50 Fun Facts About Wilmington NC

Wilmington sits on which North Carolina river?

The Cape Fear River, a 191-mile blackwater river, meets the Atlantic just below the city; Wilmington's downtown Riverwalk runs about 1.75 miles along its bank.

Wilmington is the county seat of which county?

Wilmington is the seat of New Hanover County, formed in 1729 and named for the British royal House of Hanover; the 2020 census counted 115,451 residents in the city itself.

The city was named in 1739 for Spencer Compton, who held what title?

He was the 1st Earl of Wilmington; Colonel William Bartram, uncle of the naturalist, introduced the bill and named the town for his patron.

What is Wilmington's nickname?

Wilmington is called the Port City: the state port on the river has handled ocean shipping since colonial days and is North Carolina's largest.

The Wilmington and Weldon, completed in 1840, held what world record?

At 161.5 miles the Wilmington and Weldon was the longest single rail line in the world when finished in 1840; it later became part of the Atlantic Coast Line.

Wilmington was North Carolina's largest city until which city overtook it in 1910?

Charlotte passed Wilmington in the 1910 census; through the late 19th century Wilmington, then a majority-Black city, had been the state's most populous.

The events of November 10, 1898, in Wilmington are described as the only what in United States history?

Historians call the 1898 Wilmington insurrection the only successful coup d'etat in US history: armed white supremacists forced the elected biracial Fusionist government to resign and burned the Black-owned Daily Record.

How large was the mob that overthrew Wilmington's elected government in 1898?

About 2,000 armed white men marched on November 10, 1898, burning the Daily Record office and forcing the mayor, aldermen and police chief to resign.

Fort Fisher, guarding the approach to Wilmington's port, was nicknamed the Southern what?

Fort Fisher's massive earthen walls earned it the name 'Gibraltar of the South'; it fell to a Union land-sea assault on January 15, 1865, and the city followed on February 22.

Why was the fall of Wilmington in February 1865 so damaging to the Confederacy?

Blockade runners had kept Lee's Army of Northern Virginia supplied through the port; Braxton Bragg abandoned the city at 1 a.m. on the 22nd.

What was the nickname of the WWII battleship now a memorial across from downtown?

USS North Carolina (BB-55) was nicknamed 'Showboat' by sailors after her showy 1941 shakedown runs in and out of New York; she earned 15 battle stars, the most of any US battleship in the war.

How many main guns did the memorial battleship BB-55 carry?

Nine 16-inch guns in three triple turrets formed her main battery; USS North Carolina, lead ship of her class of fast battleships, was commissioned in April 1941.

How many ships did the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company build in Wilmington between 1941 and 1946?

The yard launched 243 ships between 1941 and 1946, 126 of them Liberty ships; employment peaked at about 21,000 workers in 1943.

Which basketball legend grew up in Wilmington and was cut from his high school varsity as a sophomore?

Michael Jordan, about 5 feet 11 as a sophomore, was left off the varsity roster; he went on to hit the winning shot in the 1982 NCAA final and win six NBA titles with the Bulls.

Which local high school did the future Bulls star attend?

Emsley A. Laney High School, named for a longtime county school board chairman, is where he played; he made the Laney Buccaneers varsity as a junior after a season on junior varsity.

Which Italian producer built Wilmington's film studio in 1984?

Dino De Laurentiis, fresh from shooting Firestarter in the area, opened his DEG studio lot on North 23rd Street in 1984; it later became Carolco Studios and then EUE/Screen Gems.

The Wilmington Ten, pardoned in 2012, had been convicted of what 1971 crime?

The Wilmington Ten, led by Benjamin Chavis, were convicted in 1972 of firebombing a grocery store, Mike's Grocery, during 1971 racial unrest; a federal court overturned the convictions in 1980 and Governor Bev Perdue pardoned them in 2012.

Stage 10 at the Wilmington studios, the third-largest US production stage when opened in 2009, is what size?

