First settled in 1789 before the Louisiana Purchase, Georgetown is the oldest continuously settled area in Arkansas.

Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade tells the story of an Arkansas man named Karl Childers who has an intellectual disability and is released from a psychiatric hospital, where he has lived since killing his mother and her lover when he was 12 years old. The film won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto crossed the Mississippi and marched across central Arkansas in 1541. After finding nothing he considered of value and encountering native resistance the entire way, he and his men returned to the Mississippi River where de Soto fell ill. From his deathbed he ordered his men to massacre all the men of the nearby village of Anilco, who he feared had been plotting against him. His men obeyed, but massacred the women and children as well. De Soto died the following day in what is believed to be the vicinity of modern-day McArthur, Arkansas. His body was weighted down with sand and consigned to a watery grave in the Mississippi River under cover of darkness by his men.

The Battle of Pea Ridge (March 7-8, 1862), also known as the Battle of Elkhorn Tavern, took place near Leetown, northeast of Fayetteville. The battle was one of the few in which a Confederate army outnumbered its opponent. By defeating the Confederates, the Union forces established Federal control of most of Missouri and northern Arkansas.

Thaddeus Caraway died in office in 1931. Following the precedent of appointing widows to temporarily take their husbands' place, Arkansas governor Harvey Parnell appointed Hattie Caraway to the vacant seat, and she easily won a special election for the remaining months of the term, becoming the first woman elected to the Senate. In May 1932, Caraway surprised Arkansas politicians by announcing that she would run for a full term in the upcoming election, joining a field already crowded with prominent candidates who had assumed she would step aside. She told reporters, "The time has passed when a woman should be placed in a position and kept there only while someone else is being groomed for the job." Caraway went on to win the general election and served in the Senate until 1945.

The Fouke Monster first made headlines in 1971, when it was reported to have attacked the home of Bobby and Elizabeth Ford. According to Elizabeth, the creature, which she initially took to be a bear, reached through a screen window while she was sleeping on a couch. During the encounter, the Fords fired several shots at the creature and believed they had hit it, though no traces of blood were found. An extensive search of the area failed to locate the creature, but three-toed footprints were found close to the house.

Since its first performance in 1968, The Great Passion Play in Eureka Springs has been seen by over 7.7 million people, which makes it the largest-attended outdoor drama in America. With a cast of 170 actors and dozens of live animals, it brings to life the epic drama of Jesus Christ's last days on Earth.

Arkansas is bordered by six states: Mississippi and Tennessee to the east, Missouri to the north, Oklahoma and Texas to the west, and Louisiana to the south.

At 2,753 feet (839 m), Mount Magazine, is the highest natural point in the state of Arkansas. It got its name from French explorers who witnessed a landslide on the mountain. The noise from the landslide was so great that one explorer described it as the sound of an ammunition magazine exploding.

Arkansas designated the pine tree as the official state tree in 1939 in recognition of the state's pine timber resources and reforestation efforts. There are four native species of pine in Arkansas: shortleaf pine, loblolly pine, longleaf pine, and slash pine.