79 Fun Facts About Tennessee

Admitted to the Union on June 1, 1796, Tennessee became which number state?

Tennessee was the 16th state, admitted June 1, 1796, and the first created from a federal territory, the Southwest Territory, rather than from an original colony's land.

Tennessee earned its Volunteer State nickname for the men who signed up to fight in which conflict?

The War of 1812 gave Tennessee the nickname after thousands of its volunteers answered the call, fighting at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815.

The state's name comes from Tanasi, a town belonging to which Native American nation?

Tanasi was a Cherokee town on the Little Tennessee River; South Carolina governor James Glen's official correspondence in the 1750s helped fix the spelling 'Tennessee'.

How many other states border Tennessee, a total it ties with Missouri for the most?

Clockwise from the north: Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri.

What do the trio of white stars on Tennessee's flag represent?

Designer LeRoy Reeves added the narrow blue bar at the fly end so the flag would not 'show too much crimson when hanging limp.'

In July 1866 Tennessee became the first former Confederate state to do what?

Six days later its elected members were readmitted to Congress, sparing the state the military Reconstruction imposed on the rest of the South.

The Ku Klux Klan was founded in December 1865 in which small Tennessee town?

Six Confederate veterans founded the Klan as a social club in Pulaski, Giles County, around Christmas 1865; within two years it had become a violent paramilitary group across the South.

Which Founding Father declined to back a breakaway East Tennessee state, being 'too little acquainted' with it?

Benjamin Franklin, the breakaway State of Franklin's namesake, wrote in 1787 that he was 'too little acquainted' with it to help; its 1785 statehood bid won seven votes, short of two-thirds.

Whose note made Tennessee legislator Harry Burn switch to 'yes' on the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920?

His mother, Febb Burn, wrote telling him to 'be a good boy' and vote for suffrage; his switch made Tennessee the 36th state to ratify, completing the Nineteenth Amendment.

The 1925 Scopes 'Monkey Trial' over the teaching of evolution was held in which Tennessee town?

Dayton's boosters engineered the test case to put their town of about 1,800 on the map; hundreds of reporters and a live WGN radio hookup followed.

John Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution and fined how much?

Scopes was fined $100, the Butler Act's minimum; the Tennessee Supreme Court later threw out the verdict because the judge, not the jury, had set the fine.

The Tennessee Valley Authority was created in May 1933 as part of which president's New Deal program?

Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act on May 18, 1933, one of the first New Deal measures, to build dams, control floods and electrify the valley.

Which state did George W. Norris, namesake of TVA's first project Norris Dam, represent in the Senate?

George W. Norris, a progressive Republican senator from Nebraska, fought for a decade to keep the federal Muscle Shoals dam out of private hands before TVA adopted the plan in 1933.

In December 2008 an earthen dike failed at TVA's Kingston plant, releasing 1.1 billion gallons of what?

Coal ash slurry, about 1.1 billion gallons of it, burst from a failed dike on December 22, 2008, covering some 300 acres and swamping homes along the Emory River.

Oak Ridge was built from scratch in 1942 for what purpose?

Oak Ridge was built to enrich uranium for the atomic bomb; its Y-12 and K-25 plants fed the Manhattan Project, and the unmapped 'Secret City' was Tennessee's fifth-largest city by 1945.

Oak Ridge grew from empty woods to roughly what population by 1945?

Most residents had no idea what they were building; the town had 17 cafeterias and consumed more electricity than New York City.

Which element, number 117, was named in 2016 for the state home to Oak Ridge National Laboratory?

Tennessine takes the halogen ending -ine as element 117 in group 17; it is the second element named for a US state, after californium in 1950.

The Grand Ole Opry began in November 1925 as a barn dance on which Nashville radio station?

WSM's call letters stood for the slogan of the station's owner, National Life and Accident Insurance: 'We Shield Millions'; the WSM Barn Dance first aired November 28, 1925.

Which Tennessean was the only senator from a seceding state to keep his seat in 1861?

Andrew Johnson, a Greeneville tailor turned senator, refused to follow Tennessee out of the Union in 1861; Lincoln made him military governor in 1862 and his running mate in 1864.

What distinction does the Grand Ole Opry hold in American broadcasting?

It is the longest-running radio broadcast in US history, on the air weekly since November 28, 1925, when 77-year-old fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson opened the first barn dance.

When the Opry left the Ryman in 1974, what was cut from the old stage and inlaid into the new Opry House stage?

A six-foot circle of oak flooring from the Ryman stage was set into the new Opry House stage in 1974, so performers stand on the same boards Hank Williams played.

