99 Fun Facts About Charleston

Charleston, on the Ashley, Cooper and Wando rivers, is the largest city in which state?

South Carolina: Charleston passed Columbia to become the state's largest city in the 2010s. Locals joke that the Ashley and Cooper rivers meet at its harbour to form the Atlantic Ocean.

Charleston was founded in 1670 under what name, honouring the reigning English king?

Charles Town, named for Charles II, was founded in 1670 at Albemarle Point and moved to the present peninsula in 1680. By 1690 it ranked among the five largest towns in English North America.

The first battle of the American Civil War was fought at which harbour stronghold?

Fort Sumter: Confederate shore batteries under P. G. T. Beauregard opened fire on 12 April 1861, and Major Robert Anderson's garrison surrendered after 34 hours of bombardment.

Which Confederate vessel became the first submarine to sink a warship, off Charleston in 1864?

The H. L. Hunley sank the USS Housatonic on 17 February 1864, then went down with all eight crew. Raised in 2000, she is kept at a conservation center in North Charleston.

How many crewmen died in total across the three sinkings of the Confederate submarine Hunley?

She sank in a test run in August 1863, again in October with Horace Lawson Hunley aboard, and finally after her attack.

Rainbow Row on East Bay Street is a series of how many colourful historic houses?

Rainbow Row is 13 houses at 79–107 East Bay Street. Their pastel colours date from restoration begun by Dorothy Porcher Legge in 1931, after the block had decayed into a near-slum.

Charleston's 'Holy City' nickname is traditionally linked to what feature of its skyline?

Historians think the term was actually coined in the 20th century, possibly as a jab at Charlestonians' self-satisfaction.

What creole language and culture developed among enslaved Africans' descendants on the Sea Islands?

Rice planters paid premiums for captives from Africa's 'Rice Coast' who knew the crop; Gullah foodways gave the city Carolina Gold rice, okra and benne seeds.

Which Charleston speciality is finished with a splash of dry sherry as it is served?

She-crab soup, a cream soup of crab meat and roe, gets a splash of dry sherry as it is served. The roe of the female crab gives the soup its name and orange tint.

Which Pulitzer-winning composer founded Charleston's late-spring arts festival in 1977 as a US twin of an Italian one?

Gian Carlo Menotti founded Spoleto Festival USA in 1977 as an American counterpart to his Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, choosing Charleston for its wealth of churches and theatres.

Charleston's senior military academy was established in what year?

It grew out of an arsenal built after Denmark Vesey's thwarted 1822 uprising, and moved from Marion Square to the Ashley River in 1922.

Who was the first woman admitted to the Corps of Cadets at Charleston's military academy in 1995?

She withdrew within days after death threats; Nancy Mace, later a congresswoman, became the first female graduate in 1999.

Which local school, founded 1770, is the oldest municipal institution of higher learning in the US?

The College of Charleston, founded in 1770 and chartered in 1785, became the country's first municipal college in 1837. It is also the oldest institution of higher learning in South Carolina.

The Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, opened in 2005 over the Cooper River, links Charleston with which town?

Mount Pleasant: the Ravenel Bridge replaced the 1929 Grace and 1966 Pearman bridges. At its 2005 opening, its 1,546-foot main span was the longest of any cable-stayed bridge in North America.

Which category 4 hurricane came ashore at Charleston Harbor in September 1989?

Hurricane Hugo came ashore at Sullivan's Island, just north of Charleston Harbor, around midnight on 21–22 September 1989 with winds near 140 mph, damaging most buildings in the historic district.

In a Charleston single house, where is the real front door?

The real front door sits halfway along the long side, opening off the piazza; the street-facing 'door' just leads onto the porch. The story that the houses were built narrow to dodge a frontage tax is a myth.

Charleston's City Market is famous for baskets hand-coiled from which native grass?

Sweetgrass baskets, a Gullah craft with West African roots, are coiled from bundles of sweetgrass bound with palmetto strips. They are sold at the City Market and along Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant.

The Angel Oak on Johns Island is estimated to be how old?

The Angel Oak is usually estimated at 400 to 500 years old. Its longest limb stretches 187 feet and its canopy shades about 17,200 square feet; it is named for landowners Justus and Martha Angel.

Mother Emanuel, the Charleston congregation attacked in 2015, holds what distinction?

Emanuel AME is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the South, founded in 1817. It was burned after the 1822 Vesey plot, outlawed in 1834 and rebuilt; nine worshippers were murdered there in June 2015.

