99 Fun Facts About Louisiana

New Orleans is Louisiana's largest city, but which is its capital?

Baton Rouge took over as capital in 1849, lost the job when Union forces captured the city during the Civil War, and did not get the government back until 1882.

Louisiana is the only U.S. state whose county-equivalent subdivisions are called what?

Parishes are a holdover from colonial days: the colony was officially Catholic and ran local affairs through church parishes, and the name outlasted the empires that drew them.

La Salle named Louisiana in 1682 in honor of which reigning French king?

Louis XIV got the honor when La Salle claimed the Mississippi basin for France; sailing back to settle it, La Salle missed the river's mouth, landed in Texas and was killed by one of his own men.

Napoleon sold Louisiana in 1803 after yellow fever wrecked his army fighting rebels in which present-day country?

Haiti was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue; with his army dying there and war with Britain looming, Napoleon offered American envoys all of Louisiana for $15 million.

Which U.S. president oversaw the Louisiana Purchase?

Thomas Jefferson sent his envoys to buy little more than the port of New Orleans, and he believed the Constitution gave him no power to buy territory, yet he took the whole deal without seeking an amendment.

Which Mardi Gras pastry, iced in purple, green and gold, hides a tiny plastic baby inside?

King cake comes with a job: whoever finds the baby in their slice is expected to buy the next cake or host the next party, which keeps the cakes coming all Carnival season.

Which European power governed Louisiana from 1762 until it was secretly handed back to France in 1800?

Spain left its mark on New Orleans: after great fires in 1788 and 1794 the city was rebuilt in Spanish style, so most of the oldest buildings in the 'French' Quarter are Spanish colonial.

About 80 percent of New Orleans flooded in 2005 when which structures failed during Hurricane Katrina?

Levees and floodwalls gave way as the storm surge arrived, and investigators later held the Army Corps of Engineers, which designed and built them, responsible for the breaches.

Which team did the New Orleans Saints beat in Super Bowl XLIV to win their first championship?

Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning grew up in New Orleans, where his father Archie had starred for the Saints; his late interception, returned 74 yards by Tracy Porter, sealed the 31-17 win.

Which LSU quarterback won the Heisman Trophy in 2019?

Joe Burrow spent two seasons as a backup at Ohio State before transferring to LSU, where he won the Heisman by 1,846 points, beating a record margin O.J. Simpson had held since 1968.

Which Tennessee Williams play follows Blanche DuBois to her sister's cramped apartment in New Orleans?

A Streetcar Named Desire took its title from a real line that ran through the French Quarter; the Desire streetcars stopped running in 1948, months after the play opened.

New Orleans' international airport was renamed in 2001 for the centennial of which musician's birth?

Louis Armstrong told the world he was born on July 4, 1900, but a baptismal record points to August 4, 1901, the date the 2001 renaming honored.

Which stew did Louisiana lawmakers name the official state cuisine in 2004?

Gumbo's name most likely comes from a Central African word for okra, the pod that thickens many versions of the stew.

As of 2018, Louisiana had over 90 percent of America's farms raising which food?

Crawfish farming in America is almost all Louisiana's: 449 of the country's 482 crawfish farms were there in 2018, though by then China was raising most of the world's supply.

Cajuns descend from French colonists the British expelled in the 1750s from which region?

Acadia survives in their name: 'Cajun' is a worn-down pronunciation of 'Acadian', carried to Louisiana by exiles who arrived between 1764 and 1788.

What was populist governor and senator Huey Long's famous nickname?

The Kingfish won the governorship in 1928 on the slogan 'Every man a king', a promise he later took national with his Share Our Wealth plan to redistribute fortunes.

Hurricane Katrina peaked as a Category 5 over the Gulf, but at what strength did it make landfall in Louisiana?

Category 3 winds of about 125 mph came ashore, down from a 175 mph peak the day before, yet Katrina still became the costliest hurricane the United States had seen up to then.

