Texas Trivia & Tidbits

Broadcast journalist, columnist and CNN political analyst Roland Martin, born in 1968 in Houston, was named last year by Ebony magazine as one of  the 150 most influential black Americans and was inducted into the Texas A&M University Journalism Hall of Honor.

Stamford (pop. 3,636) is crawling with giant metal dinosaurs and insects, thanks to Johnny Anders, who owns a paint and body shop in town. In his spare time, Anders uses scrap metal and old car parts to create the outdoor sculptures.

With traffic roaring overhead, worshippers at the Church Under the Bridge meet every Sunday under an Interstate 35 bridge in Waco. Begun in 1992, the outdoor church started as a mission to the homeless, but now caters to all.
In the early 1900s, Sugar Land (pop. 63,328) was a company town owned and benevolently managed by the Imperial Sugar Co., hence the town name. The company provided a general store, sewers, gas and telephone lines. The town was incorporated in 1959 after the company sold most of its town properties.

Army Spc. Zachary Boyd of Fort Worth earned national attention for the way he responded earlier this year when his unit came under fire in Afghanistan. Jumping from a nap, the 19-year-old soldier didn't waste time putting on his uniform
and fought the Taliban in his pink "I Love NY" boxer shorts.

The University of Texas at Austin is home to one of the world's largest algae collections, with nearly 3,000 different strains. The algae are used for scientific research, especially in the search for strains that can best be converted to fuel to help supply the world's energy needs.

Muleshoe (pop. 4,530) hosts the World Championship Muleshoe Pitching Contest every Fourth of July. The town displays a statue of a mule on its main street, a memorial to the animal's vital role in frontier life and World War I.

Leading the Girl Scouts of the USA as its chief executive officer is Kathy Cloninger, a native of Dallas. Cloninger is the 18th CEO of the 3.7 million-member organization. A Girl Scout herself from the second through sixth grades, she was in her mother's troop in Dallas.

A 144-foot-long replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in May in Mineral Wells (pop. 16,946). Built by volunteers, the wall's panels list the names of more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers killed in the Vietnam War. Nearby Fort Wolters was the primary training base for helicopter pilots who flew in Vietnam.

In May, Eric Yang, 13, took an educated guess that Timis County, which shares its name with a tributary of the Danube River, is in Romania. With that answer, the middle-school student from The Colony (pop. 26,531) became the 2009 National Geographic Bee champion. Among his prizes was a $25,000 college scholarship.

Jeremy Wariner, one of the fastest men in the world, won three Olympic gold medals and a silver in the 400 meters and the 4x400-meter relay in the Athens and Beijing summer games, in addition to many world championships. He was born in Irving in 1984.

Chartered by the Republic of Texas in 1845, Baylor University in Waco is the state's oldest continuously operated university.

With just 600 checking accounts, the Oakwood State Bank in Oakwood (pop. 471) is believed to be the smallest bank in America.

Palacios (pop. 5,153) originally was named Trespalacios-"three palaces" in Spanish-after the bay on which it lies. According to legend, shipwrecked Spanish sailors imagined seeing three palaces on shore disappear as they approached. More than likely, the bay and seaside town were named after Jose Felix Trespalacios, a Mexican governor of the area in the early 1820s. The town name was shortened to Palacios in 1902.

Allison, a rescued sea turtle that has only one flipper, now can swim straight with the help of a neoprene suit with a carbon-fiber dorsal fin. Researchers at Sea Turtle Inc., a turtle rehabilitation center in South Padre Island (pop. 2,422), outfitted the turtle so she doesn't swim around in circles. The 5-year-old turtle, believed to be the first with a prosthetic flipper, can change direction by varying the strokes of her front right flipper, which survived what rescuers believe was a shark attack.

When barbed wire replaced smooth wire in the late 1800s, August Kaspar began weaving baskets from the smooth wire. From that humble start, Kaspar founded Kaspar Wire Works in 1898 in Shiner (pop. 2,070). Today, the family-owned business manufactures hundreds of wire products, including fan guards, newspaper racks and baskets.

Consecrated in 1848, St. Mary Cathedral Basilica in Galveston (pop. 57,247) survived the powerful 1900 hurricane that claimed an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 lives.

A Texas-size sculpture of Buddy Holly's trademark black horn-rimmed glasses welcomes visitors to the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock. Holly, whose 1950s-era hits "Peggy Sue," "That'll Be the Day" and "Oh, Boy" helped shape rock 'n' roll music, was born in Lubbock and died 50 years ago in a plane crash that also took the lives of Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson.

Exxon Mobil Corp., based in Irving, unseated Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to top the 2009 Fortune 500 list of America's largest corporations. Wal-Mart, headquartered in Bentonville, Ark., had 2008 sales of $405.6 billion, but Exxon's sales were $442.85 billion. Wal-Mart had held the top spot six of the last seven years.

