DeKalb turns 200, celebrates bicentennial

Tonight, DeKalb CEO Michael Thurmond will kick off the celebration with a mural unveiling and announcements, the AJC reports. Events are planned throughout the next year.

• In addition, the DeKalb History Center is showcasing a special exhibit chronicling the county's history.

Here's some trivia to wow your friends. Diiiiiiid you know:

📜 DeKalb was established in 1822 on land ceded by the Creeks and offered in a lottery. It’s Georgia’s 56th county.

🪨 At one time, Lithonia was one of the world's largest producers of granite. The owners of one company later donated 500 acres of their land to the county, helping to create the Davidson-Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve.

🪤 In the DeKalb Fire Department's early days, a ringing telephone would activate a rat trap tied to a light switch, which would alert the firefighters to go battle a blaze.

🤷 The county's namesake — Baron Johann de Kalb, a German-born supporter of colonists in the Revolutionary War — never visited the county. 

🤧 PDK Airport is the former site of Camp Gordon, a World War I Army training base where some of metro Atlanta’s early cases of the 1918 influenza were discovered.

✋ DeKalb long claimed to be the "greenest county in America" but we're not buying that. Not then, not now!