Which city, founded in 1714, is the oldest permanent European settlement in Louisiana?

Natchitoches began as a French trading post four years before New Orleans existed; nearly three centuries later Hollywood arrived to film Steel Magnolias in its streets.

Only two states have a lower highest point than Louisiana's 535-foot Driskill Mountain: Delaware and which other?

Florida's Britton Hill reaches just 345 feet, while Kansas, the flat-state guess, climbs past 4,000 feet at Mount Sunflower.

Onion, bell pepper and which third vegetable make up the 'holy trinity' of Cajun and Creole cooking?

Celery is in the French mirepoix too; in Louisiana's version of that base, it is the bell pepper that took the carrot's place.

Which Louisiana lake is crossed by a 24-mile causeway, Guinness's longest continuous bridge over water?

Lake Pontchartrain's causeway held the plain 'longest bridge over water' title until 2011, when a rival bridge opened in China and Guinness split the record into continuous and aggregate categories.

Unlike the other 49 states, Louisiana's private law is rooted in which legal tradition?

Civil law came to Louisiana with its colonial rulers and stayed after statehood; despite the popular belief, France's Napoleonic Code itself was never in force there, since it was enacted in 1804, a year after the purchase.

By what name is the Louisiana State Penitentiary, America's largest maximum-security prison, known?

Angola takes its name from a slave plantation that once stood on the site, and the prison remains a working farm: inmates still tend crops across its 18,000 acres.

Poverty Point, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northeastern Louisiana, is what kind of place?

A prehistoric earthwork of mounds and curving ridges, Poverty Point was raised more than 3,000 years ago by people who hunted, fished and gathered rather than farmed, yet traded across hundreds of miles.

Which outlaws were ambushed and killed by a posse on a rural Louisiana road in May 1934?

Bonnie and Clyde were tracked to a gang member's family home by retired Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, whose posse hid in roadside bushes before dawn and opened fire when the couple's car appeared.

Which singer signed a one-year contract with Shreveport's Louisiana Hayride radio show in 1954, at the age of 19?

Elvis Presley drew such crowds that after his last Hayride show, in 1956, the announcer had to quiet screaming fans by telling them 'Elvis has left the building', coining the phrase.

Who was the first woman ever elected governor of Louisiana?

Kathleen Blanco started out as a high school teacher; she had been governor for less than two years when Hurricane Katrina struck, and she did not run for a second term.

Whom did Edwin Edwards face in the 1991 runoff remembered for 'Vote for the Crook' stickers?

David Duke, a former Klan leader running as a Republican, was denounced as a racist by President George H. W. Bush; Edwards won with 61 percent, then later spent eight years in federal prison for racketeering.

A 2017 study found coastal Louisiana losing wetlands the size of what every 100 minutes?

A football field every 100 minutes was the slower, recent pace: when losses were at their worst the coast lost one every 34 minutes, about 2,000 square miles of land in all since 1932.

The Battle of New Orleans was fought 15 days after which peace treaty ending the War of 1812 was signed?

The Treaty of Ghent was signed in Belgium on Christmas Eve 1814, but the news was slow to cross the Atlantic; Andrew Jackson's makeshift army, pirates included, then broke the British assault in about half an hour.

Founder Al Copeland said Popeyes was named for detective Popeye Doyle, a character in which 1971 film?

The French Connection gave the chain its second try at a name: Copeland's first shop, Chicken on the Run, failed within months in a New Orleans suburb in 1972, and he reopened it four days later as Popeyes.

What was the 1724 French law regulating slavery in colonial Louisiana called?

The Code Noir let enslaved people marry and barred selling husbands, wives and young children apart, yet it also authorized brutal physical punishments; it shaped Louisiana's slave law into the 1800s.

Avery Island, home of the McIlhenny Company's famous hot sauce, is actually what geological feature?

