Tennessee Trivia & Tidbits - Page 6

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

Female pitcher Jackie Mitchell struck out Babe Ruth during an exhibition game between the Chattanooga Lookouts and the New York Yankees in Chattanooga on April 2, 1931. Next up was Lou Gehrig. The 17-year-old Mitchell struck him out, too.

first appeared: 9/25/2005

The South’s first African-American millionaire was Memphis banker, real estate investor and philanthropist Robert Reed Church, who was born in northern Mississippi in 1839. In 1899, Church built the city’s first recreation center for African-Americans, Church’s Park and Auditorium.

first appeared: 9/18/2005

Dioramas with more than 100 life-size wax figures portray biblical scenes at Christus Gardens in Gatlinburg (pop. 3,382). Opened in 1960, the gardens’ attractions include a heirloom Bible collection and a 6-ton marble sculpture of the head of Jesus.

first appeared: 9/11/2005

Crossville (pop. 8,981) is famous for its Crab Orchard stone quarried from Crab Orchard Mountain on the Cumberland Plateau. The rose and brown mottled sandstone can be admired locally in the Cumberland County Courthouse, Palace Theatre, old post office, churches and schools.

first appeared: 8/28/2005

Creative cooks compete for thousands of dollars in prize money during a cook-off at the National Cornbread Festival, held each year since 1997 in South Pittsburg (pop. 3,295). Sandi Klingler of Auburn, Ala., won this year’s contest with her recipe for Amish Chicken Cornbread Bake.

first appeared: 8/14/2005

U.S. Department of Agriculture chemist Marion Dorset discovered the virus that causes hog cholera in 1903 and later helped developed an anti-hog-cholera serum that saved the swine industry. He was born in 1872 in Columbia (pop. 33,055).

first appeared: 7/31/2005

The Homesteads Tower Museum near Crossville (pop. 8,981) relates the history of the Cumberland Homesteads, a Depression-era resettlement community. The museum is housed in the octagonal tower that stored water for the community.

first appeared: 7/17/2005

Crossville (pop. 8,981) bills itself as the "Golf Capital of Tennessee" and is home to a dozen golf courses and more than 200 holes atop the Cumberland Plateau. Designers have incorporated rolling hills and streams into the courses.

first appeared: 6/19/2005

Built in 1891 as the first multi-use structure over the Tennessee River, Chattanooga’s Walnut Street Bridge was slated for demolition in the late 1970s. Following a $4 million renovation, the bridge reopened in May 1993 as a pedestrian walkway.

first appeared: 6/5/2005

Since 1895, Lookout Mountain Incline Railway has transported passengers to the top of Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga for a view of the Tennessee River Valley. With a grade of nearly 73 percent, the railway is the world’s steepest passenger line.

first appeared: 5/22/2005

Since 1912, Dyer’s Burgers in Memphis has fried its hamburgers in the same grease, which is strained and recycled daily and added to when needed. The grease is so prized that when the restaurant relocated to Beale Street in 1998, the vat of fat traveled with its own police escort.

first appeared: 5/8/2005

Rattle & Snap, an 1845 Greek Revival mansion near Columbia (pop. 33,055), was named after the game of chance, in which William Polk won about 5,000 acres from the North Carolina governor. Players rattled the dice before throwing them on a table with a snap of their fingers.

first appeared: 4/24/2005

In 1897, Nashville candymakers William Morrison and John Wharton invented a machine to spin the sugary treat called "fairy floss" or cotton candy.

first appeared: 4/10/2005

A reconstructed 100-year-old Mississippi Delta church, Ike Turner’s original Fender guitar, Isaac Hayes’ 1972 peacock blue El Dorado Cadillac and Stax Record Co.’s recording studio can be seen at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis.

first appeared: 3/27/2005

Fried chicken and other Southern fare have been served at Miss Mary Bobo’s Boarding House in Lynchburg (pop. 5,740) since 1908.

first appeared: 3/13/2005

The state’s oldest continuous business, St. John Milling Co., was founded in 1778 in Watauga (pop. 403).

first appeared: 2/27/2005

Named the world’s fastest drummer by the Guinness Book of Records in 2000, Johnny Rabb of Nashville played 1,026 single strokes in one minute. A publisher of instructional drum videos, he also designed "The Rabb Pack" cymbals for the Meinl Cymbal Co.

first appeared: 2/13/2005

Each May since 1941, with one year off during World War II, the Iroquois Steeplechase has been run in Percy Warner Park in Nashville, and since 1981, the horse race has benefited Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.

first appeared: 1/30/2005

Sculptor Ernest Pellegrini and 50 other artists worked 14 months on a 17-foot-wide wood carving of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper. Their creation is the centerpiece of the Upper Room Chapel and Museum in Nashville.

first appeared: 1/16/2005

Rather than focusing on generals, the Tennessee Civil War Museum in Chattanooga tells the story of common soldiers, including those of women who dressed as men to enlist in the armies of the Union and Confederacy.

first appeared: 1/2/2005

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