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Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The state's capital is Richmond and its most populous city is Virginia Beach, though its most populous subdivision is Fairfax County, part of Northern Virginia, where slightly over a third of Virginia's population of 8.72 million live .

The Blue Ridge Mountains cross the western and southwestern parts of the state. The state's central region lies predominantly in the Piedmont. Eastern Virginia is part of the Atlantic Plain, and the Middle Peninsula forms the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The fertile Shenandoah Valley fosters the state's most productive agricultural counties, while the economy in Northern Virginia is driven by technology companies and U.S. federal government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency. Hampton Roads is also the site of the region's main seaport and Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval base. (Full article...)

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Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 245,803 as of the 2012 Cooper Center population estimates, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach.

Norfolk is located at the core of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, named for the large natural harbor of the same name located at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. It is one of nine cities and seven counties that constitute the Hampton Roads metro area, officially known as the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC MSA. The city is bordered to the west by the Elizabeth River and to the north by the Chesapeake Bay. It also shares land borders with the independent cities of Chesapeake to its south and Virginia Beach to its east. One of the oldest of the cities in Hampton Roads, Norfolk is considered to be the historic, urban, financial, and cultural center of the region.

The city has a long history as a strategic military and transportation point. Norfolk Naval Base is the world's largest such base, and the world's largest military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has one of its two Strategic Command headquarters here. The city also has the corporate headquarters of Norfolk Southern Railway, one of North America's principal Class I railroads, and Maersk Line, Limited, who manages the world's largest fleet of US-flag vessels. As the city is bordered by multiple bodies of water, Norfolk has many miles of riverfront and bayfront property. It is linked to its neighbors by an extensive network of Interstate highways, bridges, tunnels, and three bridge-tunnel complexes—the only bridge-tunnels in the United States.

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John Warfield Johnston (1818 – 1889) was an American lawyer and politician from Abingdon, Virginia. He served in the Virginia State Senate, and represented Virginia in the United States Senate when the state was readmitted after the American Civil War. He was United States Senator for thirteen years; in national politics, he was a Democrat.

Johnston had been ineligible to serve in Congress because of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbade anyone from holding public office who had sworn allegiance to the United States and subsequently sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. However, his restrictions were removed at the suggestion of the Freedmen's Bureau when he aided a sick and dying former slave after the War. He was the first person who had sided with the Confederacy to serve in the United States Senate.

He was caught in the middle during the debate over the Arlington Memorial. Johnston was an outspoken opponent of the Texas-Pacific Bill, a sectional struggle for control of railroads in the South, which figured in the Compromise of 1877. He was also an outspoken Funder during Virginia's heated debate as to how much of its pre-War debt the state ought to have been obliged to pay back. The controversy culminated in the formation of Readjuster Party and the appointment of William Mahone as its leader; this marked the end of Johnston's career in the Senate.

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This month in Virginia history

April 5, 1614: Pocahontas and John Rolfe are married (pictured).
April 9, 1865: General Robert E. Lee surrenders to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, officially ending the Army of Northern Virginia
April 17, 1861: After President Lincoln calls for troops, the Virginia Secession Convention votes for it to secede from the Union.
April 20, 1775: The Gunpowder Incident results from the attempt of Governor Dunmore to remove the militia's gunpowder from Williamsburg.
April 26, 1607: Captain Newport and the colonists make their First Landing in the New World at Cape Henry.

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Credit: Joe Ravi, CC-BY-SA 3.0

Colvin Run Mill in Fairfax County, Virginia

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... that three schools in Virginia were named after Daniel Webster Davis?
... that after nearly killing a man in a duel, Edgar P. Rucker went on to become the attorney general of West Virginia?
... that an exhibition hall for the 1939 New York World's Fair later hosted athletic events at a historically Black university in Virginia?
... that the Virginia Quay Settlers Monument in London has been subject to bombing and theft?
... that five peregrine falcon chicks were released from the roof of an office building in Virginia in an unsuccessful attempt to combat an overpopulation of pigeons?
... that William H. Davis was the first teacher of Booker T. Washington and the first African American to be nominated as a candidate for West Virginia governor in 1888?