A salt dome, rock salt pushed up from deep underground, lifts Avery Island above the flat marshes around it, which is why a hill three miles inland is called an island.

During the Saints' 1-15 season in 1980, what did a sportscaster urge fans to wear to games?

Paper bags went over fans' heads as the Saints lost their first 14 games, many lettered with a new team name, the 'Aints'; a first playoff berth did not come until 1987.

When LSU scored late to beat Auburn in 1988, the roar inside Tiger Stadium registered on which campus instrument?

A seismograph in a campus geology building about 1,000 feet away picked up the crowd's roar, and LSU's 7-6 upset has been known as the Earthquake Game ever since.

Shreveport is named for Captain Henry Miller Shreve, who opened the Red River by clearing what?

A giant log jam called the Great Raft had choked the Red River for generations; Shreve broke it up in the 1830s with steam snagboats of his own design, and the port that rose beside the cleared river took his name.

In 1997 Louisiana became the first state to offer couples which optional kind of marriage?

Covenant marriage asks couples to take counseling before the wedding and to accept narrower grounds for divorce; only Arkansas and Arizona have followed Louisiana's lead.

Which pop star, born just across the state line in Mississippi, grew up in the small Louisiana town of Kentwood?

Britney Spears left Kentwood as a child performer for The All-New Mickey Mouse Club, where her castmates included Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling.

The Old River Control Structure keeps the Mississippi River from changing course into which river?

The Atchafalaya River offers a much shorter, steeper path to the Gulf, and the Mississippi was on course to take it; since 1963 Army Corps gates have held the Atchafalaya to about 30 percent of the flow.

Louisiana waited until 1970 to ratify the amendment on what?

Women's suffrage had been the law for 50 years by then: Louisiana's legislature voted the Nineteenth Amendment down in 1920, and the yes it finally gave in 1970 was purely symbolic.

When Louisiana became a state in 1812, the remaining Louisiana Territory was renamed after which future state?

Missouri Territory got its new name in June 1812 so that it would not be confused with the brand-new state; the 33rd parallel that had divided the two since 1804 is still Louisiana's northern border.

When Louisiana's capital left New Orleans in 1849, which institution stayed and is still headquartered there?

The Supreme Court still sits in New Orleans, in a French Quarter courthouse from about 1910 that it left for 46 years and moved back into in 2004 after a long renovation.

A 2006 law requiring three drops of blood on the pelican of Louisiana's flag followed whose complaint?

An eighth-grade student in Houma noticed that flags and seals often left off the three drops of blood the mother pelican draws to feed her chicks, and he told his legislator, whose bill put them back.

Huey Long was fatally shot in 1935 inside which building, opened three years earlier at his urging?

The State Capitol, a 34-story tower that is still the tallest capitol in the country, became his monument: Long is buried in its gardens beneath a bronze statue of himself.

What name has LSU's live tiger mascot, kept in a habitat on campus, carried since 1936?

Mike was bought from a zoo with 25 cents collected from every student; the cub arrived named Sheik and was renamed for Mike Chambers, the athletic trainer who led the effort.

Which man was one of the first Black governors in U.S. history, serving Louisiana during Reconstruction?

P.B.S. Pinchback governed for about five weeks over the winter of 1872-73; whether he or Oscar Dunn, who filled in as acting governor a year earlier, was the very first is still argued.

One theory traces 'zydeco' to a Louisiana French phrase saying which food 'aren't salted'?

Green beans, 'les haricots', are the theory's root: said quickly in Louisiana French the words sound like 'zydeco', and saying the beans had no salt was a way of saying times were hard.

Saint Malo, Louisiana, possibly America's first Asian settlement, was founded by deserters from ships sailing from where?

The Philippines gave the village its 'Manila men', sailors said to have jumped ship from the Manila galleons; their fishing village lasted until a hurricane destroyed it in 1915.

Which Disney animated film is set in 1920s New Orleans and features a trumpet-playing alligator?

