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The
Great Smokey Mountains of North Carolina. (Photo courtesy of Chris Haven) North
Carolina was one of the original thirteen colonies. Many think North Carolina
was the first to declare its independence from Great Britian in 1775. North Carolina
became the twelfth state of the Union on November 21, 1789 and remained so until
the outbreak of the Civil War. It joined the Confederate States of America in
1861 and lost 40,000 of its citizens in the fighting. Following the Civil War,
North Carolina was re-admitted to the Union in 1868.
North Carolina is situated north of South
Carolina, east of Tennessee, south of Virginia and to its east is the Atlantic
Ocean coastline. NORTH
CAROLINA FACTS: In 1799,
the first gold nugget found
in the United States was found near present-day Charlotte on a farm that would
later become the Reed Gold Mine. The
Wright Brothers flew the first heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty
Hawk, North Carolina in 1903. The largest house
in America is the Biltmore House in Asheville,
North Carolina. For hundreds of years the Brown
Mountain Lights have mystified people near Morganton, North Carolina and they
still do. So far, science has not be able to explain them.
©2007 Wilson Jay |