59 Fun Facts About Georgia

What is the capital of Georgia?

Atlanta has been Georgia's capital since 1868, after Savannah, Augusta, Louisville and Milledgeville each held the role; it is also the state's largest city.

Which British general founded the colony of Georgia, landing at Yamacraw Bluff?

James Oglethorpe led the first settlers ashore at Yamacraw Bluff to found Savannah; the Trustees planned the colony as a buffer against Spanish Florida and a fresh start for England's 'worthy poor'.

Georgia was named in honor of which British monarch?

King George II granted the colony's charter in 1732 and the Trustees named it Georgia in his honour; it was the last and southernmost of the original Thirteen Colonies.

In what year was Georgia, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies, established?

Georgia was established in 1733, 126 years after Virginia (1607); it went on to become the fourth state to ratify the Constitution, in 1788.

Which three states ratified the U.S. Constitution before Georgia, the fourth to do so?

Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey all ratified in December 1787; Georgia followed unanimously on January 2, 1788, and Rhode Island came last in 1790.

Which of these states does NOT share a border with Georgia?

Mississippi lies beyond Alabama; Georgia's five neighbours are Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Alabama, plus the Atlantic coast.

How many counties does Georgia have, second only to Texas?

Georgia has 159 counties, second only to Texas's 254; the old rule of thumb was that a farmer should be able to ride to the county seat and back in a day.

What is the highest point in Georgia?

Brasstown Bald rises 4,784 feet in the Blue Ridge, and on a clear day its observation deck shows four states.

What is Georgia's official state bird?

The brown thrasher was first named state bird in 1935 and confirmed by law in 1970; the state's short-lived NHL team, the Thrashers, borrowed the name from 1999 to 2011.

Which flower is Georgia's official state flower?

The Cherokee rose, adopted in 1916, is actually a climbing rose native to China that naturalised across the South.

Grown only in a legally defined 20-county patch of south Georgia, what is the official state vegetable?

The Vidalia onion, named state vegetable in 1990, owes its sweetness to unusually low-sulfur soil; a 1986 state law makes it illegal to sell onions grown outside the zone under the name.

Which breakfast staple did Georgia name its official state prepared food in 2002?

Grits are ground hominy corn cooked to a porridge; Georgia made them its official prepared food in 2002, 26 years after South Carolina adopted them as its state food in 1976.

Georgia grows nearly half of the U.S. output of which crop, named its official state crop in 1995?

Peanuts became Georgia's official state crop in 1995; the state grows roughly half of the U.S. peanut crop, far ahead of Alabama, Florida and Texas.

Which pharmacist invented Coca-Cola, first sold in 1886 at Jacob's Pharmacy for five cents a glass?

John Stith Pemberton marketed Coca-Cola as a patent medicine and temperance drink; within two years he had sold the rights to Asa Candler, whose marketing made it a giant.

Which Georgia airport was the world's busiest every year from 1998 to 2024, except 2020?

Hartsfield-Jackson is named after two former mayors, William B. Hartsfield and Maynard Jackson, and handled more than 100 million passengers in 2024.

Which north Georgia town, site of an 1829 gold rush, supplied the gold leaf on the State Capitol dome?

Dahlonega's rush drew thousands of miners and Congress opened a branch of the U.S. Mint there in 1838; the Capitol dome was gilded with local gold during a 1958 renovation.

Gold found in Georgia in 1828 hastened which nation's removal on the Trail of Tears?

The Cherokee were forced west after gold was found on their land; about 4,000 died on the trek to present-day Oklahoma, and their capital, New Echota, lay in what is now Gordon County.

Which Union general's 1864 'March to the Sea' cut across Georgia to Savannah?

William Tecumseh Sherman's army set out on November 15, 1864 and reached the coast on December 21; he telegraphed Lincoln offering captured Savannah as a Christmas gift.

Which September 1863 Georgia battle had the Civil War's second-highest casualty count, after Gettysburg?

Chickamauga was a Confederate victory, but the Union army fell back to Chattanooga and held it, opening the road into Georgia the following year.

Roughly how many of the 45,000 Union prisoners held at Georgia's Andersonville prison camp died there?

Nearly 13,000 of the 45,000 prisoners died, about 28 percent, mostly from disease, exposure and starvation; commandant Henry Wirz was hanged for war crimes in November 1865.

Which U.S. president was born in Plains, Georgia, and served as the state's governor?

Jimmy Carter was Georgia's 76th governor from 1971 to 1975 before winning the presidency in 1976; Woodrow Wilson lived in Augusta as a boy but was born in Virginia.

