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Texas

Texas Trivia & Tidbits

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

––Texas A&M’s canine mascot holds the honorary rank of general in the College Station school’s Corps of Cadets. Named Reveille VII, the collie is the seventh mascot in a tradition that began in 1931 when a carload of cadets hit a black-and-white dog. They brought the injured pup back to campus and cared for it in their dormitory. The dog answered the next morning’s bugle call with loud yelps, which earned it the name Reveille.
first appeared: 5/18/2008
Guests at the Comfort Inn Alamo/Riverwalk in San Antonio don’t have to book a room for life. In 2004, the hotel opened in the former 1878 Bexar County Jail. Some of the hotel’s windows still have bars on them.
first appeared: 5/18/2008
—The state’s “Safe Cupcake Amendment” protects the right of parents to bring the frosted petite treats to school on their children’s birthdays. Lawmakers adopted the amendment in 2005 after the Texas Department of Agriculture banned junk food in public schools. Parents lobbied to protect the cupcake, and lawmakers, in a bipartisan gesture, agreed.
first appeared: 5/4/2008
San Antonio’s SeaWorld offers thrill-seekers a new ride experience: a combination water ride and roller coaster, the first of its kind in the United States. Opened last year, Journey to Atlantis includes 16-seat boats that climb 100 feet, rotate for a panoramic view of the park and the city, then propel backward down a slope and plunge into water.
first appeared: 5/4/2008
—To sell Texans on newfangled barbed wire in 1876, John Warne “Bet-A-Million” Gates rented Military Plaza in San Antonio, built a barbed-wire corral and filled it with longhorns. Gates later owned his own barbed-wire factories, and invested in railroads and oil, specifically Spindletop, a Texas oil field that made Gates millions in Texaco stocks. He earned his nickname from his indulgence in gambling and his reputation for placing high bets.
first appeared: 3/9/2008
Kilgore (pop. 11,301) College’s Rangerettes were the first precision dance team in the nation to perform on a football field. Formed in 1940 to keep football fans in their seats during halftime, the team has danced its way to fame with performances across the world.
first appeared: 3/9/2008
—Luxury department store Neiman Marcus, founded in 1907 in Dallas, is famous for its Christmas catalog featuring “fantasy gifts,” which last year included a $1.44 million submarine, a $73,000 cell phone with 7.2 carats of white and pink diamonds, and a private classical concert performed by the Kirov Orchestra and hosted by Regis Philbin, to the tune of $1.59 million.
first appeared: 2/24/2008
Bangin’ Bertha, a bell mounted on a trailer, is wheeled onto the football field and basketball court for games at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. The bell is rung by the school’s Saddle Tramps, a booster club, to celebrate Red Raiders victories. It was designed in 1959 by Saddle Tramp Joe Winegar and donated to the school by the Santa Fe Railroad.
first appeared: 2/24/2008
—The world’s largest brick, named Baby Clay, was made by Acme Brick in Denton and weighs more than 6,000 pounds and is 116 inches long. The company used clay from each of its 23 plants to make the brick in celebration of its 116th anniversary last year. It took more than a year for Baby Clay to dry.
first appeared: 2/10/2008
Although he started his musical career as an opera singer in the early 1900s, Vernon Dalhart was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1981 for his many recordings of hillbilly songs, including the 1924 release of “The Prisoner’s Song” and “The Wreck of the Old ’97,” which together became country music’s first million-selling record. Dalhart recorded under more than 100 pseudonyms, but was born Marion Try Slaughter in 1883 in Jefferson (pop. 2,024).
first appeared: 2/10/2008
—When Bryon Woods won $49 million in the Texas Lottery in 2003, he and his wife, Barbara, used some of the money to restore and reopen the Tee Pee Motel in Wharton (pop. 9,237). The quirky landmark, 10 teepee-shaped stucco units, was built in 1942 and reopened last year. Melinda Gates, co-philanthropist with her husband, Bill, Microsoft Corp. chairman and the richest man in the United States, was born in 1964 in Dallas. In 2000, the couple formed the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has given billions of dollars to charitable causes.
first appeared: 1/27/2008
—Windmills of all sizes whirl at the 28-acre American Wind Power Center in Lubbock. The museum tells the story of how the windmill helped settlement of the West by providing access to underground water, and boasts more than 100 windmills in its indoor and outdoor collection.
first appeared: 1/13/2008
—Wildlife officials counted a record 128 nests of Kemp’s ridley sea turtles on Texas beaches last summer, mostly in the Corpus Christi area, with 81 nests found on North Padre Island and four on Mustang Island. The turtles have been on the nation’s list of endangered species since 1970, when they were on the verge of extinction because of egg hunters and accidental drowning from shrimp nets.
first appeared: 12/30/2007
The National Amber Alert was started in 1996 after the disappearance and murder of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman in Arlington. Amber’s name was used as an acronym for the alert, which is known as “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.” The alert is a joint venture of broadcasters and law enforcement to quickly spread information about child abductions.
first appeared: 12/30/2007
––One of the most prestigious piano competitions in the world, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was started in 1962 in Fort Worth by music teachers, benefactors and city leaders. The event was named to celebrate Cliburn’s sensational 1958 victory in the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow. A fiberglass sculpture of alligators basking in the sun greets passersby at the San Jacinto Plaza in downtown El Paso. The 1993 sculpture by artist Luis Jimenez harks back to the days when alligators made the plaza their home. The alligators were booted out of the plaza in the 1960s.
first appeared: 12/2/2007
—Created by Texas educator and rodeo contestant Claude Mullins, the National High School Rodeo Association held its first finals in Halletsville in 1949. The NHSRA has an annual membership of about 12,500 students.
first appeared: 11/18/2007
Jamie Langridge, 30, of Odessa threw “paper” to cover “rock” and won the 2007 USA Rock Paper Scissors League championship in Las Vegas in May. Langridge, who outlasted more than 300 competitors, pocketed the $50,000 prize.
first appeared: 11/18/2007
—Lady Bird Johnson earned her nickname when a nursemaid proclaimed her to be “purty as a lady bird,” a reference to a ladybird beetle or ladybug. The former first lady was born Claudia Alta Taylor in Karnack near Marshall (pop. 23,935) and married Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president, in 1934. She died in July at her home in Austin at age 94.
first appeared: 11/4/2007
Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan became the first baseball player to reach the $1 million salary mark when he signed with the Houston Astros in 1980. Ryan, who retired after the 1993 season, was born in 1947 in Refugio (pop. 2,941) and was raised in Alvin (pop. 21,413).
first appeared: 11/4/2007
—Champion swimmer, humorist and rancher Hondo Crouch paid $30,000 in the early 1970s for 10 acres outside Fredericksburg (pop. 8,911) known as Luckenbach and proclaimed himself mayor. The town later became a music mecca that inspired the 1977 Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson collaboration, “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love).”
first appeared: 10/21/2007
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