The Ryman Auditorium, later home of the Opry, was built in 1892 by a riverboat captain as what?

Thomas Ryman, a riverboat captain converted at a Sam Jones tent revival, built the Union Gospel Tabernacle in 1892; it was renamed for him after his death in 1904.

Nashville's full-scale replica of the Parthenon was originally built for which 1897 event?

The temporary plaster original proved so popular it was rebuilt in concrete between 1920 and 1931.

Roughly how tall is the gilded statue of Athena inside Nashville's Parthenon?

Alan LeQuire's Athena stands 41 feet 10 inches, roughly 42 feet, on her pedestal; finished in 1990, she was gilded with more than eight pounds of gold leaf in 2002.

Francis Nash, for whom Nashville was named in 1784, was what?

Francis Nash was a Revolutionary War general, mortally wounded at Germantown in October 1777; the settlement had begun in 1779-80 as Fort Nashborough.

In 1963 Nashville merged its city government with which county?

Nashville and Davidson County merged into a single Metropolitan Government on April 1, 1963, after a 1962 referendum, making the consolidated city the state's largest by land area.

The 1960 downtown Nashville sit-in campaign targeted what?

Students from Fisk and other Black colleges sat in at downtown lunch counters from February 13, 1960; six stores desegregated their counters on May 10 after a boycott and the bombing of lawyer Z. Alexander Looby's home.

Legend says hot chicken was born when a woman spiked Thornton Prince's chicken with pepper as revenge for what?

The legend says Prince came home after staying out all night, and his scorned girlfriend doused his fried chicken with pepper; he loved it, and the family opened the BBQ Chicken Shack in the mid-1930s.

Nashville hot chicken is traditionally served on top of what?

Nashville hot chicken is served on slices of plain white bread, which soak up the cayenne-laced lard paste, topped with pickle chips; KFC took a version national in 2016.

What is ironic about Moore County, home of the Jack Daniel's distillery in Lynchburg?

Moore County is dry, so alcohol sales are prohibited there even as the distillery turns out millions of cases a year; a special state exemption lets visitors buy commemorative bottles on site.

Jack Daniel's is dripped through ten-foot stacks of charcoal made from which wood before barrelling?

Jack Daniel's drips through ten feet of sugar maple charcoal, the 'Lincoln County Process' that Tennessee law has required of Tennessee whiskey since 2013 and that sets it apart from bourbon.

Which enslaved distiller, recognized by the brand in 2016, taught Jack Daniel his craft?

Brown-Forman formally recognized Nathan 'Nearest' Green as its first master distiller in 2016; the Uncle Nearest whiskey brand, launched in 2017, honors him.

Jack Daniel's fatal 1911 blood poisoning reportedly began with an injury he got by kicking what?

Legend says Daniel kicked his safe one early morning after failing to open it, breaking a toe that turned gangrenous; he died of blood poisoning in October 1911.

Which snack, paired with RC Cola as the 'working man's lunch', has been made in Chattanooga since 1917?

The MoonPie dates to 1917 at the Chattanooga Bakery; legend says a Kentucky coal miner asked salesman Earl Mitchell for a graham-and-marshmallow snack 'as big as the moon'.

Which snack-cake brand is made by McKee Foods of Collegedale, Tennessee?

Little Debbie is named for the McKee founders' granddaughter Debbie, whose portrait at age four became the logo when the brand launched in 1960.

Immediately before reopening as Dollywood in 1986, the Pigeon Forge park was called what?

Silver Dollar City, run by the Herschend family of Branson, was the park's name from 1977 until Dolly Parton became a partner and it reopened as Dollywood in 1986; it began as Rebel Railroad in 1961.

Dolly Parton's father paid the doctor who delivered her in 1946 with what?

Dolly Parton has said her father, Lee, paid Dr. Robert F. Thomas with a sack of cornmeal for delivering her in January 1946 in a one-room cabin on the Little Pigeon River.

What 1996 scientific first was named as a tribute to Dolly Parton?

Dolly the cloned sheep, born at Scotland's Roslin Institute in July 1996, got her name because the donor cell came from a mammary gland, which prompted the scientists' Parton joke.

How much did Elvis Presley pay for Graceland in March 1957?

Elvis paid $102,500 for Graceland in March 1957, buying the 13.8-acre Memphis estate for himself and his parents; the mansion opened to the public in 1982.

From which small town did Elvis Presley move to Memphis at 13?

Elvis was born in a two-room shotgun house in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1935; the family moved to Memphis in November 1948, and he graduated from Humes High School in 1953.

Which 1951 Sam Phillips recording is often called the first rock and roll record?

