ALABAMA FACTS AND INFORMATION

A crimson St. Andrew's cross on a white field, patterned after the Confederate Battle Flag, and adopted in 1895. The bars forming the cross must not be less than six inches broad and must extend diagonally across the flag from side to side.


 



Alabama Facts and Trivia

• Alabama introduced the Mardi Gras to the western world. The celebration is held on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent begins.
• Alabama workers built the first rocket to put humans on the moon.
• The world's first Electric Trolley System was introduced in Montgomery in 1886.
• Alabama is the only state with all major natural resources needed to make iron and steel. It is also the largest supplier of cast-iron and steel pipe products.
• Montgomery is the capital and the birthplace of the Confederate States of America.
• The Confederate flag was designed and first flown in Alabama in 1861.
• Alabama became the 22nd state on December 14, 1819.
• The town of Enterprise houses the Boll Weevil Monument to acknowledge the role this destructive insect played in encouraging farmers to grow crops other than cotton.
• Baseball player Henry Louis (Hank) Aaron was born in Mobile in 1934.
• Boxer Joe Louis was born in Lexington in 1914. He died in 1981.
• "Alabama" is the official state song.
• Baseball player Willie Howard Mays was born in Westfield in 1931.
• A skeleton of a pre-historic man was found in Russell Cave.
• At 2,405 feet Cheaha Mountain is Alabama's highest point above sea level.
• Huntsville is known as the rocket capital of the World.
• The Alabama Department of Archives is the oldest state-funded archival agency in the nation.
• The musical singing group Alabama has a Fan Club and Museum in Fort Payne.
• In 1902 Dr. Luther Leonidas Hill performed the first open heart surgery in the Western Hemisphere by suturing a stab wound in a young boy's heart. The surgery occurred in Montgomery.
• To help fund education Alabama instituted its state sales tax in 1937.
• Schools established in Mobile include Washington Academy (founded in 1811) and Huntsville Green Academy (founded in 1812).
• Between 1817 and 1819 Old Saint Stephens was the first territorial capital of Alabama.
• In 1956 the Army Ballistic Missile Agency was established at Huntsville's Redstone Arsenal.
• Governor George C. Wallace served four terms in office.
• In 1995 Heather Whitestone serves as first Miss America chosen with a disability.
• Alabama's geographic center is located in Chilton a community located 12 miles southwest of Clanton.
• The word Alabama means tribal town in the Creek Indian language.
• The United States Army Chemical Corps Museum in Fort McClellan contains over 4000 chemical warfare artifacts.
• Hitler's typewriter survived from his mountain retreat and is exhibited at the Hall of History in Bessemer.
• Blount County was created on February 7, 1818 and is older than the state.
• Winston County is often called the Free State of Winston. It gained the name during the Civil War.
• Mobile is named after the Mauvilla Indians.
• Peter Bryce is recognized as the state's first psychiatrist. He was born in 1834 and died in 1892.
• The Alabama State Flag was authorized by the Alabama legislature on February 16, 1895.
• Hematite is Alabama's official state mineral and is known as oxide of iron (Fe2O3).
• The Monarch butterfly (Danaus pleipuss) is the state's official insect.
• The star blue quartz is the state's official gemstone.
• The Florence Renaissance Faire is the Alabama's official fair.
• The pecan is the Alabama's official nut.
• People from Alabama are called Alabamians.
• On January 11, 1861 Alabama becomes the fourth state to secede from the Union.
• On January 28, 1846 Montgomery was selected as capital of Alabama.
• Tallulah Bankhead entertained as a star of stage, screen, and radio during the 1930s-1950s. She was born in Huntsville in 1902 and died in 1968.
• Singer and entertainer Nathaniel Adams (Nat King) Cole was known as the man with the velvet voice. He was born in Montgomery in 1919 and died in 1965.
• Alabama resident Sequoyah devised the phonetic, written alphabet of the Cherokee language.
• The Birmingham Airport opened in 1931. At the time of the opening a Birmingham to Los Angeles flight took 19 hours.
• Alabama's mean elevation is 500 feet at its lowest elevation point.
• Audemus jura nostra defendere is the official state motto. Translated it means "we dare defend our rights."
• Washington County is the oldest county in Alabama.
• General Andrew Jackson defeated the Creek Indians in 1814. Following the event the Native Americans ceded nearly half the present state land to the United States.
• At the Battle of Mobile Bay Admiral David Farragut issued his famous command, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead." The event occurred on August 5, 1864.

