128 Fun Facts About Tennessee

Which state joined the Union as the 15th, four years before Tennessee became the 16th in 1796?

Kentucky joined on June 1, 1792; Tennessee followed four years later to the day, once a census showed the Southwest Territory had enough people to become a state.

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

The War of 1812 earned Tennessee the name for the rush of men who signed up; it stuck in 1846, when a call for under 3,000 soldiers for the Mexican War drew about 30,000 Tennessee volunteers.

Tennessee's name is traced to Tanasi, a town belonging to which Native American nation?

Cherokee people lived at Tanasi on the Little Tennessee River; the name passed from their town to the river and then to the state, though what the word first meant is uncertain.

Tennessee borders eight other states, a record it shares with which state?

Missouri also has eight neighbors, Tennessee among them; Tennessee reaches its eight because it runs in a long strip from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River.

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

Its three Grand Divisions, East, Middle and West Tennessee, each get a star, and the unbroken circle around them shows the three bound together as one state.

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

Ratify the Fourteenth Amendment: Tennessee did so in July 1866, and within days Congress seated its members again, so it escaped the military rule later imposed on the other ex-Confederate states.

The Ku Klux Klan was founded just after the Civil War in which small Tennessee town?

Pulaski is where a group of Confederate veterans started the Klan as a social club soon after the war; it quickly turned into a terror organization that spread across the South.

Which Founding Father, namesake of a breakaway East Tennessee state, said he was 'too little acquainted' with it to help?

Benjamin Franklin was the breakaway State of Franklin's namesake; asked for his backing, he replied that, having been in Europe when it formed, he was 'too little acquainted' with its affairs to offer advice.

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 staged the test case as a publicity stunt to put their town on the map; it worked, as Chicago's WGN carried it live, the first radio broadcast of an American trial.

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

Scopes was fined $100, but the Tennessee Supreme Court later threw out the conviction on a technicality: the judge, not the jury, had set the amount.

Which president signed the act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority in May 1933?

Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the TVA Act on May 18, 1933, as an early New Deal measure; two years earlier Herbert Hoover had vetoed a bill to let the government make and sell power at Muscle Shoals.

Which TVA dam, the agency's first, is named for a Nebraska senator who championed public power?

Norris Dam honors George W. Norris of Nebraska, who fought through the 1920s to keep the federal dam at Muscle Shoals in public hands; TVA broke ground on it in October 1933, months after the agency was created.

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 as the Manhattan Project's headquarters; uranium from its plants went into 'Little Boy', the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945.

Roughly how many people lived in Oak Ridge by 1945, three years after its founding?

75,000 people lived in the 'Secret City' by 1945, enough to make it the fifth-largest city in Tennessee, because its wartime plants needed tens of thousands of workers.

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

Tennessine ends in -ine because element 117 sits in group 17 with halogens such as chlorine and iodine; the name credits Oak Ridge, Vanderbilt and the University of Tennessee for their superheavy element research.

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.

What piece of the Ryman followed the Opry to its new home in 1974?

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 state's Centennial Exposition of 1897 had a plaster Parthenon as its showpiece; when the temporary building crumbled, Nashville chose in 1920 to rebuild it in concrete, finishing in 1931.

Which Greek goddess stands about 42 feet tall, covered in gold leaf, inside Nashville's Parthenon replica?

Athena, sculpted by Nashville's Alan LeQuire, was unveiled ungilded in 1990; it took twelve more years of fundraising before she got her gold in 2002, to match the ancient original in Athens.

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.

Nashville's city government merged in 1963 with the government of which county?

Davidson County and Nashville became a single Metropolitan Government in 1963; voters had turned the merger down in a 1958 referendum before approving a second charter in 1962.

The 1960 downtown Nashville sit-in campaign targeted what?

Segregated lunch counters in downtown stores were the target from February 13, 1960; after a shoppers' boycott and the bombing of lawyer Z. Alexander Looby's home, six stores began serving Black customers on May 10.

Nashville hot chicken is traditionally served on top of what?

White bread with pickle chips is the classic plate under chicken coated in a paste of lard and cayenne pepper; the dish spread so far that KFC put its own version on menus nationwide in January 2016.

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

Alcohol sales are prohibited there because Moore County has stayed dry since Tennessee's prohibition laws of the early 1900s; a special state law lets the distillery sell commemorative bottles to visitors.

