Useless Tennessee Facts

My state is useless

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here’s a tennessee lie: tennessee is one of the world’s largest producers of figs

(with love from @useless-bangladeshfacts)

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This is the Parthenon- this one's located not in Athens, Greece, but in Tennessee. Funnily enough, it's not located in the city of Athens, Tennessee (a real place), but Nashville. It was built as an exact full-scale replica for the city of Nashville centennial in 1897. Several replica Ancient Greek buildings were constructed for the centennial out of plaster, but the Parthenon remained a popular place after the celebration ended and so it was reconstructed gradually with concrete for greater durability. It was completed in 1931 after eleven years of reconstruction.

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Tennessee is known as the Volunteer State because it had the greatest number of volunteers present at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.

It also had the largest number of Volunteers in the Mexican War- the Secretary of State was expecting 2800 Tennesseans based on the state's population and got 30,000 recruits. Since then the University of Tennessee Knoxville has adopted the name of Volunteers, aka Vols, for their mascot and sports teams. Since a volunteer isn't very translatable into a lovable character to dance at halftime, the school also uses a blue tick hound named Smokey and a member of the flag team dressed as Tennessean and Mexican War volunteer Davy Crockett as physical mascots at many games.

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Tennessee spent the least amount of time in the Confederacy of any state that joined it

The fact that we joined it at all is incredibly embarrassing and awful, to be clear

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Greenville, TN native Andrew Johnson is the only person to have served at every level of elected office in the United States.

He started as a city councilman, then progressed to mayor, state legislator, governor, US representative, US senator, Vice President, and President.

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Vice President Al Gore and his father are both from Carthage, Tennessee

Al Sr. was the author of the bill that led to the US interstate highway system. Al Jr. worked with another famous Bill.

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Tennessee is bordered by more states than any other state

There are eight: Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.

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The oldest licensed distillery in the nation is located in Lynchburg, Tennessee

It produces- what else- Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey. Important figures in the state are nominated to be Tennessee Squires, which means you are technically the owner of one square inch of land at Jack Daniels distillery. They send you a certificate when you are nominated, and every year thereafter they send you a tongue-in-cheek update on how your land is doing.

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Tennessee + Stranger Things

As I've mentioned before, Y-12, the national security facility located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is architecturally somewhat similar to Hawkins National Lab in Stranger Things. (In fact, Oak Ridge has its own national lab, the Oak Ridge National Lab, in addition to Y-12, and a federal building that houses Department of Energy offices.) The fictional Hawkins has the imposing barbed wire and guard towers of Y-12, combined with the unmistakable 80s Brutalism of the Evins federal building. The actual building is a former mental health facility in Georgia, now owned by Emory University and primarily used as a filming location. But what made me convinced that they couldn't have made Stranger Things without Oak Ridge in mind is the name of the county. The town of Hawkins, including Hawkins National Lab, is located in Roane County, which is also the name of the county where about half of the town of Oak Ridge (but significantly more than half of its federally controlled facilities) are located. As far as I know, there is no portal to the Upside Down in Oak Ridge. Further investigation is needed.

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Oak Ridge, Tennessee built the atomic bomb

I could honestly make this whole blog useless oak ridge facts because I'm from there, but here are some basics: Four plants produced various parts of the atomic bomb in the 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project. Y-12 is now a national security facility and (in my opinion) architectural inspiration for the lab in Stranger Things. X-10 is now known as the Oak Ridge National Lab, home to Spallation Neutron Source and most of the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world. It also has a museum for the graphite reactor, which was the second such reactor in the world. K-25 became the East Tennessee Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and was the model for all the other such plants. It was demolished starting in 2008 and ending in 2014. The site is still being decontaminated and a nearby gaseous diffusion plant modeled after it which wasn't part of the Manhattan Project still isn't going to be finished being demolished until December. S-50 was shut down immediately after World War II. There is pretty much no information on what the building was used for between the end of the war and its demolition in the early 50s, but an environmental report indicates that the Manhattan Project related equipment was stored in K-25 during S-50's demolition. The equipment has since been destroyed or buried.

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A Tennessee mom's persuasion put the 19th amendment over the edge for ratification at the eleventh hour.

The swing vote on the 19th amendment was Tennessee State Representative Harry Burn , whose deciding vote made Tennessee the 36th state to ratify the amendment, which meant the required percentage of states had done so. He intended to vote against when the 96-member legislature was tied 48-48, but that morning received a note from his mother Phoebe Ensminger Burn which read: "Hurrah, and vote for suffrage! Don't keep them in doubt. I notice some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet... Be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the 'rat' in ratification." When the roll call vote was called, everyone was shocked by his change of heart- he was in fact still sporting a red flower in his boutonnière signifying being against ratification, as opposed to the yellow flowers suffragists had. In conclusion, Phoebe Ensminger Burn is incredible. "Be a good boy" s a v a g e

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The purest thing in social media, Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary, is based in Tennessee.

Specifically Mount Juliet, meaning that the whole state is within about a half day's drive of this wonderful place! It's of course most convenient for the Nashville area, so if you're interested you and in the Nashville area, these beautiful puppers are looking for families! http://www.ofsds.org/looking-for-a-family.html

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The largest ever college football game is currently taking place in Tennessee.

But how can it be the largest? Surely there have been other games to fill a stadium to capacity?

