Welcome to Fun Facts About the 50 States, where – week by week – I’ll be taking you on a tour around this great nation of ours, providing you with interesting, yet completely useless and probably untrue, information about each of the 50 states.
This week, it’s time to realize too late that the fuzzy thing you’re eating isn’t a peach, it’s just been in the fridge too long as we visit Georgia, so let’s get started…
- Georgia became the 4th state on January 2nd, 1788, and its citizens commemorate this day each year by shooting British people with muskets.
- Contrary to popular myth, not everyone who lives in Georgia is a redneck. There’s plenty of toothless, moonshine-swilling hillbillies, too.
- Coca-Cola was invented in Columbus, Georgia, in 1885, and first sold to the public in Atlanta in 1886. The original formula has changed since then, and the drink no longer contains actual cocaine or the blood of virgins.
- “Georgia” is a Cherokee Indian word meaning, “Are those rednecks or hillbillies?”
- Despite the way natives pronounce the state’s name, “Jawjah” is NOT spelled with a “W.”
- Unlike the word “dawg.”
- Since it almost never snows in Georgia, children there spend winters having cotton ball fights.
- While having a cotton ball fight, it’s considered cheating to stuff a peach pit in the cotton.
- In Georgia, everything is made out of cotton. Except the peaches, which are made out of okra.
- Atlanta, Georgia, has the worst traffic of any city in the U.S., since every street in the city is named “Peachtree Road.”
- The last time it snowed in Georgia, the confused natives thought it was ash from the Yankees burning Atlanta again.
- The state motto of Georgia is “Wisdom, Justice, Moderation,” which replaced the old motto of “Whiskey, Hookers, NASCAR.”
- In Georgia, every soft drink is referred to as “Coke.” Except for Pepsi, which is referred to as “Damn Yankee Poison.”
- After Jimmy Carter left the presidency in 1981, he returned to his home town of Plains, Georgia, and went on a bloody shooting rampage.
- Wait… I meant to type “worked for Habitat for Humanity.” Stupid autocorrect.
- The only way to get to Florida from Georgia is by sea, since the Georgia-Florida border is heavily defended by landmines and alligators.
- The Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Macon, Georgia, celebrates the careers of all the talented musicians who were born in Georgia, and is currently empty.
- They WERE going to put in a Ray Charles exhibit, but they figured there was no point, since he wouldn’t see it anyway.
- Saint Marys, Georgia, is the second-oldest city in the US, and will soon be moving to Florida to retire.
- If it can make it past the landmines and alligators, that is.
- The state fish of Georgia is the largemouth bass, which shouldn’t be confused with the much more common loudmouth drunk.
- The name of Georgia’s largest swamp, the Okefenokee, comes from a Shawnee Indian word meaning “I’d rather live in a swamp than eat okra.”
- Georgia was originally populated by settlers from England and drunk people from Alabama who couldn’t find their way home.
- The Governor’s mansion in Georgia is the only quadruple-wide trailer in America.
- Some people are offended by the fact that three Confederate leaders are carved into the side of Georgia’s Stone Mountain. Other people figure it’s ok, since the back ends of the horses point north.
- In Georgia, it’s considered ungentlemanly to stare at a woman’s breasts while talking to her.
- Unless she’s REALLY hot.
- In the year 2227, Dr. Leonard McCoy will be born in Atlanta, Georgia and will go on to become Chief Medical Officer of the USS Enterprise. If you already knew this, then you’re a pathetic nerd who will never kiss a girl.
- The most common cause of death in Georgia is getting murdered in a fight over the proper way to pronounce the word “pecan.”
- Georgia is the state most likely to be invaded by Jane Fonda and have its peanut oil stolen to power her tour bus.
- The official state prepared food of Georgia is grits, which consists of coarsely ground bits of corn and shouldn’t be confused with hog slop, which is made from coarsely ground bits of corn.
- Although Georgia is already America’s #1 grower of peanuts, farmers there are working to develop a “super-peanut” which will be twice as large and shoot laser beams out of its eyes.
- They hope to use it to stop Jane Fonda.
That wraps up the Georgia edition of Fun Facts About the 50 States. Next week we’ll be slipping into a grass skirt for our trip to Hawaii.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go murder someone who said “PEE-can”
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Once Science! identifies the rare gene that causes a predilection to eat okra, they’ll be able to move on and identify the genetic defect that causes some people to become liberals.
While a noble effort, much worse was used on other VC to no effect.
The Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Macon, Georgia, celebrates the careers of all the talented musicians who were born in Georgia, and is currently empty.
O.K. I can see how they gave Kenny Rogers and the Indigo Girls a miss, but what about the B52’s and Isaac Hayes:
You see this cat Shaft is a bad mother–
~Shut your mouth
But I’m talkin’ about Shaft
~Then we can dig it
Hall of fame material, no?