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, long left out of the brand's story, taught Jack Daniel his craft?

Nathan 'Nearest' Green ran the still where the young Daniel learned; a 2016 New York Times story spread his role widely, and in 2017 the company named him its first master distiller.

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

His safe: the story goes that Daniel kicked it one morning when he could not get it open and hurt a toe that became infected; it is often called a tall tale, but blood poisoning did kill him 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; the company's story is that a coal miner asked salesman Earl Mitchell for a 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.

Before reopening as Dollywood in 1986, the Pigeon Forge park shared which name with a Branson theme park?

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?

A sack of cornmeal was the fee, Parton has said, for Dr. Robert F. Thomas, who delivered her in 1946; she later thanked him with a song that carries his name on her album My Tennessee Mountain Home.

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.

Which Graceland room has green shag carpet and an indoor waterfall?

The Jungle Room was Elvis's den, and in 1976 it became a makeshift studio where he recorded most of his last two albums.

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

Tupelo, Mississippi, is where Elvis was born in a two-room house in 1935; his twin brother was stillborn, so he grew up an only child, and the family left for Memphis in 1948.

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 walked the aisles, picked their own goods and paid a cashier, a system Saunders patented in 1917.

Where did Kemmons Wilson get the name for the first Holiday Inn, opened 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?

A Bass Pro Shops store opened inside the Pyramid in 2015 after the building had sat dark for years; it went up in 1991 as an arena, shaped as a nod to the Egyptian city Memphis is named for.

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

The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12 dropped the land here and sent waves up the Mississippi that made the river seem to run backwards; water filled the sunken basin and became Reelfoot Lake.

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

North Carolina shares the park with Tennessee; people in both states raised $5 million to buy the land in the 1920s, and a Rockefeller memorial fund matched it to finish the purchase.

Kuwohi, the highest point in Tennessee, was known by which name until 2024?

Clingmans Dome was named in 1859 for Thomas Clingman, a senator and later Confederate general; in September 2024 a federal board restored Kuwohi, 'mulberry place', the name its first people never stopped using.

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 discoverer's wife, Ruby Lambert, gave the falls their name; Leo Lambert's crew found them in 1928 while drilling an elevator shaft toward a lower cave that a railway tunnel had sealed off.

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?

7 states is Rock City's long-standing boast for the view from Lover's Leap; painter Clark Byers spread the word by lettering 'See Rock City' on more than 900 barns across 19 states from 1935 on.

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 Secretary of War Henry Knox, was the capital when Tennessee became a state in 1796; its 1982 World's Fair drew about 11 million visitors and left the Sunsphere tower as a city landmark.

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

Glenn Miller's 'Chattanooga Choo Choo' had sold more than 1.2 million copies by February 1942, so RCA Victor handed him a gold disc on live radio, the first gold record.

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

Its citywide gigabit internet arrived in 2010, when the city-owned utility EPB switched on one-gigabit service over its fiber network, making Chattanooga the first US city to offer it.

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.

Since 2002 Bonnaroo has been staged on a 700-acre farm outside which small Tennessee town?

Bonnaroo's home is Great Stage Park outside Manchester; the founders took the name from Dr. John's 1974 album Desitively Bonnaroo, New Orleans slang they gloss as 'a really good time'.

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

The Oilers kept their Houston name for two Tennessee seasons, 1997 and 1998; the franchise retired it in 1999 to become the Titans, and the renamed team reached the Super Bowl that same season.

The Titans' first 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 Nashville inspired the Predators' logo and name?

A sabre-toothed cat skeleton turned up in 1971 as crews dug a bank tower's foundations; the hockey team put the fanged cat on its logo first, then fans voted for the name Predators to match.

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

Catfish have hit the ice in Nashville since the team's early seasons; in the 2017 playoffs Titans lineman Taylor Lewan hoisted one before a game to fire up the crowd.

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?

Bluetick coonhound Blue Smokey won the job at halftime in 1953: the last dog in line, he answered every cheer from the students until the stadium was in an uproar.

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

Daisies that grew on campus, on the rise called the Hill, are said to have inspired Charles Moore's choice of orange and white. The checkerboard end zones came in 1964, copied from the brickwork of Ayres Hall.

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

Rome 1960 brought Rudolph the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay golds. Back in Clarksville she insisted on a homecoming open to everyone, and her parade became the city's first integrated event.

