PICTURES: Bizarre facts about Pennsylvania

Milton Hershey, founder of Hershey Company, put down a $300 deposit for a first-class stateroom for the maiden voyage of the Titanic. But the chocolate gods were on his side, and he never stepped aboard the doomed ship. Hershey and his wife, who were rich after opening up their chocolate factory in 1905, spent the winter of 1911 in Nice, France. They planned to travel home on the Titanic, in a suite costing at least $3,000, but ended up returning home earlier aboard a German luxury liner, the Amerika.

A McDonald’s franchise owner in Uniontown (south of Pittsburgh) created the two-burger concotion. He spent a couple years figuring out the right ingredients for the sauce, and started selling it in his restaurant in 1967. It swept the nation the next year. You can visit the Big Mac Museum Restaurant. It’s a working restaurant in North Huntingdon, Westmoreland County, with memorabilia such as a 14-foot-tall Big Mac.

Looking down on the city of Reading is the strange and wonderful Pagoda. The seven-story structure was built in 1908 to serve as a resort atop Mount Penn but the owner wasn’t able to get a liquor license. It has been maintained by the city of Reading since 1911. It contains a bell cast in Japan in 1739. Lights flash on the Pagoda at 9 p.m. every Christmas Eve to let children know that Santa is on his way. Legendary Pennsylvania author John Updike was fascinated by the Pagoda, mentioning it in novels. In “Rabbit, Run” and sequels, he changed the name of Mount Penn to Mount Judge, and the Pagoda to the Pinnacle Hotel.

In a freak 1965 accident in Scranton, a driver hauling bananas lost control of his truck on a steep hill and blew down Moosic Street at up to 100 mph, unable to stop. Singer Harry Chapin, the “Cat’s in the Cradle” songwriter, was strangely drawn to the incident. His 1974 song “30,000 Pounds of Bananas” recounts the incident, increasing in speed with the speed of the runaway truck. “And he sideswiped nineteen neat parked cars, Clipped off thirteen telephone poles, Hit two houses, bruised eight trees, And Blue Crossed seven people.” The truck driver was the only one killed in the crash.

A small religious group settled in the 1840s in northern Chester County in an area that became known as Free Love Valley. It was founded by a guy named Theophilus Ransom Gates, who thought marriage was too restrictive and that people should be able to have sexual relations with other people. Services were held in each other’s houses, and they were known to bathe nude in local ponds. Eventually, some members were arrested on charges of adultery or fornication and the group faded away.

You can find this roadside attraction on Interstate 83 between Harrisburg and York. A Shippensburg paint store converted a water tank into a 35-foot-tall can of Benjamin Moore paint, complete with a metal handle.

The Zippo lighter, made in northern Pennsylvania’s Bradford, has been featured in more than 1,500 movies, stage plays and television shows, the company says. They have been prominent in productions ranging from “I Love Lucy” and “Mad Men” to “The X-Men” and “Hairspray – the Musical.” And the Zippo “click” sound has been sampled on songs.

The country’s first oil well was drilled in western Pennsylvania’s Titusville in 1859. The “Pennsylvania oil rush” continued to the early 1870s. That first 70-foot-deep well, Drake Well, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966.

Our own Punxsutawney Phil is the most famous but he’s certainly not the only groundhog who predicts the weather. His competitors include Buckeye Chuck of Ohio, General Beauregard Lee of Georgia, Staten Island Chuck and Wiarton Willie of Ottawa, Canada.

The inventor? A computer scientist at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, Scott Fahlman. CNN reported that in 1982, Fahlman wrote, “I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-). Read it sideways.”

The northern Pennsylvania borough of Coudersport (population about 2,500) was the headquarters of Adelphia Communications Corp., the sixth-largest cable company in the country. It was founded as a small operation in 1952 by John Rigas, and he and his sons built it into a national player through acquisitions. It all came crashing down in 2002 when Rigas, then 78, was arrested and handcuffed. He and other executives were accused of using company money for their own use. For instance, they were accused of using company jets for private trips such as an African safari and borrowing billions of dollars for their closely held companies. Adelphia sold its assets and no longer exists as a cable provider.

Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia was based on a new model for prison reform: “a true penitentiary, a prison designed to create genuine regret and penitence in the criminal’s heart,” according to Eastern State’s website. “The concept grew from Enlightenment thinking, but no government had successfully carried out such a program.” The idea was to abandon corporal punishment and ill treatment. It was one of the most expensive American buildings when it opened in 1829. Each prisoner had a private cell, centrally heated, with running water, a flush toilet and a skylight. As its website pointed out: “This was in an age when the White House, with its new occupant Andrew Jackson, had no running water and was heated with coal-burning stoves.”