Portal:Tennessee
| Main page | Facts & Symbols | Topics | Lists | Categories |
Introduction
Tennessee (/ˌtɛnəˈsiː/ (
listen), locally /ˈtɛnəsi/; Cherokee: ᏔᎾᏏ, romanized: 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 eight states, with 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 and a 2017 metro population of 1,903,045. 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
FedEx Corporation is a leading logistics services company based in Memphis, Tennessee. The company was founded as Federal Express (FedEx is an abbreviation of the original name) in 1971 by Fred Smith in Little Rock, Arkansas. The company moved to Memphis in 1973 because Little Rock airport officials would not agree to provide facilities for the company's airplanes.
Federal Express began operations on April 17, 1973, as the first cargo airline that used only jet aircraft for its services. It expanded greatly after the deregulation of the cargo airlines sector.
FedEx operates much of its U.S. overnight freight through its Memphis hub. (Read more...)
Selected biography
John Sevier (23 September 1745 – 25 September 1815) was the governor of the State of Franklin (1785–1789), the first Governor of the State of Tennessee (1796–1801 and 1803–1809), and a U.S. Congressman from Tennessee from 1811 until his death in 1815. In the American Revolutionary War he was the commander of the Washington County, Tennessee, contingent of the Overmountain Men in the Battle of Kings Mountain.
Sevier was born in New Market, Virginia. Along with his first wife, Sarah Hawkins, and their children, he settled in the Holston River valley in what is now East Tennessee. That area was then claimed by Virginia. Sevier served briefly in Lord Dunmore's War in 1774. In this war John Sevier began to win the reputation as an Indian fighter that would make him a hero in his own day, though making some modern historians uncomfortable with his legacy.
Soon after settling in Northeast Tennessee, Sevier became involved in local politics, helping to organize a petition to North Carolina to become part of that state, and commanding Washington County militia in the Cherokee siege of Fort Caswell (or Fort Watauga) near Sycamore Shoals (present-day Elizabethton, Tennessee). After this battle he was promoted from Lieutenant Colonel to Colonel, and in this capacity led 240 of over 1,000 militiamen over the Appalachian Mountains to fight against Major Patrick Ferguson and a similar number of British Regulars and Carolina Loyalists at the Battle of Kings Mountain. (Read more...)
Selected image
Nutbush, Tennessee is the childhood home of singer Tina Turner.
Image credit: doxTxob (2006)
Selected anniversaries in September
- September 1, 1812 - The Nashville Whig, a weekly newspaper to which The Tennessean traces its roots, began publication.
- September 4, 1864 - Confederate General John Hunt Morgan was killed during a Union raid on Greeneville, Tennessee.
- September 5, 1846 - Jack Daniel, founder of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey distillery, was born in Lynchburg, Tennessee.
- September 6, 1916 - Piggly Wiggly, the first true self-service grocery store, was founded in Memphis by Clarence Saunders.
- September 6, 1955 - Oak Ridge High School, then under U.S. Atomic Energy Commission control, became the first desegregated public high school in the southern U.S.
- September 10, 1794 - University of Tennessee in Knoxville was chartered as Blount College. The "University of Tennessee" was adopted in 1879.
- September 11, 1960 - At the Summer Olympic Games in Rome, Wilma Rudolph of Clarksville anchored the U.S. 400-m relay team to win her third gold medal in the Games, after previously winning the 100-m and 200-m races.
- September 13, 1916 - A crowd of over 2,500 people watched in Erwin, Tennessee, as Mary, a five-ton circus elephant, was hanged by the neck from a railcar-mounted industrial crane for the crime of killing an itinerant trainer.
- September 15, 1903 - Birth of country musician Roy Acuff in Maynardville.
- September 18, 2006 - The Music City Star regional rail service began operation between Nashville and Lebanon, Tennessee.
- September 21, 1807 - The Tennessee General Assembly met in Kingston, making the city Tennessee's state capital for one day.
- September 24, 1904 - Two Southern Railway passenger trains collided head-on near New Market, killing at least 56 people and injuring 106.
- September 25, 1780 - Several hundred frontiersmen mustered at Sycamore Shoals, forming the core of the Overmountain Men who were to play an important role in winning the Battle of Kings Mountain.
- September 25, 1979 - President Jimmy Carter signed a congressional bill exempting Tellico Dam from the Endangered Species Act, thus ending the snail darter controversy.
Did you know...
- ...that the Ocoee River was the site of the whitewater slalom events during the 1996 Summer Olympics?
- ...that the name of The Leaf-Chronicle (Clarksville's daily newspaper) refers to the leaf of tobacco, the area's main agricultural crop?
- ...that the Cumberland Gap Tunnel between Tennessee and Kentucky replaced a stretch of U.S. Route 25E that had been called "Massacre Mountain" because of the number of motorists killed there?
Tennessee News
- 15 August 2019 –
- A Cessna Citation carrying former NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., his wife and infant daughter crashes on landing at Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Elizabethton, Tennessee. All occupants survive without serious injury. (CNN)
- 28 April 2019 – Crime in Tennessee
- Seven people are found dead in Sumner County, Tennessee. The suspect, Michael Cummins, is in police custody. (WFTS)
- 24 February 2019 –
- A state of emergency is declared in Tennessee amid flooding that has caused landslides and one death. (CNN)
- 22 February 2019 –
- Flooding is reported throughout Tennessee amid heavy rain. Rain is expected to continue, possibly making the flooding worse. (WSMV)
- 1 November 2018 – Capital punishment in Tennessee
- The state of Tennessee executes Edmund Zagorski, a man convicted of the April 1983 murders of John Dotson and Jimmy Porter, making it the first time the state has executed an inmate by electrocution since 2007. Zagorski requested that he be executed via electrocution. (NBC News), (ABC News)
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.
