About Virginia and Virginia Beach

(The following information was stolen directly from other websites and does not represent any original research or material)

"A land not to be excelled by any other what-so-ever."
Sir Ralph Lane, Spring 1586 

Officially designated the Commonwealth of Virginia (after Elizabeth 1, the "Virgin Queen") and familiarly known as the "Old Dominion," one of the 13 original states of the United States, being the 10th to ratify the Constitution (1788). It is the southernmost of the Middle Atlantic states, roughly triangular in shape, bounded on the north by West Virginia and Maryland, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay, on the south by North Carolina and Tennessee, and on the west by Kentucky.

Contrary to popular belief, John Smith was not among the first landing party in the new world. When Admiral Christopher Newport organized the 30 or so men who were to go ashore, Smith was under arrest and in chains for taking part in mutinous disturbances en route to the new world.

Nevertheless, the landing party came ashore in the present city of Virginia Beach on the morning of April 26th, 1607. It was springtime and as the adventurers climbed the huge sand dunes their view of the dogwood trees in full bloom, and the climbing yellow jasmines intermingled with the deep green recesses on the woodland moved 26 year old Master George Percy to write that, "Heaven and Earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitations than Virginia."

• What Hampton Roads city draws 2.7 million tourists each year, was named the FBI's safest city of its size in America, and, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is home of the world's longest pleasure beach?
  
  Answer: Virginia Beach.