Louisiana Trivia & Tidbits - Page 5

Looking for Louisiana trivia? Try our list Louisiana little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

Famous folk artist Clementine Hunter created everyday scenes of cotton picking, washday, pecan gathering and baptisms. Born around 1886, she lived most of her life at Melrose Plantation near Natchitoches (pop. 17,865).

first appeared: 6/25/2006

At 535 feet, Driskill Mountain near Arcadia (pop. 3,041) in Bienville Parish is the state's highest point. But the parish was the low point for Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, famed gangsters killed there by law enforcement officers in 1934.

first appeared: 6/4/2006

Titled Basquette, the first rules for women's basketball were published in 1895 by Clara Baer, who introduced the game two years earlier to women at Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans. Basketball was invented in 1891 for men.

first appeared: 5/21/2006

Built in 1858, the Southwest Reef Lighthouse on Atchafalaya Bay has an iron-plated square pyramid tower. The abandoned lighthouse was brought ashore in 1987 and stands in a park along the Atchafalaya River in Berwick (pop. 4,418).

first appeared: 5/14/2006

Novelist Truman Capote, born in 1924 in New Orleans, created a genre he called the "nonfiction novel" in 1965 with In Cold Blood, which combines journalism with fiction techniques to recount the murder of a Kansas family.

first appeared: 4/23/2006

Since the 1930s, several Louisiana towns have held "blessing of the fleet" ceremonies to begin shrimp season each spring. As a flotilla of gaily decorated boats floats by, a priest blesses each one.

first appeared: 4/9/2006

It took more than an hour to land the whopper, but Keith Day of Zachary (pop. 11,275) set a state record when he pulled in a 110-pound blue catfish from the Mississippi River near St. Francisville (pop. 1,715) last April.

first appeared: 3/26/2006

Cokie Roberts, political commentator for ABC News and senior news analyst for National Public Radio, counts the 1990 Edward R. Murrow Award among her many journalism honors. She was born Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs in 1943 in New Orleans.

first appeared: 3/12/2006

Cotton baron Daniel Turnbull, one of the wealthiest men before the Civil War, named his Rosedown Plantation in St. Francisville (pop. 1,712) after a play that he and his wife, Martha, saw on their honeymoon.

first appeared: 2/26/2006

In the 1890s, patients with leprosy, later called Hansen’s disease, arrived for refuge and treatment at a leprosarium in Carville. In 2000, the site opened as the National Hansen’s Disease Museum.

first appeared: 2/12/2006

According to local lore, the muffuletta sandwich was invented in 1906 at Central Grocery on Decatur Street in New Orleans. Served on round Italian bread, the hefty sandwich is filled with cold cuts, cheese and olive relish.

first appeared: 1/29/2006

Founded during Reconstruction to help rebuild the South after the Civil War, Hibernia in New Orleans is the state’s oldest bank and has more than 300 branches in Louisiana and Texas.

first appeared: 1/15/2006

MISS LOUISIANA 2006—Molly Causey hopes to make history by being the first contestant from her state to win the Miss America title. The Ruston (pop. 20,546) native is a graduate of Louisiana Tech University and wants to be a certified public accountant.

first appeared: 1/8/2006

The sawmill town of Long Leaf, in operation from 1892 to 1969, survives today as the Southern Forest Heritage Museum with its original equipment and buildings, including the sawmill, planer mill, a company house and commissary.

first appeared: 1/1/2006

A bald cypress tree at Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge at St. Francisville (pop. 1,712) sports a trunk circumference of 53 feet and lays claim to being one of the largest bald cypress trees in the nation.

first appeared: 12/18/2005

Since 1869, Dupuy’s Oyster Shop in Abbeville (pop. 11,887) has sold oysters on the half shell. When Joseph Dupuy started harvesting oysters from the Gulf of Mexico, he sold a dozen for a nickel. New additions to the shop’s menu include grilled tuna and grouper.

first appeared: 12/4/2005

Evergreen Plantation in Wallace (pop. 570) is the home of a Greek-Revival-style plantation house and a full slate of other structures, including 22 slave cabins, an overseer’s house, guesthouse, privy, kitchen, garçonnier (quarters for boys and bachelors of the family) and two pigeonniers (pigeon houses).

first appeared: 11/20/2005

Several coastal towns celebrate Bonne Crevette (Good Shrimp) with festivals, shrimp boils and blessings of the fleet during the Louisiana shrimp season, May to August, to promote the local shrimping industry.

first appeared: 11/6/2005

Frogmore Plantation, an 1,800-acre cotton plantation in Frogmore, 20 miles west of Vidalia (pop. 4,543), offers a look at cotton farming through the centuries with a steam cotton gin, 18 restored buildings from the early 1800s and a modern computerized cotton gin that can process 900 bales a day.

first appeared: 10/23/2005

Born in Vinton (pop. 3,338), Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown (1924-2005) had a musical career that spanned nearly 60 years and the musical genres of jazz, blues, Cajun and country. In 1982, he won a Grammy for his blues album Alright Again!

first appeared: 10/9/2005

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