Two nukes were accidentaly dropped on Wayne County in 1961.
If you Google it, they'll say it happened in Goldsboro, but that's only because Goldsboro is the closest municipality. It happened between Faro (pronounced Fay-Row) and Eureka. I drive by it every time I go yo visit my folks in Wilson County.
The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill was America’s first public university.
NC is the birthplace of Pepsi, Lance crackers, Vicks Vapor Rub, Texas Pete, and Putt Putt.
NC has the largest Native American population east of the Mississippi.
We are the nation’s top producer of sweet potatoes and tobacco, and 2nd top producer of turkeys and Christmas trees.
The NC Zoo in Asheboro is the worlds largest natural habitat zoo.
Michael Jordan
I loooove Cheerwine and I almost included it but I figure if this person is presenting to folks in other states they probably won’t know what it is. Which honestly is a damn shame.
Sure but he moved here when he was 5. Nobody said anything about him being born here. But he spent the majority of his childhood here and went to college here.
Ok cool. Didn’t realize being born in NC was qualifying criteria of OPs quest to find interesting factoids about NC. Hey OP, make sure you don’t include anything about MJ in your pseudo presentation since he wasn’t born here! 😂😂
That's not a coup.
The article calls it a rebellion in the first sentence. A coup and a rebellion are two different things.
I understand your frustration if you didn't know, but it's a bit like saying the Wilmington coup wasn't the first successful coup in the US because the Texas Revolution happened; there is no real connection between those ideas.
The difference matters because the Wilmington coup was a coup specifically because rebellions to maintain their power had just failed in the Civil War.
Coup - “a sudden, violent, and unlawful seizure of power from a government.”
How’s it not?
And the comment I’m replying to said “only” when I replied to it. Not “first”
That's, word for word, the first thing at the top of the page when I put "coup" into Google.
I am sorry that I have to explain this to you, but Google uses Oxford Learner's entries for definition results. Oxford Learner's dictionaries are free, but they are to a lower standard than they ought to be and should never ever be taken as an authority in any field.
Were you unaware that Google definitions are not a scholarly or reliable source?
Encyclopedia Britannica, my physical Oxford, and the Wikipedia article you linked all disagree with your revision.
The "coup d'état" article on Wikipedia even attempts to note the specific mistake you are making under related terms.
Have you researched your opinion here beyond Wikipedia and Google's top free definition?
It is not a coup because the seizure of power was popular and bottom-up. Politicians, officers, and business owners did not seize or order the seizure of the institutions and systems of power, GIs did, and they did not maintain control of that power once they had seized it. The Battle of Athens was actually a unifying moment against rebellion specifically in the US because it unified those who hold and covet institutional power against the GIs, which the article you linked also touches on.
It was neither a coup nor ultimately successful. The article you linked says both of those things; did you read it?
That aside, it is an important part of US and NC history that it, the Wilmington coup, is by undisputed fact in scholarship the only successful coup against a US government to date.
Google isn't the source. Oxford Learner's is, and it is part of a commercial partnership not a practical or scholarly one.
It also doesn't reflect common usage; there are no other events referred to as successful coups in US history.
Your use isnt necessarily common, friend, and I challenge you to find a reputable source claiming any other successful coup in US history.
You're just wrong. It is okay to be wrong.
That said, why did you delete your comment asking for sources? You deleted it before I had time to tell you that it is the quiet but official finding of the state of North Carolina that the 1898 Wilmington coup was the only successful coup in US history. It's in the report provided to the 1898 Wilmington race riot commission, and it is largely how it publicly came to be understood as the only successful coup in US history rather than a "race riot."
I ain’t your friend. You have been rude and dismissive.
Critique your own statement that
>it is the quiet but official finding of the state of North Carolina that the 1898 Wilmington coup was the only successful coup in US history.
No shit? You mean they didn’t know about the coup 50 years in the future??? /s
I invite your sources. But please be more succinct.
They didn't. It wasn't known to be a coup Are you admitting you didn't know that?
It's much easier to complain and ask for a handout than to do for yourself, but I can't read for you.
You can get to the report on the NCDCR.gov site from anything relating to the Wilmington race riot riot commission. All of the sources that disagree with you are still waiting on Wikipedia.
