50 Fun Facts About Raleigh

Raleigh's namesake, Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsored which early English colony in America?

Roanoke. The 'lost colony' vanished from Roanoke Island after 1587, and Raleigh himself never once set foot in North America.

North Carolina's 1788 convention ordered its new capital, Raleigh, built within ten miles of what?

A tavern. Isaac Hunter's roadside inn was the landmark the convention named, but he never got the sale: the state bought 1,000 acres from a neighbour and built its capital there.

Thanks to its tree-lined streets, Raleigh is known by what nickname?

City of Oaks. Each New Year's Eve the city rings in midnight by lowering a giant copper-and-steel acorn by crane, a sculpture made for Raleigh's 1992 bicentennial.

Wake County, of which Raleigh is the seat, was named in honor of whom?

The wife of Governor William Tryon. Margaret Wake was a London heiress whose family connections likely helped win her husband his North Carolina post, and the county formed in 1771 took her maiden name.

Which planter, the 'Father of Raleigh', sold the land on which the capital was built?

Joel Lane. The site commissioners lodged at his house while they weighed rival tracts, then bought 1,000 acres of his plantation for the new capital.

Raleigh's original street grid, with a central square and one in each corner, copied which older city's plan?

Philadelphia. It was the nation's capital when surveyor William Christmas laid out Raleigh, so he borrowed the five-square grid drawn for William Penn in 1682.

North Carolina's State Capitol stands on the central square of Raleigh's original grid, which is known as what?

Union Square. The first State House burned there in 1831, and when lawmakers voted against moving the capital, today's Capitol went up on the same spot.

Which future U.S. president, born in Raleigh in 1808, ran away from a tailor's apprenticeship there?

Andrew Johnson. He never spent a day in school, so customers read aloud to him as he sewed; the small house where he was born now stands in Raleigh's Mordecai Historic Park.

Raleigh's NHL arena, long called PNC Arena, took which Triangle tech company's name in 2024?

Lenovo. The PC maker's American headquarters is a few miles away in Morrisville, and it signed a ten-year naming deal when PNC's rights ran out in 2024.

Antonio Canova's statue of George Washington, lost when Raleigh's State House burned in 1831, dressed him as what?

A Roman general. Thomas Jefferson urged both the Italian sculptor and the classical costume, judging no American up to the job; a marble copy has sat in the Capitol rotunda since 1970.

North Carolina's State Capitol, finished in 1840, is a prized example of which architectural style?

Greek Revival. Its columns copy the Parthenon's, and its stone came by horse-drawn rail from a nearby quarry, a track locals rode for fun and some historians call the state's first railroad.

Which governor left Raleigh around midnight on April 12, 1865, hours before Union cavalry took the city?

Zebulon Vance. He had sent two former governors to bargain with Sherman, and when they failed to return on time he left behind a letter authorising the mayor to surrender the city.

Days after taking Raleigh in April 1865, Sherman accepted the Civil War's largest troop surrender at which Durham farm?

Bennett Place. In the Bennitt family's farmhouse, Joseph Johnston gave up 89,270 soldiers across four states, far more than Lee had surrendered at Appomattox seventeen days earlier.

Which civil rights organization grew out of an April 1960 student meeting at Raleigh's Shaw University?

SNCC. Ella Baker called the sit-in students together and urged them to stay independent rather than become the youth wing that Martin Luther King's SCLC had hoped for.

What fetches most books from bins at NC State's Hunt Library?

Storage robots. The bookBot packs up to two million items into one-ninth the space of open shelves, which let architects shrink the building after a budget cut without losing a seat.

Football became the Wolfpack in 1921, but which nickname did NC State's other teams carry through the 1930s and 1940s?

Red Terrors. Sportswriters coined it in 1925 when coach Gus Tebell put his fast-passing basketball team in bright red silk uniforms, and it spread to every sport but football.

NC State's 115-foot Memorial Belltower was built as a monument to alumni killed in which conflict?

World War I. The cornerstone was laid in 1921, yet for a century the 'belltower' held no bells at all, playing recorded chimes through speakers until 55 real ones arrived in 2021.

Which high-flying forward led NC State to its first NCAA basketball title in 1974?

