California Trivia & Tidbits - Page 11

Looking for California trivia? Try our list California little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

Castroville (pop. 6,724) is known as the Artichoke Capital of the World. A young lady named Norma Jean—later known as Marilyn Monroe—was crowned Artichoke Queen there in 1947.

first appeared: 1/25/2004

Of the many scenic wonders found within the Inyo National Forest, one of the most amazing is the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, located between 10,000 and 11,000 feet elevation in the White Mountains east of the Sierra Nevada. These trees are the oldest known living things on Earth, some of them having survived more than 40 centuries. They exceed in age the oldest giant sequoia by 1,500 years.

first appeared: 1/18/2004

California has more senior citizens than any other state, with more than 4 million residents being at least 60 years old.

first appeared: 1/11/2004

Rainbow Basin Natural National Landmark, eight miles north of Barstow (pop. 21,119), contains significant fossil evidence of prehistoric insects and mammals. It also offers outstanding examples of the geologic processes that formed the area.

first appeared: 1/11/2004

Robert Frost, the legendary New England poet, was born in San Francisco in 1874. He was named after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, and his father was city editor of the San Francisco Daily Evening Post. Frost moved to Massachusetts as a boy, and finished high school there at the top of his class.

first appeared: 1/4/2004

Of the three Wilson brothers in the Beach Boys—Brian, Dennis and Carl—only Dennis had any interest in surfing when they were growing up in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne.

first appeared: 12/28/2003

Archeologists excavating at Little Harbor on Catalina Island in southern California have found evidence of people inhabiting the island for the last 7,000 years, living off the rich sea life of abalone and fish, as well as marine mammals such as sea lions.

first appeared: 12/28/2003

Death Valley National Park is a haven for dozens of unusual reptiles, one of which—the Mojave fringe-toed lizard—lives in areas of fine-grained sand. Specially adapted fringes on its toes allow the lizard to run across such sand at up to 10 mph. It can also “swim” underneath soft sand to find cooler temperatures.

first appeared: 12/21/2003

To take advantage of the state’s role as a leader in wheat production in the late 1800s, Daniel Best and Benjamin Holt began manufacturing steam traction engines (later called tractors) to pull farm equipment. However, because the heavy machines often sank into the soil, Holt was inspired to remove the wheels and replace them with flexible tracks. In 1925, Best and Holt merged their individual companies to form the Caterpillar Co.

first appeared: 12/14/2003

Golf champion Tiger Woods was born Eldrick T. Woods on Dec. 30, 1975 in Cypress (pop. 46,229). At 2, he appeared on television, putting with Bob Hope on The Mike Douglas Show. Woods turned professional in 1996, and with his second Masters victory in 2001 became the first person to hold all four major professional golf championships simultaneously.

first appeared: 12/7/2003

The United States Amateur Snowboarding Association held its first national championship in February 1990 at the Snow Valley Mountain Resort near Running Springs (pop. 5,125). Snowboarding evolved as a sport in the 1960s and was accepted by the International Olympic Committee as a full medal sport for the 1998 Olympic Games.

first appeared: 11/30/2003

The state adopted the gray whale as its official marine mammal in 1976. The whales can be seen off the California coast from December to January and March to April, during their 10,000-mile round-trip migration between the Bering Sea and Baja Mexico—the longest known migration of any marine mammal. Gray whales can grow up to 50 feet long and weigh as much as 35 tons.

first appeared: 11/23/2003

When Luther Haws, a sanitary inspector for the city of Berkeley, saw public schoolchildren drinking from a tin cup in 1905, it inspired him to invent a healthier alternative: a drinking faucet. Haws founded the Haws Sanitary Drinking Faucet Co. in 1909, and received a patent for his faucet in 1911. Haws Corp. now is headquartered in Sparks, Nev.

first appeared: 11/16/2003

The 10 charcoal kilns built in 1877 in Death Valley National Park’s Wildrose Canyon are some of the best surviving examples of their type. Constructed of limestone, the kilns each held 42 cords of pinyon pine logs, which—after burning for a week—would produce 2,000 bushels of charcoal to fuel smelters at area mines.

first appeared: 11/9/2003

The Apple I computer debuted in April 1976, when Apple Computer co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs demonstrated the machine at a meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club, a computer hobbyist group, in Palo Alto (pop. 58,598).

first appeared: 11/2/2003

Clear Lake, with 68 square miles of surface area and 100 miles of shoreline, is California’s largest natural freshwater lake and one of North America’s oldest lakes (sediments show that a lake has existed continuously on the site for at least 475,000 years). Clearlake (pop. 13,142) also is the name of one of the lake’s waterside communities.

first appeared: 10/26/2003

The water tower in Kingsburg (pop. 9,199) looks like a giant Swedish coffee pot, complete with a spout, handle, and lid. Painted to reflect the town’s Swedish heritage (Swedish settlers began arriving in the early 20th century), the water tower is reported to hold 1.5 million cups—if it was filled with coffee.

first appeared: 10/19/2003

California’s population of nearly 34 million people gives the state more residents than the entire country of Canada, whose population is about 31.5 million.

first appeared: 10/12/2003

The bristlecone pines found in Inyo National Forest east of Bishop (pop. 3,575) are among the world’s oldest trees—some of them were growing when the Egyptians were building the pyramids more than 4,000 years ago.

first appeared: 10/12/2003

With 46 World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War-era aircraft on display, the Castle Air Museum in Atwater (pop. 23,113) has one of the state’s largest collections of military aircraft. Exhibits include a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird (a reconnaissance aircraft used by the U.S. Air Force from 1964 to 1990), one of only 32 ever built.

first appeared: 10/5/2003

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