15 interesting Alabama Facts
- Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States of America. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west.
- Beginning in the 1950s, the United States space flight program at Redstone Arsenal and George C. Marshall Space Flight Center made Huntsville a leading aerospace center.
- The capital of Alabama is Montgomery, and the largest city by population is Birmingham. The largest city by total land area is Huntsville. The oldest city is Mobile.
- Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland waterways. The state ranks 23rd in population with almost 4.6 million residents in 2006.
- In 1955 a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white passenger. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a successful boycott of the city's public transportation and brought the technique of passive resistance to national prominence.
- From the American Civil War until World War II, Alabama, like many Southern states, suffered economic hardship, in part because of continued dependence on agriculture.
- Total Area: 30th among states, 135,775 sq km (50,744 sq mi).
- Alabama is unofficially nicknamed the Yellowhammer State, after the state bird.
- Alabama is also known as the "Heart of Dixie".
- The first electric trolley streetcars in the United States began operating in 1866 in Montgomery.
- The state tree is the Longleaf Pine, the state flower is the Camellia.
- Workers in Alabama built the first rocket to put humans on the moon.
- Alabama is the only state with all major natural resources needed to make iron and steel.
- Montgomery was the birthplace and capital of the Confederate States of America.
- In 1902, Dr. 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.