'Rocket 88', cut by Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner's band at Phillips's Memphis studio in March 1951, owes its distorted guitar to an amplifier damaged on the drive to the session.

Who joined Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins in the 1956 'Million Dollar Quartet' session at Sun Studio?

Jerry Lee Lewis, then a 21-year-old Sun session pianist, was the fourth man on December 4, 1956; a Memphis Press-Scimitar photo and the tapes later inspired a Broadway musical.

What did the initials in B.B. King's stage name, from his Memphis radio DJ nickname, stand for?

King was billed on Memphis station WDIA as the 'Beale Street Blues Boy', later shortened to Blues Boy and then B.B.; Congress declared Beale Street the Home of the Blues in 1977.

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, on the balcony of which building?

King was shot on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel, in town to support striking sanitation workers; the motel became the National Civil Rights Museum in 1991.

Piggly Wiggly, opened by Clarence Saunders in Memphis in September 1916, was the first what?

Piggly Wiggly was the first self-service grocery store: instead of handing a list to a clerk, shoppers roamed the aisles with a basket and paid at a checkout, a system Saunders patented in 1917.

Where did the Holiday Inn name come from when Kemmons Wilson opened the first in Memphis in 1952?

Architect Eddie Bluestein jokingly wrote 'Holiday Inn', the title of the 1942 Bing Crosby musical film, on the drawings for Wilson's first motel on Summer Avenue, and the name stuck.

Since 2015 the 321-foot Memphis Pyramid, once home of the Grizzlies, has housed what?

Bass Pro Shops opened its megastore in the Pyramid in April 2015, with a Big Cypress Lodge hotel, a bowling alley and a freestanding elevator up to an observation deck at the apex.

Reelfoot Lake, Tennessee's only large natural lake, was created by what?

The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12 sank the land and, witnesses swore, sent the Mississippi running backwards for hours, filling the basin that became Reelfoot Lake, famed for its bald cypress stands.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park straddles Tennessee's border with which state?

The park straddles the Tennessee-North Carolina line, with the state border running along the crest; it is the most-visited US national park, drawing more than 12 million people in 2023.

What is the elevation of Kuwohi, formerly Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Tennessee?

Kuwohi rises 6,643 feet in the Great Smoky Mountains, the third-highest peak east of the Mississippi; the state's lowest point is 178 feet, on the Mississippi at Memphis.

Roughly how many documented caves does Tennessee, the most cave-rich state, have?

Tennessee's cave survey lists more than 10,000 caves, the most of any state, concentrated in the limestone of the Cumberland Plateau and Highland Rim.

Ruby Falls, found inside Lookout Mountain by Leo Lambert while drilling in 1928, is named after whom?

The falls sit about 1,120 feet below the summit and are reached by elevator; the water is now pumped to keep them flowing year-round.

The Lost Sea near Sweetwater, found by a 13-year-old in 1905, is America's largest what?

The Lost Sea is America's largest underground lake, listed by Guinness, with a visible surface of about 4.5 acres; divers have mapped further flooded rooms without finding its end.

Rock City on Lookout Mountain claims that from Lover's Leap you can see how many states?

Its 'See Rock City' slogan was painted on more than 900 barn roofs in 19 states by one man, Clark Byers, between 1935 and 1969.

In 1775 Daniel Boone blazed the Cumberland Gap trail that became known as what?

Boone's 1775 route through the gap became the Wilderness Road, carrying 200,000 to 300,000 settlers west by 1810; the Cumberland Gap Tunnel finally bypassed it in 1996.

Which city was Tennessee's first capital and later hosted the 1982 World's Fair?

Knoxville, named for Washington's Secretary of War Henry Knox, was the capital from statehood in 1796 until 1812; its 1982 World's Fair drew about eleven million visitors.

Which bandleader's 1941 hit made Chattanooga famous around the world?

Glenn Miller's 'Chattanooga Choo Choo', from the 1941 film Sun Valley Serenade, earned the first ever gold record, presented by RCA Victor in February 1942 for 1.2 million sales.

Chattanooga's nickname 'Gig City' refers to what?

The city-owned utility EPB rolled out citywide gigabit internet over its fiber network in 2010, years ahead of most of the country, earning Chattanooga the Gig City name.

Which twin city on the Virginia line hosted the 1927 sessions called the 'big bang' of country music?

Bristol's State Street runs along the Tennessee-Virginia line; there in late July and August 1927 Ralph Peer recorded the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers within days of each other.

Bonnaroo is held every June on a 700-acre farm outside which small Tennessee town?