David Thompson. 'Skywalker' and the Wolfpack beat UCLA in double overtime in the semifinal, ending the Bruins' run of seven straight national titles, then eased past Marquette.

Who dunked Dereck Whittenburg's last-second air ball to win NC State the 1983 NCAA title over Houston?

Lorenzo Charles. His dunk beat Houston's heavily favoured Phi Slama Jama at the buzzer and sent coach Jim Valvano sprinting around the court looking for someone to hug.

NC State's doughnut-eating Krispy Kreme Challenge raises money for a children's hospital at which rival university?

UNC. The race began in 2004 as a dare (run 2.5 miles, eat a dozen doughnuts, run back inside an hour) and grew into a fundraiser whose profits go to UNC Children's Hospital.

The Carolina Hurricanes moved to North Carolina in 1997 from which city?

Hartford. Owner Peter Karmanos pulled the Whalers out of Connecticut in 1997 before he had anywhere to put them, then picked North Carolina and finished the move in three months.

In which North Carolina city did the Hurricanes play their first two seasons?

Greensboro. Their Raleigh arena wasn't built yet, so the Hurricanes spent two seasons more than an hour's drive from their new fans, a choice the owner later admitted 'was probably a mistake'.

The Carolina Hurricanes won their first Stanley Cup in 2006 by beating which team in seven games?

Edmonton Oilers. The eighth-seeded Oilers wiped out a 3-1 series deficit to force a seventh game, which Carolina won 3-1 on home ice in Raleigh.

Which broadcaster's 2019 jab at the Carolina Hurricanes' "Storm Surge" celebrations gave the team its "Bunch of Jerks" slogan?

Don Cherry. The Hockey Night in Canada pundit was fuming at their choreographed post-win celebrations; the team printed his insult on T-shirts and rode it to the conference final.

The Carolina Hurricanes' second Stanley Cup, in 2026, came in a six-game Final against which team?

Vegas Golden Knights. Carolina had swept its first two opponents to open the playoffs with eight straight wins, and it finished the job with a 3-0 shutout in Las Vegas.

Raleigh's natural sciences museum built its 'Terror of the South' exhibit around the world's most complete skeleton of which dinosaur?

Acrocanthosaurus. The museum's 'Acro' was dug up in Oklahoma, not the Carolinas, and it is still the most complete skeleton of the giant predator ever found.

Raleigh's NC Museum of Art opened its 2010 West Building with a gallery and garden for some 30 bronzes by which sculptor?

Auguste Rodin. The Cantor Foundation gave the museum the sculptures in 2009, a small cast of The Thinker among them, so the new building opened with a Rodin court and garden of its own.

Along with Raleigh and Durham, which town completes the Research Triangle?

Chapel Hill. The triangle is drawn between three universities, NC State in Raleigh, Duke in Durham and the state's flagship in Chapel Hill, and the name dates only from the research park of 1959.

Which everyday technology did an IBM engineer develop at Research Triangle Park in the early 1970s?

The barcode. George Laurer's striped design beat the bull's-eye symbol his own managers favoured, and its first checkout scan, in 1974, rang up a pack of chewing gum.

Which Raleigh-based open-source company did IBM buy for $34 billion in a deal closed in 2019?

Red Hat. Co-founder Marc Ewing wore his grandfather's red lacrosse cap around his college computer lab, where anyone needing help was told to look for the guy in the red hat.

Which Triangle TV station won America's first experimental high-definition broadcast license in 1996?

WRAL. It put its first HD signal on the air 34 days after winning the license, and four years later it produced the world's first all-HD newscast.

What nickname did Raleigh's Sir Walter Hotel earn as the unofficial headquarters of North Carolina politics?

The Third House of Government. Legislators lodged, dined and cut deals there for four decades, until the new Legislative Building and newer hotels drew the politicians away in the 1960s.

In 2021 Raleigh's 1949 shopping center, the first between Washington and Atlanta, dropped the Cameron family name to become what?

Village District. It opened as Cameron Village, named for planter Duncan Cameron, and its owners cut his name because his fortune came from enslaving more than 1,000 people.

Jim Valvano and Jesse Helms are both buried in which historic Raleigh burial ground near the State Capitol?

