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Education

There's no teacher like experience. And no state like Alabama when it comes to historic educational opportunities. Caves, archaeological sites, museums and historic homes all offer your tour group a hands-on chance to see and experience the people and places that make up our state's rich heritage. And if you're not careful, you just might learn something.
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Did You Know?

  1. Alabama was named after the southern Indian tribe who inhabited the central part of the state.
  2. Sequoyah, a Cherokee silversmith who resided in northern Alabama, spent 12 years devising an 86-symbol written language.
  3. Childersburg, Alabama, is proclaimed as the "Oldest Continually Occupied City in America," dating to 1540.
  4. Alabama is bordered by four states: Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi and Florida.
  5. Washington County was Alabama's first county.
  6. Alabama does not have an official nickname, however, it has been commonly referred to as "The Heart of Dixie." In 2002, the phrase "Stars Fell on Alabama" appeared on license plates. The phrase "Sweet Home Alabama" was adopted for the state's license plates beginning in 2009. The phrase is also the adopted slogan for the Alabama Tourism Department.
  7. On December 14, 1819, Alabama became the 22nd state admitted to the Union.
  8. Alabama is 330 miles long and 190 miles wide with 67 counties.
  9. Alabama has an estimated population of 4,599,030 people.
  10. Alabama has had five capitals since 1817: St. Stephens; Cahaba, near Selma; Tuscaloosa; Huntsville; and Montgomery.
  11. Montgomery was laid out in 1817 by Andrew Dexter of Boston. It was formerly known as "New Philadelphia."
  12. Montgomery has been the capital of Alabama since 1846.
  13. The State Capitol building in Montgomery was presented to the public on December 6, 1847.
  14. Jefferson Davis took his presidential oath for the Confederacy on the steps of the State Capitol in Montgomery, then telegraphed his now-famous "Fire on Ft. Sumter" order, which initiated the War Between the States.
  15. Alabama seceded from the Union on January 11, 1861.
  16. General Andrew Jackson defeated the Creek Indians in 1814 during the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Following the event the Native Americans ceded nearly half the present state land to the United States.
  17. At the Battle of Mobile Bay Admiral David Farragut issued his famous command, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead." The event occurred on August 5, 1864.
  18. The hillside by the State Capitol in Montgomery is known as "Goat Hill" because herds of goats used to graze on slopes here before the capital was moved to Montgomery. A gift shop inside the Capitol bears the name Goat Hill.
  19. The world's first electric trolley system was built in Montgomery in 1886.
  20. The Governor's Mansion was built in 1907 and is located in Montgomery's Garden District.
  21. Mobile, Alabama's oldest city, was founded in 1702 by French explorer Sieru de Bienville.
  22. Birmingham is Alabama's largest city with an estimated 229,424 people.
  23. Although Alabama's Great Seal has been altered several times since it was created in 1817, it was restored in 1939 to the original Great Seal.
  24. Alabama's motto is "Audemus jura nostra defendere," which means "We Dare Maintain Our Rights" or "We Dare Defend Our Rights."
  25. Alabama's state flag, which was adopted in 1895, contains a crimson cross of St. Andrew on a white field.
  26. The state song, "Alabama," was written by Julia S. Tutwiler.
  27. The yellowhammer is Alabama's state bird.
  28. The camellia is Alabama's state flower.
  29. Helen Keller, born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, is considered "America's First Lady of Courage."
  30. The Alabama state quarter, featuring Helen Keller, is the first U.S. coin in circulation to feature Braille.
  31. The small town of Tillman's Corner near Mobile hosts a festival honoring the Alabama Pecan.
  32. Alabama ranks third nationally in peanut production. More than 50 percent of the nation's peanuts are grown within a 100-mile radius of Dothan, Alabama.
  33. Dothan, known as "The Peanut Capital of the World," hosts the National Peanut Festival each fall.
  34. Dr. George Washington Carver of Tuskegee is noted for his research with the peanut, sweet potato and hundreds of other products.
