filled with blossoms and it also happened to be Easter (“Pascua Florida” in Spanish). Thus, the state’s name was born.

Known for its beaches, islands, and tropical climate, the peninsular state's image is reflected by its official state nickname, adopted by the Florida legislature in 1970. However, according to the National Weather Service, Florida is actually only the sixth-sunniest state in the country. It follows Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas in the rankings, but it does lead the nation in thunderstorm frequency.