Oakwood Cemetery. It began on land Henry Mordecai gave after the Civil War, when Raleigh families had to move some 500 Confederate dead within days because the army wanted their graveyard for Union soldiers.

Which Raleigh park, opened beside NC State in the 1880s, is billed as North Carolina's first public park?

Pullen. Shy philanthropist Stanhope Pullen gave the city his farmland for a park, thought naming it after him was nonsense, and handed the land next door to the college that became NC State.

Raleigh's 308-acre Dix Park occupies the grounds of what institution?

A psychiatric hospital. Reformer Dorothea Dix won it from a reluctant legislature but is said to have refused to let it carry her name, and it became Dorothea Dix Hospital only in 1959, long after her death.

Falls Lake, the reservoir that supplies Raleigh's drinking water, was created by damming which river?

Neuse. Engineers built the dam after years of damaging floods downstream, and the lake drowned the Falls of the Neuse, the whitewater stretch that gave it its name.

Raleigh sits on the boundary between the Piedmont and the coastal plain, known as what?

The fall line. Rivers tumble off the hard Piedmont rock here in rapids that boats could not pass, which is why so many eastern towns grew up along it.

Which 1996 hurricane carried hurricane-force gusts as far inland as Raleigh, toppling trees onto homes?

Fran. It hit less than two months after Hurricane Bertha, and its surge swept away the double-wide trailer that one beach town had used as a police station since Bertha.

In the 1930s North Carolina leased its State Fair in Raleigh to whom?

A circus promoter. The state wanted the fair's costs off its books, so George Hamid ran it as a business until a new agriculture commissioner made taking it back one of his first acts in 1937.

Raleigh's Dorton Arena, opened on the State Fairgrounds in 1952, was the first building in the world to use what?

A cable-supported roof. The landmark was commissioned as a livestock-judging pavilion, and its architect, Matthew Nowicki, died in a plane crash before a single cable was strung.

After hosting the IBMA's World of Bluegrass from 2013 to 2024, Raleigh lost the event to which Tennessee city?

Chattanooga. The gathering had come to Raleigh from Nashville, so the move sent bluegrass's biggest week back to Tennessee after twelve years in North Carolina's capital.

Which downtown Raleigh restaurant did chef Ashley Christensen reopen in 2007 as the first of her group?

Poole's Diner. The room had opened in 1945 as Poole's Pie Shop, and she kept its name and its double-horseshoe counter on her way to two James Beard awards.

Which Raleigh-born singer finished second on the 2003 season of American Idol?

Clay Aiken. After losing the Idol final to Ruben Studdard he went home and ran for Congress twice in North Carolina, winning a Democratic primary in 2014 and losing one in 2022.

When General Sherman reached Raleigh in April 1865, where did he set up his headquarters?

The Governor's Palace. The Confederate governor had already left town, so Sherman simply moved into his house; no governor ever lived there again, and it was pulled down in 1885.

Which rookie goaltender won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP of the Carolina Hurricanes' 2006 Cup run?

Cam Ward. The 22-year-old began the playoffs on the bench, took over when starter Martin Gerber faltered in the first round, and carried Carolina all the way to the Cup.

In which town did North Carolina ratify the US Constitution in 1789, before Raleigh existed?

Fayetteville. It had built a brick State House in the hope of becoming the permanent capital, and delegates there reversed the Hillsborough convention's refusal to ratify a year earlier.

Which North Carolina rapper's Dreamville Festival first filled Raleigh's Dix Park in 2019?

J. Cole. The festival carries the name of his record label and was meant to open in 2018, but Hurricane Florence forced a postponement to the following April.

'Willo', the Thescelosaurus at Raleigh's natural sciences museum, became famous for supposedly preserving which fossilized organ?

Heart. A CT study in 2000 read a lump in Willo's chest as a four-chambered heart, a sign of a warm-blooded dinosaur, but other researchers argued it was only an iron-rich concretion.

Estey Hall at Raleigh's Shaw University was the first US building for the higher education of whom?

African-American women. Named for Vermont donor Jacob Estey, the hall closed in 1970 as it decayed, but a foundation formed to restore it, and it stands today as the oldest building on Shaw's campus.