Connecticut

America's most famous patriot spy and its most infamous traitor grew up about 25 miles apart in Connecticut. Nathan Hale was a schoolteacher from Coventry who volunteered to spy for George Washington.

The British caught him and hanged him in 1776. He was only 21.

Benedict Arnold, from nearby Norwich, started the Revolution as one of America's best generals. Then he switched sides and led a brutal British attack on his own home state.

Before any Europeans showed up, the Pequot, Mohegan, and other Native peoples had lived here for thousands of years. In 1637, English colonists and their Native allies attacked a Pequot village near the Mystic River, set it on fire, and killed as many as 700 men, women, and children.

The treaty that followed tried to erase the Pequot completely, banning their name and splitting survivors among other tribes.

Just two years later, colonists in Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield wrote the Fundamental Orders of 1639. Most historians consider it the first written constitution in the American colonies. That's how Connecticut got its nickname, the Constitution State.

During the Revolution, Connecticut supplied more food, cannons, and goods to Washington's army than any other colony, earning it the title "the Provision State." But the war hit home hard in 1781 when Benedict Arnold led British troops against New London and Groton.

At Fort Griswold, soldiers killed around 85 defenders after they had already surrendered.

In 1839, 53 kidnapped Africans aboard the slave ship Amistad revolted and ended up jailed in New Haven. Former president John Quincy Adams argued their case all the way to the Supreme Court and won their freedom.

You can tour Mark Twain's wild 25-room Gothic mansion in Hartford, where he wrote Huckleberry Finn, and visit his neighbor Harriet Beecher Stowe's house right next door. Over in Mystic, climb aboard the last wooden whaling ship in the world at Mystic Seaport.

In New Haven, grab a coal-fired apizza at Frank Pepe's on Wooster Street, then head to Louis' Lunch, where the Library of Congress says the hamburger was invented in 1900. Fair warning: don't ask for ketchup.