Discover Nantucket: Top 8 Astonishing Fun Facts You Never Knew!

1. Hank the Harpoon Man Mascot

In a whale of a tale fit for Herman Melville himself, Nantucket High School students dive deep into their island's history with a harpooning mascot: Meet Hank the Harpoon Man, their mascot since 2013, who proudly represents the island's storied past in the commercial whaling industry. With navy blue and white school colors mirroring this heritage and a juvenile finback whale skeleton on display, they surely make a splash and keep their connection to the deep blue sea alive!
Source => npsk.org

2. Nantucket Comedy Festival

If laughter is the best medicine, Nantucket prescribes a whale-sized dose every summer: The Nantucket Comedy Festival has been tickling funny bones since 2007, showcasing top comedic talents and supporting Stand Up & Learn™, a nonprofit program that empowers kids aged 8-18 to build confidence through stand-up comedy writing and performance.
Source => nantucketcomedy.com

🧙‍♀️ Discover the chilling connection between the Salem Witch Trials Memorial and the haunted cemetery next door. What dark secrets lie in this eerie destination? Find out now!

=> Fun Facts about Massachusetts

3. New Guinea Neighborhood

Ahoy, there once was an island named Nantucket, where a tale wasn't only about a man and his bucket! A diverse community of hardworking folks did dwell, but here's the "kicker": many out of the well-known Nantucket shell: In the neighborhood of New Guinea, near Five Corners, lived a vibrant community of Black and Native American residents who built churches, shops, and even an anti-slavery lending library. Today, the Boston-Higginbotham House and the African Meeting House stand as some of America's oldest Black landmarks, testifying to the island's unexpectedly rich and multifaceted past.
Source => theatlantic.com

4. The Old Mill's Legacy

In a country known for its fast food, one windmill in Nantucket bucks the trend by grinding it out since 1746 without any breadcrumb of retirement: The Old Mill still operates today, grinding corn into cornmeal just as it has for over two centuries. Surviving a $20 sale in 1828 and periods of disuse, it holds the title as the oldest functioning mill in the country and boasts an ASME Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark status.
Source => nha.org

5. Great Meeting House's Record

Hold onto your powdered wigs, history buffs, because this next fact is about to knock your tricorn hats off: Nantucket's Great Meeting House, built in 1762, was once the largest church building in colonial New England, accommodating a whopping 2,400 people and serving as a monument to the island's influential Quaker community.
Source => nha.org

6. Main Street's Cobblestone Mystery

You may have heard the saying, "You can't put a price on good cobblestones," and Nantucket's Main Street is here to prove it: paved in the 1830s with meticulously handpicked cobblestones, their origin remains a mystery as some say they were imported from Gloucester, yet no solid evidence supports this claim – leaving us with a whimsically cobbled conundrum that adds to the island's enduring allure.
Source => nha.org

7. Nantucket's Sperm Whale Pursuit

Long before Ahab's resolute quest for vengeance in Moby Dick, Nantucket's whalers were on an unyielding pursuit of a rather "spermy" situation: In its heyday as the whaling capital of the world, Nantucket hunters ventured as far as the Arctic Circle, African coastline, South America, and the Falkland Islands in search of the prized sperm whale, nearly exterminating the local whale population by the 19th century.
Source => smithsonianmag.com

8. Busy Nantucket Airport

Whoever said "size doesn't matter" clearly never visited Nantucket airspace: Nantucket Memorial Airport is the second-busiest airport in Massachusetts, boasting 50,963 aircraft operations in the 12-month period ending April 30, 2021, with 56% being air taxi and 41% general aviation, covering 1,200 acres and a recently updated terminal to accommodate all those high-flying socialites.
Source => en.wikipedia.org