{"id":176378,"date":"2026-03-03T15:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T15:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/176378\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T15:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T15:02:08","slug":"happy-birthday-florida-sunshine-state-turns-181","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/176378\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Florida! Sunshine State turns 181"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Published:\u00a0March 3, 2026 at 9:37 AM<\/p>\n<p>lead-art-block.fullscreen-enterExpand<img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/QGT5EL2R3JHYDEJ7BTI2PLARCY.png\"  width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Tuesday marks a very special day in the Sunshine State, as Florida turns 181 years old.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/espanol\/2026\/03\/03\/feliz-cumpleanos-florida-el-estado-del-sol-cumple-181-anos\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/espanol\/2026\/03\/03\/feliz-cumpleanos-florida-el-estado-del-sol-cumple-181-anos\/\">Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The Sunshine State became the 27th state in the United States on March 3, 1845.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">According to the Florida Department of State website, William D. Moseley was elected the state\u2019s first governor, and David Levy Yulee, one of Florida\u2019s leading proponents for statehood, became a U.S. Senator.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Beginning in the 1870s, residents from northern states visited Florida as tourists to enjoy the state\u2019s natural beauty and mild climate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The state reptile is the American Alligator, and the state animal is the Florida Panther.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The state bird is currently the Mockingbird, even though a bill was filed last year to change it to the American Flamingo.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dos.fl.gov\/florida-facts\/florida-state-symbols\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/dos.fl.gov\/florida-facts\/florida-state-symbols\/\">Click here<\/a> for more information about Florida\u2019s state symbols. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">There are 67 counties in the state of Florida and Miami-Dade County tops the list for most residents.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published:\u00a0March 3, 2026 at 9:37 AM lead-art-block.fullscreen-enterExpand Tuesday marks a very special day in the Sunshine State, as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8601,28,4324,30,29],"class_list":["post-176378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-capitol","tag-florida","tag-florida-capitol","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}