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Oklahoma Trivia & Tidbits - Page 4

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

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—In 1972, David Green borrowed $600 to open a 300-square-foot miniature-frame store in north Oklahoma City. Today, Green’s Hobby Lobby Creative Centers are a chain of more than 375 stores in 30 states that sell art supplies, crafts, frames and home decorating products.
first appeared: 12/2/2007
—Founded in 1986 by Bob Carroll of Clarita, Black Cat Mountain Trilobites, part of Carroll & C. Enterprises, collects, prepares and sells fossils of the extinct arthropods, which are quarried from the nearby Black Cat Mountain. Carroll has discovered two trilobite species, and another, Cyphaspis carrolli, was named in his honor.
first appeared: 11/18/2007
A 100-acre meadow in Edmond (pop. 68,315) known as Chitwood Farms has been established as the first community farm in the state. Plans are for local residents and community groups to grow gardens on the property, which was donated by a housing developer.
first appeared: 11/18/2007
—At age 32, Alfred Paul Murrah in 1937 became one of the youngest men in history to be appointed a U.S. District Court judge. Murrah, born near Tishomingo (pop. 3,162), later was elevated to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals and became its chief judge. Two years after his death in 1975, the federal building in Oklahoma City was named in his honor. The building was bombed in 1995, killing 168 people.
first appeared: 11/4/2007
—Watonga (pop. 4,658) is the boyhood home of Clarence Nash, who was the voice behind Walt Disney’s Donald Duck for more than 50 years, from 1933 until his death in 1985. Nash was born in Watongo in 1904 and has a street named in his honor.
first appeared: 10/21/2007
—A 1957 Plymouth Belvedere buried as a time capsule 50 years ago to celebrate Oklahoma’s golden jubilee as a state was unearthed, rust and all, in June on the lawn of the Tulsa County Courthouse. The car, a 1950s icon, was wrapped in three protective layers and housed in a concrete vault, but still bore the blemishes of time. Also unearthed were gasoline, which at the time cost 24 cents a gallon, and a handbag containing typical items of the day: bobby pins, lipstick, cigarettes and a pack of gum.
first appeared: 10/7/2007
—John Hope Franklin is known as the dean of African-American history and one of America’s greatest historians. His best-known book is From Slavery to Freedom, published in 1947 and still being used in college classrooms. He was elected to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1978 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995. Franklin was born in 1915 in Rentiesville (pop. 102).
first appeared: 9/30/2007
The former home in Yale (pop. 1,342) of 1912 Olympian Jim Thorpe is a museum containing artifacts, including Thorpe’s track and field awards and family items. Thorpe, considered one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century, was born in Prague (pop. 2,138) and lived in Yale from 1917 until 1923.
first appeared: 9/30/2007
—The Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art in Tulsa displays 4,000 years of Jewish art and artifacts. The museum’s collection, said to be one of the nation’s largest, includes ancient ritual objects, historical documents, traditional costumes and artwork. Included is a Holocaust exhibit of the experiences of survivors who settled in Oklahoma, and Oklahomans who helped liberate the Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
first appeared: 9/9/2007
The Healing Rock near Skiatook (pop. 5,396), once called Teepee Rock, was considered a healing site by the Osage and Quapaw Indians in the late 19th century. Archaeologists say the 12-foot-tall triangular rock is a natural formation and set in near perfect vertical alignment by natural erosion, ending speculation that the rock was manmade. The rock was to be covered by the planned Skiatook Lake in 1985, but residents campaigned to save it and the Army Corps of Engineers moved it to the lake’s south rim.
first appeared: 9/9/2007
—After an online statewide vote, Oklahomans chose a design featuring the state wildflower, the Indian blanket, and the state bird, the scissortail flycatcher, for the state’s commemorative quarter to be minted next year. More than 148,000 votes were cast and the winning design garnered 76,643 to beat out designs of the Pioneer Woman statue in Ponca City (pop. 25,919), a gushing oil derrick, waving wheat, a windmill and a calumet.
first appeared: 8/26/2007
When the town of Frazier was flooded in the 1890s, its residents fled to higher ground and named their new community Altus (pop. 21,447), Latin for “high place.”
first appeared: 8/26/2007
—The Twister Museum in Wakita (pop. 420) offers a glimpse of the making of the blockbuster movie Twister in 1995. The movie, starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as storm chasers, used the town as the location for an F-4 tornado’s devastation. The museum building, which contains film memorabilia, pictures of Paxton with local residents, and one of the film’s “Dorothy” machines, was the on-location office for the movie.
first appeared: 8/12/2007
—Norman is fast becoming the weather capital of the world after a $69 million National Weather Center opened last year on the University of Oklahoma campus. Inside the center, a joint project of the university and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, hundreds of meteorologists, engineers and technicians are at work researching, monitoring and issuing storm warnings for the 48 contiguous states.
first appeared: 7/29/2007
—Lauren Nelson, 20, became the second consecutive Miss Oklahoma to be crowned Miss America during pageant ceremonies in January. The Lawton native is a student at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. Nelson accepted the tiara from fellow Oklahoman Jennifer Berry, Miss America 2006.
first appeared: 7/15/2007
Mary Masterman, 17, of Westmoore High School in Oklahoma City, won the top prize of a $100,000 scholarship in the Intel Science Talent Search in March. She built a spectrograph, an instrument that measures wavelengths and can cost up to $100,000, for about $300.
first appeared: 7/15/2007
—One of the state’s oldest hotels, the ornate Skirvin Hilton in Oklahoma City, has undergone a $55 million renovation and reopened in February with 225 rooms. The 14-story downtown landmark originally opened in 1911 and became a gathering place for oil barons, dignitaries, political leaders and actors until its closing in 1988. The renovation was directed by Marcus Hotels and Resorts, which modernized the structure while preserving its rich architectural details.
first appeared: 7/1/2007
The Mattie Beal Home in Lawton offers a glimpse of the town’s beginnings, as it was built by one of the first winners of the Oklahoma land lottery of 1901. The 14-room 1910 Greek Revival-style home, which is open for tours, underwent a major restoration from 2003 to 2005.
first appeared: 7/1/2007
—Bigfoot footprints painted on the roads lead to Honobia, home of the annual Bigfoot Fall Festival. The Honobia area has been in the national spotlight since several people reported seeing Bigfoot, a half-man, half-ape mythical creature, also known as Sasquatch. Residents decided the sightings were cause for celebration, not fear, and the festival includes firsthand accounts of Bigfoot sightings, plus food vendors, pony rides, games and Bigfoot souvenirs.
first appeared: 6/17/2007
Residents of Oklahoma City didn’t know whether to grab their swimsuits or coats on Nov. 11, 1911, when temperatures reached a high of 83 degrees, then dropped to 17 degrees.
first appeared: 6/17/2007
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