The Princess and the Frog drew its heroine partly from life: Tiana, the waitress who dreams of her own restaurant, was inspired by Leah Chase, the chef behind the New Orleans landmark Dooky Chase.

Bourbon Street in New Orleans, laid out by a French engineer in 1721, takes its name from what?

A royal house: Adrien de Pauger, the engineer who drew the city's street plan, picked the name to honor France's rulers, the House of Bourbon.

Which major U.S. airline grew out of a crop-dusting company based in Monroe, Louisiana, in the 1920s?

Delta Air Lines began as Huff Daland Dusters, the world's first aerial crop-dusting outfit, which sprayed cotton fields against the boll weevil. Its head office stayed in Monroe until 1941.

What is hidden inside a New Orleans king cake, obliging whoever finds it to supply the next one?

A plastic baby, standing for the infant Jesus, is tucked into the cake. Louisiana traditionally serves king cake from Epiphany until Carnival ends.

Which restaurant chain, named for its founder's yellow Labrador, first opened beside LSU in 1996?

Raising Cane's honors founder Todd Graves's dog, Cane. The business plan behind it had earned only a B-minus when it was handed in for a college course.

Louisiana pays trappers a bounty per tail for which orange-toothed South American rodent?

Nutria escaped from Louisiana fur farms in the 1930s and now chew through coastal marsh, so since 2002 the state has paid registered hunters for every tail they turn in.

In its best-known origin story, the po' boy sandwich was handed out free in 1929 New Orleans to whom?

Striking transit workers were fed for free by Benny and Clovis Martin, former conductors turned restaurant owners, who are said to have greeted each one as another poor boy.

Which bathroom-cabinet staple is credited to New Orleans dentist Levi Parmly, who promoted it in 1819?

Dental floss began as the waxed silk thread Parmly told patients to run between their teeth, though nobody sold it commercially until 1882.

Which six-year-old, escorted by federal marshals, integrated William Frantz Elementary in New Orleans in 1960?

Ruby Bridges spent that year as the only child in her class, because white parents pulled their children out and just one teacher agreed to stay and teach her.

The French phrase 'Mardi Gras', which names the last day of Louisiana's Carnival, translates literally as what?

Fat Tuesday is the last chance for rich, fatty food before the Lenten fast begins. Louisiana made the day a legal state holiday in 1875.

Café du Monde in New Orleans' French Market is famous for serving which pastry under heaps of powdered sugar?

Beignets at the café are square doughnuts with no hole, sold in orders of three. The business began as a simple coffee stand in 1862.

The National WWII Museum is in New Orleans because which local boatbuilder made the D-Day landing craft?

Andrew Higgins based the landing craft on shallow boats built for swamps and marshes, and Eisenhower later said the man had won the war for the Allies.

Which future Union general ran the military academy that became LSU, resigning when Louisiana seceded in 1861?

William T. Sherman was the school's first superintendent, and after the Confederate surrender he donated two cannons to his old academy.

Which reality series followed the Robertson family's hunting-call business in West Monroe, Louisiana?

Duck Dynasty grew out of Duck Commander, the call that family patriarch Phil Robertson invented before founding his company in 1973.

Which BP-leased rig exploded off the Louisiana coast in 2010, causing history's largest accidental marine oil spill?

Deepwater Horizon was drilling the Macondo well when a blowout killed 11 crew, and oil then flowed into the Gulf for 87 days before the wellhead was capped.

New Orleans coffee is traditionally blended with the roasted root of which plant, a habit born of 1860s shortages?

Chicory stretched scarce coffee when Union blockades cut off the port, and the city kept the taste: it gives café au lait an almost chocolate flavor.

Which three colors, proclaimed by the Rex organization in 1872, are the official colors of New Orleans Mardi Gras?

Purple, green and gold were given meanings twenty years later, when Rex declared that the three stood for justice, faith and power.

