Virginia Trivia & Tidbits - Page 2

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

—With a victory in 1963 at Speedway Park in Jacksonville, Fla., Wendell Oliver Scott of Danville (pop. 48,411) became the first black driver to win a NASCAR Grand National Series event. Scott died in 1990.

first appeared: 1/11/2009

—Montpelier, near Orange (pop. 4,123), is the 2,650-acre lifelong estate of President James Madison, the Father of the Constitution. Sites include the restored 1820s mansion, family and slave cemeteries, gardens and a forest.

first appeared: 12/29/2008

—The first official Thanks-giving celebration was Dec. 4, 1619, according to the White House, when Capt. John Woodlief led 37 newly arrived English colonists to a grassy slope along the James River now known as Berkeley Plantation in Charles City (pop. 6,926). He instructed them to drop to their knees and give thanks for a safe arrival to the New World.

first appeared: 11/30/2008

—Scientists with the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville (pop. 15,416) have confirmed the discovery of a 500-million-year-old fossil called a stromatolite, found at the Boxley Blue Ridge Quarry near Roanoke. The specimen is the first intact stromatolite “head” found in the state.

first appeared: 11/16/2008

—Considered one of the greatest living luthiers, Wayne Henderson of Grayson County (pop. 17,917) has built acoustic guitars for Doc Watson, Gillian Welch and Eric Clapton. In 1995, he received the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship for his work as an instrument maker and musician.

first appeared: 11/2/2008

—Round Oak Rag Apple Elevation, a Holstein bull born in 1965 and owned by Ronald Hope and sons in Loudoun County, is credited with more than 100,000 offspring and millions of descendants.

first appeared: 10/19/2008

—At 17, Mariel Alper graduated with a bachelor’s degree and a near A grade average in May from Old Dominion University in Norfolk. She skipped high school and jumped from middle school into college.

first appeared: 10/5/2008

—The first architect of the U.S. Capitol, William Thornton, also designed Woodlawn in Alexandria, which was a gift from President George Washington to his nephew Lawrence Lewis and his wife, Eleanor “Nelly” Custis. Nelly was Martha Washington’s granddaughter and was raised as part of the nation’s “first family.” Completed in 1805, the mansion contains Washington and Lewis family heirlooms.

first appeared: 9/21/2008

—The first winning pitcher in the World Series was Deacon Phillippe, born in 1872 in Rural Retreat (pop. 1,350), who pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates during the first World Series games in 1903. The Pirates, however, lost the series, 5-3, to the Boston Americans.

first appeared: 9/7/2008

—Sixteen percent of the state’s license plates are personalized. Vanity plates are so popular with Virginians that of the 9.3 million issued nationwide, about one in 10 can be found in the Old Dominion.

first appeared: 8/24/2008

—Poquoson (pop. 11,566), which takes its name from an American Indian word for either “flat land” or “great marsh,” is one of a few early English-speaking communities in America that bears its original name. The name was used as early as 1631 on a land grant.

first appeared: 8/10/2008

—The state’s official boat is the Chesapeake Bay deadrise, adopted in 1988. The deadrise is a wooden boat with a sharp bow, a tiny cabin and a long cockpit. It is especially suited for crabbing, oystering and fishing.

first appeared: 7/27/2008

—The only home owned by Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson is in Lexington (pop. 6,867), where he lived while teaching at Virginia Military Institute before the Civil War. WEST VIRGINIA—Hershel “Woody” Williams of Ona is the state’s only living Medal of Honor winner. The retired U.S. Marine received the medal for his heroic actions during the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. He was born in 1923 in Quiet Dell in Marion County (pop. 56,598).

first appeared: 7/13/2008

—Opened in 1934 in Norfolk, Doumar’s is a classic drive-in restaurant with curb service, but one of its main attractions is a machine for making waffle-style ice cream cones. The machine has been used since Abe Doumar designed it in the early 1900s.

first appeared: 6/29/2008

—Live alligators used to lounge in a fountain at the elegant 1895 Jefferson Hotel in Richmond. The hotel’s sweeping marble staircase is said to be the model for the staircase in the Atlanta mansion in the classic 1939 movie Gone with the Wind.

first appeared: 6/15/2008

—Since 1908, students at Washington and Lee University in Lexington (pop. 6,867) have held a mock convention to select the presidential nominee for the party that is not in the White House. Students do extensive grassroots research in each state and have been wrong once in the last 60 years. The victor after the two-day convention in January was Sen. Hillary Clinton.

first appeared: 6/1/2008

—Opened in 1929, the Virginia Diner in Wakefield (pop. 1,038) bills itself as the “Peanut Capital of the World” and operates a mail-order peanut business along with serving its popular peanut pie.

first appeared: 5/18/2008

—James Edward Allen Gibbs, a farmer from Raphine, patented the first chain-stitch, single-thread sewing machine in 1857. Gibbs named his farm Raphine after a Greek word meaning “to sew.” The town later adopted the name.

first appeared: 5/4/2008

—Wolf Trap National Park in Vienna (pop. 14,453) is the only national park dedicated solely to the performing arts. About 100 performances are staged at the park annually.

first appeared: 3/9/2008

—The long arm of the law could apply to Norfolk Sheriff’s Deputy George Bell, 50, who stands 7-foot-8 and is the tallest man in the United States. Bell wears shirts with 45-inch sleeves, pants with a 43-inch inseam, and size 19 shoes. Bell has played basketball for the Harlem Wizards and the Harlem Globetrotters.

first appeared: 2/24/2008

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