Rhode Island breaks the rule

It is a small state 30 miles from Boston and 60 miles from NYC, a city in the middle of a metropolis.

It has all the gains to scale it needs, the Constitutional Adjustment act benefits the state more than necessary.  What is the history how did it become?

Rhode Island State History. The colony of Rhode Islandbegan in 1636 when clergyman Roger Williams was exiled from Massachusetts Bay. The Puritans disagreed with Williams's religious views. He named his new settlement "Providence," claiming providence had brought him there.

A bit of religious bigotry and we get stuck with an unnecessary state.

How about Vermont?

After being defeated in 1763 in the Seven Years' War, France ceded its territory east of the Mississippi River to Great Britain. Thereafter, the nearby British colonies, especially the provinces of New Hampshire and New York, disputed the extent of the area called the New Hampshire Grants to the west of the Connecticut River, encompassing present-day Vermont. The provincial government of New York sold land grants to settlers in the region, which conflicted with earlier grants from the government of New Hampshire. The Green Mountain Boysmilitia protected the interests of the established New Hampshire land grant settlers against the newly arrived settlers with land titles granted by New York.
Ultimately, a group of settlers with New Hampshire land grant titles established the Vermont Republic in 1777 as an independent state during the American Revolutionary War. The Vermont Republic partially abolished slavery before any of the other states.

I became a state because someone enforced one set of land title over another. Otherwise it would have remained part of the New York Northern wilderness.  Delaware is another strange state.