1. Diamonds were first discovered in Arkansas by John W. Huddleston in 1906 where Crater of Diamonds State Park stands now, making engagement bling just a little bit blingy-er forever.
“Diamond”bynikilokis licensed underCC BY 2.0
2. You probably know that Arkansas is The Natural State, but did you know that the Magnet Cove region contains 102 varieties of minerals alone?
“Gold”byAnthony Eastonis licensed underCC BY 2.0
3. It’s strictly prohibited by law to mispronounce the state name. It’s “Ar-kan-saw.”
“Great Southern Arkansas Mule Ride”bySouthern Arkansas Universityis licensed underCC BY 2.0
4. Hope is the self-proclaimed Watermelon Capital Of the World.
5. Hope is also home to a certain saxophone playing president you may have heard of. But did you know that he put AstroTurf down in the back of his El Camino?
6. Cheese dogs were created in Little Rock at the Finkbeiner Meat Packing Company in 1956 by inserting cheese into the center of a hot dog.
7. 15 meteorites have been discovered in Arkansas.
8. The World's Championship Duck Calling Contest is held annually in Stuttgart.
9. Arkansas has the only active diamond mine in the United States along with the only mine where you can mine for your own diamonds.
10. The next time you're moved to tears by a great movie moment made perfect by the soundtrack, thank Pine Bluff native Freeman Owens, the first person to successfully add sound to film.
11. Ernest Hemingway wrote parts of his classic novel “A Farewell to Arms” at his studio in Piggot, his wife's hometown.
12. Hemingway saved his manuscripts from a fire that broke out in his writing studio in 1932 by throwing them out of an upstairs window. The house is now a museum.
13. Meyer’s Bakery brought the world the gift of brown-and-serve rolls in the 1930’s in Arkansas.
14. It is illegal for the Arkansas River to rise above the Main Street Bridge in Little Rock. Take that, Mother Nature.
15. Walmart, the superchain with 11,000 stores in 27 countries, opened its first store in Rogers in 1962 by Sam Walton.
16. Mount Ida is referred to as the Quartz Crystal Capital of the World.
17. Native Johnny Cash’s “Five Feet High and Rising” song was based on a 1937 flood that saw his hometown of Dyess Colony evacuated.
18. Growing up in Arkansas, Johnny Cash was fascinated by Frankenstein's monster and empathized with the character saying he was just someone who was "made up of bad parts but trying to do good."
19. Hot Springs has an Alligator Farm with a petting zoo.
20. Little Rock is the home to the American Taekwondo Association National Headquarters.
21. The Little Rock Nine changed the face of the civil rights movement when they walked into Little Rock Central High School in 1957 after Brown vs. The Board Of Education ruling deemed segregation unconstitutional.
22. Paul McCartney has suggested that the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School was his inspiration for the song “Blackbird.”
23. In Fayetteville, it’s illegal to kill any living creature. Hopefully that doesn’t go for mosquitoes.
24. More than half the state of Arkansas is covered by forestland.
25. Elvis was cleaned up for his service in the Army at Fort Chaffee on March 25, 1958 where he received his televised haircut. The barbershop is now a museum.
26. The show "Designing Women" was produced by Harry Thomason, a Little Rock native. The city's Villa Marre house is featured in the show's opening credits.
27. Pine Bluff, Arkansas was named America's most dangerous small town last year by CQ Press—its crime rate is second only to Detroit.
28. The Ozark National Forest covers more than one million acres.
29. The Little River County Courthouse in Ashdown is Arkansas-famous for its holiday light display.
30. It's illegal in Arkansas to shine any sort of artificial light from the road in a wildlife management region like a state park. So technically speaking, it's a law against waking sleeping bears by snapping a photo.
31. Tyson Foods, now the world’s largest producer and marketer of chicken, began with a single truck shipping chickens from Arkansas to Chicago in 1935.
32. In 1876, two Fayetteville newspaper editors had a street fight to settle their differences. The loser had to sell his paper and leave town, which he did.
33. Highly-acclaimed author John Grisham was born in Jonesboro and lived throughout Northeast Arkansas before his career took off, selling over 225 million copies of his books. He still returns to Arkansas often for book signings.
34. 47 hot springs flow from Hot Springs Mountain, at an average temperature of 143 degrees.
35. Because the Hot Spring water is said to be therapeutic for ailments, many famous faces have visited Hot Springs over the years, including Franklin. D Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, and Al Capone.
36. As part of the Magnolia Blossom Festival, Magnolia is home to the World's Largest Charcoal Grill and the World Championship Steak Cook-off.
37. Alma claims to be the Spinach Capital Of The World but is not the home of Popeye.
38. Arkansas-native Hattie Caraway was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate in November 1932.
39. In the early 20th century, ostrich racing was a popular sport at Cockburn’s Ostrich Farm in Hot Springs.
40. A farm in Lavaca has a silo painted into a giant Budweiser beer can.
41. Before 1932, a man and a woman openly flirting on the streets of Little Rock could get a 30-day stint in jail.
42. You might expect the University of Arkansas’ first football team to go way back, but it was founded 120 years ago in 1894.
43. After getting injured in a car accident, Bonnie Parker and fellow notorious bank robber Clyde Barrow stole another car and hid out in a tourist camp in Fort Smith in 1933.
44. Dover has a double-decker outhouse at the Booger Hollow Trading Post.
45. In Arkansas, voters get a five-minute window to mark and place their ballots.
46. Pine Bluff is the only city in the country to hold the 13-15 year-old Babe Ruth World Series four separate times.
47. What started off as a small store in Howard County in 1938 turned into Dillard’s, one of the top department stores in the country.
48. The Dover Lights are an unexplained phenomenon that witnesses say flicker and sway in various colors in the sky overlooking the Ozark Valley. Legend has it that they’re lights carried by Spanish Conquistador ghosts searching for their lost gold in the foothills.
49. While the makeup company Maybelline is headquartered in New York, its factory has been based in Little Rock since 1975, selling an average of 1.7 tubes of mascara every second.
50. Fouke is said to be home to the Boggy Creek Monster or the Fouke Monster, a seven-foot-tall, hairy Bigfoot wannabe that reportedly kills chicken, cattle, dogs and livestock.