Which French leader, facing renewed war with Britain, sold the vast Louisiana Territory to the United States?

Napoleon Bonaparte gave up on an American empire after his army failed to crush the revolt in Saint-Domingue, the colony that became Haiti.

Which pirate and smuggler, based at Barataria Bay, helped defend New Orleans against the British in 1815?

Jean Lafitte offered his men in exchange for a legal pardon, only months after a U.S. naval raid on his base had captured most of his fleet.

Which 'separate but equal' ruling began when a New Orleans man deliberately sat in a whites-only rail car in 1892?

Plessy v. Ferguson was a planned test case: a citizens' committee recruited Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white, to challenge Louisiana's Separate Car Act.

Which hair-care pioneer, born on a Louisiana plantation in 1867, became a famous self-made millionaire?

Madam C. J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, was the first child in her family born into freedom. Guinness records her as America's first woman to become a self-made millionaire.

Which 19th-century New Orleans hairdresser became famous as the city's 'Voodoo Queen'?

Marie Laveau's tomb became a shrine: by a decades-old custom, wish-seekers drew three Xs on it, turned around three times and knocked.

In a New Orleans jazz funeral, what name is given to the crowd that follows the brass band, dancing?

The second line twirls parasols and waves handkerchiefs as it dances behind the band, and the custom has outgrown funerals to become a parade in its own right.

Which New Orleans thoroughfare carries the world's oldest continuously operating streetcars, running since 1835?

St. Charles Avenue's streetcars run on one of only two street railways named National Historic Landmarks, the other being San Francisco's cable cars.

Which New Orleans stadium, home of the NFL's Saints, became a 'shelter of last resort' during Hurricane Katrina?

The Superdome housed thousands of people in 2005, then was repaired in time for the Saints' 2006 home opener, when U2 played before kickoff.

Which 1853 memoir by Solomon Northup recounts being kidnapped and sold to plantations in Louisiana?

Twelve Years a Slave was rediscovered in the 1960s by two Louisiana historians, who retraced Northup's journey and published an annotated edition.

Which rock and roll pioneer from Ferriday, Louisiana, pounded the piano under the nickname 'The Killer'?

Jerry Lee Lewis first played piano alongside two cousins who also became famous: country singer Mickey Gilley and televangelist Jimmy Swaggart.

Which New Orleans pianist, famous for Blueberry Hill, was rescued from his flooded Ninth Ward home in 2005?

Fats Domino had stayed put in the Lower Ninth Ward partly because his wife was in poor health, and a Coast Guard helicopter lifted him to safety.

Which New Orleans rapper, signed to Cash Money Records as a boy, released the Tha Carter album series?

Lil Wayne used to leave freestyle raps on the label co-founder's answering machine as a boy. His sixth album later sold over a million copies in its first week.

Which New Orleans-born trumpeter became the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, in 1997?

Wynton Marsalis won for his oratorio Blood on the Fields. He is one of six sons of the New Orleans pianist and music teacher Ellis Marsalis.

Which legal red-light district of New Orleans, open from 1897 to 1917, gave early jazz musicians steady work?

Storyville took its nickname from Sidney Story, the alderman who wrote the ordinance, though his aim had been to confine vice to a single district.

Which hand-painted item is the signature 'throw' of the Zulu krewe at New Orleans Mardi Gras?

A coconut became Zulu's throw because its working men could not afford the costly glass necklaces other krewes tossed, and coconuts from the French Market were cheap.

In the rural Courir de Mardi Gras of Cajun Louisiana, masked riders famously chase which live animal?

A chicken is the prize ingredient the riders beg for a communal pot, and it is usually thrown into the air for them to chase through muddy yards and fields.

In Cajun folklore, the rougarou said to prowl Louisiana's swamps is what kind of creature?

A werewolf: the name is a local twist on the French loup-garou, and in one telling the curse falls on anyone who breaks Lent seven years in a row.

