Page Toppers

• Mississippi Lady
  (song by Jim Croce)
• Mississippi Moon
  (song by Seatrain)
• Mississippi Woman
  (song by David Allen Coe)
• Mississippi You're On My Mind
  (song by Jerry Jeff Walker)
• My Head's in Mississippi
  (song by ZZ Top)
• The South's Warmest Welcome

Mississippi Symbols

• Nicknames: The Magnolia State; The Bayou State; The Eagle State; The Mud-cat state
• Slogan: The South's Warmest Welcome
• Motto: By valor and arms
• Song: Go, Mississippi (words and music by Houston Davis)
• Folk Dance: Square Dance
• Land Mammal: White-tailed Deer (1974)
• Land Mammal: Red Fox (1997)
• Marine Mammal: Bottlenose Dolphin
• Bird: Mockingbird
• Waterfowl: Wood Duck
• Fish: Largemouth Bass
• Shell: Oyster Shell
• Insect: Honeybee
• Butterfly: Spicebush Swallowtail
• Tree: Southern Magnolia
• Flower: Magnolia
• Fossil: Prehistoric Whale
• Rock: Petrified Wood
• Beverage: Milk
• Toy: Teddy Bear

Facts About Mississippi

• Capital: Jackson
• Residents: Mississippians
• State Name Origin: from a Chippewa word meaning "large river"
• Admitted to Statehood: 10 Dec 1817
• Order of Admission: 20th state
• Coastline/Shoreline: 44/359 miles
• Length: 340 miles
• Width: 170 miles
• Area: 48,430 square miles
• Size Rank: 32
• Number of Counties: 82
• Streams and Rivers: 84,003 miles
• Geographic Center: 9 miles WNW of Carthage in Leake County
• Mean Elevation: 300 feet
• Highest Point: Woodall Mountain, 806 feet
• Lowest Point: Gulf Coast, sea level
• Official Language: English (since 1987)
• Agricultural Products: cotton, corn, peanuts, pecans, rice, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, soybeans, food grains, poultry, eggs, meat animals, dairy products, feed crops, horticultural crops
• Commercial Products: fish, transportation equipment, furniture, electrical machinery, lumber and wood products
• Average Annual Rainfall: 52.8 inches
• Average Winter High Temperature: 34.9 degrees
• Record Low Temperature: -19 degrees (30 Jan 1966 Corinth)
• Average Summer High Temperature: 92.5 degrees
• Record High Temperature: 115 degrees (29 Jul 1930 Holly Springs)
• More information about Mississippi

Quotes

• Biloxi, the first capital of the Louisiana Territory, is a delightful antebellum city, now a bustling tourist center. (Walter Cronkite)
• I drove on to Oxford, home of the University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss as it's known. The people named the town after Oxford in England in the hope that this would persuade the state to build the university there, and the state did. This tells you most of what you need to know about the workings of the Southern mind. (Bill Bryson)
• The mighty Mississippi River is a wonderful book [with] a new story to tell every day. (Mark Twain)
• Vicksburg, Mississippi, sits high on the hills and overlooks the river like a citadel. (Eddy L. Harris)

Items of Interest

• University of Mississippi Medical Center was the site of the world's first human lung transplant in 1963 and the world's first heart transplant surgery in 1964.
• Nearly 60% of Mississippi is covered by forests, and more than 100 species of trees are found in the state.
• Borden's Condensed Milk was first canned in Liberty.
• In 1902, while on a hunting expedition in Sharkey County, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a captured bear. This inspired the creation of the teddy bear.
• The world's largest cactus plantation is in Edwards.
• The concept of selling shoes in boxes in pairs started in Vicksburg in 1884.
• The first female rural mail carrier in the U.S. was Mrs. Mamie Thomas in 1914. She delivered mail by buggy to the area southeast of Vicksburg.
• In 1871 Liberty became the first town in the United States to erect a Confederate monument.
• Mississippi was the first state in the nation to have a planned system of junior colleges.
• Mississippi is the birthplace of the Order of the Eastern Star.
• Flexible Flyer sleds are made in West Point.
• Friendship Cemetery in Columbus is said to be "Where Flowers Healed a Nation". On April 25, 1866, a year after the end of the Civil War, the ladies of Columbus decided to decorate both Confederate and Union soldiers' graves with flowers. As a result, Americans celebrate Memorial Day each year, an annual observance of recognition of war dead.
• The world's largest cottonwood tree plantation is in Issaquena County.
• The oldest game in America is stickball. The Choctaw Indians of Mississippi played the game.
• Natchez, settled by the French in 1716, is the oldest permanent settlement on the Mississippi River. Natchez once had 500 millionaires, more than any other city except New York City. It has more than 500 buildings that are on the National Register of Historic Places.
• D'Lo sent proportionally more men to serve in WWII than any other town of its size - 38 percent of the men served.
• Mississippi suffered the largest percentage of people who died in the Civil War of any Confederate State. 78,000 Mississippians entered the Confederate military. By the end of the war 59,000 were either dead or wounded.
• The world's largest pecan nursery is in Lumberton.
• The Mississippi River is the largest in the United States and is the nation's chief waterway.
• At Vicksburg, the United States Army Corps of Engineers runs the world's largest hydraulic research laboratory.

