50 Fun Facts About Southern

Which two English surveyors gave the famous line separating Pennsylvania from Maryland its name?

The pair spent four years (1763-1767) laying out the boundary; the line only became shorthand for North versus South decades later, during the Missouri Compromise debates.

Which city was the largest in the American South by population in the 2020 census?

The South has been the fastest-growing region of the country, and Houston has ridden that growth to become its biggest city.

Which writer claimed credit for inventing the term 'Bible Belt'?

The famously acerbic Baltimore journalist used it in a 1924 Chicago Daily Tribune column and, three years later, claimed the coinage as his own.

The Mississippi Delta lies between the Mississippi River and which other river?

Despite the name, the region is not the river's actual delta but an alluvial plain far upstream, built up by ancient floods of both rivers.

Which is the only state that lies entirely within Appalachia?

The Appalachian Regional Commission's map runs from southern New York down to Mississippi and takes in every one of the state's 55 counties.

The Okefenokee Swamp straddles the border of Georgia and which state?

The peat-filled wetland covers about 438,000 acres and in 2026 became Georgia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.

According to one theory, the nickname 'Dixie' may derive from the surname of which person?

Competing theories credit ten-dollar 'dix' banknotes issued by a Louisiana bank, but the surveyor whose line divided free and slave states is one of the leading candidates.

Coca-Cola was first sold, for five cents a glass, at which Atlanta business in May 1886?

Two years later John Pemberton sold the rights to Asa Candler, whose marketing turned a headache tonic into a global brand.

Who came up with the name 'Coca-Cola' and its cursive logo?

Robinson felt the two Cs would look good in advertising; Candler bought the rights in 1888 and turned the tonic into a global brand.

In which Georgia town did the first Waffle House open on Labor Day weekend in 1955?

Founders Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner were neighbors; the chain is now headquartered a few miles away in Norcross.

Which federal agency uses the 'Waffle House Index' as an informal gauge of disaster recovery?

The logic is simple: if a Waffle House is closed, the storm was really bad; if it is open with a limited menu, the area is getting back on its feet.

Boiled peanuts are the official state snack of which state?

Only raw or 'green' peanuts work; fully mature dried peanuts make poor boiled peanuts.

Where did the oldest known recipe for sweet tea appear?

Marion Cabell Tyree's Housekeeping in Old Virginia beat the World's Fair, often wrongly credited with inventing iced tea, by a quarter of a century.

Which soft drink is traditionally paired with a Moon Pie as the 'working man's lunch'?

Chattanooga Bakery says the treat was born when a salesman asked a Kentucky coal miner what he wanted and the miner asked for something 'as big as the moon'.

Pimento cheese, the 'pâté of the South', is famously served as a sandwich at which sporting event?

Ironically the spread was born up North: an early recipe in a 1908 issue of Good Housekeeping called for cream cheese and minced pimentos.

North Alabama's distinctive 'white' barbecue sauce is built on which base?

It is cut with apple cider vinegar, sugar, salt and black pepper and traditionally slathered on smoked chicken.

The mustard-based 'Carolina Gold' barbecue sauce is usually traced to which 18th-century arrivals?

The 18th-century Germans brought their mustard with them; eastern North Carolina, by contrast, keeps things to vinegar and pepper.

By law, bourbon must be made from a grain mixture that is at least what percentage corn?

It must also be aged in new charred oak containers; Congress declared bourbon a 'distinctive product of the United States' in 1964.

Approximately what share of the world's bourbon is distilled in Kentucky?

Bourbon can legally be made anywhere in the U.S., but Kentucky's limestone-filtered water and cooperage tradition keep it overwhelmingly a Bluegrass State product.

Georgia is the world's number one producer of which nut?

The area around Albany in southwest Georgia is the center of production; the trees are native to the South and their nuts go into the region's signature holiday pie.

Tabasco sauce is made on Avery Island in Louisiana, which is actually what kind of geological feature?

Native Americans boiled the island's briny springs for salt long before Edmund McIlhenny bottled his first pepper sauce there in 1868.

Dr Pepper was created in the 1880s by pharmacist Charles Alderton in which Texas city?

Alderton mixed it at Morrison's Old Corner Drug Store, and store owner Wade Morrison was the first customer to approve.

Where did Colonel Sanders open the very first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in 1952?

Sanders had sold chicken from his roadside restaurant in Corbin since the Depression, but franchising began far from home in Utah.

Vernon Rudolph chose Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the first Krispy Kreme in 1937 for what reason?

Rudolph had bought his yeast-raised doughnut recipe from a Louisiana chef and sold hot doughnuts through a window to customers who came by between midnight and 4 a.m.

Cracker Barrel was founded in 1969 in which Tennessee town, where it is still headquartered?

