California Trivia & Tidbits - Page 8

The Los Angeles County Coroner opened its Skeletons in the Closet souvenir shop in Los Angeles in 1993. Each souvenir—from beach towels to baseball caps—features a design, such as the L.A. County Coroner seal, a chalk body outline or a skeleton dressed as Sherlock Holmes. Profits fund educational efforts about the consequences of drunk driving and drug abuse.

Army chaplain George Russell Barber (1914-2004) of Whittier landed in Normandy with the 1st Infantry Division on D-Day, June 6, 1944. He ministered to the wounded and dying and later helped choose the site for the U.S. cemetery there.

Irwin Rose, professor emeritus of physiology and biophysics at the University of California–Irvine, shared the 2004 Nobel Prize for chemistry with two Israeli scientists, for discovering how the cells of living things break down proteins. When the process doesn’t work properly, diseases such as cancer can result. Rose’s research already has paved the way for new cancer treatments.

At 1,770 pounds, Bert—a dromedary, or one-humped camel—weighed in as the heaviest officer in San Dimas (pop. 34,980) when he was sworn in as a Los Angeles County reserve deputy sheriff in 2003.

Residents of Boonville, in the Anderson Valley of northern California, began inventing their own language, "Boontling," during the 1880s. With more than 1,000 words and phrases, including harpin’ (talking), briney (ocean), kimmie (man), codgy kimmie (old man) and keloppity (to travel by horse), Boontling is still spoken by a few people in the town. Charles C. Adams, an English professor at the California State University-Chico, wrote Boontling: An American Lingo, published in 1971.

Wing Chong Market in Monterey (pop. 29,674) was the model for Lee Chong’s Heavenly Flower Grocery immortalized in John Steinbeck’s 1945 novel Cannery Row and 1954 novel Sweet Thursday. The author, born in Salinas, called the store "a miracle of supply" but "not a model of neatness" and captured the sights and smells of the town’s sardine canning industry.

Born near Venice, Italy, in 1937, artist Carlo Marchiori immigrated to the United States in 1956 and re-created his homeland at Ca’Toga, a Palladian-style villa near Calistoga (pop. 5,190). The house features plywood and metal pillars made to resemble ancient stone columns, while the gardens include Greek- and Roman-style ruins created from stones and shells.

Blues and rock singer Janis Joplin—who died in Los Angeles on Oct. 4, 1970—left $2,500 in her will to pay for a gathering of her friends. The event was held Oct. 26 at The Lion’s Share nightclub in San Anselmo (pop. 12,378).

Last September, workers pulled a 100-pound, 50-year-old alligator snapping turtle out of Fullerton’s Laguna Lake during a restoration project. "Old Bob" was likely dumped in the lake as a youngster. He is now off to a turtle preserve out of state.

Albert McArthur designed the Arizona Biltmore resort in Phoenix, drawing inspiration from consulting architect Frank Lloyd Wright. When the Biltmore opened in February 1929, it was known as "the Jewel of the Desert." Among the hotel’s famous guests was songwriter Irving Berlin, who in 1939 enjoyed the desert sun while writing White Christmas.—SpaceShipOne test pilot Mike Melvill earned the Federal Aviation Administration’s first commercial astronaut wings on June 21, 2004, when he flew his craft 62 miles above the Mojave Desert to the edge of space. Briefly leaving the Earth’s atmosphere, he returned for a safe landing at the airport in Mojave (pop. 3,836). The $20 million SpaceShipOne was built by Scaled Composites and funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Climbing the east face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park took Warren Macdonald four days and 3,000 pull-ups in October 2003. He was the first double-above-knee amputee to scale the sheer granite cliff. Macdonald lost his legs at mid-thigh in 1997 after falling rock crushed them during a climbing expedition in Australia.

San Diego’s Rocket Chemical Co. made 40 attempts in 1953 to find a degreasing substance that would prevent rust. The result was WD-40, which stands for "water displacement perfected on the 40th try." The business, renamed the WD-40 Co. in 1969, reports that its product has been used by a driver in Asia to remove a python coiled around the undercarriage of his bus and by police to remove a naked burglar trapped in an air conditioning vent.

Dogs in Carmel-by-the-Sea (pop. 4,081) have their very owndrinking fountain in the Carmel Plaza shopping area. Dedicated in August 2003,the canine-only "Fountain of Woof" features a dog's-head sculpturethat shoots water into a series of rocky pools. Nearby stores catering to thefour-legged customers sell pet feather beds and canine cologne.

Once close to extinction, northern elephant seals now congregate in the thousands during the December to March breeding season on the beaches of Año Nuevo State Reserve northwest of Santa Cruz (pop. 54,593). Hunted in the 1800s for their blubber, which was rendered into oil, the seals are named for the males’ long, dangling noses. Males of the species are up to 13 feet long and weigh as much as 2.5 tons.

First lit in 1901, the orange light bulb that serves as a nightlight over the engines in a Livermore fire station celebrated its 103rd anniversary this year. Made by the Shelby Electric Co., the hand-blown, four-watt bulb has a carbon filament and is reported to be the nation’s longest-burning light bulb.

At 10,000 years of age, creosote bushes that grow in circular patterns in the state's Mojave Desert are among the oldest living plants on Earth. In the late 1970s, Frank Vasek, a professor at the University of California?Riverside, proved that each "ring" of bushes was actually one plant that had grown out in ever-larger circles from a central stem that had since died.

Almost 40 years ago, the town of Kenwood (pop. 1,730) laid a steel pole across the banks of Los Guilicos Spring Creek and gave pillows to two competitors, who sat on the pole and whacked each other until one fell into the mud below. Today, proceeds from the World Pillow Fighting Championships, held annually on Independence Day, go to the local fire protection district.

A three-story, 100-foot-wide hill made of concrete, adobe and paint stands near Niland (pop. 1,143), topped with a white cross and emblazoned with the message "God is Love." Begun in the mid-1980s by Leonard Knight, Salvation Mountain has become a folk art icon. In 2002, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer entered it into the Congressional Record as a national treasure.

Willows (pop. 6,220) became home to “Just Duckies,” the 20,000th chapter of the Red Hat Society in March. Calling itself a “dis-organization” with no rules or bylaws, the society celebrates women over the age of 50. It encourages the wearing of red hats and purple clothing and holds events ranging from afternoon teas to motorcycle rides.

In 1990, at age 19, tennis champion Pete Sampras became the youngest player ever to win the U.S. Open men’s title. Raised in Palos Verdes (pop. 13,340), Sampras began playing tennis at age 7, and earned a record 14 Grand Slam titles, ranking number one worldwide for six consecutive years, from 1993 to 1998.