30 Facts About Alabama

1. Alabama is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered by Tennessee to the north; Georgia to the east; Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south; and Mississippi to the west.

2. Alabama is the 30th largest by area and the 24th-most populous of the US states.

3. Alabama is nicknamed the Yellowhammer State, after the state bird.

4. Alabama is known as the "Heart of Dixie" and the "Cotton State".

5. Originally home to many native tribes, present-day Alabama was a Spanish territory beginning in the sixteenth century until the French acquired it in the early eighteenth century.

6. Alabama settled in the Tombigbee District during the early 1770s.

7. Alabama was admitted as the 22nd state on December 14, 1819, with Congress selecting Huntsville as the site for the first Constitutional Convention.

8. On January 11, 1861, Alabama declared its secession from the Union.

9. Company of cavalry soldiers from Huntsville, Alabama, joined Nathan Bedford Forrest's battalion in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

10. Alabama was under military rule from the end of the war in May 1865 until its official restoration to the Union in 1868.

11. Alabama was represented in Congress during this period by three African-American congressmen: Jeremiah Har n, Benjamin S Turner, and James T Rapier.

12. New 1901 Constitution of Alabama included provisions for voter registration that effectively disenfranchised large portions of the population, including nearly all African Americans and Native Americans, and tens of thousands of poor European Americans, through making voter registration difficult, requiring a poll tax and literacy test.

13. In 1954, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education that public schools had to be desegregated, but Alabama was slow to comply.

14. The civil rights movement had notable events in Alabama, including the Montgomery bus boycott, Freedom Rides in 1961, and 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches.

15. Alabama is bordered by the states of Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida to the south, and Mississippi to the west.

16. Alabama contains the Natchez Trace Parkway, the Selma To Montgomery National Historic Trail, and the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.

17. Alabama receives an average of 56 inches of rainfall annually and enjoys a lengthy growing season of up to 300 days in the southern part of the state.

18. Alabama is home to a diverse array of flora and fauna in habitats that range from the Tennessee Valley, Appalachian Plateau, and Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians of the north to the Piedmont, Canebrake, and Black Belt of the central region to the Gulf Coastal Plain and beaches along the Gulf of Mexico in the south.

19. Alabama is in the subtropical coniferous forest biome and once boasted huge expanses of pine forest, which still form the largest proportion of forests in the state.

20. Center of population of Alabama is located in Chilton County, outside the town of Jemison.

21. Baha'i centers in Alabama exist in Birmingham, Huntsville, and Florence.

22. In 2018, life expectancy in Alabama was 75.1 years, below the national average of 78.7 years and is the third lowest life expectancy in the country.

23. The total 2020 sales of catfish raised in Alabama equaled $307 million but by 2020 the total employment of Alabamians fell to 2,442.

24. Movies filmed in Alabama include: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Get Out, 42, Selma, Big Fish, The Final Destination, Due Date, Need For Speed and many more.

25. UAB Hospital, USA Health University Hospital, Huntsville Hospital, and Children's Hospital of Alabama are the only LevelI trauma centers in Alabama.

26. Alabama is an alcoholic beverage control state, meaning the state government holds a monopoly on the sale of alcohol.

27. For nearly a hundred years local and state elections in Alabama were decided in the Democratic Party primary, with generally only token Republican challengers running in the General Election.

28. Public primary and secondary education in Alabama is under the purview of the Alabama State Board of Education as well as local oversight by 67 county school boards and 60 city boards of education.

29. The rate of school corporal punishment in Alabama is surpassed by only Mississippi and Arkansas.

30. Largest single campus is the University of Alabama, located in Tuscaloosa, with 37,665 enrolled for fall 2016.