  35. Confederate soldiers used peanuts as a food staple during the Civil War.
  36. Elberta, Alabama, hosts a German Sausage Festival to raise money for the volunteer fire department.
  37. Mobile is the site of North America's first Mardi Gras celebration.
  38. Gulf Shores, Alabama, hosts an annual National Shrimp Festival.
  39. Alabama Jubilee Hot-Air Balloon Classic in Decatur is one of the Southeast's largest hot air balloon festivals.
  40. The Southern Museum of Flight and Aviation Hall of Fame is located in Birmingham.
  41. Cotton was once the most important crop in Alabama until the boll weevil destroyed it in the early 1900s.
  42. The Boll Weevil Monument in Enterprise, Alabama, is the world's only monument to a pest.
  43. Alabama's Veterans Museum and Archives is located in Athens, Alabama.
  44. The Frank Lloyd Wright Rosenbaum House Museum in Florence is the only structure in Alabama built by Wright. It was created using only cypress, glass and brick.
  45. Built in 1860, the Huntsville Depot is one of the nation's oldest remaining railroad structures.
  46. A POW camp located in Aliceville, Alabama, was later used as a Coca- Cola bottling company.
  47. Barber Motorsports Park is home to the largest motorcycle museum in the U.S.
  48. The largest municipal art museum in the Southeast is located in Birmingham.
  49. The only meteorite to have ever struck a human reportedly fell in Sylacauga, Alabama, on March 30, 1954.
  50. The Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church & Parsonage in Montgomery, Alabama, is the church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pastored from 1954-1960 and began his quest for civil rights.
  51. The Wiregrass Museum of Art in Dothan is located in an old power plant.
  52. The oldest Fine Arts museum in Alabama is located in Montgomery.
  53. The Alabama Sports Hall of Fame has 200+ inductees, a theater and touch-screen video.
  54. Cecil C. Jackson Jr. Public Building was a public safety building used as a jailhouse in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and protestors were imprisoned in 1965.
  55. Eddie James Kendrick, a founding member of the Temptations is from Union Spring, Alabama.
  56. Alabama has a $2 billion cattle industry with an estimated 1.5 million heads of cattle.
  57. The Tallapoosa River hosts one of the world's longest curved bridges.
  58. Coon Dog Cemetery is a resting place for man's best friend.
  59. Emma Sanson was a Civil War heroine for helping Gen. Forest's troops across Black Creek near Gadsden.
  60. There are 45,000 farms in Alabama, covering 9,000,000 acres.
  61. The Dothan Pecan Company was established pre-Civil War and is still in operation today.
  62. Some of the nation's most famous musicians were born in or have ties to Alabama and are enshrined in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in Tuscumbia.
  63. Fame Recording Studios, established in 1959 in Muscle Shoals, was the first professional recording studio in Alabama.
  64. Florence native Sam Phillips is credited with discovering Elvis Presley.
  65. Tuscaloosa native, Dinah Washington, is recognized as the "Queen of the Blues."
  66. W.C. Handy, the "Father of the Blues," is remembered in his hometown of Florence during an annual festival each summer in his honor.
  67. Tammy Wynette, of Red Bay, is known as the "First Lady of Country Music."
  68. Alabama has almost 1 million acres of recreational waters, but there are no natural lakes in the state. However, four major artificial lakes - Guntersville, Wheeler, Martin and Weiss - have been created by damming the Tennessee, Tallapoosa and Coosa Rivers, respectively.
  69. Alabama's highest point is Cheaha Mountain, a 2,407-foot peak in the Talladega Ridge.
  70. Magnolia Springs is one of the few places in the United States that still has postal service by boat.
  71. Gadsden, Alabama, was once home to the largest tire and tube manufacturing plant in the world.
  72. The large meteor shower that pounded the state on November 13, 1833, is forever etched in history as "the night the stars fell on Alabama."
