A basic tax return costs $220 to $280 nationally when a paid preparer fills it out, according to tax industry fee data. But some Georgians can walk into their county extension office and have trained volunteers prepare that same return for free. That’s just one of the services these offices offer. These are the services…
Tell someone from Idaho that the state has a seaport, and they probably won’t blink. Tell someone from almost anywhere else, and you’ll get a very different reaction. These are the facts, laws, and quirks that only make sense to someone who grew up in Idaho. 1. A Working Seaport Idaho doesn’t border an ocean,…
A fork hovers over fish in a Lutheran church basement in Fargo. The tourist nudges it toward the rim of the plate instead of taking a bite. Behind the serving line, the volunteers who’ve made this fish every fall for decades go back for seconds without a second thought. These are the North Dakota foods…
North Carolina stretches close to 500 miles from its western peaks to its eastern shoreline. Somewhere along that stretch, a handful of everyday words flip their meaning, and the person using them often has no idea it ever happened. These are the North Carolina words that mean one thing in the mountains and something else…
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says Americans lost hundreds of millions of dollars to AI-related scams last year. A cloned voice was often the first sign of trouble. Americans everywhere have learned to be wary of an unfamiliar voice on the phone, but Texans are finding fresh reasons to extend that caution to artificial…
A lot of people hear the name Nauvoo, Alabama and assume Mormon pioneers built it, the same way they built the original Nauvoo in Illinois. Wrong guess. The reason traces back to one resident’s travels, and it has nothing to do with the Latter-day Saints at all. These are the Alabama town names with origins…
In 1912, one of Pennsylvania’s busiest barn star painters logged his hours in his ledger: 52 and a quarter hours of work, at 15 cents an hour. Pennsylvania’s barn stars carry a documented history, and these are the things they don’t mean, no matter what a gift shop sign says. 1. Not Proof of Any…
A phone’s turn-by-turn directions read Sepulveda Boulevard out loud in a flat robot voice. But it doesn’t land the way Los Angeles says it. Neither does the app’s version of half the state’s other Spanish-rooted street names. These are the California street names locals don’t say the correct way, let alone tourists. 1. Los Feliz…
Ask a Mississippian about their home state, and there’s a good chance they’ll have to correct at least one assumption. No, Mississippi isn’t landlocked. No, Elvis wasn’t born in Memphis. And no, the Mississippi River didn’t get its name from the state. Some things just shouldn’t have to be explained this many times. 1. Mississippi’s…
A cashier at a Sacramento grocery store slides your last item across the belt and asks if you brought bags. You say “sorry,” like you did something wrong. These are the things Californians apologize for that nobody else would ever think twice about. 1. Correcting a Town’s Name Californians will let almost anything slide, except…