Denmark Vesey, who planned an 1822 uprising in Charleston, had bought his freedom with what?

He planned the revolt for Bastille Day and an escape to Haiti; the plot leaked and he was hanged on 2 July 1822.

Which pirate blockaded Charleston in May 1718, leaving only when given a chest of medicine?

Blackbeard (Edward Teach) held Charleston's harbour for about a week in May 1718, seizing ships and hostages until Governor Robert Johnson handed over a chest of medicines. His sometime partner Stede Bonnet was hanged in Charleston that December.

Roughly what share of Africans enslaved in North America landed at Sullivan's Island off Charleston?

About 40% of enslaved Africans brought to North America are estimated to have entered through Charleston, many first quarantined at Sullivan's Island, which has been called the Ellis Island of Black Americans.

Which tree's spongy logs absorbed British cannonballs at Fort Sullivan in June 1776?

Palmetto logs, soft and spongy, soaked up British cannonballs on 28 June 1776. The fort was renamed for its commander, William Moultrie, and the palmetto went on to the state flag and seal.

Which Seminole leader died as a prisoner at Fort Moultrie in 1838 and is buried at its gate?

Osceola, seized under a flag of truce in Florida in 1837, died at Fort Moultrie on 30 January 1838. He is buried outside the fort's sally port beneath a marked stone.

Charleston's surrender to the British on 12 May 1780 is described as what?

Sir Henry Clinton besieged the city with about 14,000 troops and 90 ships; the British then held it for over a year after Yorktown.

What magnitude was the great Charleston earthquake of 31 August 1886?

The 1886 quake is estimated at about magnitude 7.0, the strongest on record in the southeastern United States. It was felt from Boston to Cuba, damaged some 2,000 buildings, and left iron 'earthquake bolts' on many houses.

A Charleston institution founded in 1773 in the Wraggborough neighbourhood claims what national first?

It did not open to the public until 1824; the Old Charleston Museum building burned down.

The original Dock Street playhouse, opened in 1736, was what?

It opened with Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer and hosted Flora, the first opera performed in America; the current theatre was built inside the old Planter's Hotel in the 1930s.

Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, founded in Charleston in 1749, is important in the history of which movement?

Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim is the birthplace of Reform Judaism in America: members formed the Reformed Society of Israelites there in 1824. It is the fourth-oldest Jewish congregation in the continental United States.

Which 1925 novel, later an opera, is set on Charleston's fictional 'Catfish Row'?

DuBose Heyward wrote it; he and George Gershwin spent the summer of 1934 at Folly Beach writing Porgy and Bess.

The Charleston dance craze was popularised by a 1923 James P. Johnson tune from which Broadway show?

'The Charleston' was introduced in the 1923 Broadway revue Runnin' Wild, with music by James P. Johnson, who said he took its rhythm from the dances of Gullah dockworkers from Charleston.

Which Charleston children's home fielded a band that played inaugurations and appeared in Porgy on Broadway?

The Jenkins Orphanage, founded by Rev. Daniel Jenkins in 1891, raised money with brass bands that played at presidential inaugurations and appeared on stage in the 1927 Broadway play Porgy.

Which 1771 Charleston building held patriot prisoners in its Provost Dungeon during the Revolution?

The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon, completed in 1771, served as the British prison during the 1780–82 occupation. South Carolina ratified the US Constitution there in 1788, and George Washington was entertained there in 1791.

Which Declaration signer's home was the Ashley River plantation with the butterfly lakes?

Arthur Middleton, a Declaration signer, inherited Middleton Place on the Ashley River. His father Henry, president of the First Continental Congress, laid out its gardens and butterfly lakes from 1741.

The Charleston Tea Garden, on Wadmalaw Island, is owned by which tea company?

Bigelow Tea bought the Wadmalaw Island plantation in 2003 and sells its harvest as American Classic Tea. French botanist André Michaux first brought tea plants to the area in the late 1700s.

What is a joggling board, a fixture of Charleston porches?

Legend puts the first one at a plantation near Edgefield in the early 1800s, copied from a Scottish exercise device.

Charleston's growing technology sector has earned the city what nickname?

'Silicon Harbor' is the nickname for Charleston's tech scene, home to companies such as Blackbaud and Benefitfocus. Boeing's 787 assembly plant and a busy container port anchor the wider economy.

How do old-money Charlestonians, in the non-rhotic accent, say their city's name?

