If you think Nashville is all cowboy hats and honky-tonks, you'd be mistaken. Sure, country music permeates Music City, USA, but Nashville is also a place of high culture, and, more recently, foreign culture. The capital of Tennessee is a refugee hot spot as well as an entertainment destination, and it's also the home of some interesting historical trivia. So, bring your boots, but prepare to be surprised by some things about the city you might not have known.

Little Kurdistan

Nashville is home to the largest Kurdish community in North America. The community was featured in the PBS documentary series "Next Door Neighbors" in an episode titled "Little Kurdistan, USA." The episode focuses on the Kurds' resettlement in Nashville as a result of decades of strife in their homeland. The resettlement began after the failed Kurdish revolution against Iraq in 1976 and continued in waves, the largest wave occurring in the early 1990s after refugees fled Saddam Hussein's brutal genocidal campaign against the Kurds that began in 1987. The Kurdish population in Nashville has been estimated to be as high as 11,000. "It's a source of pride for a lot of Nashvillians," a manager of the local Metro Services Refugee Program was quoted as saying in an article on the Kurdish Herald website.

Athens of the South

Long before Nashville became Music City, it was known as the Athens of the South because of its many higher educational institutions. Today the Nashville area has 21 postgraduate institutions, including Vanderbilt, Belmont, Lipscomb and Tennessee State universities. Owing to the "Athens of the South" moniker, in the 1890s the city built a full-scale replica of Athens' Parthenon for the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Housed inside this replica is another full-scale re-creation, a 42-foot-tall statue of the goddess Athena. Nashville's Parthenon is the centerpiece of Centennial Park, the city's major urban green space. It also houses an art museum run by the city.

The World's Longest-Running Live Music Radio Show

Nashville is home to the world's longest-running live music radio show. The Grand Ole Opry has been broadcasting every week since 1925 on AM radio station WSM. Originally known as the "WSM Barn Dance," the show has had many venues in Nashville through the years, beginning in the studios of WSM and currently broadcasting from the stage of its permanent home since 1974, the Grand Ole Opry House (opry.com). You can attend the family-friendly show, which features country legends sharing the bill with up-and-coming acts, and take a backstage tour of the Opry House. During the holiday season the show returns to one of its former homes, the legendary Ryman Auditorium (ryman.com) in downtown Nashville. The Grand Ole Opry House contains a 6-foot circle of oak at center stage that was cut from the stage of the Ryman.

"Good to the Last Drop"

One of the more well-known marketing slogans in the history of American advertising, Maxwell House Coffee's "Good to the Last Drop" originated in Nashville. In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt was visiting the Hermitage (the hermitage.com), former home of one of his predecessors, Andrew Jackson. As the story goes, Roosevelt asked for some coffee while touring the home and was given a local brand named after the Maxwell House hotel in Nashville. Though there is no direct evidence Roosevelt ever uttered the phrase, he reportedly declared the coffee "good to the last drop." Years later, the company began touting the connection between its catch phrase and Roosevelt in its ads.

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About the Author Blake Guthrie covers travel, entertainment and outdoor recreation for many outlets, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he is a regular contributor. With years of experience as a professional cook, Guthrie also relishes writing about food and beverage topics. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in mass communications from Auburn University.