Georgia
State in SE USA; nicknamed Empire State of the South/Peach State
Area:
152,600 sq km/58,904 sq mi
Capital:
Atlanta
Towns and Cities:
Columbus, Savannah, Macon
Physical:
Okefenokee Swamp national wildlife refuge (1,700 sq km/ 656 sq mi);
Golden Isles, including Cumberland Island national seashore; Chattahoochee
national forest
Features:
St Simons Island (with Fort Frederica national monument), Sea Island,
and Jekyll Island, including Jekyll Island Club historic district, with
the mansions built by wealthy families such as the Rockefellers and
the Vanderbilts; Savannah (founded 1733), with a 4- sq-km/2.5-sq-mi
historic district with town squares and over 1,000 restored houses,
including Regency houses designed by William Jay (Owens Thomas House,
1817, and Telfair mansion and art museum, 1819), Juliette Gordon Low
Girl Scout National Center (birthplace of Daisy Low, founder of the
Girl Scouts of the USA), Isaiah Davenport House (1815), Olde Pink House
(1771), King-Tisdall Cottage (a museum of black history and culture),
and the site of the Siege of Savannah (1779); Atlanta, site of the 1996
Olympic Games, with Martin Luther King Jr national historic district
(including Martin Luther King's birthplace and Ebenezer Baptist Church),
Stone Mountain Park (with the world's largest sculpture memorial, to
the Confederate war heroes), the CNN Center, and the World of Coca-Cola
; Andersonville national historic site, site of the National Prisoners
of War Museum; Fort Jackson on Salter's Island, the oldest colonial
fort in the state; Nennesaw Mountain national battlefield; Calloway
Gardens, Pine Mountain, with the Cecil B Day Butterfly Center, the largest
glass- enclosed tropical butterfly conservatory in North America
Industries:
Poultry, livestock, tobacco, maize, peanuts, cotton, soya beans, china
clay, crushed granite, clothing and textiles, carpets, aircraft, paper
products
Population:
(1996 est) 7,353,000
Famous People:
Jim Bowie; Erskine Caldwell; Jimmy Carter; Ray Charles ; Ty Cobb; Joel
Chandler Harris; Bobby Jones; Martin Luther King, Jr ; Carson McCullers;
Margaret Mitchell; James Oglethorpe; Jackie Robinson
History:
Explored 1540 by Hernando de Soto; claimed by the British and named
after George II of England; founded 1733 as a colony for the industrious
poor by James Oglethorpe, a philanthropist; one of the original
13 states of the USA. In 1864, during the Civil War, Gen W T Sherman's
Union troops cut a wide swath of destruction as they marched from
Atlanta to the sea. The state benefited after World War II from
the growth of Atlanta as the financial and transportation centre
of the southeastern USA.
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