The traditional accent drops the r and stretches the first vowel; it is nonrhotic and heard mainly in older natives.

Charleston was the largest colonial city south of which other city?

Philadelphia: Charleston ranked fourth among colonial cities behind Philadelphia, New York and Boston. Rice and indigo made it the wealthiest city in the colonies; about half its 11,000 residents in 1770 were enslaved.

Which Charleston promenade at the peninsula's tip is lined with antebellum mansions and Civil War cannon?

The Battery runs along the seawall where the Ashley and Cooper rivers meet, with White Point Garden at its tip. Its promenade is lined with antebellum mansions and Civil War-era cannon.

Charleston, West Virginia, sits at the confluence of the Kanawha River and which other river?

The Elk River joins the Kanawha at Charleston, West Virginia, which grew up around Fort Lee, built by George Clendenin in 1788. The city became the state's permanent capital in 1885.

Which Charleston church, finished in 1761, is the city's oldest surviving church building?

St. Michael's Episcopal Church, built from 1752 to 1761 at Broad and Meeting streets, is Charleston's oldest surviving church building. George Washington worshipped there during his 1791 visit.

What early industry, from brine wells drilled in 1806, first made Charleston, West Virginia rich?

Salt: the Ruffner brothers drilled brine wells at Kanawha Salines from 1806, and by the 1850s the valley was among the largest salt-producing regions in the world. Coal and natural gas came later.

Charleston's first planned settlement followed a 'Grand Model' drawn up by which philosopher?

John Locke, secretary to Lord Ashley Cooper, drafted the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina in 1669; the accompanying Grand Model laid out Charles Town's grid, though the Constitutions were never ratified by the colonists.

Many of Charleston's founding settlers in 1670 came from which Caribbean island?

Barbados: many of Charles Town's first settlers in 1670 were Barbadian planters who brought the slave-based plantation system with them. Charleston is now twinned with Speightstown, Barbados.

What was the population of Charleston, SC at the 2020 census, roughly?

Charleston counted 150,227 residents in the 2020 census, making it South Carolina's largest city, while the three-county metro area (Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester) held about 800,000.

On 9 January 1861, cadets from which Charleston school fired on the supply ship Star of the West?

The Union later confiscated the Citadel campus and used it as an army garrison for 17 years.

In what year was the Medical College of South Carolina, now MUSC, founded in Charleston?

The Medical College of South Carolina was founded in 1824 by the Medical Society of South Carolina and renamed the Medical University of South Carolina in 1969. It is the oldest medical school in the Deep South.

What did Charleston's 1739 Security Act require of every white man, even at church on Sundays?

The Stono Rebellion broke out before it fully took effect; drums were later banned because enslaved Africans used them to signal.

Which Gone with the Wind character is a Charleston black sheep who was expelled from West Point?

Rhett Butler is introduced as a visitor from Charleston whom no family with a reputation in the city will receive.

Which Christmas plant is named after a Charleston-born diplomat who sent samples home from Mexico?

Poinsettia honours Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first United States minister to Mexico and an avid amateur botanist, who came across the plant near Taxco.

Which late-night television host grew up on Charleston's James Island as the youngest of eleven children?

Stephen Colbert was born in Washington, D.C., but was raised in Charleston, where his mother later ran a bed and breakfast from a downtown carriage house.

Which Ghostbusters star became a part-owner of the Charleston RiverDogs minor-league baseball team?

Bill Murray took his stake through the Goldklang Group, which has also owned the Hudson Valley Renegades and the Brockton Rox.

Which Charleston-born singer fronted Hootie & the Blowfish before topping the country charts solo?

Darius Rucker took a single to number one on Hot Country Songs in 2008, the first Black artist to do so since Charley Pride in 1983.

Which 2004 Nicholas Sparks film used Boone Hall Plantation near Charleston as Allie's summer house?

The Notebook kept its production offices at Charleston's old naval shipyard, and Ryan Gosling moved to the city beforehand to prepare for his part.

Which Charleston restaurant favourite began as a breakfast eaten while the local catch peaked around November?

Shrimp and grits appeared in a 1931 Charleston cookbook under the name shrimp and hominy, with credit for the dish given to Black cooks.

Which fruit, a symbol of hospitality, shapes the famous fountain in Charleston's Waterfront Park?

Pineapple Fountain sits in the middle of the park's grassy lawn, right in front of the City Gallery.

