Nebraska Trivia & Tidbits - Page 14

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

Located in Fremont (pop. 25,174), Nebraska’s largest red oak tree measures 15 feet, 6 inches in circumference, 85 feet tall, and has an 80-foot crown.

first appeared: 3/24/2002

Albert Brooking, founder of the Hastings Museum in Hastings, (pop. 24,064) was buried beneath the museum’s basement floor when he died in 1946. A plaque there reads: “If you want to see my monument, look around.”

first appeared: 3/17/2002

Unadilla (pop. 342) calls itself Nebraska’s Groundhog Capital.

first appeared: 3/10/2002

A mile-long fence, built last summer, guides turtles through the state’s first turtle tunnel under U.S. Highway 83, which passes through the turtles’ wetlands home, the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge south of Valentine (pop. 2,820).

first appeared: 3/3/2002

The first flight of a modern (propane-powered) hot air balloon occurred at Bruning (pop. 300) on Oct. 22, 1960, when Ed Yost piloted a balloon in a 25-minute flight covering three miles.

first appeared: 2/24/2002

Among the most visited attractions in the state is Cabela’s, an outdoor sporting goods store in Sidney (pop. 6,282), with an estimated 1 million visitors in the year 2000.

first appeared: 2/17/2002

The 1928 Pilgrim Holiness Church in Arthur (pop. 145) is built entirely of straw bales covered in stucco. It is the only known church built of baled straw and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

first appeared: 2/10/2002

Vice President Richard B. Cheney, a former Wyoming senator and secretary of defense, was born in Lincoln on Jan. 30, 1941, the son of a soil conservation agent.

first appeared: 2/3/2002

The Nebraska National Forest near Halsey (pop. 59) is the only man-made national forest in the United States. About 20,000 acres of grassland have been planted with pine and cedar trees since the early 1900s.

first appeared: 1/27/2002

Actor Nick Nolte, whose movie credits include 48 HRS, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, and Prince of Tides, was born Feb. 8, 1940, in Omaha.

first appeared: 1/20/2002

The coldest temperature recorded in Nebraska was 47 degrees below zero Dec. 22, 1989, in Oshkosh (pop. 887), tying the record low set at Camp Clarke near Northport on Feb. 12, 1899.

first appeared: 1/13/2002

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather grew up in Red Cloud (pop. 1,131). Many of the scenes and characters in her novels are based on the people and landscapes she encountered as a youth in Webster County in the 1880s.

first appeared: 1/6/2002

Dedicated in 1921, Chadron State Park near Chadron (pop. 5,634) is Nebraska’s oldest state park.

first appeared: 12/30/2001

On Nov. 7, 1860, results of the presidential election were telegraphed no farther west than Kearney (pop. 27,431), where the telegraph lines ended. From there, Pony Express riders carried the news to Salt Lake City three days later and reached California on Nov. 14.

first appeared: 12/23/2001

Born in Geneva (pop. 2,226) on May 23, 1875, Kate Barnard was elected commissioner of Charities and Corrections for Oklahoma in 1907, becoming the first woman elected to a statewide office in the nation.

first appeared: 12/16/2001

More than 10,000 American Indians met with about 300 whites from Sept. 8-23, 1851, near Horse Creek, west of Morrill (pop. 957), to negotiate passage for wagon trains on the Oregon and California trails.

first appeared: 12/9/2001

Born Aug. 29, 1891, in David City (pop. 2,597), Joyce C. Hall later created the card company Hallmark. When he died in 1982, Hall’s estate was worth more than $1.5 billion.

first appeared: 12/2/2001

The state’s largest oak tree is a black oak, west of Barada (pop. 28), measuring 16 feet, 9 inches in circumference and 82 feet tall.

first appeared: 11/25/2001

Bellevue, the state’s third largest city, is home to STRATCOM, a joint-services military command center which controls the nation’s long-range aircraft and missiles.

first appeared: 11/18/2001

Covering 2,850 acres and stretching more than eight miles long, Union Pacific Railroad’s Bailey Yards in North Platte (pop. 23,878) is the world’s largest railroad sorting yard. Each day it handles about 10,000 railroad cars.

first appeared: 11/11/2001

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