How much do you know about Florida history?

Before the Civil War, Florida had the smallest population of any Southern state. Over 140,000 people lived in the state, with nearly half of them being enslaved.

The first people who inhabited Florida were Native Americans. Called Paleo-Indians, they came as early as 14,000 years ago.

Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon made Florida's first written records in 1513. These were the first written records of what would become America.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Florida was under the colonial rule of all of these countries at various points. It became a US territory in 1821.

After becoming a US territory, Florida was admitted to the Union in 1845. It was the 27th US state.

Florida is known as the sunshine state due to its warm sunny weather. This has attracted generations of vacationers and led to a booming tourism industry.

Florida was inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people at the time of Spanish contact. The Spanish recorded names of nearly 100 different groups of people, such as the Apalachee, which had a population of around 50,000.

The Spanish took control of Florida and brought their diseases with them. The natives had no immunity to these new European plagues, and many died.

After indigenous Florida groups were mostly killed off by European diseases, tribes to the north took advantage. They raided the remaining towns, killed survivors and captured some to sell into slavery.

Written history of Florida begins with this Spanish explorer, who named it full of flowers. This is why you can recognize the Spanish word for flowers "flores" in the state's name.

While his expedition was the first official one, Portuguese sailing maps from a decade before his expedition show the Florida coast. It is believed that slave traders may have been secretly raiding villages long before Ponce de Leon came ashore, as well.

In 1763, Spain traded Florida to England for control of Havana, Cuba, which had been captured by the British during the Seven Years' War. Almost the entire Spanish population left for Cuba and took the majority of the indigenous population with them.

Most Floridians condemned the Revolution, as they lived in backwoods areas which had been mostly unaffected by events leading up to it. Many were loyalists and some even helped the British raid the American south.

When the British took Florida from the Spanish, it was divided into East and West Florida. Both Floridas remained loyal to Great Britain during the revolution and were under Spanish control again from 1783-1821.

Florida became an organized territory of the US in 1822. The US joined the Floridas.

In the 1840s and 1850s, nearly half of Florida's entire population was enslaved African Americans. There were less than 1,000 free people of color in the entire state.

Florida was one of the founding members of the Confederate States of America. It was a plantation state with roughly half of the population enslaved.

After World War I, many white Floridians took to lynching black Floridians in mobs, as well burning down their homes, churches and schools. Roughly a fifth of Florida's entire population left for northern cities to escape the random acts of racially motivated violence.

In the early days of Florida, it was the least populous US state. In 1950 it was ranked 20th in terms of population. Modern-day Florida is one of the most populated states in the country.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the Interstate highway system and availability of air conditioning inspired people from other parts of America to come to Florida. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 also led to a huge wave of Cuban immigration into South Florida.

Before Europeans landed in Florida, an estimated 350,000 people lived there. About 100 names of different tribes were recorded by the Spanish.

The Seminole tribe developed in Florida during the 18th century, after many of Florida's original tribes had died due to disease and violence. Today they have two federally recognized tribes in Florida and one in Oklahoma.

Natives had hunted the native North American horse population to extinction thousands of years before European arrival. Europeans brought horses with them to Florida in the 16th century, reintroducing them to the continent.

In 1565, the settlement of San Augustin, which is called St. Augustine, was founded. It's the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in any US state.

In Spanish-controlled parts of Florida, slaves were offered freedom if they converted to Catholicism. They settled in a community north of St Augustine called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose.

Creek and Seminole Native Americans were known for accepting and harboring slaves. When the British government tried to get them to return runaway slaves, the Creek and Seminole refused.

Spain ruled Florida from 1513-1763, before losing it to the British in exchange for Cuba from 1763-1783. The Spanish ruled Florida again from 1783-1821.

Span ceded Florida to the US via treaty in 1821. It had become a financial burden on Spain, and they could not afford to send anyone else to maintain it.

In order to avoid coming under US control, North America's first city of free blacks escaped to Havana, Cuba. During the 1800s, hundreds more escaped to the Bahamas.

Florida was the 27th state to join America in 1845. Michigan precedes Florida and Texas follows it.

Under Spanish rule, Florida never really prospered. The British changed this by building roads and introducing all kinds of industry to the territory.

The Spanish ended up losing Florida twice ultimately, first to the British, who used it for its natural resources and lastly to the United States. Britain harvested these natural resources as well as various fruits.

In 1810, illegal American immigrants and British settlers in West Florida rebelled against Spanish control. They became The Free and Independent Republic of West Florida, which lasted roughly 3 months.

Florida became a state in 1845. By then, it already had large cotton and sugar plantations. Roughly half of the state's population was enslaved working on them.

White Democrats in Florida fought to limit voting rights for poor white people and former slaves. They did this through both violent means and political maneuvering and were successful.