—Legendary bluesman Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins (1912-1982), one of the most prolific blues recording artists, was born in Centerville (pop. 903). In the early 1960s he played at Carnegie Hall with folk singers Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, and by the end of the decade he opened for rock bands such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in Memphis in 1980. The audience can throw popcorn and hiss at the villain in the melodrama performed every year at Midland's (pop. 94,996) "Summer Mummers," the state's longest-running summer theater. Local volunteers have presented the raucous production since 1949 and make their home in the historic Yucca Theatre.

—The University of Texas at Austin houses one of only five complete copies of the Gutenberg Bible in the United States. The Bible, among the Harry Ransom Center's collections, was printed at Johann Gutenberg's shop in Mainz, Germany, and was completed around 1455. The center's Bible was acquired in 1978.

—The first football rivalry to be featured on a Wheaties cereal box was the Lone Star Showdown, a legendary football game between the University of Texas Longhorns in Austin and the Texas A&M University Aggies in College Station (pop. 67,890). The teams were pictured in 2006 on the Wheaties box.

The first set of octuplets born in the United States were the Chukwu octuplets, born in December 1998 to Nkem Chukwu and Iyke Louis. Seven of the babies survived and are thriving in the birth city, Houston.

—In 1972, George Ballas, of Houston, took a tin popcorn can, punched holes in it and inserted short lengths of nylon fishing line. He attached the can to the rotary of his lawn edger and the spinning nylon lines trimmed the grass around his trees. From this modest beginning was born the Weed Eater.

—In the 1870s, at the urging of his wife, Molly, Charles Goodnight captured a few bison and bred them on the JA Ranch in the Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle. Today, the historic herd comprises the official Texas State Bison Herd and roams Caprock Canyons State Park near Quitaque (pop. 432).

—Stump, a 10-year-old Sussex spaniel, became the oldest Best in Show winner at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in February. Stump makes his home in Houston with his handler, Scott Sommer. In 2004, veterinarians at Texas A&M University in College Station (pop. 67,890) saved Stump from a near-fatal disease, allowing him to come out of retirement.

—The Super Bowl was named the AFL-NFL World Championship Game until Dallas businessman and Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt nicknamed it the Super Bowl after watching his children play with a toy called the Super Ball. Horton Foote, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of the 1962 screen adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, was born in 1916 in Wharton (pop. 9,237). Many of his works are set in the mythical small town of Harrison, Texas, but his 1999 autobiography, Farewell: A Memoir of a Texas Childhood, is an account of his life in Wharton.

—Founded in 1888, the Dallas Zoo is the oldest zoo in the state. The Fort Worth Zoo is the oldest continuous zoo site in the state, having been established in 1909. Half Price Books, Records, Magazines was started in 1972 in a converted Laundromat in Dallas when co-founders Ken Gjemre and Pat Anderson put 2,000 of their books up for sale. Today, the company operates more than 100 stores in 15 states.

–Nicknamed the "Vaulting Vicar," the Rev. Robert Richards, of Gordon (pop. 451), is the only two–time Olympic gold medalist in pole vaulting (1952, 1956). He also won a bronze medal in 1948. Dr. David Watson, a family practitioner in Yoakum (pop. 5,731), has delivered and doctored many of the town's residents over the last 50 years, even making house calls, and was named 2008 Country Doctor of the Year by Staff Care, a physician staffing service.

—Wen Chyan, 17, a senior at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science at the University of North Texas in Denton (pop. 80,537), won the national Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology and a $100,000 scholarship last December. Chyan developed a polymer coating that could help prevent bacterial infections developed during hospital stays. A sunken tour bus, a triple-decker houseboat, airplanes and motorcycles provide scuba divers with an underwater adventure at the Athens Scuba Park in Athens (pop. 11,297). The spring-fed lake offers divers visibility of 35 feet or more.

—Songwriter Mae Boren Axton (1914-1997), born in Bardwell (pop. 583) and raised in Oklahoma, is best known as co-writer of Elvis Presley's hit "Heartbreak Hotel." Axton and Tommy Durden wrote the song in 1955 based on a newspaper article about a hotel guest who committed suicide and left a one-line note: "I walk a lonely street." Military dogs hurt in combat get treatment at a state-of-the-art hospital at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Some 2,500 dogs work for all branches of the military and the Transportation Safety Administration and are trained at the base to find explosives, drugs and land mines. Trevor Brazile became rodeo's first Triple Crown winner in 24 years by coming in first in tie-down roping, all-around, and steer roping in 2007 competitions. Born in Amarillo and living in Decatur (pop. 5,201), Brazile earned the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association's first Triple Crown since Roy Cooper accomplished the feat in 1983.

—The Lopez siblings from Sugar Land (pop. 63,328) made Olympic history last summer when they became the first set of three siblings to make an Olympic team in the same year since 1904. Known as tae kwon do’s “first family,” Steven, Mark and Diana Lopez took home bronze, silver and bronze medals, respectively, at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Their older brother Jean was the U.S. Olympic tae kwon do team coach.

According to legend, Davy Crockett camped in the area of Honey Grove (pop. 1,746) in the 1830s and wrote to friends telling them of the abundance of honey-filled trees, thus providing the town’s name. Honey Grove now bills itself as “The Sweetest Town in Texas.”