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

Conscientious objector status was what York asked for on religious grounds; the claim was denied and he was drafted. 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 won Best Actor for Sergeant York. York had turned Hollywood down for years; when he finally agreed, he put much of his fee toward a Bible school.

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, a plantation east of Nashville, was the home of which president?

Andrew Jackson bought the Hermitage in 1804. When his wife Rachel died in 1828, just after his election, he buried her in the garden she loved, and he lies there beside her.

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

Cordell Hull led the State Department from 1933 until ill health forced him out in late 1944, months before the UN he had championed was founded. His Nobel Peace Prize followed in 1945.

Which Memphis-born actress won her Oscar for a Stephen King adaptation?

Kathy Bates, a Memphis native, won Best Actress as the fan who holds her favorite novelist captive in Misery. Sissy Spacek's turn in Carrie earned a nomination but no win.

What became Tennessee's official state fruit in 2003?

The tomato became the state fruit in 2003, which put Tennessee on the botanists' side. The US Supreme Court had ruled in 1893 that, for tariff purposes, it is a vegetable.

Which nocturnal animal became Tennessee's state wild animal in 1971?

The raccoon was adopted in 1971. Fess Parker's coonskin cap in Disney's Davy Crockett set off a 1955 craze that sold about $300 million of Crockett merchandise.

Who were most of the passengers killed when the steamboat Sultana exploded near Memphis in April 1865?

Freed Union prisoners of war from camps such as Andersonville and Cahaba were most of the more than 2,000 people packed onto a boat built for 376. The blast is the deadliest maritime disaster in US history.

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

Shiloh opened with a Confederate surprise attack that made big gains on the first day. Reinforced overnight, Grant counterattacked and won back the ground, at a cost of some 23,700 casualties on both sides.

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 Tennessee and Mississippi rivers for $300,000. A year later its chief negotiator, a future president, helped found Memphis there.

Which vehicle did Chattanooga garage worker Ernest Holmes invent in 1916, now honoured by a hall of fame there?

The tow truck was born after Holmes needed blocks, ropes and six men to haul a car out of a creek. His home town now displays restored antique wreckers in a towing museum.

Memphis, founded on the Mississippi River in 1819, was named after the ancient capital of which country?

Egypt's ancient Memphis stood beside the Nile, so the founders of the new town on the river bluffs borrowed its name.

Nashville's 33-story skyscraper at 333 Commerce Street is nicknamed after which superhero, whose cowl it resembles?

Batman's pointed mask is echoed by the dark tower's twin spires. The 617-foot building was completed in 1994 and first carried the name of a telephone company.

Which pastime did Sweetwater, Tennessee, native Garnet Carter popularise in the late 1920s under the 'Tom Thumb' name?

Miniature golf made Carter a fortune: thousands of Tom Thumb courses opened within a few years, and he used the money to found Rock City Gardens.

Which Memphis thoroughfare, celebrated in a 1916 W. C. Handy tune, did Congress declare the 'Home of the Blues' in 1977?

Beale Street won the title by act of Congress in December 1977. Handy's tune was so popular that it helped change the official name from Beale Avenue.

Which entertainer founded St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis in 1962 to keep a vow to a saint?

Danny Thomas, then a struggling comedian living paycheck to paycheck, had promised St. Jude Thaddeus a shrine if the saint helped him succeed.

Which rock and soul star grew up in Nutbush, Tennessee, a farming community she celebrated in a 1973 hit?

Tina Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock, went to Flagg Grove School there and sang in the choir at Spring Hill Baptist Church.

The Great Smoky Mountains are nicknamed the world capital of which animals, with up to 31 species found there?

Salamanders are so varied here that five families live in the range, and the red-cheeked kind is found nowhere else.

Which author of 'Roots' spent his early childhood in Henning, Tennessee, and is buried beside his boyhood home there?

Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York, but Henning was his mother's home town, and the house where he lived as a boy is now a museum to him.

Which delivery company runs its global 'Superhub' at Memphis International Airport, having moved to the city in 1973?

FedEx moved to Memphis from Little Rock and began overnight service in April 1973 with fourteen small jets linking twenty-five cities.

Which Memphis soul label, home to Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes, recorded in an old movie theater on McLemore Avenue?

Stax Records left the cinema's slope in place, so its studio still tilted where the seats had once been. A museum of American soul music now stands on the site.

