North Carolina Fun and Interesting Facts from Kids National Geographic!
North Carolina got the nickname the Tar Heel State because workers here used to sell tar, pitch, and turpentine from the state's longleaf pine trees to be used in wooden ships. Legend has it that some British soldiers were slowed down when they stepped in sticky North Carolina tar during the Revolutionary War.
North Carolina's diverse regions are home to mammals like black bears, coyotes, and raccoons; reptiles like sea turtles; amphibians like salamanders; and birds like ospreys and cardinals (the state bird). The state boasts 300 species of trees—including longleaf pine, shortleaf pine, and the American chestnut tree. Plus, nearly 3,000 types of flowering plants—including the flowering dogwood, the state flower—fill the state with lots of color.
The pirate Blackbeard called North Carolina home, and spent time ransacking ships off the coast in the early 1700s. In 1799 a shiny nugget twinkled in the North Carolina mountains and became the first gold discovered in what is now the United States. —Fast forward about a century to see brother inventors Wilbur and Orville Wright complete the first successful airplane ride in the dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903. (That's why the state's license plates and quarters read "First in Flight" and "First Flight," respectively.) —Plenty of famous folks were born in North Carolina, too, including jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, President James K. Polk, and maybe President Andrew Jackson (he was born on the border of North and South Carolina). —You might want to visit the Outer Banks, a group of islands with beaches, state parks, and shipwreck-diving sites. One of those islands, Roanoke Island, was home to the first colony of English settlers in the New World. In the late 1500s the settlers disappeared, and historians are still trying to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony.
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