50 Fun Facts About Wilmington NC

Wilmington sits on which North Carolina river?

Cape Fear: Wilmington stands about 30 miles up the river from the open sea, yet it grew into North Carolina's chief seaport.

Wilmington is the county seat of which county?

New Hanover: the county dates from 1729 and honours the House of Hanover, the German dynasty that had inherited the British throne fifteen years earlier.

Wilmington is named for Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, who went on to hold which British office in 1742?

Prime minister: Compton, a patron of the colony's governor Gabriel Johnston, followed Robert Walpole and is counted as Britain's second holder of the office.

The woman in which famous American painting was born in Wilmington in 1804?

Whistler's Mother: Anna McNeill Whistler was born at Fourth and Orange Streets, and the portrait her son painted in London was later bought by the French government.

The railroad from Wilmington to Weldon, completed in 1840, held what world record?

Longest single rail line: about 161 miles of track, it was meant to run to Raleigh until the capital's citizens declined to buy enough shares.

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

Charlotte: Wilmington had been the state's biggest city, and a majority-Black one, until many Black residents were driven out in 1898 and its lead was gone by the 1910 census.

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

A successful coup d'etat: an armed white mob burned the Black-owned Daily Record, forced the elected mayor and aldermen to resign, and made its own leader mayor the same day.

Which armed horsemen, named for their clothing, rode to intimidate Black voters in North Carolina's 1898 election campaign?

Red Shirts: they rode for the Democratic campaign, and two days after its victory as many as 2,000 white men marched through Wilmington.

Fort Fisher, the Confederate stronghold near Wilmington, was nicknamed the Southern what?

Gibraltar: the walls were heaped earth and sand, which soaked up naval shellfire, and by 1865 it was the largest earthwork fort in the South.

Why was Fort Fisher's fall in January 1865 so damaging to the Confederacy?

It closed the South's last Atlantic port: blockade runners had kept Lee's army supplied through Wilmington, and the city itself fell to Union troops five weeks later.

What is the nickname of the battleship North Carolina, moored as a memorial opposite downtown Wilmington?

Showboat: saved from the scrapyard in 1961, she was towed 30 miles upriver to Wilmington and rammed a floating restaurant on the way to her berth.

Whose small donations helped save the battleship North Carolina from the scrapyard?

Schoolchildren: pupils across the state were asked for ten cents each, and the Save Our Ship campaign raised more than $330,000 to move and berth her.

Over half the 243 vessels built at Wilmington's wartime shipyard were which mass-produced cargo ships?

Liberty ships: the yard launched its first on December 6, 1941, hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and named many of them for famous North Carolinians.

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

Michael Jordan: judged too short for varsity, he starred for the junior varsity instead, grew four inches over the summer and made the team the following year.

Which future Wimbledon champion moved to Wilmington as a teenager to train under local doctor Hubert Eaton?

Althea Gibson: she enrolled at the city's Williston high school while Eaton coached her, and graduated with its class of 1949.

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

Dino De Laurentiis: his 32-acre lot turned Wilmington into an unexpected centre of film and television, and it kept working under new owners after his company collapsed.

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

Firebombing a grocery store: the ten spent years in prison for the 1971 blaze before a federal appeals court threw out the convictions in 1980 over an unfair trial.

Which British general based his army in Wilmington in April 1781 before marching north into Virginia?

Lord Cornwallis: bloodied at Guilford Courthouse, he regrouped in Wilmington for a few weeks, then set off on the march that ended in his surrender at Yorktown.

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

Dawson's Creek: the series turned its filming spots into tourist stops, and 25 years after its debut the local visitors' bureau was still publishing a tour of them.

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

One Tree Hill: set in a fictional North Carolina town, it ran for nine seasons from 2003 and changed network when The WB merged into The CW.

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

Iron Man 3: North Carolina's 25 percent film incentive helped lure Marvel from California, and the finished film took more than $1.2 billion at cinemas around the world.

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

Lumberton: Lynch borrowed the name of a real North Carolina city, and accepted a smaller fee in exchange for the final cut of the film.

Wilmington's spring festival, first held in 1948, is named for which flowering shrub?

Azalea: the first festival crowned a film actress as its queen, and screen stars and musicians have been among its honoured guests in the years since.

In 1765 Wilmington saw the American colonies' first armed resistance to which British tax law?

The Stamp Act: a crowd forced the colony's stamp master to resign on the spot, and the governor ended up keeping the stamps aboard the ship that had brought them.

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

Military headquarters: Union officers moved into a house finished four years earlier by enslaved and free Black craftsmen, one of whom had already escaped to join the Union Navy.