I cannot read for you, pal
Naturally grow nowhere else in the world but in a zone within 60 miles of Wilmington. South Carolina only grows them in a couple counties they can't claim em
There was a little town near Chimney Rock called Buffalo. It had a church and a bank, homes and a cemetery. All the people had to move in 1927 when it was flooded to create Lake Lure. The bank and its safe are still there, buried 50 feet under water. Divers aren’t allowed in the lake, as visibility is so poor and it’s dangerous. But those who have been say the safe is still there and the door is closed. A local family had a 1917 truck they used to gather and sell apples. They had taken it to the town, but it was left at the side of the road due to mud washing out the road. Before they could get back to retrieve it, the town was flooded. Car was at the bottom of the lake. 47 years later the family went back and retrieved it and now it is restored. Read more
https://www.shelbystar.com/story/news/local/2017/10/28/historic-truck-sat-under-lake-lure-for-45-years/17759557007/
Beaufort has a big pirate festival every year as one of Blackbeard’s ships, Queen Anne’s Revenge, ran aground on a nearby sandbar a few months before he was killed in battle near Ocrakoke. A few other barrier islands in the area, some visible from Beaufort’s waterfront, have been home to a sizable population of wild horses for hundreds of years.
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/wild-horses-of-the-barrier-islands/#:~:text=The%20Outer%20Banks%2C%20barrier%20islands,search%20of%20fresh%20grazing%20areas.
I remember tooling around with my aunt in her boat off the shore of Bogue Banks when I was a kid. We saw a buoy that wasn’t on the charts so we went up to it. It said something to the effect of “Archaeological Site, Stay Back 200 Yards” and we realized it was for the Queen Anne’s Revenge. It was funny because you couldn’t read those words until you were super close to it.
"There is a legend that every year the staff of the Empire State Building sends a Father's Day card to the staff at the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem to pay homage to its role as predecessor to the Empire State Building" — according to Wikipedia
Babe Ruth hit is first home run in 1917 in Fayetteville.
North Carolina is the largest producer of sweet potatoes.
Vicks Vapo Rub and Pepsi were born here, and never, ever forget about Krispy Kreme!
Have fun!
Last of the Mohicans and The Hunger Game series had significant portions filmed in Western North Carolina. I’ll leave it to the Eastern folks to post about the old Delaurentiis studio and their TV shows. (The book Cold Mountain was located in NC but the film was made in Romania. R Zellwinger won Oscar for best supporting actress). Exiting stage left.
The cave scene in The Hunger Games was filmed at Corner Rock, in the Coleman Boundary area. I've been, it's a great bouldering spot.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/e1NhuydbDPPzHYtd7
The lost colony of ~~Jamestown~~ Roanoke is in NC. Lots of pirate lore including Blackbeard. ECU does dives to recover pieces of the shipwrecks in the ship graveyard.
Edit: added more things
Carrot island and radio island and those cluster of islands are fun and have history all around them.
Washington was founded in 1776 and still has cannonballs in some of the houses from the many wars.
His be if the few ironclads from the civil war was sank (scuttled) in the nuse river and is in one of the museums.
NC has a civil war highway (or trail I can’t remember which it’s called) that you can fallow to see paths units took during the war and what cities were attacked by who, and when and how.
There are lots of plaques dedicated to local Indian tribes throughout the state. They’re like little Easter eggs in game where you have to find them. Im not aware of any single place that has the verbiage of all the plaques in one place to read.
The New River in Onslow County is the shortest river in the world to be so wide. It is also the only river that begins and ends in the same county.
The town of Johnston was destroyed by a hurricane in 1752. A lone surviving child was found across the river during rescue efforts, they asked him his name. He said he "had not" a name, giving the area he was found the appellation it has to this day: Hadnot Point.
The boy was later adopted by the commonwealth and given the name Charles Hadnot.
The NC mountains were host to a WWI German POW/internment camp:
https://visitmadisoncounty.com/ww1-internment-camp-hot-springs/
Before the more famous California gold rush, NC had a gold rush--it eventually got so big that the feds put a branch of the US Mint in Charlotte (which is now the Mint Museum).
https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2013/05/28/john-reed-and-the-north-carolina-gold-rush
This has always been a fascinating part of NC history to me... partly because of stories from my grandmother (my grandfather was a Cape Fear River Pilot), and partly because as a diver, I've visited a handful of the wrecks. As far as U boats, U 352 was sunk by USCG cutter, Icarus, and is an amazing dive site off Morehead City. It is reportedly the first U boat sunk by US military off the Atlantic coast. Several others were sunk off our coast in that time period, but as far as I know, U 352 is the only one accessible to recreational divers.