Stage 10 covers 37,500 square feet with no interior columns, the largest of the lot's ten sound stages when it opened in 2009.

Which teen drama, set in fictional Capeside, Massachusetts, was filmed in Wilmington from 1998 to 2003?

Dawson's Creek, created by Kevin Williamson, shot its Capeside scenes around Wilmington and Southport; it launched James Van Der Beek, Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson and Michelle Williams, with Paula Cole's 'I Don't Want to Wait' as its theme.

Which series about half-brothers on a high-school basketball team was filmed in Wilmington?

One Tree Hill, created by Mark Schwahn, ran from 2003 to 2012 on The WB and then The CW; its River Court basketball court was a real spot on the Wilmington riverfront.

Which Marvel film began shooting at Wilmington's studios in May 2012?

Iron Man 3 began principal photography at EUE/Screen Gems in Wilmington in May 2012 and went on to gross more than $1.2 billion worldwide.

David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) used Wilmington's studio and streets to play which fictional town?

Lumberton is the fictional town, sharing its name with a real North Carolina city; Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper starred, and the film shot on the new Wilmington studio lot in 1985.

The North Carolina Azalea Festival was first held in Wilmington in which year?

The first Azalea Festival was held in April 1948, the brainchild of Dr. W. Houston Moore; Ronald Reagan served as its celebrity emcee in 1959.

Airlie Gardens, a 67-acre showpiece, was begun in 1886 by whom?

Sarah Green Jones, wife of wealthy Wilmington rice planter Pembroke Jones, laid out Airlie around her country home; the county bought the 67-acre gardens in 1999, and the Airlie Oak dates from about 1545.

The Bellamy Mansion, built 1859-61 on Market Street, was used as what by Union forces in 1865?

Union General Joseph Hawley made the Bellamy Mansion his military headquarters after the city fell in February 1865; Dr. John Bellamy's Greek Revival-Italianate house had been built by enslaved and free Black artisans.

Thalian Hall, the 1858 theatre, shares its building with what municipal institution?

Thalian Hall and Wilmington City Hall share one 1858 building designed by John Montague Trimble; the Thalian Association helped fund the theatre wing attached to the city government's offices.

Which carnivorous plant is native only to a roughly 60-mile radius of Wilmington?

The Venus flytrap grows wild only in wet pine savannas within about 60 miles of Wilmington; North Carolina named it the state carnivorous plant in 2005.

What did North Carolina do in 2014 to protect its native carnivorous plant?

In 2014 North Carolina made poaching the plant from the wild a Class H felony; its trap snaps shut only when two trigger hairs are touched within about 20 seconds.

Hurricane Florence made landfall on September 14, 2018, just south of which town beside Wilmington?

All roads into Wilmington flooded and the city was cut off; the storm set a state rainfall record of 35.93 inches near Elizabethtown.

How much rain fell on Wilmington from Hurricane Florence over September 13-16, 2018?

Wilmington's airport measured 23.02 inches from Florence, which crawled across the coast for days; the storm caused about $24 billion in damage and 54 deaths.

UNC Wilmington's sports teams are known as what?

UNC Wilmington's Seahawks compete in the Coastal Athletic Association; the school opened as Wilmington College in 1947 and joined the University of North Carolina system in 1969.

What is UNC Wilmington's official school colour?

Teal is UNC Wilmington's primary colour, with navy and gold as secondary colours; the university also runs a Center for Marine Science on Masonboro Sound south of the city.

The Memorial Bridge carrying US 17 over the river at Wilmington, opened in 1969, is what type?

The Memorial Bridge is a vertical-lift bridge: its 408-foot centre span rises to give ships about 135 feet of clearance on the way to the state port; it carries US 17, 76 and 421.

Which self-taught visionary artist worked for decades as the gatekeeper at Airlie Gardens?

Minnie Evans, a self-taught artist born in 1892, took the gatekeeper's job at Airlie Gardens after the Second World War and sold her visionary drawings to visitors there for a quarter century; the Whitney Museum showed her work in 1975.

