Test your knowledge of the Mississippi Coast with this 25-question quiz

Ships, shrimp, baseball, bronze busts, lighthouses, war heroes, pickles, pralines, interstates, fish, seawalls, aviators, creosote, jazz funerals, oh my!

How well do you know the community you call home? Today is a chance to test your knowledge of the Mississippi Gulf Coast as past and present all swirl together in this 25-question Q&A.

1. The Mississippi Coast has a history of 11 lighthouses on the mainland and islands. Which one of them was painted black to mourn the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln?

2. A rest stop in Wiggins on U.S. 49 is dedicated with photos and plaques in memory of a nationally revered baseball player. Who is he and why is it located there?

3. What Coast city is named an American World War II Heritage City, an honor designated by the U.S. National Park Service to only one city per state?

4. Why is a subdivision, created in Long Beach in the 1960s, called Pitcher’s Point?

5. What Coast city declared itself as “The Praline Capital of the World” in the mid-20th Century?

6. What year was the Mississippi Coast section of Interstate-10 completed, and for how many miles?

7. What Mississippi-born attorney turned author, now living in Virginia, used Biloxi as a backdrop for many of his early legal thrillers and continues to mention Biloxi?

8. We all learned in school that a French Canadian named Iberville, under the flag of French King Louis XIV, led the 1699 expedition that brought colonization to this Coast. But who moved the French capital from Biloxi to create New Orleans and what was his relationship with Iberville?

9. Which is the oldest city on the Coast?

10. So how old is Bay St. Louis?

11. Unlike Biloxi and other cities that date to colonial times, Gulfport was created at the turn of the 20th Century by two men? Who were they?

12. What is a shrimp nickle?

13. What is a Biloxi lugger?

14. Name the company and location where the first all-welded ships were built for the U.S. Navy, revolutionizing ship construction.

15. A Gulfport native, an early Black aviator flying by the mid-1930s, paved the way for other Black flyers and at one time led the Ethiopian Air Force against fascist Italy. What was both his real name and his nickname?

16. What Ocean Springs native became an ace Navy pilot in World War II, mayor of Biloxi, state legislator and patriarch of an extensive funeral home and insurance business?

17. Who was the noted and colorful Coast district attorney, World War II aviator who was shot down and became a POW, and later survived an assassination attempt by the Dixie Mafia?

18. Who was Harrison County named for, and in what year?

19. Elizabeth Meriwether, one of the nation’s first widely read newspaper advice columnists, bought a home in Pass Christian in the 1920s. What was the pen name of this Oracle of the lovelorn?

20. What Biloxi native was an astronaut on Apollo 13 and in more recent times played an important role in getting NASA’s Infinity Science Center located in Hancock County?

21. The last battle between U.S. Navy ships and foreign foe fought in American waters took place near what Coast community and when?

22. What two Coast high schools were forbidden to play each other for 11 years after a melee of fans and players occurred in the popular Thanksgiving Coast Classic football game of 1957?

23. Who is the Florida artist who sculpted the beachfront oak trees damaged by Hurricane Katrina into sea animals and birds, even an eagle in front of the USM Gulf Park Campus?

24. What state park on the Mississippi Coast has historical roots to President Andrew Jackson?

25. A soft drink inventor, a New Orleans native, moved to Biloxi near the turn of the 20th Century and his special drink, over a century later, is made by the Coca-Cola Company today. Who is he and what is the name of his drink?

From the Chronicler: Our Coast has such a rich history that today’s 25 questions are a mere drop in the bucket. Stay tuned for the next Gulf Coast Chronicles for 25 more. The hardest job for me is whittling the Q&A down to just 25, a mixture of hard and easy ones, while sneaking in a little “did you know” facts. Look for today’s Q&A answers below.

The answers

Here are the answers to today’s 25 question in the Coast knowledge quiz.

1. None. Biloxi Lighthouse was once credited with that story, but it’s just legend. The lighthouse was coated with black tar in 1867 to keep it from rushing further from neglect during the Civil War.

2. Dizzy Dean, a Baseball Hall of Famer known for his meteoric pitches and who played in five World Series, married Patricia Nash of Bond, a community near the rest stop. After retiring from a broadcasting career the two retired in Bond and he died in 1974.

3. Pascagoula received the designation in 2022 for its shipyards and contributions in the workforce to support America’s war effort.

4. Developers revived the legend of a pirate named Captain Pitcher, who mistreated his Native Indians and his own men and paid the ultimate price. Ads claimed at his death Pitcher had “pronounced a curse on the area to discourage habitation of new settlers,” adding, “There is no record of any part of his immense buried fortune ever being found. Look sharp, Matey!”

5. Bay St. Louis. U.S. 90 was lined with businesses then called ‘novelty shops’ that sold the candy along with piles of seashells and other souvenirs.

6. 1982, 77 miles long. Louisiana and Alabama got their sections finished first by the late 1970s.

7. John Grisham, writer of 37 consecutive best sellers.

8. Jean-Baptiste LeMoyne, sieur de Bienville, or just Bienville. He was younger brother to original 1699 leader, whose full name was Pierre Le Moyne, sieur d’Iberville

9. You decide! Iberville stepped on presentday Biloxi shores Feb. 10, 1699, but built his first fort in an area he named Biloxi, a site now located in presentday Ocean Springs. He abandoned that, moved to Mobile, but within a decade the French returned to build a new fort in presentday Biloxi, calling it New Biloxi. Early history firsts aside, Biloxi incorporated as a township in 1848 and Ocean Springs in 1892.

10. Bay St. Louis, too, claims roots to Iberville’s 1699 explorations. The area was incorporated as Shieldsborough in 1818 and enlarged and re-incorporated as Bay St. Louis in 1875.

11. William H. Hardy planed, platted and named the city. Joseph T. Jones brought the port to life after Hardy faced a financial recession.

12. Nickname for tokens used to pay shrimp peelers and oyster shuckers in Coast seafood factories of late 1800s-early1900s. Tokens, slipped in apron pockets as they worked, represented how many cups they’d peeled and were redeemed for cash or used in company stores.

13. A shallow-draft fishing vessel designed and used in the 1900s to work the Mississippi Sound, typically 30-50 feet long and with a signature single mast. The Biloxi lugger design could both trawl for shrimp and harvest oysters.

14. Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, founded in 1938, is today part of Northrop Grumman. In 1940 it launched the first revolutionary all-welded steel hull ship, named the Exchequer.

15. John C. Robinson, The Brown Condor, who died in 1954

16. Jeremiah O’Keefe III, who died in 2016

17. Jesse Boyce Holleman, who died in 2003

18. William Henry Harrison, ninth U.S. president. Harrison was carved out of Hancock, Jackson and Perry counties in 1841.

19. Dorothy Dix, who died in 1951

20. Fred Haise, the lunar module pilot. Actors Bill Paxton and Adam Baldwin have played his role.

21. Bay St. Louis. In the War of 1812 American gunboats battled the British in the Pass of Christian.

22. Biloxi and Gulfport

23. Marlin Miller of Florida carved them as a gift to the ravaged Coast. Dayle Lewis from Indiana also did some in Bay St. Louis.

24. Jackson apparently once owned land in Waveland on what is known as Jackson Ridge, much of which is Buccaneer State Park.

25. Edward Barq and Barq’s root beer, although Ed sometimes insisted his drink was not root beer. “Barq’s is Barq’s,” he’d say.

Kat Bergeron, an award-winning veteran reporter and feature writer who specializes in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes this Gulf Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at:

BergeronKat@gmail.com

Or, at Southern Possum Tales, P.O. Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923