The Titans' 'Music City Miracle' kickoff return in January 2000 knocked which team out of the NFL playoffs?

The Buffalo Bills had just kicked a field goal to lead with 16 seconds left when Frank Wycheck's lateral sent Kevin Dyson 75 yards to the end zone.

Tennessee, which stretches about 440 miles from east to west, is split between which two US time zones?

Eastern and Central time divide the state unevenly: the larger share of Tennessee keeps Central time, while most of East Tennessee runs an hour ahead.

Which legendary haunting is said to have tormented a farming family near Adams, Tennessee, from 1817 to 1821?

The Bell Witch was said to be a mostly invisible entity that could speak and shapeshift, and it vowed to kill farmer John Bell, whom it called Old Jack.

Which state lies directly across the Mississippi River from Memphis, reached by the Interstate 40 bridge?

Arkansas begins on the far bank, where the bridge lands at West Memphis. Locals call the span the M Bridge for its distinctive double-arch shape.

Which architect, who called the Tennessee State Capitol his greatest achievement, is entombed within its walls?

William Strickland died before the building was finished, so his son Francis designed the cupola's roof decorations after his death.

The Nashville Sounds' ballpark, like their old Greer Stadium home, has a giant scoreboard shaped like which instrument?

The guitar was such a hit at Greer Stadium that, after overwhelming support from fans, the Sounds built a larger, more modern version at their new park.

Which classical nickname did Nashville, Tennessee, earn in the 19th century for its many colleges and universities?

Athens of the South is the reason the city later chose to build a full-scale replica of the Parthenon.

Which West Tennessee railroad engineer became a folk hero after dying in the 1900 crash of his passenger train?

Casey Jones was killed when his train struck a stalled freight in Mississippi. His fame owes much to a ballad sung by his friend Wallace Saunders, an engine wiper.

Which Union general earned the nickname 'Unconditional Surrender' after capturing Tennessee's Fort Donelson in 1862?

Ulysses S. Grant had been an obscure, largely unproven leader; the win made him a major general, and admirers played on his initials for the nickname.

Which Tennessee governor resigned in 1829 and later served as the first president of the Republic of Texas?

Sam Houston stepped down after his marriage collapsed, and he remains the only person elected governor of two different US states.

Which disease killed more than 5,000 people in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1878, costing the city its charter?

Yellow fever sent more than 25,000 people fleeing within two weeks, and bankrupt Memphis did not regain its charter and home rule until 1893.

Which Tennessean, nicknamed 'Young Hickory', won the White House in 1844 as the first 'dark horse' presidential nominee?

James K. Polk had been Speaker of the House and governor of Tennessee, yet every earlier president had been a vice president, Secretary of State or high-ranking general.

Which Spanish explorer, who reached the Mississippi River in 1541, is honoured by Memphis's Interstate 40 bridge?

Hernando de Soto was the first European documented as having crossed the great river, and he died on its banks in May 1542.

Which co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech began an anti-lynching crusade in 1892 after a mob killed her friends?

Ida B. Wells urged Black residents to leave Memphis altogether, and a white mob later destroyed her newspaper office and presses, driving her to Chicago.

Which Chattanooga-born singer, known as the 'Empress of the Blues', died after a car crash in September 1937?

Bessie Smith lost her parents young and survived with her siblings by performing on Chattanooga street corners, long before the national press crowned her an empress.

Which frontier soldier, a leader of the Overmountain Men in 1780, was elected Tennessee's first governor in 1796?

John Sevier went on to serve six two-year terms as governor, eleven years in all, and later won three terms in Congress.

Under Governor William Blount, what was the future Tennessee commonly called from 1790 until statehood in 1796?

The Southwest Territory, formally the Territory South of the River Ohio, lasted just six years, and Blount, chosen by George Washington, was its only governor.

Which Tennessee city, the state's geographic centre, served as the state capital from 1818 to 1826?

Murfreesboro was chosen in 1818 because the old capital in the east had become inconvenient as settlement spread west, and the town's population boomed.

Which fairground treat's first machine was invented in 1897 by Nashville dentist William Morrison and a confectioner?

Cotton candy was first sold as Fairy Floss, and it reached a wide audience at the 1904 World's Fair, where 68,655 boxes were sold.

Which soft drink, named after old slang for whiskey, did Tennessee bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman develop as a mixer?