Point of fact: there is only one Peachtree Road. Not to be confused with Peachtree Street, Peachtree Parkway, Peachtree Industrial Blvd., Peachtree Corners Circle, Peachtree Circle, Peachtree Memorial, Peachtree Way, North Peachtree Road, New Peachtree Road, Peachtree Battle Ave., Peachtree Creek Road, Peachtree-Dunwoody Ave., Peachtree City, Peachtree Doors & Windows and/or Peachtree Accounting. (Omitting the lesser known byways.)
Don’t get too many Brits down here. Much like you, apparently, they draw upon TV and movies for a Hollywood-style caricature as their concept of Georgia and the south. When they do show up, we explain that GWTW was fiction, Tara was a movie set, and Ted Turner was a cartoon.
Rednecks? We invented the term. But, if writing about Georgia, how could you miss “Cracker”?
Not much cotton, nowadays. Peanuts and pecans in the south. Some. The trees bearing peaches closest to Atlanta are up I85 to Gaffney, SC. Fun fact: The original name was “pitch-tree road”, because a bucket of pitch was hung there for greasing wagon axles. Stupid Yankees thought we were miss-pronouncing, and “corrected” us. What the hell, they had the guns.
How did you miss mentioning Vildalia onions?
Quadruple-wide Governer’s mansion? Really? Could’ve held that one for Arkansas and the Clintons. Or about forty five other states. We’ get it, everybody not you is dumb, poor, and backward.
No musicians of note from Georgia? Seriously?
Your work is usually more on target, better informed and funnier.
the movie “Deliverance” was filmed in Georgia, using real Georgians.
Harvey, you’ve been judged!
Hehe. I wonder if all people in Georgia are as serious as Richard.
@Richard Blaine: I suspect that Harvey was being sarcasmic about musicians that hail from Georgia. Perhaps you’re being sarcastic about Harvey’s sarcasm. This would cause the little gears in my head to overheat.
Fun fact: Of the 57 states, Georgia has the most songs written about it.
Fun fact: If you are making a movie or TV show, and you need to portray stupid, give the actor a southern accent. Southerners are perceived as less intelligent. This is neither racist nor bigoted.
Fun fact (OT): If you are making a movie or a TV show and you need to portray unhinged insanity, portray the actor as a Viet Nam vet because Viet Nam vets have not yet received the abuse they deserve.
Fun fact (for me at least): Few Southerners have either a caricatured “Georgia Belle” or “Dumb Redneck’ accent as portrayed in TV and film — British or American. The South is blanketed with a rich variety of geographically related accents. Listen sometime. The mid Tennessee rolling smooth drawl (a la Fred Thompson) is not like the thick Mississippian drawl which is not like the clipped eastern South Carolina accent that also ranges into Georgia, but is softened just a bit as you travel north into eastern Virgina and becomes slightly more of a drawl as you travel west toward the mountains in Virginia, etc.
I collect Southern accents. Yes, I am odd.
Oh, if you really want to portray on-screen some full-tilt nutjobbery, give that there ‘Nam vet a Jaw-Juhn accent. I mean, just visualize Charles Manson in an Atlanta Braves ballcap.
(Speaking of which, wasn’t that sorry bastid Manson born in Jawjuh?)
Papelbon notwithstanding, when he was with Tha Sawx as a closer, not to mention any contingent from Southie or Charlestown, you never see said psycho wearing Red Sox gear.
Just saying.
Went on a cultural tour of Atlanta once; took three minutes.
Punch “Peachtree, Atlanta” into your Garmin and it explodes.
Hmm. Many of these facts sound familiar. Are you recycling jokes from those old IMAO podcasts?
And I’ll bet you thought no one would notice. 🙂
Georgia became the 4th state on January 2nd, 1788, and its citizens commemorate this day each year by shooting British people with muskets.
Except in Kennesaw, where they shoot British (and other) people with weapons featured in the latest issue of Soldier of Fortune.
* The official sport of Atlanta is telling anybody who will listen how sophisticated Atlanta and Atlantans are, how the Atlanta area is rivaling Silicon Valley as a high-tech center, etc.
We need Basil to weigh-in on this.
Basil!!!
The city of Atlanta had 2 NHL teams, but both moved to Canada.
I found this to be the most interesting fact you left out.
Anthony – yes and no. I wrote the Fun Facts series specifically for the Podcast, where I’d read my entire list, then trim down the audio for the sake of keeping it to 3 minutes.
I later posted the uncut versions at IMAO.
The Podcast ended, I think, around Maryland.
After that, I just wrote them & posted them.
Now I’m reposting them.
There might be some updating (mostly because Ted Kennedy’s dead now), but yeah, pretty much what you heard on the podcast.
And since I last reposted the podcasts a couple years ago, I’m a little surprised anyone would remember 🙂
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