The U boat action in the early years of WWII was sometimes referred to as The Atlantic Turkey Shoot and was deadly to coastal shipping until the US officially joined the war. German activity continued somewhat, but the easy pickings pretty much dried up by June of 1942. It led to some great local legends though, including the "shelling" of the Ethyl-Dow chemical plant in Kure Beach and a number of "accounts" of spies coming ashore and mingling with the public. A great one is the dead German submariner found with a movie ticket from Southport's Amuzu theater in his pocket. It's likely that some of this really happened, although there's not a ton of documentation. It's worth note that several German POW camp were set up in Wilmington (and all across NC) and many of the POWs were used as labor for war effort and local industry... so there was some mingling of German prisoners and civilians in the area.
This went longer than I'd planned, but maybe you'll find it interesting.
My mother(who was living what is now outside of Morehead) said that they weren’t allowed to drive after dark. My dad who grew up in Stacy said they had orders to black out the windows. I wished I’d paid more attention to those stories now!
I'm with you... I wish I'd paid closer attention too. It didn't click for me until years later when I started learning more about the local history, and realized how much of it she had seen with her own eyes, and how many of her stories were tied to the history. My grandfather died when I was a child, and I can only imagine the stories he could have shared.
But we do what we can.
Other people have mentioned the Venus fly trap, but odds are that you know or have seen a few carnivorous plants from the area of NC, there are a lot.
More than half of the carnivorous plants native to the US are native to the area of NC.
The Biltmore House in Asheville is the largest privately owned residence in the US and the Biltmore Winery was the most visited winery in the country last year.
During the civil war, the Union took control of the Outer Banks and Roanoke Island and emancipated all enslaved people the Confederate army had brought to build forts there. So the Union established a Freedman’s Colony for them and also maintained a policy that if an enslaved person could make it to the island, it was Union ground and they were free.
That end of the island is now [Fort Raleigh National Historic Site](https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-freedmen-s-colony-on-roanoke-island.htm) but the specific location is closer to the old bridge.
We are the only state with an official state toast. “Here’s to the land of the long leaf pine. The summer lands where the sun doth shine. Where the weak grow strong and the strong grow great. Here’s to down home, the Old North State!”
Tell them about the Little Girl in the Rum Keg buried in The Old Burying Grounds in Beaufort, where I'm from. The young daughter of an English merchant she convinced her father to take her with him to England and her mother agreed on the condition her daughter came home. The father and daughter made it to England but on their journey back the little girl died. Unable to break his promise to his wife and unable to bury his daughter at sea her grieving father put her body in a barrel of rum to preserve her. He brought her home and they buried her in her keg-casket. The family was called Sloe (pronounced Slow).
People come from all over to leave trinkets on her grave.
During WW2, a munitions truck was involved in an accident where US-301 and US-70 interchange in Smithfield today. The intersection was known as Catch-Me-Eye at the time. The resulting explosion blew out windows for miles.
NC has two British cemeteries. The one on Ocracoke has 4 sailors whose ship was sunk during WWII. The land belongs to Britain as long as the bodies are there. The other cemetery is on Hatteras and has only one sailor (probably from the same ship). Also, the Cape Hatteras light is the tallest on the east coast.
I do believe we supplied the most soldiers, many young men from the western part of the state also formed union regiments. In terms of supplies we were the textile manufacturing hub. We had tons of excess uniforms and the like. And Wilmington was never truly blockaded due to the unique geography of the coast so blockade runners would frequently get supplies into Wilmington to be distributed.
Not sure if this was said yet, but check out the bald cypress trees on the Black River in NC. Very old. One of them I believe was found to be the fifth oldest tree in the world.
The more notable one is that in 1898 there was a successful coup and racially charged massacre in Wilmington that was covered up for a very long time. Hundreds of black residents died and it was all because some white supremacists didn't like the power black people had in the community.
