Louisiana Trivia & Tidbits - Page 6

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

Sugar planter William J. Minor built Southdown Plantation House in Houma (pop. 32,392) in 1859. During the 1920s, the Minor family helped save the state’s sugar industry by propagating a sugarcane resistant to the crop disease known as mosaic.

first appeared: 9/25/2005

In 1962, the state banned alligator hunting after the reptiles were hunted nearly to extinction. Today, 1.5 million alligators inhabit the state’s swamps and marshes, and hunting is permitted to control their population.

first appeared: 9/18/2005

Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler, in command of the Union occupying force in New Orleans during the Civil War, became known as "Spoons" because of his habit of confiscating silverware from New Orleans Confederates. He was in command there from May to December 1862.

first appeared: 9/11/2005

In 1947, Kerr-McGee Corp. drilled the world’s first commercial oil well out of sight of land in the Gulf of Mexico near Morgan City (pop. 12,703). This marked the beginning of the modern offshore drilling industry.

first appeared: 8/28/2005

Guests of the circa 1800 Hotel Maison de Ville in New Orleans can stay in the Tennessee Williams room where the playwright completed A Streetcar Named Desire or a cottage where John James Audubon painted some of his Birds of America.

first appeared: 8/14/2005

Called the "pride and sorrow of chess," Paul Morphy (1837-1884) of New Orleans ruled the chess world in the 1850s and was a national hero, then abruptly stopped competing in 1859 at the peak of his game.

first appeared: 7/31/2005

Wildlife abounds on the 180-mile Creole Nature Trail, the first National Scenic Byway in the Gulf South. The trail runs south from Lake Charles (pop. 71,757) to the Gulf of Mexico and then north to Sulphur (pop. 20,512). More than 250 species of birds can be spotted and 39 species of mosquitoes swatted along the trail.

first appeared: 7/17/2005

The New Orleans Pharmacy Museum is housed in the 1823 apothecary of Louis Dufilho Jr., America’s first licensed pharmacist. Live leeches, crude medicine, Civil War-era surgical instruments and 200-year-old dental instruments are displayed.

first appeared: 6/19/2005

The Degas House in New Orleans, where French impressionist artist Edgar Degas lived and painted from 1872 to 1873, is his only home or studio open to the public. Degas’ relatives, the Musson family, owned the home while he lived there.

first appeared: 6/5/2005

New Orleans-born film star Dorothy Lamour popularized the sarong, which became her trademark attire, through her role as Ulah in The Jungle Princess in 1936. She often appeared with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

first appeared: 5/22/2005

On D-Day, June 6, 1944, 156,000 Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, most carried ashore by Higgins boats, designed by Andrew Jackson Higgins and built in New Orleans. President Eisenhower called Higgins the man "who won the war for us."

first appeared: 5/8/2005

Six times a year, the Abita Springs (pop. 1,957) Town Hall becomes the Abita Springs Opry where Louisiana "roots" music is kept alive by musicians playing old-time country, bluegrass, Southern gospel, Cajun, zydeco and Irish tunes that reflect the local residents’ heritage.

first appeared: 4/24/2005

Built in 1769, St. Gabriel Catholic Church in St. Gabriel (pop. 5,574) is one of the state’s oldest churches.

first appeared: 4/10/2005

The Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witches series author Anne Rice, born in 1941 in New Orleans’ Garden District, uses the city as a backdrop in many of her novels.

first appeared: 3/27/2005

Thousand-year-old bald cypress trees and Louisiana black bears thrive at Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge near St. Francisville (pop. 1,712).

first appeared: 3/13/2005

Norman Francis has been president of Xavier University of Louisiana, a historically black Catholic college in New Orleans, since 1968, the longest tenure of any sitting U.S. college president.

first appeared: 2/27/2005

On track since 1835, the New Orleans’ St. Charles streetcar line is the world’s oldest continuously operating streetcar and is considered a moving national landmark. Appointed with mahogany seats, the cars run through the beautiful Garden District.

first appeared: 2/13/2005

Basketball Hall of Famer Clyde "The Glide" Drexler, a New Orleans native, played for the Portland Trail Blazers and the Houston Rockets and won a gold medal as part of the U.S. Olympic Dream Team in Barcelona, Spain, in 1992.

first appeared: 1/30/2005

The site of the 1884 World’s Fair, called the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, in New Orleans is now home to the Audubon Park and Zoo in the city’s beautiful Garden District.

first appeared: 1/16/2005

The world's tallest offshore oil-drilling rig, Bullwinkle, 150 miles southwest of New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico, at 1,615 feet, is taller than Chicago's 1,450-foot Sears Tower, one of the world's tallest buildings. Only 262 feet of the rig are above the water line.

first appeared: 1/2/2005

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