Topical Tens: 23 May: South Carolina

Monday 22 May 2017

23 May: South Carolina

South Carolina entered the Union on May 23, 1788 and became the 8th state.

The state was named after the British kings, Charles I and Charles II. The name comes from the Latin “Carolinus” meaning “of Charles.” It was originally one settlement, along with North Carolina, but the British decided it was too big to govern easily, so they split it in 1729.
South Carolina is the only state in the USA that grows Tea.
It grows a lot of Peaches, too, gaining it the nickname the Peach State. It used to be called the Iodine State. The peach is the state fruit. South Carolina is also called the Palmetto State, for a distinctive tree that grows along its coast. Palmetto trees are historically important because they were used to build Fort Moultrie, the site of the American colonists’ first victory during the Revolutionary War. The wood of these trees was so soft and spongy that British cannonballs would bounce off the walls. The state flower is the Yellow Jessamine; the state amphibian is the salamander; the state Spider is the Carolina wolf spider; the state fossil is the woolly mammoth, at the request of an eight year old girl in 2014, and the state dance is the shag.
South Carolina has the smallest police station in the world and the largest living Cat. The police station is in Ridgeway and is about the size of a toll booth. It was in full use up until 1990. The cat lives at Myrtle Beach Safari wildlife reserve, weighs over 900 pounds, is 12 feet tall when standing on his hind legs, and eats 100 pounds of meat each day. He is a liger, (half Lion, half Tiger) and his name is Hercules.
The capital, Columbia, was named after Christopher Columbus and is a hundred years older than the United States of America.
South Carolina has no professional sports teams. It was, however, the venue for the first game of golf played in the US and one of its famous sons is the boxing champion Joe Frazier.
Other famous people from South Carolina include Blackbeard, Chubby Checker, Dizzy Gillespie, Andrew Jackson, Jesse Jackson, Joe Jackson and James Brown. One I'd never heard of, but according to one source is the most famous son of South Carolina was Clayton "Peg Leg" Bates, who lost a leg in a cotton gin accident at the age of 12, but overcame his disability and became a famous dancer known for the "Imitation American Jet Plane," in which he'd jump five feet in the air and land on his peg leg, with his good leg sticking out straight behind him.
It's illegal in South Carolina to keep a Horse in a Bathtub or perform dental surgery on it. If you happen to visit Magnolia Park Cemetery in Spartanburg, bear in mind that it's illegal to eat watermelons there. It's also illegal to sell anything within a half mile of a church unless it's fruit. It's illegal to sell musical instruments on a Sunday, but you can sell lightbulbs. If you want to beat your wife, take her to the court house steps on a Sunday as it's perfectly legal to beat her there on that day.
The US Civil War began in South Carolina when Confederate soldiers opened fire on the Union soldiers guarding the sea fort at Fort Sumter.
South Carolina has the oldest landscaped gardens in the United States, at Middleton Place near Charleston; America's first symphony orchestra was based there as was the first free or public library in the American colonies and the first public museum. The prize for the wackiest museum could well go to the button museum which started in 1983 when an insomniac named Dalton Stevens decided to pass the time by sewing Buttons on things. The most bizarre exhibit is a button-covered hearse.