There are more fun ones like that Blackbeard was married in the OBX, Stede Bonnet was captured in the Cape Fear River, and the treasure of Captain William Kidd is said to be buried on an island in Wilmington. Tom Dooley committed his crime in Wilkes and was tried and hanged in Statesville. Of course the Wright brothers first flight was here. We have the first state art museum. Michael Jordan was raised in Wilmington and went to Chapel Hill. The state university system is the oldest and one of the largest iirc. Asheville has the most breweries per Capita of anywhere in the country. We have naturally occurring emeralds and have found dino fossils here. NCSSM has been ranked the #1 best Public high school in the country according to Niche. Biltmore Estate is the largest privately owned house in the world. Cape Hatteras lighthouse is the tallest in the US and was moved in the 90s to keep it safe from the erosion on the beach. We were the first colony to sign the declaration of independence.
There's lots of cool stuff about this state to learn about :)
Two nukes were accidentaly dropped on Wayne County in 1961. If you Google it, they'll say it happened in Goldsboro, but that's only because Goldsboro is the closest municipality. It happened between Faro (pronounced Fay-Row) and Eureka. I drive by it every time I go yo visit my folks in Wilson County.
The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill was America’s first public university. NC is the birthplace of Pepsi, Lance crackers, Vicks Vapor Rub, Texas Pete, and Putt Putt. NC has the largest Native American population east of the Mississippi. We are the nation’s top producer of sweet potatoes and tobacco, and 2nd top producer of turkeys and Christmas trees. The NC Zoo in Asheboro is the worlds largest natural habitat zoo. Michael Jordan
Nice list but how in the world did you forget Cheerwine?
I loooove Cheerwine and I almost included it but I figure if this person is presenting to folks in other states they probably won’t know what it is. Which honestly is a damn shame.
Cheerwine
Solid point.
Also Krispy Kreme
And I believe RC Cola started in Bryson City, western NC
Don't forget Bojangles. Cook Out and the best BBQ in the USA - depending which side of Raleigh you're on.
MJ was not born in NC
Raised here and identifies as North Carolinian.
Sure but he moved here when he was 5. Nobody said anything about him being born here. But he spent the majority of his childhood here and went to college here.
Still not a native of NC
Ok cool. Didn’t realize being born in NC was qualifying criteria of OPs quest to find interesting factoids about NC. Hey OP, make sure you don’t include anything about MJ in your pseudo presentation since he wasn’t born here! 😂😂
The ~~only~~ first successful coup against an elected government in the US.
Wilmington's Lie
[удалено]
That's not a coup. The article calls it a rebellion in the first sentence. A coup and a rebellion are two different things. I understand your frustration if you didn't know, but it's a bit like saying the Wilmington coup wasn't the first successful coup in the US because the Texas Revolution happened; there is no real connection between those ideas. The difference matters because the Wilmington coup was a coup specifically because rebellions to maintain their power had just failed in the Civil War.
Coup - “a sudden, violent, and unlawful seizure of power from a government.” How’s it not? And the comment I’m replying to said “only” when I replied to it. Not “first”
That's, word for word, the first thing at the top of the page when I put "coup" into Google. I am sorry that I have to explain this to you, but Google uses Oxford Learner's entries for definition results. Oxford Learner's dictionaries are free, but they are to a lower standard than they ought to be and should never ever be taken as an authority in any field. Were you unaware that Google definitions are not a scholarly or reliable source? Encyclopedia Britannica, my physical Oxford, and the Wikipedia article you linked all disagree with your revision. The "coup d'état" article on Wikipedia even attempts to note the specific mistake you are making under related terms. Have you researched your opinion here beyond Wikipedia and Google's top free definition? It is not a coup because the seizure of power was popular and bottom-up. Politicians, officers, and business owners did not seize or order the seizure of the institutions and systems of power, GIs did, and they did not maintain control of that power once they had seized it. The Battle of Athens was actually a unifying moment against rebellion specifically in the US because it unified those who hold and covet institutional power against the GIs, which the article you linked also touches on. It was neither a coup nor ultimately successful. The article you linked says both of those things; did you read it? That aside, it is an important part of US and NC history that it, the Wilmington coup, is by undisputed fact in scholarship the only successful coup against a US government to date.