Gonzales, Louisiana, holds a yearly festival as the self-styled world capital of which Creole and Cajun dish?

Jambalaya earned the town its title in 1968, when Governor McKeithen proclaimed it at the very first Jambalaya Festival.

Which Louisiana lake drained like a bathtub in 1980 after an oil rig's drill pierced a mine beneath it?

Peigneur emptied through a whirlpool that swallowed the drilling platform, eleven barges and a tugboat. Days later, nine of the barges popped back up to the surface.

Which flambéed dessert was created at Brennan's in New Orleans in 1951 and named for a friend of the owner?

Bananas Foster honors Richard Foster, who chaired the New Orleans Crime Commission, and it reworked a dish from the Brennan family's own kitchen.

Which round sandwich, layered with olive salad, was reputedly created at Central Grocery in New Orleans in 1906?

Muffuletta was first the name of a round Sicilian sesame bread; grocer Salvatore Lupo, a Sicilian immigrant, is said to have turned it into the sandwich.

Which rye whiskey drink, served in an absinthe-rinsed glass, became New Orleans' official cocktail in 2008?

Sazerac is usually made in New Orleans with Herbsaint, an anise liqueur, because absinthe was absent from the American market from 1912 until 2007.

Filé powder, stirred into Louisiana stews as a thickener, is made from the dried leaves of which tree?

Sassafras leaves and stems are harvested young and ground to make the seasoning, which thickens a stew in place of okra.

The word 'bayou', for Louisiana's slow-moving waterways, comes via French from which Native American language?

Choctaw bayuk meant a small stream. Louisiana French speakers borrowed the word, and it had reached American English by 1766.

Which bird artist, who worked on Birds of America in Louisiana, gives his name to a New Orleans zoo and park?

John James Audubon created or began 32 of the paintings at Oakley Plantation, where he was employed to teach drawing to the owners' young daughter.

Which comic novel set in New Orleans won John Kennedy Toole a Pulitzer Prize years after his death?

A Confederacy of Dunces reached print only because Toole's mother found a smeared carbon copy of the manuscript and championed it; it came out eleven years after he died.

Which novelist, born in New Orleans in 1941, created the vampire Lestat in her Vampire Chronicles?

Anne Rice was christened Howard Allen Frances O'Brien after her father, and became Anne on her first day of school, when a nun asked her name.

For most of the 20th century, a federal hospital at Carville, Louisiana, treated patients with which disease?

Leprosy patients at Carville lived on what had been a sugar plantation, and from 1941 they published The STAR, a newspaper that won readers around the world.

NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans built which part of every Space Shuttle, shipping it by barge?

The external tank went by barge to Florida. Its orange color is bare spray-on foam: only the first two tanks were painted white.

Henry Hub, a trading point in Erath, Louisiana, sets the benchmark American price for which commodity?

Natural gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange are priced at the hub, a meeting point of pipelines named for the Henry hamlet of Erath.

Which politician, elected governor of Louisiana in 2007, was the first Indian American to lead a U.S. state?

Bobby Jindal remained the country's only Indian American governor until Nikki Haley took office in South Carolina in 2011.

Which Longfellow heroine is honored in St. Martinville, Louisiana, by an oak tree and a statue modeled on a film star?

Evangeline's statue was posed for by Dolores del Río, star of a 1929 film of the poem, and the film's cast and crew gave it to the town.

Which New Orleans university, founded by Saint Katharine Drexel, is America's only historically Black Catholic one?

Xavier was founded by Katharine Drexel, a nun from a wealthy Philadelphia banking family who funded schools for Black and Native American children. She was canonized in 2000.

Which country star, born in Delhi, Louisiana, learned at age 11 that his father was a famous baseball pitcher?

Tim McGraw stumbled on his birth certificate as a boy, and his mother then told him about Tug McGraw, a star pitcher for the Mets and Phillies.