Which 1989 film follows the 54th Massachusetts regiment to its assault on Fort Wagner, outside Charleston?

Glory closes with an epilogue noting that Fort Wagner was never captured, yet the regiment's courage led the Union Army to accept thousands of Black men for combat.

Which World War II aircraft carrier, nicknamed the Fighting Lady, is a museum ship on Charleston Harbor?

USS Yorktown served as the prime recovery ship for Apollo 8 in December 1968 before becoming a museum ship at Patriots Point in 1975.

A 1739 shipment of equipment to Charleston is among the earliest evidence of which sport in America?

Golf gear was sent to a William Wallace in 1739, and Charleston had founded a golf club of its own by 1787.

The Best Friend of Charleston, which made its first run on Christmas Day 1830, was what kind of machine?

A steam locomotive built for regular passenger service, the Best Friend also became the first in the country to suffer a boiler explosion, in June 1831.

Which planned city, founded inland in 1786, replaced Charleston as the capital of its state?

Columbia was laid out because the state's leaders wanted a more centrally located capital than Charleston once independence was won.

Charleston sits in which coastal region, known for its tidal marshes and sea islands?

Lowcountry plantations once grew rich on crops that flourished in the hot subtropical climate, and the region is known for its historic cities.

Which author, once a soldier stationed near Charleston, set his treasure tale The Gold-Bug on Sullivan's Island?

Edgar Allan Poe served at Fort Moultrie from November 1827 to December 1828 and drew on what he saw of the island to recreate the setting.

Which composer spent the summer of 1934 on Folly Island, near Charleston, working on an opera set in the city?

George Gershwin came at the invitation of DuBose Heyward, the Charleston author whose novel the opera was based on.

In December 1860, a convention sitting in Charleston made its state the first to do what?

The vote to secede from the Union was unanimous, 169 to none, and fighting began in Charleston Harbor less than four months later.

An 1865 parade by freed people at a Charleston racecourse has been called the first observance of which holiday?

Memorial Day gained that claim on 1 May 1865, when a parade of 10,000 people honoured 257 Union soldiers buried at the Washington Race Course.

Which Bravo reality series, first aired in 2014, follows the lives of socialites living in Charleston?

Southern Charm proved popular enough for Bravo to order spin-offs set in Savannah and New Orleans.

Which Netflix teen treasure-hunt drama began filming around Charleston in 2019?

Outer Banks shot its first season from May 2019 at locations that included the Morris Island Lighthouse.

Which Revolutionary War guerrilla, nicknamed the Swamp Fox, is honoured by a square in downtown Charleston?

Francis Marion is remembered at Marion Square, which hosts a farmers market on summer Saturdays and several of the city's big festivals.

Which seaside resort near Charleston staged the 2021 PGA Championship, won by Phil Mickelson at the age of fifty?

Kiawah Island's Ocean Course, the work of Pete and Alice Dye, also staged the 1991 Ryder Cup, a contest dubbed the War by the Shore.

Which novelist drew on his cadet years at Charleston's military academy for The Lords of Discipline?

Pat Conroy had been recruited to the school to play basketball, an experience he returned to in his memoir My Losing Season.

Benne wafers, a classic Charleston cookie, take their name from a West African word for which seed?

Sesame first crossed the Atlantic on ships carrying enslaved Africans, who went on to grow the plants in small gardens of their own.

Which dye plant did teenager Eliza Lucas make her colony's second cash crop on a plantation near Charleston?

Indigo took Eliza Lucas three years of failed attempts from 1739, and by 1775 the colony was producing more than a million pounds of it.

Which epic fantasy series did Charleston native James Rigney write under the pen name Robert Jordan?

The Wheel of Time runs to 14 books and a prequel, and after Jordan died in Charleston in 2007 Brandon Sanderson took over the writing.

Which Boeing airliner has its final assembly building in North Charleston, opened in November 2011?

The 787 Dreamliner is assembled and delivered from a building that covers 1.2 million square feet beside Charleston International Airport.

Which enslaved pilot seized the Confederate ship Planter and sailed it out of Charleston Harbor to freedom?

Robert Smalls went into politics once peace came and was elected to the state legislature and then to the United States House of Representatives.

Which so-called Gentleman Pirate, a wealthy landowner turned outlaw, was hanged at Charleston in December 1718?

Stede Bonnet wrote to the governor begging for clemency, but the judge's sentence stood and he went to the gallows on 10 December.

