A blogger with good taste in music, Countertop has sent in some interesting facts about the Smoky Mountains.
1. Sequoyah, a Cherokee Indian, is the only known person in history to single-handedly develop and perfect an alphabet
2. Trade, Tennessee is by far the oldest town in the state and has held Pow Wows since at least the 1700s
3. More civil war battles were fought in Tennessee than any other state but Virginia.
4. The first (and best) civil war battlefield park is Chicamagua-Chattanooga in both Tennessee and Georgia.
5. In the late 1700s the counties in the Western Smokey’s secceed from North Carolina and form a new state – Franklin – before eventually returning to North Carolina and then become part of the Tennessee Region North Carolina gave the U.S.
6. Kingston, TN was the state capitol for one day.
7. UT is the 28th oldest college in the country, but more importantly, it was the first non-sectarian college founded in the country.
8. Tennessee has an official state flower, an official state cultivated flower, and an official state wildflower – Pursuant to a resolution of the state assembly, Tennessee schoolchildren voted on the passion flower as the stateflower. Some years later (in an effort to appease commercial horticulture) the legislature named the Iris the state flower, but never rescinded the Passion flower. TO clear the confusion, the legislature adopted a designation for both the state wildflower and cultivated flower – and made them the passion and iris, respectivly, and then also made the passion the sole state flower again.

Good stuff Countertop, but I’m still confused about the whole state flower thing.