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Georgia,
General Information
Nickname: Peach State
State bird: Brown Thrasher
State flower: Cherokee Rose
Capital: Atlanta
Date of admission to the Union: January 2 1788 (original 13 States; date of ratification of the Constitution)
Population: 8,829,383 (official estimate 2004)
Population density: 57.4 per sq km
2003 total overseas arrivals/US ranking: 451,000/13
Time: Eastern (GMT - 5). Daylight Saving Time is observed.
The State: Georgia is the largest State east of the Mississippi River, and was founded in 1735 by James Oglethorpe, an Englishman who landed in Savannah and established the 13th colony in the New World. Georgia is the only State to be named after a British monarch. It is a mixture of the Old and New South, and is geographically diverse, with landscapes ranging from mountains in the northeast to the mysterious, low-lying Okefenokee Swamp in the south, called the land of the ‘trembling earth’ by the region’s Native American tribes. It was in this State that gold was first struck in North America in the early part of the 19th century, and the gold rush that followed centred around the town of Dahlonega. Georgia’s varied climate ranges from the low humidity of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the subtropical southern coastal region.
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