Mountain Dew made its debut in 1946 with hillbilly-themed labels showing a barefoot mountaineer, and it began as a clear lemon-lime drink much like 7 Up.

Which restaurant chain opened its first location near Lebanon, Tennessee, in 1969?

Cracker Barrel was dreamed up by Dan Evins, a Shell Oil representative, who saw a roadside restaurant as a way to sell more gasoline.

Which coffee brand did Nashville wholesale grocer Joel Cheek introduce in 1892?

Maxwell House took its name from a Nashville hotel: guests complained when a free trial batch ran out, so the hotel began buying Joel Cheek's blend exclusively.

In a 'meat and three', the fixed-price Southern meal with roots in Nashville, a diner picks one meat and three what?

Side dishes fill out the plate, and the choices run from potatoes, corn and beans to macaroni and cheese, hush puppies and even spaghetti.

Which soft drink's first bottling company opened in Chattanooga in 1899, after two local men bought the rights for $1?

Coca-Cola's owner Asa Candler was talked into signing the contract by the persuasive pair, and he never even bothered to collect his fee.

Which fast-food chain, known for small square hamburgers, was founded in Chattanooga in 1932?

Krystal's founder toured Chicago's White Castle restaurants taking notes first, and his original building was made in Chicago and shipped south.

Which food, flavored with mustard and jalapeño chilies, became Tennessee's first official state food in 2024?

Hot slaw was honoured by the 113th General Assembly, giving a spicy cousin of coleslaw a title the state had never awarded before.

Which Nashville candy, created in 1912, is considered the first candy bar to combine several kinds of candy?

Goo Goo Cluster was created by Howell Campbell and the Standard Candy Company, and it is 13 years older than the Grand Ole Opry, where it was later sold.

South Pittsburg, Tennessee, home of the Lodge cast iron foundry, holds a national festival each April for which food?

Cornbread suits the town, whose foundry makes the cast iron skillets it is baked in, and festival visitors can tour the plant.

Which bird, picked in a 1933 election run by the Tennessee Ornithological Society, is Tennessee's official state bird?

The mockingbird has shared the honours since 1988, when lawmakers added the bobwhite quail as an official state game bird.

Which flower, championed by 1930s garden clubs, is Tennessee's official cultivated flower, usually shown in purple?

The iris was named state flower in 1933 although schoolchildren had already voted for another bloom in 1919, so Tennessee had two state flowers until 1973.

Which tall tree, widely used by Tennessee's pioneers to build houses and barns, became the state tree in 1947?

The tulip poplar was also chosen because, in the words of the 1947 act, it grows from one end of the state to the other.

Which insect, known for synchronized June displays at Elkmont in the Smokies, is an official Tennessee state insect?

The firefly became a state insect in 1975 alongside the ladybug, and so many people want to watch the Elkmont display that viewing passes are handed out by lottery.

Which drink, the most popular choice among US states, did Tennessee adopt as its official state beverage in 2009?

Milk was honoured for building strong muscle and bones in children, and most states with an official beverage have made the same pick.

Which rock, quarried in East Tennessee as a building stone called 'Tennessee marble', became a state rock in 1979?

Limestone is common throughout Tennessee, and it joined agate, which had been the only official state rock for the previous ten years.

Which animal, which can live 30 to 60 years without straying far from its birthplace, is Tennessee's state reptile?

The eastern box turtle took the title in 1995, and it usually grows to less than six inches long, with orange and red spots on its dark shell.

Which gem, once gathered as a Sunday pastime on the Caney Fork, did Tennessee make its official state gem in 1979?

Freshwater pearl hunting faded after World War I, when new dams drowned the swift, shallow shoals where the pearl-bearing mussels lived.

Which bluegrass favourite, written in about 15 minutes at a Gatlinburg inn, became a Tennessee state song in 1982?

Rocky Top was a quick break for Felice and Boudleaux Bryant from writing slow songs, and the University of Tennessee holds a perpetual licence to play it.

Which butterfly, whose caterpillars feed on pawpaw leaves, became Tennessee's official state butterfly in 1995?

The zebra swallowtail is rarely found far from pawpaw trees, and because its caterpillars are cannibals, females lay their eggs one at a time.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, chartered by Congress in 1934, holds which record among US national parks?

Most visited: the park welcomed over 11 million visitors in 2025, more than any other national park in the United States.