Many people know the textbook highlights of our state’s history – agriculture, space exploration, civil rights clashes – but did you know about the Alabamian who created Jackie Kennedy’s iconic wedding dress? Or that the world’s largest cake once built in Fort Payne? Or that the giant sloths that once roamed the land?

Just for funsies, we put together a list of random but intriguing bits of trivia from Alabama. See how many you already knew.

Next time you’re stuck for an interesting topic at a gathering, you’ll be ready. You’re welcome!

Mysterious staircase

The gorgeous spiral staircase inside the Cary Center at Auburn University is an architectural mystery. Built in 1840 as the Halliday-Cary-Pick home at 360 North College Street and now used as offices for Auburn University, the structure features a mahogany spiral staircase built during the home’s construction by an itinerant French carpenter. The staircase has no visible means of support. Click here to read more.

World-record bubble

In 2004, Chad Fell of Haleyville was certified by the Guinness World Records for blowing the World’s Largest Bubblegum Bubble, Unassisted (without use of his hands) at Double Springs High School in Winston County. He used three pieces of Dubble Bubble gum.

8,000-year-old skeleton

The skeleton of a pre-historic human, thought to date back as many as 8,000 years, was found in Russell Cave near Bridgeport. The National Park Service says: “The monument contains a large number of sites related to the aboriginal use and occupation of the cave and preserves one of the oldest burials known to date in Alabama, with well-preserved material including some of the oldest bone tools, fishhooks, domesticated seeds, and weaving impressions in the Southeast.”

Hank William’s Cadillac

The blue Cadillac in which Hank Williams was riding when he died on January 31, 1953, at age 29 is on display at the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery.

Portraits inspired ‘Gone with the Wind’

The paintings of Huntsville’s Maria Howard Weeden (1846-1905) were the inspiration for “Gone with the Wind” costumes. As a renowned artist and writer, she used the name Howard Weeden. She was best known for her paintings of enslaved people. The home where she lived her entire life in downtown Huntsville is now the Weeden House Museum.

Biologically diverse

Alabama rivers are home to 325 freshwater species of fish, and another 100 that are native to the state, making the rivers the most biologically diverse in the world.

Watercress Capital of the World

Alabama was once a major producer of watercress, a leafy green used in salads. According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, watercress was an important commodity in the state until the mid-1900s. “The watercress industry was centered in Madison County … [and Huntsville] was known as the Watercress Capital of the World,” the encyclopedia article said. “From the early twentieth century through the 1960s, more than 2 million bunches of watercress were grown and harvested in the area, more than produced by any other source in the United States. Today, watercress production continues in Madison County, but on a much-reduced scale.”

Mark Twain’s cousin

Mark Twain’s cousin, Jeremiah Clemens (1814-1865), was a writer who was born and died in Huntsville. He served as a U.S. senator and a member of the Alabama Legislature. He was the author of several books including “A Tale of the Times of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton,” and the novel “Tobias Wilson.”

World-record cake

In October of 1989, residents of Fort Payne built a cake to celebrate the city’s centennial. The 12-layer cake was 32 feet wide and 80 feet long and weighed 128,238 pounds, according to a 1989 edition of The Huntsville Times. It was certified by Guinness World Records as the World’s Largest Cake. The record has since been broken.

Famed harmonica player

Burl “Jaybird” Coleman (born 1896 in Gainesville; died 1950 in Tuskegee) was a blues harmonica player who performed with the Birmingham Jug Band in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels Show. Coleman served in World War I and then began travelling with the minstrel show. He first recorded in 1927 on Birmingham’s Gennett, Silvertone and Black Patti Record labels. During the 1930s, he toured throughout Alabama and later recorded for OKeh and Columbia Records.

Alabama’s prairie

Before the 1830s, Alabama’s Black Belt consisted of tallgrass prairies. Early settlers cut the grasses and farmed the lands so that today, less than 1 percent of the prairie remains, meaning the loss of habitat for many forms of wildlife. The prairie is also home to rare plants, like rosinweed, that do not grow anywhere else in the world, according to this marker at Old Cahawba Archaeological Site. first capital city, which is preserved as an outdoor museum.

The man who shot Billy the Kid

Pat Garrett, the man who killed Billy the Kid, was born near Cusseta, Ala., on June 5, 1850. He was sheriff of Lincoln County, N.M., when he shot and killed the notorious outlaw July 14, 1881. Garrett himself was murdered Feb. 29, 1908. He is buried in Las Cruces, N.M.

First city in the nation

Abbeville, Ala., is the first city in the nation alphabetically, both by city and state, in the Rand McNally Road Atlas.

Dred Scott in Alabama

Dred Scott, whose name is associated with the landmark U.S. Supreme Court Dred Scott Decision of 1857, worked in Alabama. Scott was born in Virginia but lived and worked, as a slave, in Madison and Florence between 1818 and 1830. For a time, he was a hostler at the Peter Blow Inn in Florence and a historic marker was erected at the site. Historians believe his first wife was buried in Oakwood Slave Cemetery in Huntsville.

Founder of The Temptations

Edward James Kendrick (1939-1992) was born in Union Springs, Ala. He became a soul singer and songwriter who, using the name Eddie Kendricks, was a lead vocalist and cofounder for the legendary group, The Temptations. He also recorded as a solo artist, and had a No. 1 single with “Keep On Truckin’.”

World-famous Fisk Jubilee singer

A woman born into slavery in Athens, Ala., in the 1850s, went on to become one of the world’s best-known mezzo-soprano singers. Patti Malone was born on Cedars Plantation and, following the Civil War, was able to attend Trinity School, founded to provide education to former slaves. That allowed her to enroll at Nashville’s Fisk University, where she joined a choir established to help raise funds to build a campus. She became one of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and traveled the world, entertaining German Emperor Wilhelm and leaders across Europe, Australia and New Zealand. She died in 1897 and is buried in Athens.

Birmingham’s Wikipedia

Bhamwiki.com was launched in 2006 as part of the Project to Document the Birmingham District. It uses the Wikipedia Model of encyclopedic entries and is operated with MediaWiki software. The entries are created by volunteers. Its mission statement says, “We aim for accuracy, objectivity, and accessibility as we work steadily to expand our coverage.” Bhamwiki currently has more than 13,000 entries so visitors can explore the area’s history by date or by subject or even select articles at random.

Designed Jackie Kennedy’s dress

An Alabama native designed the wedding dress worn by Jacqueline Bouvier when she married future president John F. Kennedy. Ann Lowe, who was living in New York at the time, hailed from Clayton, Ala. She was the daughter of a seamstress and great-granddaughter of a slave woman and plantation owner. Click here to see more than a dozen of Lowe’s creations in the Smithsonian collection. Watch an interview with Lowe above.

Building the Black Pearl

The Black Pearl was built in Alabama. One of the pirate ships featured in Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” film franchise was built at Steiner Shipyard in Bayou La Batre. The ship, created from an existing craft, was used in the second and third films in the franchise.

Alabama’s plank roads

Alabama once had wooden roads. In 1849, the first plank road in the country was built by Daniel Pratt for the public and for transportation from his Pratt Cotton Gin to the Alabama River. It was constructed of large pine logs, sawed lengthwise and laid round-side down. These days, visitors can walk along a reproduction plank road in Tannehill State Park near McCalla.

When Giant Sloths roamed

Giant sloths once roamed Alabama. Bones of two types of extinct giant ground sloths – the Megalonyx jeffersonii and Paramylodon harlani – that lived during the Ice Age have been found in Alabama. They could grow up to 9 feet tall and weigh more than two tons.