Notable Natives

Some of these people were born here, others just lived a part of their life in the state.

• Red Barber - sportscaster (Columbus)
• Edward Adolf Barq, Sr. - invented root beer in Biloxi in 1898
• Lance Bass - singer (Laurel)
• Theodore Bilbo - public official (Poplarville)
• Jimmy Buffett (1946- ) - singer, songwriter (Pascagoula)
• Guy Bush - baseball pitcher, in the 1929 World Series Babe Ruth hit his last home run off a ball pitched by Bush
• Craig Claiborne - columnist, restaurant critic (Sunflower)
• Harry A. Cole, Sr. - invented Pine Sol in 1929
• Bo Diddley (1928- ) - guitarist, entertainer (McCombs)
• Charles Evers - civil rights leader (Decatur)
• Medgar Evers - civil rights leader (Decatur)
• Brett Farve - football player (Kiln)
• William Cuthbert Faulkner (1897-1962) - author (New Albany)
• Shelby Foote - historian (Greenville)
• Richard Ford - author (Jackson)
• Barry Hannah - author (Clinton)
• David Harrison - owns the patent on the Soft Toilet Seat
• Beth Henley - playwright, actress (Jackson)
• Jim Henson - puppeteer (Greenville)
• Faith Hill (1967- ) - country singer (Jackson)
• Dr. Emmette F. Izard - developed the first fibers of rayon, the first real synthetic fiber
• James Earl Jones (1931- ) - entertainer (Arkabutla)
• Simbi Khali - actress (Jackson)
• B. B. King (1925- ) - guitarist, "King of the Blues" (Itta Bena)
• Burnita Shelton Mathews - the first woman federal judge in the U.S.
• H.T. Merrill - performed the world's first round trip trans-oceanic flight in 1928
• Willie Morris - writer (Jackson)
• Brandy Norwood - singer, actress (McComb)
• Walter Payton - first football player on a Wheaties box (Columbia)
• Elvis Presley (1935-1977) - king of rock-and-roll (born in Tupelo on Jan 8)
• Leontyne Price - opera singer
• Charley Pride - country singer (Sledge)
• William Raspberry - columnist (Oklaona)
• Hiram R. Revels (1822-1901) - clergyman, first African American in the U.S. Senate (1870-1871)
• Jerry Rice (1962- ) - football player (Starkville)
• LeAnn Rimes - country music singer (Jackson)
• Captain Isaac Ross - in 1834 he freed his slaves and arranged for them to be sent to Africa, where they founded Liberia
• John B. Stetson - hat maker, learned and practiced his trade at Dunn's Falls after the Civil War
• William Grant Still - composed the Afro-American Symphony.
• Conway Twitty - country music singer (Friars Point)
• Sam B. Vick - baseball player, the only man ever to pinch hit for Babe Ruth
• Sela Ward (1956- ) - actress (Meridian)
• Muddy Waters - singer, guitarist (Rolling Fork)
• Eudora Welty - author (Jackson)
• Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) - Pulitzer-prize winning playwright (Columbus)
• Oprah Winfrey (1954- ) - talk-show host (Kosciusko)
• Richard Wright - author (Natchez)
• Tammy Wynette - country music singer (Tupelo)

You know you are from Mississippi if...

• You've been to the towns of: Hot Coffee, Whynot, Soso, Shuqualak, Okalona, and Noxapater.
• When someone talks about The Flag, you know exactly what flag they're referring to.
• In any given parking lot, every third car has a Flag bumper sticker.
• Your neighbor (or yourself) has the Confederate battle flag in his yard and nothing else.
• You eat coon hash.
• You know where chittlins come from.
• You know it's coke, not "pop", or "soda."
• You know pop is a noise or an action (i.e. the coon popped out of his hole), not a soft drink.
• You can tell, purely by accent, whether a person is from the Black Belt, the Red Clay Hills, the Piney Woods, or the Delta.
• You know that the Delta is not the one below New Orleans.
• Your church's attendance is reduced by half on opening day of bow season.
• The preacher is not there on opening day of gun season.
• The last time it snowed, you took fifteen photos and put some in your freezer for old time's sake.
• A seven course meal is a bucket of KFC and a six-pack.
• There is a trampoline in your neighbor's back yard.
• Teenagers refer to the bus as the "cheese wagon," and refuse to ride it.
• You only know five spices--salt, pepper, Ranch dressing, BBQ Sauce and hot sauce.
• You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Mississippi.