Thalian Hall, Wilmington's 1858 theatre, shares its building with what?

The city government: the 1850s building put the town's offices, a library and an opera house under one roof, and an amateur drama society, the Thalian Association, ran the stage at first.

Which carnivorous plant grows wild only in the coastal bogs and savannas around Wilmington?

The Venus flytrap: its whole natural range is a patch of the Carolina coast, where sandy soil is so poor in nutrients that trapping insects pays.

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

Made poaching it a felony: until then it was a misdemeanor that usually ended in a small fine or court costs, which one conservationist called a slap on the wrist.

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

Wrightsville Beach: the storm lingered for two days of record rain, and floodwater closed the roads until Wilmington was cut off from the rest of the mainland.

Which future US president lived in Wilmington in the 1870s, when his father was pastor of First Presbyterian Church?

Woodrow Wilson: he arrived in 1874 after leaving Davidson College and spent the next year studying at home before going north to Princeton.

UNC Wilmington's sports teams are known as what?

The Seahawks: the school opened in 1947 as Wilmington College, a junior college set up to cope with the rush of veterans coming home from the war.

What is UNC Wilmington's official school colour?

Teal: the university's style guide calls it 'the teal of the ocean' and sets it beside 'the gold of the sand and the navy of the deep sea'.

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.

Visionary artist Minnie Evans worked for many years as the gatekeeper at which Wilmington garden?

Airlie Gardens: Evans said her pictures came to her in dreams and visions, and the gardens now keep a sculpture garden in her memory.

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

David Brinkley: he was already writing for the Wilmington Morning Star while still at high school, long before NBC paired him with Chet Huntley.

Which Wilmington-born quarterback of Filipino descent was the NFL's Most Valuable Player in 1969?

Roman Gabriel: twice an All-American at NC State, he was the first choice of both the Rams and the Raiders in 1962 and spent eleven seasons in Los Angeles.

Which country star was born in Wilmington in 1936?

Charlie Daniels: his family moved around the Carolinas and Georgia as his father looked for work, and Georgia later gave him his biggest hit, 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia'.

Which Harlem Globetrotters star grew up in Wilmington, where newsreels of the team first inspired him?

Meadowlark Lemon: by his own account he made his first hoop from a coat hanger and an onion sack, then spent more than two decades as the Globetrotters' chief showman.

Wilmington's first wartime cargo ship, launched the day before Pearl Harbor, was named for which North Carolina governor?

Zebulon B. Vance: the ship named for the Civil War governor was later bought by the War Department and rebuilt as an Army hospital ship.

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

Carolina and Kure: their Pleasure Island was plain Federal Point, and Confederate Point in the Civil War, when Fort Fisher's guns guarded its tip.

Interstate 40 runs across the country from Wilmington to which western city?

Barstow, California: the road ends in the Mojave Desert where it meets I-15, and the stretch into Wilmington was the last part of the whole route to open, in 1990.

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

Go digital-only: the trial came nine months before the national switch, and regulators chose Wilmington because its stations were already on the digital channels they would keep.

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

The Crow: a fragment of a dummy bullet left in the gun's barrel was fired out by a blank, and the film was finished with a double and digital effects.

Which disease swept Wilmington in 1862 after a blockade runner arrived from Nassau in the Bahamas?

Yellow fever: townspeople blamed the ship, the Kate, because nobody yet knew that mosquitoes carry the disease, and the epidemic ended only when cold weather came in November.

Before it was renamed Wilmington, the settlement had come to be known by which name?

Newton: the place had already been New Carthage and New Liverpool, and its final name flattered an English earl who was the governor's patron.

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

Hollywood East: a 32-acre studio lot opened in 1984, and film and television production grew into one of the city's important industries.

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

World War II Heritage City: a retired Navy captain and local historian campaigned for the title for years, pointing to a home front whose shipyard alone launched 243 vessels.

Which independent film festival, founded by a Wilmington filmmaking collective in 1994, is held in the city every November?

Cucalorus: the collective, Twinkle Doon, launched it with 16 local films in a riverside restaurant, and the queue wrapped around the block.

Which designation, created by Congress in 1998, did Wilmington receive in 2003?

Coast Guard City: Grand Haven in Michigan was the first, and Wilmington kept the title even after its cutter of nearly 30 years, the Diligence, was moved to Florida.

Which future All-Star catcher played for Wilmington's Double-A Roosters in 1995 and 1996?

Jason Varitek: the Roosters were a Seattle Mariners farm club, but Seattle traded him to Boston in 1997 and he went on to catch for two World Series winners there.