Anyone want to comment on this item:

Ohio signed up to join the US in 1803, but was not formally admitted by
Congress until 7 August 1953, retroactive to 1803!
(thus there was a large hunk of land in the US that was not a state).

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_127.html
It all started when Ohio was preparing to celebrate the 150th anniversary
of its admission to the Union in 1953. Researchers looking for the original
statehood documents discovered there'd been a little oversight. While
Congress had approved Ohio's boundaries and constitution, it had never
passed a resolution formally admitting the future land of the Buckeyes.
Technically, therefore, Ohio was not a state.

Predictably, when this came to light it was the subject of much merriment.
One senator joshingly suggested that his colleagues from Ohio were drawing
federal paychecks under false pretenses.

But Ohio congressman George Bender thought it was no laughing matter. He
introduced a bill in Congress to admit Ohio to the Union retroactive to
March 1, 1803. At a special session at the old state capital in Chillicothe
the Ohio state legislature approved a new petition for statehood that was
delivered to Washington on horseback. Congress subsequently passed a joint
resolution, and President Eisenhower, after a few more jokes, signed it on
August 7, 1953.

But then the tax resisters got to work. They argued that since Ohio wasn't
officially a state until 1953, its ratification of the 16th Amendment in
1911 was invalid, and thus Congress had no authority to enact an income tax.

Brendan