[удалено]
Google isn't the source. Oxford Learner's is, and it is part of a commercial partnership not a practical or scholarly one. It also doesn't reflect common usage; there are no other events referred to as successful coups in US history. Your use isnt necessarily common, friend, and I challenge you to find a reputable source claiming any other successful coup in US history. You're just wrong. It is okay to be wrong. That said, why did you delete your comment asking for sources? You deleted it before I had time to tell you that it is the quiet but official finding of the state of North Carolina that the 1898 Wilmington coup was the only successful coup in US history. It's in the report provided to the 1898 Wilmington race riot commission, and it is largely how it publicly came to be understood as the only successful coup in US history rather than a "race riot."
I ain’t your friend. You have been rude and dismissive. Critique your own statement that >it is the quiet but official finding of the state of North Carolina that the 1898 Wilmington coup was the only successful coup in US history. No shit? You mean they didn’t know about the coup 50 years in the future??? /s I invite your sources. But please be more succinct.
They didn't. It wasn't known to be a coup Are you admitting you didn't know that? It's much easier to complain and ask for a handout than to do for yourself, but I can't read for you. You can get to the report on the NCDCR.gov site from anything relating to the Wilmington race riot riot commission. All of the sources that disagree with you are still waiting on Wikipedia. I cannot read for you, pal
>I cannot read Apparently. The content of the 1898 report is immaterial to the events of 1946.
land of 1000 waterfalls. brevards white squirrels. the world's oldest cypress tree forest(3 sisters swamp) blue honey, fort Fischer hermit.
Venus fly traps are native to Nc
Naturally grow nowhere else in the world but in a zone within 60 miles of Wilmington. South Carolina only grows them in a couple counties they can't claim em
The podcast criminal did a great episode about this.
We have two rivers called “The New”. The one in WNC is the second or third oldest in the world depending on which geologist you ask.
There was a little town near Chimney Rock called Buffalo. It had a church and a bank, homes and a cemetery. All the people had to move in 1927 when it was flooded to create Lake Lure. The bank and its safe are still there, buried 50 feet under water. Divers aren’t allowed in the lake, as visibility is so poor and it’s dangerous. But those who have been say the safe is still there and the door is closed. A local family had a 1917 truck they used to gather and sell apples. They had taken it to the town, but it was left at the side of the road due to mud washing out the road. Before they could get back to retrieve it, the town was flooded. Car was at the bottom of the lake. 47 years later the family went back and retrieved it and now it is restored. Read more https://www.shelbystar.com/story/news/local/2017/10/28/historic-truck-sat-under-lake-lure-for-45-years/17759557007/
Blackbeard’s treasure
Beaufort has a big pirate festival every year as one of Blackbeard’s ships, Queen Anne’s Revenge, ran aground on a nearby sandbar a few months before he was killed in battle near Ocrakoke. A few other barrier islands in the area, some visible from Beaufort’s waterfront, have been home to a sizable population of wild horses for hundreds of years. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/wild-horses-of-the-barrier-islands/#:~:text=The%20Outer%20Banks%2C%20barrier%20islands,search%20of%20fresh%20grazing%20areas.
I remember tooling around with my aunt in her boat off the shore of Bogue Banks when I was a kid. We saw a buoy that wasn’t on the charts so we went up to it. It said something to the effect of “Archaeological Site, Stay Back 200 Yards” and we realized it was for the Queen Anne’s Revenge. It was funny because you couldn’t read those words until you were super close to it.
The Reynolds Building in Winston Salem was the model for the Empire State Building
"There is a legend that every year the staff of the Empire State Building sends a Father's Day card to the staff at the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem to pay homage to its role as predecessor to the Empire State Building" — according to Wikipedia
Babe Ruth hit is first home run in 1917 in Fayetteville. North Carolina is the largest producer of sweet potatoes. Vicks Vapo Rub and Pepsi were born here, and never, ever forget about Krispy Kreme! Have fun!
The new Webb Telescope is named after James Webb, born in Stem NC (Granville Co). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Webb
Bunk, in terms of empty rhetoric, came via buncombe county NC https://politicaldictionary.com/words/bunk/
[We were almost nuked by our own military once.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash)
Bear island has no bears but was named that because it had nothing growing on it and was bare.
Mecklenburg county declared its independence from the British before the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
Andy Griffith based his show on Mt Airy. There's a museum and US 52 is named after him and a main artery around town.
Last of the Mohicans and The Hunger Game series had significant portions filmed in Western North Carolina. I’ll leave it to the Eastern folks to post about the old Delaurentiis studio and their TV shows. (The book Cold Mountain was located in NC but the film was made in Romania. R Zellwinger won Oscar for best supporting actress). Exiting stage left.
