Texas Trivia & Tidbits - Page 14

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

While not as celebrated as its cattle business, the state’s $50 million oyster industry supplies 13 percent of the nation’s oysters. Oystering was shut down on the Texas Gulf Coast in 2000, due to an inundation of toxic red tide algae.

first appeared: 12/21/2003

One of the state’s most unusual fish is the paddlefish, or spoonbill, which looks vaguely like a shark with a swordfish snout. It inhabits fresh water, is a harmless plankton feeder, and commonly reaches weights of 40 to 60 pounds. Paddlefish were a booming commercial product until fishing reduced their numbers. They now are protected.

first appeared: 12/14/2003

Construction on the 570-foot San Jacinto Monument near La Porte (pop. 31,880) began on April 21, 1936, and finished exactly three years later on April 21, 1939. Dedicated to the heroes of the battle of San Jacinto, and to those who contributed to the independence of Texas, the tower is 125 feet square at its base, and features a nine-pointed star at its peak.

first appeared: 12/7/2003

The Comal River is the state’s shortest river, rising from Comal Springs in Landa Park in New Braunfels (pop. 36,494) and meeting the Guadalupe River two-and-a-half miles later. Comal is Spanish for “basin” or “flat dish,” which describes the landscape through which the river travels.

first appeared: 11/30/2003

Spanning 130,454 acres off the mainland Texas coast near Corpus Christi, Padre Island National Seashore is the nation’s longest remaining stretch of undeveloped barrier island. The island was named for Padre Jose Nicolas Balli, who founded a settlement named Rancho Santa Cruz there in 1804 and established a mission for the Karankawa Indians and local settlers.

first appeared: 11/30/2003

The Harvard oak trees in Monahans Sandhills State Park near Monahans (pop. 6,821) stand about 36 inches tall at maturity, but their roots grow as deep as 90 feet. The miniature trees, which also are known as shin oaks, help to stabilize the area’s sand dunes and produce acorns just as their larger cousins do.

first appeared: 11/23/2003

In 1865, school supervisor Jacob Brodbeck reportedly flew about 100 feet and reached a height of 12 feet in an airship that he’d built, with varying accounts placing the flight at either Luckenbach or San Pedro Park in San Antonio. The airship, which featured a rudder, wings, and a propeller that operated by coiled springs, was destroyed in a crash landing when the springs unwound, with Brodbeck escaping serious injury.

first appeared: 11/16/2003

At more than 29.8 square miles, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport is one of the world’s largest airports in terms of land mass. In 2002, its seven runways handled 52.8 million passengers and 765,109 takeoffs and landings.

first appeared: 11/9/2003

The Texas Water Safari, a marathon canoe racing adventure held annually since 1963 between San Marcos (pop. 34,733) and Seadrift (pop. 1,352), bills itself as the world’s toughest boat race. Obstacles along the 260-mile route include dams, logjams, water moccasins and rough water, resulting in as few as two teams out of 60 reaching the finish line—which must be crossed within 100 hours of starting.

first appeared: 11/9/2003

At a height of 425 feet and covering an area of one square mile, Enchanted Rock, north of Fredericksburg (pop. 8,911), reportedly is the nation’s second largest exfoliation dome—an underground rock formation that has been uncovered by erosion. Such domes are also known as inselbergs, or island mountains.

first appeared: 11/2/2003

At .01 acres, Acton State Historical Park in Acton (pop. 450) is Texas’ smallest state park. It’s located at Acton Cemetery, and is the burial site of Davy Crockett’s second wife, Elizabeth, who married him in Tennessee in 1815. Because Davy fought for Texas and died at the Alamo, Elizabeth was eligible for a land grant, which she claimed near Acton in 1853.

first appeared: 10/26/2003

Oil well firefighter and Houston native Paul “Red” Adair and his company, Red Adair Co., pioneered modern techniques to cap wild oil wells and extinguish oil well fires, inspiring the 1968 movie Hellfighters starring John Wayne. In 1991, Adair and his team extinguished 117 of the burning oil wells in Kuwait after the Gulf War.

first appeared: 10/19/2003

When Alaska became a state in 1959, it meant that the “largest and grandest” lyric in the state song of Texas had to be changed. The lyric from Texas, Our Texas, which was adopted as the state song in 1929 after a statewide competition, became “boldest and grandest.” William Marsh of Fort Worth composed the song’s music and Marsh and Gladys Yoakum Wright wrote the lyrics.

first appeared: 10/12/2003

Don Wetzel, the co-inventor of the nation’s first successful automatic teller machine (ATM), said that the idea came to him while he was waiting in line at a Dallas bank in 1968. It took $5 million and 5 years, but Docutel, the company Wetzel worked for, was issued a patent for an ATM in 1973.

first appeared: 10/5/2003

The Texas Agricultural Experiment Station at Sonora (pop. 2,924) was founded in 1915 to study the breeding and management of sheep and goats under range conditions. The station is located on 3,462 acres of the Edwards Plateau, which is known for its sheep and Angora goat production.

first appeared: 10/5/2003

Mary Kay Ash, who founded Mary Kay Cosmetics, was a native of Hot Wells, located 24 miles southeast of Sierra Blanca (pop. 533). She started the company in 1963 with her life savings of $5,000 and the help of her 20-year-old son. In 1992, Mary Kay Cosmetics Inc. reported more than $1 billion in annual sales, and today has a presence in 19 countries.

first appeared: 9/28/2003

The longest straight-line distance in the state is 801 miles, running slightly northwest-to-southeast from the Panhandle’s northwest corner to the state’s southern tip on the Rio Grande below Brownsville. The longest east-west line stretches 773 miles from the eastward bend in the Sabine River in Newton County to the western bulge of the Rio Grande just above El Paso.

first appeared: 9/21/2003

With a land area of 261,797 square miles, Texas is larger than all of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia combined.

first appeared: 9/21/2003

Actor Tommy Lee Jones was born Sept. 15, 1946, in San Saba (pop. 2,637). After studying English at Harvard University on a football scholarship, Jones headed to New York’s Broadway to launch his acting career. In 1993, he won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Fugitive.

first appeared: 9/14/2003

A tree on the grounds of the Bosque Memorial Museum in Clifton (pop. 3,542) commemorates the 1982 visit of King Olav V of Norway. Settled by Norwegian and German immigrants in the mid-1800s, the Clifton area is known as the Norwegian Capital of Texas and the museum holds one of the South’s largest collections of Norwegian artifacts.

first appeared: 9/7/2003

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