Which president died at his "Little White House" in Warm Springs, Georgia, in April 1945?

Franklin D. Roosevelt first came to Warm Springs for its mineral water as polio therapy in 1924; he died there of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945 while sitting for a portrait.

Which two men founded Augusta National, home of the Masters since 1934?

Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts founded Augusta National; Jones, the Georgia amateur who won golf's 1930 Grand Slam, designed the course with Alister MacKenzie.

Which boxing great lit the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Games in Georgia?

Muhammad Ali, trembling from Parkinson's, lit the flame after Evander Holyfield carried the torch into the stadium and swimmer Janet Evans ran the final leg up to him.

Chartered by the legislature in 1785, what national distinction does the University of Georgia claim?

The University of Georgia calls itself the first state-chartered public university, its charter dating to January 1785; UNC, chartered in 1789, counters that it held classes first.

R.E.M. formed in 1980 in which Georgia college town, also the home of the B-52's?

Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry played their first show in Athens in April 1980, at a friend's birthday party in a converted church.

Which Albany-born singer sang 'Georgia on My Mind' to Georgia's legislature in 1979?

Ray Charles's 1960 recording took the 1930 Hoagy Carmichael–Stuart Gorrell song to No. 1; weeks after his performance the General Assembly adopted it as the state song in April 1979.

Which 'Godfather of Soul' grew up shining shoes in Augusta, Georgia?

James Brown was born in South Carolina but moved to Augusta at four or five; the city later renamed a street James Brown Boulevard and unveiled his statue in 2005.

Which 1936 Margaret Mitchell Civil War novel won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize?

Gone with the Wind was the only novel Margaret Mitchell published in her lifetime; the 1939 film premiered in her home city with a three-day festival.

Juliette Gordon Low founded which organization in Savannah in March 1912, starting with 18 girls?

Girl Scouts of the USA grew from that first Savannah troop of 18 into millions of members; Low's Savannah birthplace is now a museum and pilgrimage site for troops nationwide.

Which 24-hour breakfast chain opened its first location in Avondale Estates, Georgia, in 1955?

Waffle House founders Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner were neighbours in Avondale Estates; FEMA informally uses whether the chain is open, the 'Waffle House Index', as a gauge of disaster severity.

S. Truett Cathy's Dwarf Grill, opened in 1946 in Hapeville, Georgia, grew into which fast-food chain?

Chick-fil-A is headquartered in College Park, and every restaurant closes on Sundays, a policy Cathy set at the original Dwarf Grill in 1946.

Which hardware chain, co-founded by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, opened its first stores in Georgia in 1979?

The Home Depot's first two stores were leased former Treasure Island spaces in Doraville and Decatur; Marcus later bankrolled the Georgia Aquarium, and Blank bought the Falcons in 2002.

The Georgia Aquarium opened in 2005 around a 6.3-million-gallon tank built for which animal?

The Ocean Voyager tank was built to hold whale sharks, the only ones on display outside Asia at the time; Bernie Marcus's $250 million gift funded most of the aquarium, on land donated by Coca-Cola.

Delta Air Lines, headquartered in Georgia, began in 1925 in Macon as what kind of business?

Delta started as a crop dusting outfit, Huff Daland Dusters, formed in Macon in 1925 to fight the boll weevil; it moved to Monroe, Louisiana within months and flew its first passengers in 1929.

The Confederate carving on Stone Mountain, the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world, depicts Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and who else?

Stonewall Jackson rides alongside Davis and Lee; the carving is 90 feet tall and cut 42 feet into the granite, and work begun in 1923 was finished in 1972.

Which Georgia-Florida wetland is North America's largest blackwater wetland and source of the Suwannee River?

The Okefenokee Swamp's name is usually translated from Hitchiti as 'trembling earth', after the peat mats that quiver underfoot; the St. Marys River rises there alongside the Suwannee.

Providence Canyon, nicknamed Georgia's "Little Grand Canyon", was created by what?

Poor 19th-century farming caused it: the gullies, some more than 150 feet deep, are erosion scars from settlers' ploughing that began opening in the 1800s and keep widening.

Which is the largest of Georgia's barrier islands, known for feral horses and the ruins of the Carnegies' Dungeness?

Cumberland Island is reached by ferry only and visitor numbers are capped; John F. Kennedy Jr. married Carolyn Bessette in its tiny First African Baptist Church in 1996.

A secret 1910 meeting of financiers at the Jekyll Island Club drafted plans for what?

Paul Warburg and J.P. Morgan's partners travelled under first names only, posing as duck hunters. The Federal Reserve Act followed in 1913.