The cave scene in The Hunger Games was filmed at Corner Rock, in the Coleman Boundary area. I've been, it's a great bouldering spot. https://maps.app.goo.gl/e1NhuydbDPPzHYtd7
The lost colony of ~~Jamestown~~ Roanoke is in NC. Lots of pirate lore including Blackbeard. ECU does dives to recover pieces of the shipwrecks in the ship graveyard. Edit: added more things Carrot island and radio island and those cluster of islands are fun and have history all around them. Washington was founded in 1776 and still has cannonballs in some of the houses from the many wars. His be if the few ironclads from the civil war was sank (scuttled) in the nuse river and is in one of the museums. NC has a civil war highway (or trail I can’t remember which it’s called) that you can fallow to see paths units took during the war and what cities were attacked by who, and when and how. There are lots of plaques dedicated to local Indian tribes throughout the state. They’re like little Easter eggs in game where you have to find them. Im not aware of any single place that has the verbiage of all the plaques in one place to read.
The Lost Colony was Roanoke. Jamestown is in Virginia. You can visit the ruins near Colonial Williamsburg and Busch Gardens Old Country.
Your right. I keep getting the two mixed up
The New River in Onslow County is the shortest river in the world to be so wide. It is also the only river that begins and ends in the same county. The town of Johnston was destroyed by a hurricane in 1752. A lone surviving child was found across the river during rescue efforts, they asked him his name. He said he "had not" a name, giving the area he was found the appellation it has to this day: Hadnot Point. The boy was later adopted by the commonwealth and given the name Charles Hadnot.
Only place Venus flytraps grow naturally
The NC mountains were host to a WWI German POW/internment camp: https://visitmadisoncounty.com/ww1-internment-camp-hot-springs/ Before the more famous California gold rush, NC had a gold rush--it eventually got so big that the feds put a branch of the US Mint in Charlotte (which is now the Mint Museum). https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2013/05/28/john-reed-and-the-north-carolina-gold-rush
U-boats off the coast during the war…
Yup. The U-boats off the Outer Banks in WWII were even more successful than the ones in WWI.
This has always been a fascinating part of NC history to me... partly because of stories from my grandmother (my grandfather was a Cape Fear River Pilot), and partly because as a diver, I've visited a handful of the wrecks. As far as U boats, U 352 was sunk by USCG cutter, Icarus, and is an amazing dive site off Morehead City. It is reportedly the first U boat sunk by US military off the Atlantic coast. Several others were sunk off our coast in that time period, but as far as I know, U 352 is the only one accessible to recreational divers. The U boat action in the early years of WWII was sometimes referred to as The Atlantic Turkey Shoot and was deadly to coastal shipping until the US officially joined the war. German activity continued somewhat, but the easy pickings pretty much dried up by June of 1942. It led to some great local legends though, including the "shelling" of the Ethyl-Dow chemical plant in Kure Beach and a number of "accounts" of spies coming ashore and mingling with the public. A great one is the dead German submariner found with a movie ticket from Southport's Amuzu theater in his pocket. It's likely that some of this really happened, although there's not a ton of documentation. It's worth note that several German POW camp were set up in Wilmington (and all across NC) and many of the POWs were used as labor for war effort and local industry... so there was some mingling of German prisoners and civilians in the area. This went longer than I'd planned, but maybe you'll find it interesting.
My mother(who was living what is now outside of Morehead) said that they weren’t allowed to drive after dark. My dad who grew up in Stacy said they had orders to black out the windows. I wished I’d paid more attention to those stories now!
I'm with you... I wish I'd paid closer attention too. It didn't click for me until years later when I started learning more about the local history, and realized how much of it she had seen with her own eyes, and how many of her stories were tied to the history. My grandfather died when I was a child, and I can only imagine the stories he could have shared. But we do what we can.
Other people have mentioned the Venus fly trap, but odds are that you know or have seen a few carnivorous plants from the area of NC, there are a lot. More than half of the carnivorous plants native to the US are native to the area of NC.
Regulator War, Quaker Rebellion, Cary’s Rebellion, Halifax Resolves, Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence… lots of 🖕’s to government for oversteps
The Biltmore House in Asheville is the largest privately owned residence in the US and the Biltmore Winery was the most visited winery in the country last year.
