Think You Know Alabama Business? Take the August 2026 Quiz

How closely have you been following Alabama business news, from the deals making headlines right now to the milestones that shaped the state’s economy decades ago? This month’s quiz spans 125 years of Alabama enterprise, touching everything from a family-run sporting goods wholesaler in Luverne to a massive Coast Guard shipbuilding contract in Bayou La Batre. Read each question, take your best guess from the choices provided, then check your answer below. No peeking ahead.

1. August 2026: A 125-Year-Old Family Business in Luverne

One of the key businesses in Luverne has been in the family for 125 years. Hicks Inc. is now led by John Wise, son-in-law to the founding family, and John’s son, John Wise Jr. What is Hicks Inc.’s line of business?

• Peanut butter processing
• Hunting and fishing gear
• Farm supplies
• Sausage making

Answer: Hunting and fishing gear. Hicks Inc. grew out of a general store that evolved into a wholesale fishing tackle business, and John Wise Jr. modernized the operation after joining in 1980. Today the company stocks roughly 20,000 products and is one of only a handful of wholesalers nationwide that handle both hunting and fishing supplies under one roof.

2. July 2026 (One Month Ago): A $1.5 Billion Data Center Expansion

One of America’s biggest companies announced plans to expand its data center in Jackson County to the tune of $1.5 billion. What company?

• Amazon
• Google
• DC Blox
• Microsoft

Answer: Google. Google announced the $1.5 billion expansion of its data center campus in Jackson County in June 2026, adding to the tech giant’s growing footprint in north Alabama and pairing the investment with energy and education initiatives for the surrounding community.

3. August 2025 (One Year Ago): A Billion-Dollar Coast Guard Contract

A Bayou La Batre shipbuilding firm won a massive $1.187 billion contract to build Waterway Commerce Cutters for the U.S. Coast Guard. What’s the name of the shipbuilder?

• Ingalls
• Austal
• Birdon
• Metal Shark

Answer: Birdon. Birdon America built out shipbuilding operations in Bayou La Batre to fulfill the Waterway Commerce Cutter contract, which covers the construction of a new class of vessels for the Coast Guard, and the company has continued investing in its Alabama shipyard as construction on the cutters has progressed.

4. August 2021 (Five Years Ago): A New Entertainment Venue Breaks Ground

A new entertainment venue broke ground that month in Montgomery, promising water activities, biking, boating, zip lines and more. What is the name?

• Montgomery Whitewater
• OWA at Montgomery
• Riverside Rally
• Capital Casino

Answer: Montgomery Whitewater. The whitewater rafting and outdoor recreation park broke ground in August 2021 and has since become a major draw for the capital city, combining a man-made whitewater course with biking trails, zip lines and other outdoor amenities.

5. August 2016 (10 Years Ago): The Nation’s Largest Manufacturer

A feature that month highlighted Southern Plastics in Eufaula and its leader, Terry Spence. Southern Plastics was selling some 50 million units a year and was the largest manufacturer in the country of its key product. What does Southern Plastics make?

• Automotive dashboards
• Cutlery
• Bike helmets
• Fishing lures

Answer: Fishing lures. Southern Plastics manufactures soft-bait fishing lures and was, at the time, the nation’s largest producer in that category, shipping roughly a million units a week under Spence’s leadership. The Eufaula company was later acquired by Lew’s/Strike King parent Peak Rock Capital and remained in Eufaula.

6. August 2001 (25 Years Ago): Alabama’s Largest Public Company Changes Hands

In a public companies feature that month, Gene Sapp, CEO of Alabama’s largest public company, with $8 billion in annual revenue, was interviewed. That day, after the interview, the company was sold to Sanmina Corp. What company?

• Birmingham Auto Tech
• Alabama Aircraft Components
• SCI Systems
• Space Exploration and Technologies Company

Answer: SCI Systems. SCI Systems, an Alabama-based electronics manufacturing giant, merged with Sanmina Corp in 2001 to form Sanmina-SCI, one of the largest electronics contract manufacturers in the world at the time.

How many did you get right? Whether you’re new to following Alabama’s business scene or you’ve been tracking it for decades, these milestones show just how much the state’s economy has grown and diversified over the past 125 years.

