Fast facts about Mississippi

  1. The state of Mississippi is located in the Southern United States.
  2. Total Area: 32nd among states, 125,060 sq km (48,286 sq mi)
  3. Jackson is the state capital and largest city.
  4. Mississippi has a larger percentage of black residents than any other state.
  5. The state's name comes from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, and takes its name from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi ("Great River").
  6. Hernando de Soto, a Spanish explorer, discovered the Mississippi River in1540. Spain did not relinquish its claims on the Mississippi region until 1798.
  7. Mississippi is bordered on the north by Tennessee, on the east by Alabama, on the south by Louisiana and a narrow coast on the Gulf of Mexico and on the west, across the Mississippi River, by Louisiana and Arkansas.
  8. Although cotton is the most important crop in Mississippi, corn, peanuts, pecans, rice, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, soybeans, food grains, poultry, eggs, meat animals, dairy products, feed crops and horticultural crops are all important to the state's economy.
  9. Major rivers in Mississippi, apart from its namesake, include the Big Black River, the Pearl River, the Yazoo, the Pascagoula, and the Tombigbee.
  10. In June 1963 Medgar Evers, state field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was shot dead in front of his Jackson home.
  11. In 1891, the Biedenharn Candy Company bottled the first Coca-Cola in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Root beer was invented in Biloxi in 1898 by Edward Adolf Barq, the namesake of Barq's Root Beer.
  12. In 1902 while on a hunting expedition in Sharkey County, President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt refused to shoot a captured bear. This act resulted in the creation of the world-famous teddy bear.
  13. In 1935, the world's first night rodeo held outdoors under electric lights was produced by Earl Bascom and Weldon Bascom in Columbia, Marion County, Mississippi
  14. Nearly 60% of Mississippi is covered by forests, and more than 100 species of trees are found in the state.
  15. Marilyn Monroe won the Miss Mississippi finals in the 1952 movie We're Not Married.
  16. The Mississippi River is the largest in the United States and is the nation's chief waterway. Its nickname is Old Man River.
  17. Several warships have been named USS Mississippi.
  18. The first nuclear submarine built in the south was produced in Mississippi.
  19. The comic book character Rogue, from the well-known series X-Men, is a Mississippian and self-declared southern belle. Her home town is located in the fictional county of Caldecott.
Labels: ,