  73. In 1861, Gaineswood Antebellum Home in Demopolis was reportedly the first home in Alabama to have running water.
  74. Legendary University of Alabama football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, baseball greats Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Satchel Paige, and track and field Olympian Jesse Owens are among those honored at the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.
  75. Oakville native Jesse Owens became the first U.S. citizen to win four Olympic gold medals when he competed in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
  76. The Selma-to-Montgomery March in 1965 helped to change voting rights history in America.
  77. The first ice-making machine was invented in Mobile County, Alabama.
  78. Judson College, founded in Marion in 1838, is Alabama's only remaining women's college. The Alabama Women's Hall of Fame is based here and honors women such as Helen Keller, Julia Tutwiler, Amelia Gorgas, Tallulah Bankhead and others.
  79. Jasper is the hometown of both actress Tallulah Bankhead and George "Goober" Lindsey of "The Andy Griffith Show."
  80. The Alabama Department of Archives and History became the first state-supported archives in the nation when it was established in 1901.
  81. National Veterans Day, begun in Birmingham in 1947, is the nation's oldest.
  82. During the Union occupation of Huntsville, the city's railroad depot served as a prison for Confederate soldiers.
  83. Domino players from around the world gather in Andulusia each July to compete in the World Championship Domino Tournament.
  84. The city of Opp is the "land of opportunity" and rattlesnakes. It hosts the Opp Rattlesnake Rodeo each April.
  85. Three Miss Americas hail from Alabama: Yolande Betbeze of Mobile (1951), Heather Whitestone of Birmingham (1995) and Deidre Downs of Birmingham (2005).
  86. The Battleship USS Alabama, anchored in Mobile, won nine Battle Stars during World War II.
  87. For more than 10,000 years, Russell Cave, near Bridgeport, was home to prehistoric peoples. Today, it provides clues to the daily lifeways of these early North American inhabitants.
  88. On December 1, 1955, Montgomery seamstress Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. Her subsequent arrest ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott and propelled her into status as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.
  89. In 1910, Wilbur and Orville Wright established the world's first flying school at the site now occupied by Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery.
  90. The Saturn V rocket system, which powered the first missions that landed astronauts on the moon in the 1960s, was developed at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
  91. Literary authors Truman Capote and Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, both hail from Monroeville, Alabama.
  92. A quaint museum in Montgomery's Old Cloverdale Historic District is the only one in the world dedicated to the literary duo of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
  93. The Tuskegee Airmen were dedicated, determined young men who enlisted to become America's first black military airmen.
  94. Haleyville, Alabama, was the site of the nation's first 9-1-1 call.
  95. The U.S. Army Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker has one of the world's largest helicopter collections.
  96. Brundidge, Alabama, is home to the state's official folklife play, Come Home, It's Suppertime.
  97. Vulcan towers over Birmingham as a symbol of its iron and steel heritage.
  98. George Wallace was elected governor of Alabama for four terms.
  99. Governor Lurleen was the first and only woman to serve as Alabama's chief of state.
  100. Lady Bird Johnson's mother, Minnie Patillo, was from Alabama. The New York Times said Minnie, "surprised her neighbors by listening to opera, reading voraciously and campaigning for women's right to vote." (07/12/2007) She died when Lady Bird was five years old, and an unmarried aunt, Effie Patillo, moved from Alabama to help raise Lady Bird and her siblings.
  101. Sam Houston's 3rd wife was an Alabamian. After marrying her, Houston quit drinking, started going to church and had eight children. They were married in a house that is still standing in Marion, Ala. They met in Mobile.
  102. Sloss Furnaces is currently the only 20th-century blast furnace in the nation being preserved and interpreted as an industrial museum.
  103. Sloss is an important reminder of the dreams and struggles of the people who worked in the industries that made Birmingham the "Magic City."
  104. Sloss is home to one of the nation's leading metal arts programs and offers workshops, exhibitions and conferences on all aspects of metal sculpture.

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