UnNews:Iowa switches names with Idaho--no one notices
| UnFair and UnBalanced | ✪ | UnNews | ✪ | Thursday, November 21, 2024, 14:28:59 (UTC) |
| Iowa switches names with Idaho--no one notices | 
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17 April 2008
Monday, February 26, 2008 DES MOINES, IDAHO. The State of Iowa officially changed its name to Idaho yesterday. Idaho reciprocated, changing its name to Iowa.
The switch went unnoticed until an Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle, Washington, to Boise, Idaho, ran out of fuel in mid-flight and crashed into a corn field in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, killing all on board. NTSB investigators spent three days looking for the wreckage in eastern Oregon before an observant truck driver pointed out that Idaho is now due south of Minnesota.
The name switch came as a complete surprise to Congressional delegations of both states. All four Senators and several members of the House of Representatives gathered at the bar in the Dulles Airport Hilton and drew straws for who would go where--until Senator Larry Craig, D-Idaho, pulled out of the contest, possibly because Idaho now was closer to his favorite pick-up spot in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. His compatriot, Senator Tom Harkin, D-Idaho, said he wished Iowa had switched with California, especially since he had been up all night partying and could use the rest on a longer flight home. Questioned about this, California Senator Barbara Boxer noted "I've never been to Iowa and I wouldn't really know what time zone it's in, anyway".
There were some glitches in the name switch. The official replacement stationery arrived in Boise with the new name misspelled "Idowa". When the governor's secretary called to complain, all the New York based supplier had to say was "Get over it. Idowa--Schm-I-do-wa,---who cares? Idowa's close enough."
All the road signs in Iowa had to be turned 90 degrees to accommodate the new outline of the state, which confused a lot of drivers unaccustomed to reading speed limits sideways. As a direct result, a vacationing family from Wisconsin died of starvation after skidding off the Interstate into a snowdrift near Iowa Falls, just west of Des Moines. All their cellphone calls to 9-1-1 were routed to the Pocatello sheriff's department, which refused to send out a patrol car to investigate, saying "there ain't no "S" in "De Moine".
Asked what he thought about the two states trading names, President George Bush said, "What--you wouldn't be tryin' to trip me up, would you? That's a trick question. Y'all know there's only one state that starts with "I"--Ill-di-ana. Next question."