Why a business-history quiz matters

The August 2026 quiz is more than a pastime; it is a compact tour of how Alabama’s economy has changed over 125 years. The questions leap from a 125-year-old Luverne wholesaler to a $1.5 billion Google data-center expansion in Jackson County, from a Coast Guard shipbuilding contract in Bayou La Batre to a 2001 electronics merger — a span that captures the state’s shift from family wholesalers and manufacturers to data centers and federal shipbuilding. Taken together, the six questions show an economy that has not stood still: the same state that produced soft-bait fishing lures by the million in Eufaula now hosts hyperscale cloud infrastructure in the north.

The threads the quiz reveals

Several through-lines run beneath the questions. Family continuity shows up in Hicks Inc. of Luverne, still run by the founding family’s descendants after 125 years, a rarity in American retail wholesale. Defense and maritime work appears in Birdon’s Bayou La Batre cutters, a reminder that Alabama’s Gulf Coast is a serious shipbuilding region alongside the better-known Austal and Ingalls yards. Outdoor recreation surfaces in Montgomery Whitewater, the capital city’s man-made whitewater park. And the tech era arrives with Google’s Jackson County campus. Each answer is a snapshot of a sector that matters to Alabama jobs, and the quiz is a way to make that breadth legible to readers who follow business news only casually.

For readers who want to go deeper

The quiz invites a follow-up most readers will appreciate: pick one answer and read the fuller story behind it. The Hicks Inc. wholesale model, the economics of a billion-dollar data center, the shipbuilding pipeline in Bayou La Batre, or the rise and sale of SCI Systems each could fill a feature on its own. Alabama’s business press has covered all of them, and the quiz is best read as an index to that reporting rather than a closed set of facts. Whether a reader got six of six or none, the milestones demonstrate how much the state’s economy has grown and diversified across the past 125 years — the point the quiz closes on, and the reason it is worth taking.

Reading Alabama’s economy in the answers

What makes the quiz instructive is the geography of its questions: Luverne in the Wiregrass, Jackson County in the north, Bayou La Batre on the Gulf, Montgomery in the center, Eufaula on the Georgia line, Huntsville-area tech. The state’s business story is not one city’s tale but a spread of regional specializations, each with its own anchor employer and its own 125-year arc. A reader who aces the quiz has, without realizing it, mapped Alabama’s economic diversity; a reader who bombs it has a reading list. Either way, the point stands — the economy has grown and diversified across the past 125 years, and the quiz is the friendly proof.

A quiz as an invitation

The August 2026 quiz closes by asking how many a reader got right, and the real answer is less a score than a prompt: go find the stories behind the ones you missed. Alabama’s business century is full of characters — the Luverne family in wholesale tackle, the Eufaula lure maker who shipped a million soft baits a week, the Jackson County town hosting a hyperscale data center — and each is a window into how the state works. The quiz is the doorway; the reporting behind it is the room. Whether a reader is new to the scene or has tracked it for decades, the milestones argue that the economy’s growth and diversity are worth paying attention to, and the quiz is the friendly nudge to do so.

The surprise of the familiar

Quizzes work because they surface the unfamiliar hiding inside the familiar. Most Alabamians have driven past a Wholesale Tackle sign, eaten near a data center, or heard of a Bayou La Batre shipyard without knowing the 125-year arc or the billion-dollar contract behind it. The August 2026 quiz pulls those threads into one page and, in doing so, reminds readers that the state’s business life is both older and newer than it looks — older in its family firms, newer in its cloud campuses. That tension is the actual story of Alabama enterprise, and the six questions are merely the footnotes to a longer book the quiz invites everyone to open.

The value of knowing your state’s business

A quiz like this one is also a nudge to local pride and local literacy. Residents who can name the Luverne wholesaler or the Bayou La Batre shipbuilder are residents who understand the engines of their own region’s prosperity, and understanding is the first step toward supporting those engines — as customers, workers or voters. Alabama’s 125-year business story is not abstract; it is the payroll in Jackson County, the contracts on the Gulf, the family firm in Luverne. The August 2026 quiz makes that concrete, and the six answers are an invitation to look closer at the economy readers live inside every day.