Bonnaroo's home is Great Stage Park outside Manchester, in Coffee County; the name is Creole slang for 'a really good time', borrowed from a 1974 Dr. John album.

Before adopting the Titans name in 1999, the franchise spent two Tennessee seasons as what?

The team played as the Tennessee Oilers in 1997 and 1998, carrying the name Bud Adams's Houston club used when it won the first two AFL titles in 1960 and 1961.

The Titans' only Super Bowl appearance ended one yard short of a tying touchdown against which team?

Kevin Dyson was tackled at the one-yard line as time expired, and the St. Louis Rams won Super Bowl XXXIV 23-16 on January 30, 2000, three weeks after the Titans' 'Music City Miracle'.

Which animal's 1971 fossil find under downtown inspired the Nashville Predators' name?

A partial Smilodon, a sabre-toothed cat, turned up in 1971 while crews dug the foundations of the First American Center bank tower; the Predators put its fangs in their logo.

Predators fans borrowed Detroit's octopus tradition but throw what onto the ice instead?

Fans throw catfish, a Southern riposte to Detroit's octopus; the tradition dates to the early 2000s and went national during the Predators' 2017 run to the Stanley Cup Final.

The Memphis Grizzlies moved to Tennessee in 2001 from which city?

The Grizzlies began as an expansion team in Vancouver in 1995 and moved to Memphis in 2001 after six losing seasons in Canada.

Smokey, the live mascot of the Tennessee Volunteers, is what breed of dog?

Smokey is a Bluetick coonhound; the first, Blue Smokey, was picked by student vote at a 1953 halftime contest when he howled back at the crowd's cheers.

Where did the University of Tennessee's famous orange come from?

Charles Moore, a member of the first football team in 1889, picked orange and white after the daisies that grew on the Hill at the heart of campus; the checkerboard end zones came in 1964.

At which Games did Wilma Rudolph become the first American woman to win three golds at one Olympics?

Rudolph won the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay at Rome 1960, running for Tennessee State's Tigerbelles under coach Ed Temple; the European press dubbed her 'The Black Gazelle'.

Alvin York, one of the most decorated soldiers of World War I, had originally sought what status?

York, a devout member of a pacifist church, applied as a conscientious objector and was refused; on October 8, 1918, in the Argonne he led the capture of 132 Germans.

Who won the Best Actor Oscar for playing Alvin York in 1941?

Gary Cooper, York's own choice for the role, won Best Actor for Sergeant York (1941); York put his share of the film's earnings toward a Bible school in Fentress County.

Davy Crockett was the only Tennessee congressman to vote against which law?

Crockett alone among Tennessee's delegation voted against the Indian Removal Act of 1830; after losing his seat in 1835 he told voters they could go to hell and he would go to Texas.

The Hermitage, ten miles east of Nashville, was the plantation home of which president?

Andrew Jackson bought the Hermitage in 1804 and is buried in its garden beside his wife Rachel; more than 100 enslaved people worked the cotton plantation by 1840.

Which Tennessean served nearly twelve years as Secretary of State and won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping create the UN?

Cordell Hull served from 1933 to 1944, the longest tenure of any Secretary of State, and won the 1945 Nobel Peace Prize as the 'Father of the United Nations'.

Which Oscar-winning actress was born in Memphis?

Kathy Bates was born in Memphis in 1948 and won Best Actress for Misery in 1991; fellow Memphis natives include Morgan Freeman and Aretha Franklin.

What became Tennessee's official state fruit in 2003?

The tomato, botanically a fruit, became Tennessee's official state fruit in 2003, a nod to the crop grown in Grainger County, which celebrates it with an annual tomato festival.

Which animal has been Tennessee's official state wild animal since 1971?

The raccoon became the official state wild animal in 1971; the mockingbird is the state bird, the tulip poplar the tree, and the Tennessee Walking Horse the state horse.

Roughly how many died when the steamboat Sultana exploded near Memphis in April 1865?

About 1,168 died, most of them paroled Union prisoners packed aboard for the trip home, when the Sultana's boilers exploded on April 27, 1865, less than two weeks after Lincoln's assassination.

Which April 1862 battle in southwestern Tennessee was, at the time, the bloodiest of the Civil War?

Shiloh, fought April 6-7, 1862, near Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River, cost some 23,700 casualties on both sides, more than any American battle before it.

Which 1818 land deal with the Chickasaw added all of West Tennessee to the United States?

The Jackson Purchase of October 1818 bought the Chickasaw lands between the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers for about $300,000 paid over 15 years, negotiated by the future president and Kentucky governor Isaac Shelby.