North Carolina is named in honor of King Charles I of England who first formed the English colony, Carolus being Latin for "Charles".

On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully piloted the world's first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. To commemorate this achievement, the state adopted the slogan "First in Flight" on state license plates.

In June 1718, Blackbeard ran his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, aground on a sandbar at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina. After appealing to the governor of North Carolina for safe-haven and a pardon, Blackbeard settled in the town of Bath. But the governor of Virginia was uncomfortable with the idea of a pirate living nearby and sent troops across the border to ambush and kill him.

During the American Revolutionary War, British General Charles Cornwallis marched his men through the city of Charlotte, where they encountered stiff resistance. He would later write that Charlotte was "a hornet's nest of rebellion." Little did he know that the town would wholeheartedly embrace his comment. Today, a hornet nest logo is emblazoned on the sides of Charlotte-Mecklenburg police vehicles, and the city's current NBA team is called the Charlotte Hornets.

Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees, which line the streets in the heart of the city. It was chosen as the site of the new capital in 1788, as its central location protected it from attacks from the coast.

In August 1587, a group of about 115 English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. After three months, the colony's governor, John White, made the trip back to England for supplies. When he returned, White found no trace of the colony or its inhabitants, and few clues to what might have happened, apart from a single word--"Croatoan"--carved into a wooden post. The fate of the "Lost Colony" remains a mystery to this day.

One of America's favorite backyard birds, the northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) was once prized as a pet, but its sale as a cage bird was banned in the United States by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

North Carolina's most common nickname is the "Tar Heel State". The origin of the term is not entirely clear, but historians agree that it derives from the state's long history as a producer of naval stores--tar, pitch, rosin and turpentine--all of which were culled from North Carolina's extensive pine forests.

At 6,684 feet (2,037 m), North Carolina's Mount Mitchell is the highest-point in North America east of the Mississippi River. The mountain, previously known as Black Dome for its rounded shape, was named after Elisha Mitchell, who first explored the Black Mountain region in 1835 and determined that the height of the range exceeded by several hundred feet that of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, commonly thought at the time to be the highest point east of the Rocky Mountains. Mitchell fell to his death at nearby Mitchell Falls in 1857, having returned to verify his earlier measurements.

Thanks to its century-long run as a major manufacturing hub, the town of High Point, North Carolina, is nicknamed "the furniture capital of the world." It's a moniker worn with pride, as the gigantic, 40-foot dresser in the middle of town clearly shows. The original chest of drawers was built in 1926 by the High Point Chamber of Commerce. It was restored in 1996 as a 19th-century Queen Anne-style piece, with four wide drawers and silver handles. Out of the center drawer hangs a mismatched pair of neon-colored socks, each six feet long.