1. Knoxville was named after Henry Knox, President Washington's War Secretary.
2. The corporate headquarters of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is located in Knoxville. TVA was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 to provide "Electricity for All."
3. In 1901, Kid Curry, a member of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, shot a couple of deputies and escaped out the back window of a business on Central Avenue in what is now the Old City. He was captured, brought to the Knoxville Jail, but escaped and was last seen riding the sheriff’s stolen horse across the Gay Street Bridge.
4. Knoxville is 20 miles south of Oak Ridge National Laboratory which was instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb.
5. In 1974 Walter Cronkite designated Knoxville as the "Streaking Capital of the World." It was in the spring of that year that an estimated 5,000 people on Cumberland Avenue took their clothes off... stripping on the "strip".
6. Still on the law books: It is illegal to lasso fish in Knoxville, TN.
7. The Sunsphere, built for the 1982 World’s Fair, is 266 feet tall and has 26 stories. The actual ball itself houses only five levels.
8. Knoxville Zoo is the Red Panda Capital of the World, having the greatest success in breeding and survival of baby Red Pandas.
9. Nikki Giovanni, the Princess of Black Poetry, was born in Knoxville in 1943.
10. Pulitzer Prize winning writer James Agee was born in Knoxville in 1909.
11. Current NFL star Peyton Manning played for UT in Knoxville.
12. Knoxville had the last successful World's Fair held in America.
13. Quentin Tarantino, the famous actor and director was born in Knoxville. Creator of "Kill Bill" and "Pulp Fiction."
14. Lastly, there is a street here named Gerald R. Ford Drive, for reasons I have yet to discover.
1 comment:
I just had lunch with a very handsome bridegroom and I must say it was a loverly loverly time. Too bad you could not join us....I love you so much,
Blynn
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