What did the US Air Force lose off Tybee Island, near Savannah, after a 1958 mid-air collision?

The Air Force lost a hydrogen bomb, a 7,600-pound Mark 15, jettisoned from the damaged B-47 so it could land safely; searches failed and the weapon lies somewhere in Wassaw Sound.

The Appalachian Trail's southern terminus is on which Georgia peak?

Springer Mountain is the trail's southern end; from there it runs almost 2,200 miles to Mount Katahdin in Maine, and roughly three quarters of northbound thru-hikers never finish.

Cabbage Patch Kids are "born" at BabyLand General Hospital in which north Georgia town?

Cleveland, in White County, is where creator Xavier Roberts sold his hand-stitched 'Little People' before the dolls became the toy craze of 1983.

Ty Cobb, nicknamed "the Georgia Peach" after his home state, spent 22 seasons with which team?

Ty Cobb played for the Detroit Tigers from 1905 to 1926 before two final seasons in Philadelphia; he grew up in Royston, where a small museum stands, and his .366 career average has never been topped.

Off which Dodgers pitcher did Hank Aaron hit home run 715 on April 8, 1974?

Al Downing, a left-hander, gave up the record homer in the fourth inning; two fans ran onto the field and jogged beside Aaron between second and third, after a winter of death threats.

Which city did the Braves, World Series winners in three home cities, leave for Georgia in 1966?

They won in Boston in 1914, Milwaukee in 1957 and in Georgia in 1995 and 2021, and took 14 straight division titles from 1991 to 2005.

By what score did Heisman's Georgia Tech beat Cumberland in 1916, college football's most lopsided result?

Georgia Tech won 222-0; Cumberland had dropped its football program and fielded a scratch team to avoid a forfeit fee, and Heisman was reportedly avenging a 22-0 baseball loss.

Which Georgia running back won the 1982 Heisman after a 1980 national title as a freshman?

Herschel Walker ran for the U.S. Senate from Georgia in 2022, losing to Raphael Warnock; Fran Tarkenton had quarterbacked the Bulldogs two decades before Walker's title season.

The 56-foot 'Big Chicken' in Marietta, Georgia, sits atop what kind of business?

It tops a KFC restaurant; when the company considered demolishing it after storm damage in 1993, complaints from locals and pilots who used it as a landmark saved it, and its eyes and beak move.

Which Georgia-set zombie series used downtown Senoia as the town of Woodbury?

The Walking Dead shot its Woodbury scenes on Senoia's main street from season three; Georgia's film tax credit turned the state into 'Y'allywood' and the town into a fan destination.

What name honouring the governor's daughter did Georgia's future capital briefly bear before 1847?

Marthasville, named for Governor Wilson Lumpkin's daughter Martha, replaced the railroad name Terminus in 1843 and was itself renamed two years later; the city's motto is Resurgens, 'rising again', with a phoenix symbol.

Where did Georgia rank among US states by population in the 2025 Census estimate?

Georgia ranked eighth, with the Census Bureau estimating roughly 11.3 million residents in 2025; by area the state is 24th.

Roughly what share of Georgia's population lives in the Atlanta metropolitan area?

About 57% of Georgians live in the metro area, roughly 6.3 million of the state's 11 million people in 2023, one of the largest metropolitan populations in the United States.

Georgia, the last Confederate state readmitted to the Union, rejoined in which year?

Georgia was finally readmitted on July 15, 1870, after an earlier 1868 readmission was reversed when its legislature expelled Black members; it had seceded on January 19, 1861.

Which journalist promoted the 'New South' ideology of reconciliation and industrialisation in Georgia?

Henry W. Grady, managing editor of the state's leading newspaper, popularised the 'New South' creed in his December 1886 speech to the New England Society of New York, urging industry and reconciliation.

Which mound-building polities governed Georgia before European settlement?

Ocute and Coosa were Mississippian paramount chiefdoms whose mound towns Hernando de Soto's expedition passed through in 1540, Ocute in the Oconee valley and Coosa in the northwest.

In which year did Georgia become a British royal colony?

The Trustees surrendered their charter in 1752, a year before it would have expired, and Georgia became a royal colony; the first royal governor, John Reynolds, arrived in 1754.

Which delivery giant moved its headquarters to the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs in 1991?

UPS left Greenwich, Connecticut for Sandy Springs in 1991, a year after the IOC picked the city for the 1996 Olympics, cementing the region's status as a transport hub.

What is Georgia's official state reptile?

The gopher tortoise, a keystone species whose burrows shelter hundreds of other animals, was named state reptile in 1989; other symbols include the right whale, staurolite and the live oak.