Guest topic: Rhode Island

So I have been told before that Rhode Island is neither a road, nor an island. I began to wonder if that was true, so I investigated by taking a trip over to wikipedia.com to see what they had to say about the small state in the east. It seems historians are not exactly sure how the name "Rhode Island" came to be. One theory is that Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered one of the islands just off the coast of the mainland and called it Rhode Island because of its similarity in shape to the Greek island of Rhodes. The other theory is that the name comes from the words "Rooodt Eylandt," which is Dutch for "red island," red because of the red clay that was along the shores. However the case may be it is certainly not a "road", just pronounced that way. There are over 30 islands in the bay, but the biggest section is the mainland. We can rule out that while there are islands, it is not really an island, but it has been nicknamed "the ocean state" because you are never more then 30 miles from the sea. So there you have it, Rhode island really is neither a road, nor an island. Class dismissed. Today's topic was submitted by Wendy.