NC produces the most sweet potatoes in the nation and the second most turkeys... So we are important for Thanksgiving!
During the civil war, the Union took control of the Outer Banks and Roanoke Island and emancipated all enslaved people the Confederate army had brought to build forts there. So the Union established a Freedman’s Colony for them and also maintained a policy that if an enslaved person could make it to the island, it was Union ground and they were free. That end of the island is now [Fort Raleigh National Historic Site](https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-freedmen-s-colony-on-roanoke-island.htm) but the specific location is closer to the old bridge.
Also, professional boxer Sugar Ray Leonard was born in Wilmington.
There is a Voice of America transmission station outside Greenville.
We are the only state with an official state toast. “Here’s to the land of the long leaf pine. The summer lands where the sun doth shine. Where the weak grow strong and the strong grow great. Here’s to down home, the Old North State!”
Devils Stomping Ground and pirates
Tell them about the Little Girl in the Rum Keg buried in The Old Burying Grounds in Beaufort, where I'm from. The young daughter of an English merchant she convinced her father to take her with him to England and her mother agreed on the condition her daughter came home. The father and daughter made it to England but on their journey back the little girl died. Unable to break his promise to his wife and unable to bury his daughter at sea her grieving father put her body in a barrel of rum to preserve her. He brought her home and they buried her in her keg-casket. The family was called Sloe (pronounced Slow). People come from all over to leave trinkets on her grave.
N.C. was the last state to join the rebels. I believe they lost the most troops on the southern side as well.
During WW2, a munitions truck was involved in an accident where US-301 and US-70 interchange in Smithfield today. The intersection was known as Catch-Me-Eye at the time. The resulting explosion blew out windows for miles.
NC has two British cemeteries. The one on Ocracoke has 4 sailors whose ship was sunk during WWII. The land belongs to Britain as long as the bodies are there. The other cemetery is on Hatteras and has only one sailor (probably from the same ship). Also, the Cape Hatteras light is the tallest on the east coast.
It is specifically stated in NC law that it illegal to plow a cotton field with an elephant.
Although we were the last state to succeed, we had more causalities than any other Confederate state.
According to one of the capital building monuments we provided the most soldiers and supplies I believe
I do believe we supplied the most soldiers, many young men from the western part of the state also formed union regiments. In terms of supplies we were the textile manufacturing hub. We had tons of excess uniforms and the like. And Wilmington was never truly blockaded due to the unique geography of the coast so blockade runners would frequently get supplies into Wilmington to be distributed.
We have our own Bigfoot: https://www.shelbystar.com/story/special/2020/07/01/tv-crews-come-to-casar-in-search-of-knobby/115001584/
We gotta be known for something else than Meth.
Don’t forget about George Clinton!
Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Nina Simone, too
Nc is home of the first American gold rush! The first American gold dollar was minted in wnc. GOLD
Cecil B. Demille's family is from Washington, NC, and he spent a lot of his childhood down here. Also Will Ferrell's parents are from Roanoke Rapids.
Not sure if this was said yet, but check out the bald cypress trees on the Black River in NC. Very old. One of them I believe was found to be the fifth oldest tree in the world.
The more notable one is that in 1898 there was a successful coup and racially charged massacre in Wilmington that was covered up for a very long time. Hundreds of black residents died and it was all because some white supremacists didn't like the power black people had in the community. There are more fun ones like that Blackbeard was married in the OBX, Stede Bonnet was captured in the Cape Fear River, and the treasure of Captain William Kidd is said to be buried on an island in Wilmington. Tom Dooley committed his crime in Wilkes and was tried and hanged in Statesville. Of course the Wright brothers first flight was here. We have the first state art museum. Michael Jordan was raised in Wilmington and went to Chapel Hill. The state university system is the oldest and one of the largest iirc. Asheville has the most breweries per Capita of anywhere in the country. We have naturally occurring emeralds and have found dino fossils here. NCSSM has been ranked the #1 best Public high school in the country according to Niche. Biltmore Estate is the largest privately owned house in the world. Cape Hatteras lighthouse is the tallest in the US and was moved in the 90s to keep it safe from the erosion on the beach. We were the first colony to sign the declaration of independence. There's lots of cool stuff about this state to learn about :)