Which Palladian plantation house near Charleston was the only one on its river to survive two wars intact?

Drayton Hall was kept up by seven generations of one family, though an 1886 earthquake and an 1893 hurricane destroyed its flanking outbuildings.

Which general surrendered Charleston in 1780, then formally accepted a British surrender himself the next year?

Benjamin Lincoln was George Washington's second in command when the British general's sword was handed to him, and he then served as secretary at war under the Confederation Congress.

Which Confederate general's guns opened the Civil War in Charleston Harbor against his old West Point instructor?

P. G. T. Beauregard had been taught at West Point in 1837 by Robert Anderson, the major who went on to surrender the fort to him.

Which Charleston lawyer was, at 26, the youngest delegate to sign the Declaration of Independence?

Edward Rutledge built a successful law practice in Charleston and went on to serve as his state's governor.

Charleston patriot Christopher Gadsden designed a famous yellow flag of the Revolution that shows which animal?

A rattlesnake, coiled above a warning not to tread on it, fills the flag; Gadsden, born in Charleston in 1724, was also a general in the Continental Army.

What was the surname of sisters Sarah and Angelina, who left slaveholding Charleston to lecture against slavery?

Grimké sisters Sarah and Angelina were among the first American-born women to make public speaking tours; Sarah left Charleston for good in 1821.

Charleston has the only independent congregation in the United States of which Protestant refugee group?

Huguenots founded the congregation in the 1680s, and its present Gothic Revival building on Church Street was completed in 1845.

Which Charleston-born architect of the city's Fireproof Building went on to design the Washington Monument?

Robert Mills never saw the obelisk finished: it was not dedicated until 1885, thirty years after his death.

Charleston's Ravenel Bridge, hung from two diamond-shaped towers 575 feet high, is which type of bridge?

Cable-stayed means the deck hangs 186 feet above the river from 128 individual cables anchored directly to the towers.

The Charleston Open, a women's tennis tournament on Daniel Island, is played on which surface?

Green clay courts host the event at a tennis centre whose main stadium seats 10,200; the tournament moved to Daniel Island in 2001.

Which fragrant flower is named after a Scottish physician and naturalist who lived for years in Charleston?

Gardenia honours Alexander Garden, who spent his spare hours in Charleston studying plants and animals and sending specimens to Carl Linnaeus.

Which Charleston-born street artist created the 2008 Barack Obama poster built around the single word Hope?

Shepard Fairey came out of the skateboarding scene and went to school in Charleston before finishing high school at an arts academy in California.

Philip Simmons made more than 500 decorative pieces seen across Charleston during seven decades in which craft?

Blacksmithing in Charleston meant horseshoes and household objects when Simmons started out; he turned the trade to ornamental gates, balconies and window grilles.

Which Charleston outlaw, hanged in 1820, is named in local legend as America's first female serial killer?

Lavinia Fisher did belong to a gang of highwaymen working the roads outside Charleston, but historians doubt that she ever killed anyone.

Charleston's Four Corners of Law has a city hall, a county courthouse, a federal courthouse and what else?

A church stands for ecclesiastical law beside the federal, state and local kinds; Robert Ripley coined the nickname in the 1930s.

Which 1739 revolt, the largest by enslaved people in the colonial South, began 20 miles southwest of Charleston?

The Stono Rebellion began when a literate man called Jemmy gathered about twenty followers near the Stono River; the last survivors were beaten a week later.

Charleston's two main rivers are both named after Anthony Ashley Cooper, a Lord Proprietor who held which earldom?

Shaftesbury was the title of the colony's chief Lord Proprietor, and it was the explorer Robert Sandford who put his name on the Ashley.

Which Charleston-born teacher did Martin Luther King Jr. call the Mother of the Movement?

Septima Clark drew on her years of teaching on Johns Island to build the literacy classes that fed the drive for Black voting rights.

Which mayor led Charleston for forty years, from 1975 to 2016, the longest tenure in the city's history?

Joseph Riley was a Charleston native whose forty years in office were also the longest of any mayor in the state when he retired.

Which Lifetime drama, set at the fictional Fort Marshall, was filmed in North Charleston?

Army Wives ran for seven seasons from 2007 to 2013 and opened with the largest series premiere the channel had seen in its 23 years.

In 1931 Charleston became the first American city to give legal protection to what, inspiring New York's later laws?

A historic district protected by local legislation was a national first, and part of the area later became a National Historic Landmark.