Oklahoma Trivia & Tidbits - Page 5

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

—Cushing (pop. 8,371) is a major oil pipeline hub in the United States and is known as “the pipeline crossroads of the world.” A good portion of the crude oil traded in Cushing consists of West Texas Intermediate crude, which arrives from pipelines originating in Texas and New Mexico, and imported crude, which is unloaded from tankers on the Gulf Coast and pipelined to Cushing.

first appeared: 6/3/2007

Oklahoma City’s Myriad Botanical Gardens and Crystal Bridge Tropical Conservatory contain more than 1,000 different plants from six continents. The 224-foot-long conservatory, designed by famed architect I.M. Pei, has a tropical rain forest zone with a 35-foot waterfall and a desert area. The conservatory spans a two-acre lake filled with Japanese koi and ponds containing the state’s native fish.

first appeared: 6/3/2007

—Since 2002, about 800 students have danced the night away at high school proms in northeast Oklahoma wearing donated dresses, tuxedoes and corsages provided by Prom Wishes Inc. Founder Tiffany Grant, 19, of Sperry (pop. 981), created the organization as a 4-H project when she realized some teens couldn’t afford to attend prom. Grant outfitted 19 girls in hand-me-down gowns the first year, and today Prom Wishes also provides gift certificates for manicures and hairstyles and even $25 gift cards for gasoline.

first appeared: 5/28/2007

Seamstress Tynsy Foster, 58, of Grove (pop. 5,131), transforms the clothing and blankets of deceased loved ones into huggable teddy bears. In 2001, Foster began stitching her Healing Memory Bears and has since created more than 1,400 bears. She considers the keepsakes to be a ministry, bringing comfort to grieving hearts.

first appeared: 5/28/2007

—Completed in 1904, the Santa Fe Railroad Depot in Shawnee (pop. 28,692) features a striking 60-foot tower that was intended as a clock tower, but the clock portion wasn’t completed because of a lack of funds. The building, on the National Register of Historic Places, now houses a museum of railroad and county history.

first appeared: 5/6/2007

Phillip Calvin McGraw, a motivational speaker and host of the popular TV talk show Dr. Phil, was born in 1950 in Vinita (pop. 6,472). A psychologist, Dr. Phil gained celebrity status following his appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

first appeared: 5/6/2007

—A penniless orphan at age 12, Charles Ross Anthony started Anthony’s family apparel store in Cushing (pop. 8,371) in 1922. The business was the first among a chain of more than 200 stores. In 1997, the company was sold to Stage Stores, based in Houston, Texas.

first appeared: 4/22/2007

—Matthew Haugland, 26, who received his doctorate in meteorology from the University of Oklahoma in Norman last year, was the $25,000 grand prize winner in the 2006 Collegiate Inventors Competition. Haugland, who’s been fascinated with weather since he was a child, developed a way to predict nighttime temperatures in microclimates, which could help farmers protect their crops from frost and freezing.

first appeared: 4/8/2007

—Oklahoma history has a new home in Oklahoma City. Opened in 2005, the Oklahoma History Center, housed in a 215,000-square-foot building and located on 18 acres, includes exhibits from prehistoric times to oil field wildcatter days to the Space Age. Inside are thousands of artifacts, original artwork and interpretive exhibits. Outside are oilfield exhibits and the Red River Journey, a walking tour of the Red River Valley. The center’s restaurant provides a view of the governor’s mansion and the state Capitol.

first appeared: 3/25/2007

—Country music star Keith Anderson’s video for “Podunk” was filmed in November in his hometown of Miami (pop. 13,704). Anderson and his crew shot footage of the northeast Oklahoma town’s residents as they enjoyed his free concert.

first appeared: 3/11/2007

—Numbering about 2,000 pieces, the Dale Chihuly glass art collection in the Oklahoma City Museum of Art sparkles as one of the nation’s largest Chihuly exhibitions. The collection includes bowls, basket sets and “seaforms,” and features the tallest Chihuly glass tower, reaching 55 feet.

first appeared: 2/27/2007

Skulls Unlimited in Oklahoma City claims to be the world’s leading supplier of osteological (skulls and bones) specimens. Jay Villemarette started the company in 1986 in his kitchen where he boiled and cleaned skulls to remove tissues. His business now sells human skulls and skeletons, provided mostly to museums and educational institutions, and animal bones.

first appeared: 2/27/2007

—The Museum of the Great Plains in Lawton features Tingley’s Store, a re-creation of an American Indian trading store that operated in Anadarko (pop. 6,645) beginning in 1901. Also on the museum grounds are the Red River Trading Post, a replica of the posts that operated in the region in the 1830s and 1840s, a one-room schoolhouse and a vintage steam locomotive.

first appeared: 2/11/2007

—Currie Ballard, a historian in Langston (pop. 1,670), has made what he calls “the find of a lifetime”—29 canisters of vintage movie film that provide footage of the everyday life of African-Americans in 1920s Oklahoma. The films show a black community thriving in the years after the infamous Tulsa Riot of 1921, in which white mobs destroyed that city’s historic black Greenwood district, which was known as the Black Wall Street of America.

first appeared: 1/28/2007

Superheroes abound in Pauls Valley (pop. 6,256), home of the Toy and Action Figure Museum that opened in 2005. Superman, Batman and Spider-Man figures, along with comic books and original comic-strip art, entertain and educate. The museum includes the collection of Kevin Stark, a toy consultant and artist whose studio is in Pauls Valley.

first appeared: 1/28/2007

Joseph Pierre Foucart was a prominent architect in Europe before settling in Guthrie (pop. 9,925) in 1889, months after Oklahoma’s “land run.” Foucart built many of Guthrie’s most prominent buildings, several of which still stand, using native red sandstone and brick made from red Oklahoma clay to construct homes, businesses and government structures in the Romanesque, Gothic and Queen Anne styles.

first appeared: 1/14/2007

—The mid-1800s, African-American spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” is believed to have been written by Wallace Willis, who with his wife, Minerva, sang the spiritual to teachers and students while they were slaves at a Choctaw boarding school in Doaksville. The song so moved the school’s headmaster that he sent it to the Fisk Jubilee Singers in Nashville, Tenn., fueling the song’s popularity.

first appeared: 12/17/2006

—Country singer Carrie Underwood graduated magna cum laude in May from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah (pop. 14,458). The Checotah (pop. 3,481) native was a senior just a few credits shy of earning her communications degree when she withdrew from school to compete on TV’s American Idol. Since winning on the show, she has moved to Nashville, Tenn., and scored a string of hits, including “Jesus, Take the Wheel.”

first appeared: 12/3/2006

At 102, Doris Eaton Travis is believed to be the oldest surviving chorus girl from the Ziegfeld Follies of the early 1900s. And the Norman woman still is kicking up her heels. In May, she performed at a benefit gala at the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York City, the same stage where she sang and danced decades ago.

first appeared: 12/3/2006

—Pistol Pete, a gun totin’, rootin’ tootin’ cowboy in an orange 10-gallon hat, is the official mascot of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater (pop. 39,065). The cartoon caricature, found on sweatshirts and bumper stickers, is based on a real-life cowboy named Frank Eaton, a sheriff in Perkins (pop. 2,272), who died in 1958.

first appeared: 11/19/2006

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