Ohio

Something about Ohio makes people want to leave the planet. Twenty-five astronauts have called this state home, more than almost any other.

Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, grew up in Wapakoneta. John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, came from Cambridge. And it all started with Wilbur and Orville Wright, two brothers from Dayton who built an airplane in the back of their bicycle shop and flew it at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.

When Armstrong left for the moon 66 years later, he carried a piece of that original plane with him.

The Shawnee, Miami, Wyandot, and Delaware peoples lived across Ohio long before Europeans arrived. In 1794, a confederation of tribes led by the Shawnee warrior Blue Jacket and the Miami chief Little Turtle fought the U.S. Army at the Battle of Fallen Timbers near present-day Toledo.

They lost, and the Treaty of Greenville the following year forced them to give up most of Ohio. By 1843, the government had removed the last tribe, the Wyandot, sending them west.

Ohio became the 17th state in 1803 and quickly grew into a key link on the Underground Railroad. The Ohio River separated slave states from free states, and thousands of enslaved people crossed it seeking freedom.

In Ripley, a minister named John Rankin kept a lantern burning in his hilltop window as a signal to those escaping. Oberlin College, founded in 1833, became one of the first colleges in America to admit Black students and the first to grant bachelor's degrees to women.

The state sent over 300,000 soldiers to fight for the Union in the Civil War and produced three of its top generals: Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip Sheridan. Seven presidents were born here, earning Ohio the nickname "Mother of Presidents."

Tour the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, the world's oldest and largest military aviation museum. Walk the Great Serpent Mound, a 1,300-foot snake-shaped earthwork built over a thousand years ago.

Explore the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, and the Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta, where the kid who got his pilot's license before his driver's license ended up walking on the moon.