Which NBC anchor, co-host of a top-rated 1956-70 nightly news programme, was born in Wilmington in 1920?

He later hosted ABC's This Week with David Brinkley from 1981.

Which Wilmington-born QB won the 1969 NFL MVP as the league's first Filipino-American QB?

Roman Gabriel, born in Wilmington in 1940, starred at NC State and won the 1969 NFL MVP with the Los Angeles Rams; his father was a Filipino immigrant.

Which country fiddler, famous for 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia', was born in Wilmington in 1936?

Charlie Daniels was born in Wilmington in 1936; 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia' hit number three on the Hot 100 in 1979 and won a Grammy, and he entered the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016.

Roughly how many blocks does Wilmington's historic district cover?

The Wilmington Historic District covers nearly 300 blocks of downtown, one of the largest such districts in the state; the Cotton Exchange shops and the Riverwalk sit within it.

On what date did Wilmington launch its first Liberty ship, SS Zebulon B. Vance?

SS Zebulon B. Vance slid down the ways on December 6, 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor; the yard, set up by Newport News Shipbuilding, lay three miles south of downtown on the river.

Which two beach towns lie on Pleasure Island, just south of Wilmington?

Carolina Beach and Kure Beach occupy Pleasure Island, the strip between the river and the Atlantic south of the city; Kure Beach holds the Fort Fisher historic site and a North Carolina Aquarium.

Interstate 40 runs 2,554 miles from Wilmington to which western city?

Interstate 40 ends at Barstow, California, where it meets I-15; the famous 'Barstow, Calif. 2554' sign stood at the Wilmington end after the freeway reached the city in 1990.

On September 8, 2008, Wilmington became the first US TV market to do what?

Wilmington's stations switched off analog and went digital-only on September 8, 2008, an FCC test run nine months before the national analog shutoff of June 12, 2009.

Actor Brandon Lee died in an accidental shooting while filming which 1994 movie in Wilmington?

The Crow was shooting at the Wilmington studios when Lee was fatally wounded by a prop gun on March 31, 1993; the film was finished with doubles and digital effects and released in May 1994.

The deadly 1862 yellow fever outbreak in Wilmington was blamed on a blockade runner of what name?

The blockade runner Kate, arriving from Nassau in August 1862, was blamed for bringing the fever; roughly 650 people died before frost ended the epidemic, and Walter Reed's commission only proved mosquito transmission in 1900.

Before the 1739 renaming, the settlement on the river had gradually taken on which name?

The settlement was called New Carthage, then New Liverpool, and by the 1730s simply New Town or Newton; Governor Gabriel Johnston had it renamed Wilmington in 1739.

Wilmington's busy film studios of the 1980s and 1990s earned the city which nickname?

Wilmington earned the nickname Hollywood East (also 'Wilmywood') as the studio lot churned out films and series; the boom faded after the state's film tax credit expired at the end of 2014 and productions shifted to Atlanta.

In 2020 Wilmington became the first place in America to hold which designation?

On September 2, 2020, the 75th anniversary of Japan's surrender, Wilmington was named the first American World War II Heritage City, honouring its Liberty-ship yard and home front; the Hannah Block Historic USO building survives downtown.

Which oddly named independent film festival has been held in Wilmington every year since 1995?

Cucalorus, first held in 1995, takes its name from the cucoloris, a perforated screen film crews use to throw patterned shadows; the festival runs each November.

Which designation did Congress confer on Wilmington in 2003?

Congress named Wilmington a Coast Guard City in 2003; the medium-endurance cutter USCGC Diligence was homeported on its downtown riverfront for nearly three decades from 1992.

Which future Red Sox All-Star catcher played for Wilmington's Port City Roosters in 1995 and 1996?

Jason Varitek, a Seattle Mariners draft pick, caught for the Roosters, the Mariners' Double-A club in Wilmington, in 1995 and 1996 before a 1997 trade sent him to Boston.