New Jersey is located in the North Eastern and mid-Atlantic regions of US and adjacent to the city of New York.

Listed below are some very interesting facts about NJ:

• The Delaware Indians are believed to be the first inhabitants to live in New Jersey which is estimated to be around 10,000 years ago. Their dialect was an Alonquian dialect.

• The first European to explore NJ was Giovanni de Verrazano around the year 1524 while sailing across the coast anchored at Sandy Hook.

• Henry Hudson was the first Englishman, who working for the Dutch while sailing through Newark Bay claimed land for the Dutch and named it New Netherlands.

• New Netherlands was lost to the British in 1664 after which British colonies were added and the land divided between two proprietors, Sir George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley.

• New Jersey continued to grow rapidly after the Civil War and the Industrial revolution as more and more factories opened up in the cities of Camden, Trenton, Paterson and Newark.

• Immigrants of NJ in the initial years primarily comprised of people from Italy, Ireland and Germany and later from other countries in Eastern Europe.

• New Jersey was given the nickname of ‘Garden state’ by Abraham Browning of Camden. In 1954 a bill was passed by the State Legislature that made the name “Garden State” mandatory to be added to license plates thereby becoming the official nickname of New Jersey.

• Over 100 battles have been fought on the New Jersey soil which made people give it the name “Pathway of Revolution”.

• New Jersey comprises of 21 counties and run by 566 municipalities.

• The first town to be lighted by electricity in NJ was Roselle in 1883.

• NJ or New Jersey spans across 127 miles across the coastline of the Atlantic and comprises of more than 800 lakes and ponds. It also has over 100 rivers and creeks.

• It has 36 state parks, 11 state forests and 42 natural areas; 42 natural historic sites and 4 national recreational areas.

• New Jersey is home to two international airports: Newark and Atlantic City.

• The first airplane passenger flight took off from New York and landed at Atlantic City on 3rd May 1919.

• The Absecon Lighthouse located in NJ is the USA’s third tallest lighthouse that has 228 steps to climb to the top and have a 360 degree view of Atlantic City.

• The first organised baseball game was played in New Jersey in the city of Hoboken.

• While it is natural to think that LA is the home of Hollywood; it is actually New Jersey where the motion pictures were first invented and therefore the true birthplace of the movie industry. William Kennedy Laurie Dickson invented the first movie viewer and camera and named it the kinetoscope.

• In 1892, the first Kinetographic theatre was opened at New Jersey in West Orange, named Black Maria. In the following year to come, over 75 silent films were made of 20 second durations. The Black Maria closed down in 1901. However, NJ continued to provide a great landscape for many more movies to come.

NJ has numerous tourist attractions and can be a great destination to explore. The Long Beach Island is a beach lover’s paradise and one of the most popular attractions of NJ.