Well this one (University of Tennessee-Knoxville vs Virginia Tech) isn’t happening at a college football stadium, it’s happening at Bristol Motor Speedway, which has been retrofitted over the course of a month for a college football game. It’s normally a NASCAR and concert venue. It seats over 150,000 (exact attendance at the game should be announced soon). The game is being dubbed the “Battle at Bristol.“

The previous record for largest college football attendance was set at either 120,000 or 115,109, depending on which games one is seeming eligible for the world record. The 120,000 person game happened in 1927, Notre Dame vs USC at Soldier Field in Chicago. The 115,109 person game was Michigan vs. Notre Dame in 2013 at Michigan Stadium.

Conversion of Bristol Motor Speedway started on August 2 with manufacturing of 101,200 square feet of AstroTurf and wasn’t complete until last night- country musician Kenny Chesney had a concert there with a stage that was speedily dismantled by cranes in just twelve hours while the most zealous fans were literally camped out in the parking lot.

397,621 pounds of material were used for the turf- 180,000 pounds each of rubber and silica, 37,555 of fiber, and 66 of thread used to stitch the three layers together. It took 450 truckloads to transport it all there.

Neyland Stadium, where the University of Tennessee usually plays, can comfortably fit inside Bristol Motor Speedway without its outer edges touching any of the Bristol seating.

The plan for the record breaking game was announced in October 14, 2013, just a month after the Michigan/Notre Dame game broke the previous attendance record. It’s being sponsored by Pilot Flying J, a chain of truck stops whose CEO is the governor of Tennessee’s brother.

A 700-ton Jumbotron is being brought in- it’s been dubbed Colossus and is the world’s largest outdoor center-hung four-sided video screen. Apparently there are a lot of different types of Jumbotrons. It’s 96 feet above the ground.

545,000 servings of beer are ready for purchase at Bristol. Assuming that at least 13,750 of the 150,000 attendees are children or won’t be drinking for other reasons, that’s one beer for each quarter of the game, per person. No cars are being allowed out of the parking lot from the conclusion of the game until an hour afterward, to keep the large number of inebriated people from being run over on the long walk back to their cars and to try to keep people from driving within an hour of having their last drink.

This post will be updated with other useless facts about the game as I hear them!

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The official count has been released: 156,990 people are in attendance at this game!

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The largest ever college football game is currently taking place in Tennessee.

But how can it be the largest? Surely there have been other games to fill a stadium to capacity?

Well this one (University of Tennessee-Knoxville vs Virginia Tech) isn’t happening at a college football stadium, it’s happening at Bristol Motor Speedway, which has been retrofitted over the course of a month for a college football game. It’s normally a NASCAR and concert venue. It seats over 150,000 (exact attendance at the game should be announced soon). The game is being dubbed the “Battle at Bristol."

The previous record for largest college football attendance was set at either 120,000 or 115,109, depending on which games one is seeming eligible for the world record. The 120,000 person game happened in 1927, Notre Dame vs USC at Soldier Field in Chicago. The 115,109 person game was Michigan vs. Notre Dame in 2013 at Michigan Stadium.

Conversion of Bristol Motor Speedway started on August 2 with manufacturing of 101,200 square feet of AstroTurf and wasn’t complete until last night- country musician Kenny Chesney had a concert there with a stage that was speedily dismantled by cranes in just twelve hours while the most zealous fans were literally camped out in the parking lot.

397,621 pounds of material were used for the turf- 180,000 pounds each of rubber and silica, 37,555 of fiber, and 66 of thread used to stitch the three layers together. It took 450 truckloads to transport it all there.

Neyland Stadium, where the University of Tennessee usually plays, can comfortably fit inside Bristol Motor Speedway without its outer edges touching any of the Bristol seating.

The plan for the record breaking game was announced in October 14, 2013, just a month after the Michigan/Notre Dame game broke the previous attendance record. It's being sponsored by Pilot Flying J, a chain of truck stops whose CEO is the governor of Tennessee's brother.

A 700-ton Jumbotron is being brought in- it's been dubbed Colossus and is the world's largest outdoor center-hung four-sided video screen. Apparently there are a lot of different types of Jumbotrons. It's 96 feet above the ground.

545,000 servings of beer are ready for purchase at Bristol. Assuming that at least 13,750 of the 150,000 attendees are children or won't be drinking for other reasons, that's one beer for each quarter of the game, per person. No cars are being allowed out of the parking lot from the conclusion of the game until an hour afterward, to keep the large number of inebriated people from being run over on the long walk back to their cars and to try to keep people from driving within an hour of having their last drink.

This post will be updated with other useless facts about the game as I hear them!

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There are 9 national parks within a 3-hour drive of the McGhee-Tyson airport in Knoxville

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I'm so sorry

~born👶on a mountaintop🗻in Tennessee~ ~green♻️est state in the land🇺🇸 of the free🇺🇸~ ~raised👶👦👨 in the woods🏞⛺️ so he knew every tree🌵🎄🌲🌳🌴~ ~kilt😵🏹🔫 him a barr 🐻 when he was only three3️⃣👶~ ~Davy, Davy Crockett, King 👸👑 of the Wild 🐾 Frontier🌎~

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The name of the city of Alcoa derives from an abbreviation for Aluminum Company of America