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Introduction
Tennessee (/ˌtɛnəˈsiː/ (listen), locally /ˈtɛnəsi/; Cherokee: ᏔᎾᏏ, translit. Tanasi) is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th largest and the 16th most populous of the 50 United States. Tennessee is bordered by Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the west, and Missouri to the northwest. The Appalachian Mountains dominate the eastern part of the state, and the Mississippi River forms the state's western border. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, with a 2017 population of 667,560. Tennessee's second largest city is Memphis, which had a population of 652,236 in 2017.
The state of Tennessee is rooted in the Watauga Association, a 1772 frontier pact generally regarded as the first constitutional government west of the Appalachians. What is now Tennessee was initially part of North Carolina, and later part of the Southwest Territory. Tennessee was admitted to the Union as the 16th state on June 1, 1796. Tennessee was the last state to leave the Union and join the Confederacy at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. Occupied by Union forces from 1862, it was the first state to be readmitted to the Union at the end of the war.
Selected article
Fisk University is a historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee, which opened its doors to its first classes on January 9, 1866.
Fisk is the home of the world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers. The Jubilee Singers started out in the 1870s as a group of traveling students who set out from Nashville to raise money for the school through their singing. After a tour of Europe in 1873 they sent enough money back to Fisk to build Jubilee Hall, the first permanent building in the country built for the education of newly-freed slaves.
Notable Fisk alumni include Marion Barry, former mayor of Washington D.C.; Cora Brown, the first African-American woman to be elected to a state senate; W. E. B. Du Bois, a sociologist and scholar, who was the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University; poet Nikki Giovanni; U.S. Congressman Alcee Hastings and John Lewis; concert singer Roland Hayes; and Alma Powell, wife of General Colin Powell. (Read more...)
Selected biography
As a player, and a member of Chi Omega sorority at the University of Tennessee-Martin, Summitt was an All American and co-captain of the 1976 Olympic basketball team.
As coach, Pat Summitt has won eight national championships, which is the most among all women's basketball coaches, and second most among all college basketball coaches (only former UCLA men's coach John Wooden won more). She also has 14 Southeastern Conference regular season titles with the Lady Vols, as well as 13 SEC tournament titles.
She has written two books (with the help of Sally Jenkins), Reach for the Summitt (part motivational book, part autobiography) and Raise the Roof (about the Lady Vols' undefeated season in which they won the 1998 NCAA championship). Read more...
Selected image
Clingmans Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains is the highest point in the state of Tennessee.
Image credit: Scott Basford (2007)
Selected anniversaries in April
- April 2, 2006 - A tornado outbreak took 24 lives and devastated parts of West Tennessee, including Newbern and Bradford. It was followed five days later by another devastating tornado outbreak that left 12 people dead in Middle Tennessee.
- April 3-4 1974 - 45 people died in Tennessee during the largest one-day tornado outbreak on record, which caused a total of 319 deaths in the United States and Canada.
- April 4, 1968 - Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, now the National Civil Rights Museum.
- April 6/7 1862 - The Battle of Shiloh was one of the first major battles in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, it lasted two days.
- April 12, 1864 - The Civil War Battle of Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow Massacre, was fought at Fort Pillow on bluffs above the Mississippi River near Henning, Tennessee.
- April 15, 1865 - U.S. Vice President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee succeeded to the presidency upon the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
- April 17, 1905 - The current Tennessee flag was adopted by the Tennessee State Legislature as the state flag.
- April 17, 1973 - Federal Express began operations in Memphis, the first cargo airline to use only jet aircraft for its services.
- April 27, 1865 - The paddlewheel steamboat Sultana was destroyed by an explosion and sank in the Mississippi River near Memphis; the greatest maritime disaster in United States history killed an estimated 1,700 of the 2,400 passengers.
Did you know...
- ...that Great Falls Dam on the Caney Fork River in Middle Tennessee was built in 1916 by the Tennessee Electric Power Company for the purpose of hydroelectric power generation and was sold to the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1939?
- ...that McGhee Tyson Airport, which serves Knoxville, is named for Navy pilot McGhee Tyson, who was lost on patrol in World War I?
- ...that Reelfoot Lake was formed in 1812 as a result of the New Madrid earthquake, the largest earthquake ever recorded in the contiguous United States?
Related portals
Things to do
- Join WikiProject Tennessee
- Help compile high quality encyclopedic content related to the State of Tennessee for the Tennessee Portal. Suggest articles, biographies, anniversaries. Every idea, suggestion and contribution is welcome! Please leave your idea on the WikiProject Tennessee talk page.