The 75th National Peanut Festival is under way in the southeast Alabama city of Dothan.

The fair opened Friday night and is expected to draw as many as 200,000 people during a 10-day run that concludes Nov. 11.It includes amusement rides, a beauty pageant, livestock shows, agriculture exhibits and live music.

Dothan calls itself the “Peanut Capital of the World,” and the festival honoring the region’s peanut industry dates back to 1938.

The festival website says Tuskegee University scientist George Washington Carver was the speaker that inaugural year.

The festival wasn’t held in the early 1940s because of World War II, but it resumed in 1947 and has been held each year since.
(Associated Press, copyright 2018)

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