Capital: Montgomery

State abbreviation/Postal code: Ala./AL

U.S. Representatives: 7

Organized as territory: March 3, 1817

Entered Union (rank): Dec. 14, 1819 (22)

Present constitution adopted: 1901

Motto: Audemus jura nostra defendere (We dare defend our rights)

State symbols:

flower camellia (1959)

bird yellowhammer (1927)

song Alabama (1931)

tree Southern longleaf pine (1949, 1997)

salt water fish fighting tarpon (1955)

fresh water fish largemouth bass (1975)

horse racking horse (1975)

mineral hematite (1967)

rock marble (1969)

game bird wild turkey (1980)

dance square dance (1981)

nut pecan (1982)

fossil species Basilosaurus Cetoides (1984)

official mascot and butterfly eastern tiger swallowtail (1989)

insect monarch butterfly (1989)

reptile Alabama red-bellied turtle (1990)

gemstone star blue quartz (1990)

shell scaphella junonia johnstoneae (1990)

Nickname: Yellowhammer State

Origin of name: From Alabama River by early European explorers and named "Alibamu" after the local Indian tribe

Largest cities (2014): Birmingham, 212,461; Montgomery, 200,602; Mobile, 194,288; Huntsville, 190,582; Tuscaloosa, 98,332; Hoover, 84,848; Dothan, 68,567; Auburn, 62,059; Decatur, 55,437; Madison, 46,962

Land area: 50,744 sq mi. (131,427 sq km)

Geographic center: In Chilton Co., 12 mi. SW of Clanton

Number of counties: 67

Largest county by population and area: Jefferson, 658,327 (2012); Baldwin, 1,596 sq mi.

State forests: 21 (48,000 ac.)

State parks: 22 (45,614 ac.)

Residents: Alabamian, Alabaman

2015 resident population: 4,858,979

Spanish explorers are believed to have arrived at Mobile Bay in 1519, and the territory was visited in 1540 by the explorer Hernando de Soto. The first permanent European settlement in Alabama was founded by the French at Fort Louis de la Mobile in 1702. The British gained control of the area in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris but had to cede almost all the Alabama region to the U.S. and Spain after the American Revolution. The Confederacy was founded at Montgomery in Feb. 1861, and, for a time, the city was the Confederate capital.

During the later 19th century, the economy of the state slowly improved with industrialization. At Tuskegee Institute, founded in 1881 by Booker T. Washington, Dr. George Washington Carver carried out his famous agricultural research.

In the 1950s and '60s, Alabama was the site of such landmark civil-rights actions as the bus boycott in Montgomery (1955-56) and the Freedom March from Selma to Montgomery (1965).

Today paper, chemicals, rubber and plastics, apparel and textiles, primary metals, and automobile manufacturing constitute the leading industries of Alabama. Continuing as a major manufacturer of coal, iron, and steel, Birmingham is also noted for its world-renowned medical center. The state ranks high in the production of poultry, soybeans, milk, vegetables, livestock, wheat, cattle, cotton, peanuts, fruits, hogs, and corn.

Points of interest include the Helen Keller birthplace at Tuscumbia, the Space and Rocket Center at Huntsville, the White House of the Confederacy, the restored state Capitol, the Civil Rights Memorial, the Rosa Parks Museum & Library, and the Shakespeare Festival Theater Complex in Montgomery; the Civil Rights Institute and the McWane Center in Birmingham; the Russell Cave near Bridgeport; the Bellingrath Gardens at Theodore; the USS Alabama at Mobile; Mound State Monument near Tuscaloosa; and the Gulf Coast area.

Thirty-seven years after the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing which killed four young girls in Birmingham, the FBI released the name of four men—self-proclaimed Cahaba Boys, a branch of the Ku Klux Klan—responsible for the dynamite attack: Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry. Cash died in 1994; Blanton and Cherry were tried and convicted in 2001 and 2002 respectively (Cherry died in prison in 2004). Chambliss, originally charged alone, was acquitted of murder in 1963, but was sentenced to life in prison when the case was reopened in 1977. He died in prison in 1985.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused major flooding and destruction along the coast of Alabama; flood waters reached 11 ft in Mobile. Twenty-two counties were declared federal disaster areas.