Peter Georgies, age 11, of Lancaster, Pa., for his question:

HOW DID RHODE ISLAND GET ITS NAME?

There are two different theories on how the smallest state in the United States received its name. Pick the one you like best:

A Portuguese navigator named Miguel de Cortereal may have sailed along the Rhode Island coast in 1511, but he didn't give the land a name. Then in 1524 an Italian navigator named Giovanni da Verrazano, who was working for France, explored Narragansett Bay. Some historians say he named Rhode Island when he wrote that it resembled the Island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean Sea.

Other historians say a Dutch navigator named Adrian Block named the region in 1614. He called it Roodt Eylandt, or Red Island, because of the red clay on some of the land's shore.