Founder Dan Evins, a Shell Oil representative, conceived it as a way to sell more gasoline at highway exits; every table still has the wooden peg game.

Piggly Wiggly, which opened in Memphis in 1916, is remembered as the first grocery store to do what?

Founder Clarence Saunders also introduced checkout stands and price tags on individual items, and later built the Pink Palace mansion that now houses a replica of the store.

The Southern pronoun 'y'all' is a contraction of which phrase?

The spelling 'you-all' was first recorded in 1824; one theory ties it to the Scots-Irish Ulster Scots phrase 'ye aw'.

Stock car racing, and eventually NASCAR, grew out of which illegal Prohibition-era trade?

Drivers souped up ordinary cars to outrun the law with a trunk full of Appalachian moonshine, then started racing each other for bragging rights and money.

The Grand Ole Opry began in 1925 as a radio program under what name?

Announcer George D. Hay coined the new name in 1927 by joking that after an hour of 'grand opera' the station would now present 'the Grand Ole Opry'.

Congress has formally recognized which city as the 'Birthplace of Country Music'?

The 1927 Bristol sessions, run by talent scout Ralph Peer, produced the first recordings of both Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family.

Jazz originated in the African-American communities of which Southern city?

The word's first documented musical use in the city was a 1916 Times-Picayune article about 'jas bands'.

What was Dollywood called before Dolly Parton bought a stake in 1986?

Herschend, which still co-owns the park with Parton, also runs the original Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri.

Elvis Presley was born in which Mississippi town before his family moved to Memphis?

He was 13 when the family left; his career began at Sun Records in 1954 with producer Sam Phillips.

The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is headquartered in which city?

The SEC was formed in 1932 by 13 members of the Southern Conference; ten of the founding schools are still in it.

What is the traditional drink of the Kentucky Derby?

The 'Run for the Roses' was first held in 1875 and takes about two minutes, which a Churchill Downs president billed as 'The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports'.

Which city claims the oldest official Carnival (Mardi Gras) celebration in the US, from 1703?

Mobile was the capital of French Louisiana at the time; masked balls, parades and floats all appeared there before its more famous neighbor to the west adopted them.

Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, was established in what year?

The Virginia Company called it James Fort; tobacco cultivation from 1612 turned the struggling colony into a money-maker.

Which city was the first Confederate capital, before the government moved to Richmond?

The Alabama State Capitol hosted the Confederate government for less than four months, from February 4 to May 29, 1861.

Robert E. Lee signed the surrender at Appomattox Court House in the parlor of whose house?

McLean had moved to Appomattox to escape the war after the First Battle of Bull Run was fought on his farm at Manassas.

Which Army division did Eisenhower send to escort the Little Rock Nine in 1957?

Eisenhower also federalized all 10,000 members of the Arkansas National Guard, taking them out of Governor Orval Faubus's control.

'Bloody Sunday', March 7, 1965, took place as marchers crossed which Selma, Alabama landmark?

About 600 unarmed marchers were attacked by state troopers; the outcry helped push the Voting Rights Act through Congress that same year.

Virginia is nicknamed the 'Mother of Presidents' because how many U.S. presidents were born there?

Four of the first five presidents were Virginians, though the state has not produced one since Woodrow Wilson.

Jimmy Carter was born in 1924 in which small Georgia town, where he later ran the family farm?

The Naval Academy graduate left the submarine service to take over the family's peanut operation, and later won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for his post-presidential work.

Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha stands in for which real Mississippi place where he lived?

Faulkner was born in New Albany but spent most of his life in Oxford; he won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Which future writer was Harper Lee's childhood friend in Monroeville, Alabama?

The friend is thought to be the model for Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird, which won the Pulitzer Prize a year after publication.

Flannery O'Connor famously raised about 100 of which birds at her Georgia farm, Andalusia?

She wrote about them in an essay called 'The King of the Birds' and used them as symbols throughout her fiction.

The 1991 film Fried Green Tomatoes, based on Fannie Flagg's novel about the Whistle Stop Cafe, was shot in which nearly deserted Georgia town?

Director Jon Avnet found the town while location scouting; the cafe built for the film still serves fried green tomatoes to tourists.

Roughly what share of US grits are bought in the Southern 'grits belt'?

The belt runs from lower Texas to Washington, D.C.; the dish itself came from the Native American Muscogee, who ground maize into porridge long before colonists arrived.

What makes Vidalia onions from Georgia so unusually sweet?

The Vidalia Onion Act of 1986 limits the name to onions grown in a defined set of Georgia counties, and the state made it the official vegetable in 1990.

At 2.66 miles, which Alabama track is the longest oval on the NASCAR schedule?

Built in 1969 in Lincoln, Alabama, its 33-degree banking and tight pack racing make 'The Big One' multi-car pileup a recurring feature.