As the capital, Tallahassee is the site of the Florida State Capitol, Supreme Court of Florida, Florida Governor's Mansion, and nearly 30 state agency headquarters. The city is also known for its large number of law firms, lobbying organizations, trade associations and professional associations, including the Florida Bar and the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

The road to becoming the official state pie wasn't an easy one. Since the 1980s, North Florida lawmakers had insisted that a pie made of Florida-grown pecans would better reflect the state's history, but on July 1, 2006, the Florida House of Representatives and the Florida Senate both passed legislation selecting Key lime pie as the official pie of the state of Florida.

The use of "Sunshine State" has been in place since 1949, when it first appeared on license plates. The nickname was made official by the state legislature in 1970.

The first European contact was made in 1513 by Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, who called it la Florida, or "the land of flowers".

Fort Lauderdale is known as the Venice of America because of its canal system, with 165 miles of local waterways. The city is a popular tourist destination with over 4,000 restaurants, 63 golf courses, 12 shopping malls, 16 museums, 132 nightclubs, 278 parkland campsites, and 100 marinas housing 45,000 resident yachts.

The John F. Kennedy Space Center is located on Merritt Island, Cape Canaveral, Florida. Named the Launch Operations Center at its creation on July 1, 1962, it was renamed in honor of the late U.S. president on November 29, 1963, and has been the launch site for every United States human space flight since 1968.

Roughly 1.3 million alligators live in the state of Florida. And don't think these prehistoric predators are confined to wildlife areas. A map of where nuisance alligators have been removed includes all areas of the state, from Pensacola to the Keys.

Florida produces more than 70 percent of the nation's oranges, but it also ranks #1 for tomatoes, grapefruit, sugarcane, snap beans, and cucumbers.

Julia Tuttle, a local citrus grower, was the original owner of the land upon which Miami was built. After the Great Freeze of 1894-95, the crops in what was then known as "Biscayne Bay Country" were the only ones in Florida that survived. Tuttle subsequently convinced railroad tycoon Henry Flagler to extend his Florida East Coast Railway to the region, for which she became known as "the mother of Miami".

Florida's John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park is located on Key Largo. It is approximately 25 miles in length and extends 3 miles into the Atlantic Ocean.