Carolina Trivia

By Tom Poland

 

Do You Know That … 

Back home a beer was hard to come by. It was my fate to grow up in a dry county on the Georgia-South Carolina border. The legal drinking age in Georgia was 21 but when I crossed the Savannah River a magical thing happened. It didn’t matter that my buddies and I were eighteen. We were old enough to buy beer at a spot in the road called Bordeaux. We felt daring. Bold. And those early beers rank among the best I recall. For certain, South Carolina seemed very cool. Hey, you can get beer as an eighteen-year-old. That’s about all I knew about South Carolina in my post-high school days.

Seven years later fate made South Carolina my home and a stupendous turn of events would turn me to writing. If life is a journey (and it is), then writing gave me a great dash cam for recording it all. It’s been my privilege to research and write about many aspects of the Palmetto State. I know a bit more about South Carolina today and I’d like to share some lesser-known tidbits that make for a fascinating and whimsical history.

You just can’t make up stuff like this. Somebody ought to create a Carolina Trivia game, and maybe that somebody will be me. Let’s roll the dice and play Carolina Trivia.

 

Round One—Do You Know …

That the Edisto is the world’s longest, free-flowing blackwater river, and it’s the only river totally within South Carolina.

That people once thought a meteorite bombardment gouged out all the Carolina bays in the coastal plain. Meteorites didn’t create these oval landforms but we aren’t sure just what did. Whatever their origin, they rank among the world’s more mysterious landforms.

That Groucho Marx once owned a vineyard in the Upstate.

That Georgetown may turn out to be the oldest settlement in the United States.

That Forty Acre Rock Heritage Preserve is just fourteen acres.

That the Garden Club of America refers to Middleton Place’s 65 acres as “the most important and most interesting garden in America.”

That Saluda County folks like to say, “Texas starts here” because Saluda County was the birthplace and childhood home of William Barret Travis and James Butler Bonham; both died defending the Alamo.

That Sumter County’s Colonel David DuBose Galliard helped engineer the excavation and building of the Panama Canal.

That the Great Pee Dee just missed musical renown in Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home.” Foster first wrote “Way down upon the Pee Dee River.” Spying the Suwannee River on a map, Foster preferred “Swanee’s” lyrical fit.

That Poinsett Bridge is South Carolina’s oldest intact bridge.

That Ridgeway’s old Police Station has been called the “World’s Smallest Police Station.”

That John’s Island’s Angel Oak is one of the oldest living things east of the Mississippi River.

 

Round Two—Do You Know …

That we have camellias because the Chinese deceived the British, selling them camellia bushes instead of its cousin, the tea bush.

That a vertical sundial has served as the clock in Barnwell’s courthouse square since 1828. It’s accurate within two minutes and is quite possibly the only “clock” of its kind.

That a B-47 accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb at Mars Bluff in Florence County. The bomb slammed down in gummy loam and its high-explosive trigger dug a crater 50 feet wide and 35 feet deep. No one died.

That Amelia Earhart flew into Anderson’s original airport November 14, 1931 in her Pitcairn PCA-2 Autogyro to promote Beech-Nut products.

That Lute Boylston deeded Blackville’s Healing Springs to God in 1944.

That a frustrated sculptor designed a cockroach just inside the hem of the jacket on Strom Thurmond’s statue in Edgefield.

That Aiken’s Whiskey Road and Easy Street is one of the United States’ most photographed intersections.

That eight days after the Civil War started, Professor T.S.C. Lowe, a self-taught scientist embarked on a hot air balloon voyage from Cincinnati, Ohio to Washington, D.C. Winds altered his course and he landed on a plantation outside Union.

That McCormick sits over a gold mine.

That Campbell’s Covered Bridge near Gowensville is South Carolina’s only covered bridge.

That Samuel Augustus Maverick, an ornery Texas rancher originally from Pendleton, who was quite disagreeable signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Thus did “maverick” come into our language.

That Greenville’s Peace Center sits on the site of a factory that built wagons for the Confederate Army.

 

Bonus Round—Do You Know …

Finally, here are two strange bits of trivia. Do you know that a fortuneteller can’t predict the future in South Carolina without a permit from the state. And do you know that South Carolina is home to the world’s hottest chili pepper? Well it is. Smokin’ Ed’s “Carolina Reaper.”

Now, don’t you feel oh so wiser! Print out this column and go drink a cold beer with your buddies. See how much Carolina trivia they know.

 

 

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]

 

Tom Poland is the author of eleven books and more than 1,000 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press has released his and Robert Clark’s book, Reflections Of South Carolina, Vol. II. The History Press of Charleston just released his book, Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture.

 

 

 

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