Texas Trivia & Tidbits - Page 15

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

Students at The Woodlands High School in The Woodlands (pop. 55,649) baked the world’s largest gingerbread man on Dec. 19, 1998. The sweet treat measured 11 feet long, 1 inch thick, and almost 5 feet wide, for a total weight of 25 pounds.

first appeared: 8/31/2003

Some 4,000 train carloads of Texas red granite were transported from Marble Falls (pop. 4,959) to Austin to help build the State Capitol, which opened to the public May 16, 1888. The state traded 3 million acres of public land in the Panhandle for the materials and the building of the Capitol, including 11,000 train carloads of limestone, 85,000 square feet of copper, and 7 miles of oak, pine, cherry, cedar, walnut, ash, and mahogany wood.

first appeared: 8/24/2003

CBS news anchor Dan Rather was born in Wharton (pop. 9,237) in 1931, and began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville (pop. 35,078). In 1992, the frame house in which he was born was moved to the Wharton County Historical Museum, and in 1994, Sam Houston State University in Huntsville (his alma mater) named its journalism and communications building after him.

first appeared: 8/17/2003

Natural Bridge Caverns, southwest of New Braunfels (pop. 36,494), are named for the 60-foot natural limestone bridge that was formed when a cavern ceiling collapsed about 5,000 years ago. Within the caverns, the largest room is almost the size of a football field: more than 100 feet wide, 350 feet long, and 100 feet tall. The caverns also contain one of North America’s longest “soda straw” hollow stalactite formations, measuring 14 feet.

first appeared: 8/10/2003

The Texas Department of Transportation sows more than 30,000 pounds of wildflower seeds along roadways each year as part of its vegetation management program.

first appeared: 8/3/2003

The El Paso Diablos baseball club set a world record for the largest pecan pie—measuring 50 feet across, and weighing 41,586 pounds—on May 22, 1999, at Cohen Stadium in El Paso. The pie contained about 1,000 pounds of pecans, 6,700 dozen eggs, 3,500 pounds of flour, and 13,700 pounds of sugar.

first appeared: 8/3/2003

The balloons launched by NASA’s National Scientific Balloon Facility near Palestine (pop. 17,598) are made of polyethylene film about the same thickness as sandwich wrap, but they can carry research instruments weighing 8,000 pounds—about the weight of three small cars. The unmanned balloons, which measure up to 400 feet across, travel some 26 miles up into the atmosphere to conduct scientific research.

first appeared: 7/27/2003

Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, was born in Lubbock in 1944. When she was elected executive vice-president in 1995, she became the first woman and the first person of color elected to the organization’s top offices, and the highest-ranking woman in the labor movement.

first appeared: 7/20/2003

The state’s population increases daily by an average of 555 people (based on 940 births and 402 deaths), according to the Texas Almanac. In addition, 504 marriages take place, along with 210 divorces.

first appeared: 7/13/2003

The first grapefruit to be granted a U.S. patent, the ruby red grapefruit, was discovered growing on a pink grapefruit tree in a Texas citrus grove near McAllen in 1929. Since then, various sweet red varieties have been developed in the state, which are now trademarked as either Ruby-Sweet or Rio Star grapefruit. Texas adopted the red grapefruit as its official fruit in 1993.

first appeared: 7/13/2003

Two U.S. presidents were born in Texas. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president, was born Oct. 14, 1890 in Denison (pop. 22,773), where the Eisenhower Birthplace State Historical Park now commemorates his life. The Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park, which includes the LBJ Ranch, recognizes the 36th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, born Aug. 27, 1908 near Johnson City (pop. 1,191).

first appeared: 7/6/2003

Houston’s Astrodome, which opened in 1965, was America’s first covered superstadium. The stadium’s domed roof, measuring 642 feet across and 218 feet high, covers a 150,000-square-foot playing field. The Astrodome project was spearheaded by Judge Roy Hofheinz, who bought and drained 495 acres of swampland with the intention of building an air-conditioned stadium so that baseball teams could play even in the intense heat of summer. Mickey Mantle hit a home run in the stadium’s opening game.

first appeared: 6/29/2003

Established in 1917, the state’s highway department began work on its first road in 1918, building a 20-mile stretch between Falfurrias (pop. 5,297) and Encino (pop. 177) in Brooks County. The road, finished in 1920, runs along the same corridor as present-day U.S. 281. Today, the state maintains more than 79,000 miles of road.

first appeared: 6/22/2003

Laredo is the nation’s largest inland port of entry, and the largest border crossing for goods traded between the United States and Mexico.

first appeared: 6/15/2003

The annual West of the Pecos Rodeo in Pecos (pop. 9,501) boasts one of the longest rodeo histories in the country, begun July 4, 1883.

first appeared: 6/15/2003

Texas is the state with the most Dairy Queen restaurants: more than 600.

first appeared: 6/8/2003

Texas named the Confederate Air Force, based in Midland, the state’s official air force in 1989. Now known as the Commemorative Air Force, the organization’s mission is to preserve, in flying condition, a complete collection of the combat aircraft flown by the United States in World War II.

first appeared: 6/8/2003

Gordon Matthews invented voicemail in Dallas in the late 1970s. Matthews formed his company, VMX (Voice Message Express), in 1979, and received a patent for his voicemail system in 1982. He sold his first system to 3M, and his wife, Monika, recorded the first greeting on the first commercial voicemail.

first appeared: 6/1/2003

The breezes of Corpus Christi inspired Lew Hewitt and Dee Horton to invent an automatic sliding door in the mid-1950s. The two men saw that regular swing doors blew open in the wind, so they developed a sliding door that wouldn’t. Their company, Horton Automatics, was formed in 1960 and still operates in Corpus Christi today.

first appeared: 5/25/2003

If you look down from the Flagship Hotel in Galveston, you might see fish: the hotel has the distinction of being built entirely over water. It was opened in 1965 on Pleasure Pier, and stretches 1,000 feet into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

first appeared: 5/18/2003

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