Texas Trivia & Tidbits - Page 16

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

The state’s cattle population is estimated to be 16 million. In comparison, the state’s human population is nearly 21 million.

first appeared: 5/18/2003

The Heisman Memorial Trophy is named for distinguished football player and coach John W. Heisman, who was the athletic director and head football coach at Rice University in Houston from 1924 to 1927. The trophy is awarded each year to the most outstanding college football player in the nation.

first appeared: 5/11/2003

Aransas National Wildlife Refuge near Austwell (pop. 192) is the winter home of one of the rarest creatures in North America—the whooping crane, whose population in 1941 numbered just 15 birds. Today, the “whoopers” are making a comeback, wintering on the refuge’s saltwater marshes, where tidal flats provide ample food in the form of clams and crabs.

first appeared: 5/4/2003

The state bird of Texas is the mockingbird, which the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs nominated in 1926. The mockingbird lives year-round throughout Texas, and is known for the beauty and variety of its song, which mimics other bird songs exactly.

first appeared: 5/4/2003

Conrad Hilton, who founded the Hilton chain of hotels, purchased his first hotel in Cisco (pop. 3,851) in 1919. The first hotel to carry the Hilton name was built in Dallas in 1925. Hilton went on to run the nation’s first “coast-to-coast” hotel chain, which currently numbers about 500 hotels worldwide.

first appeared: 4/27/2003

The longest highway in the state is U.S. 83, which stretches 899 miles from the Oklahoma state line near Perryton (pop. 7,774) to the border with Mexico at Brownsville. The shortest highway, at just 391 feet long, is Loop 168 in downtown Tenaha (pop. 1,046), and the highest highway runs from Texas 118 to the McDonald Observatory on Mount Locke in the Davis Mountains—6,791 feet above sea level.

first appeared: 4/20/2003

Hall of Fame power pitcher Nolan Ryan set a record for fastest recorded pitch—100.9 mph—in 1974 and is the only major league player to have his uniform number retired by three teams: the California Angels, Houston Astros, and Texas Rangers. Ryan was born Jan. 31, 1947, in Refugio (pop. 2,941) and grew up in Alvin (pop. 21,413). He pitched seven no-hitters during a 27-season career from 1965 to 1993.

first appeared: 4/13/2003

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department collected more than 8,000 lost and abandoned crab traps from Texas bays last year, including about 3,200 from Galveston Bay alone. The traps foul shrimpers’ nets and snag fishermen’s lines, department officials say.

first appeared: 4/13/2003

“Twice as nice” is the motto for Texarkana (pop. 34,782), a border city whose main thoroughfare is the state line between Texas and Arkansas. Some credit Col. Gus Knobel, surveyor for the Iron Mountain Railway, with the town name. Thinking he was at the spot where three states joined (Louisiana, too), he wrote Tex-Ark-Ana on a board and nailed it to a tree.

first appeared: 4/6/2003

The State Line Post Office and Federal Building, built in Texarkana in 1932, sits in both Texas and Arkansas and has two zip codes. Texas granite and Arkansas limestone were used to build it.

first appeared: 4/6/2003

In 1903, Jonathan Edwards Pierce and other settlers gave land for a right-of-way to the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway, guaranteeing survival of the settlement. Grateful for the railroad, Pierce proposed naming the town “Thank God.” When the postal service rejected the name, he chose Blessing (pop. 861).

first appeared: 3/30/2003

No city limit signs are posted in Luckenbach because they’re stolen as fast as they’re planted in the hamlet made famous by country singers Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. The cowboy town consists of an 1849 general store with a post office, a blacksmith shop, a saloon, and cultural events such as armadillo races, an annual hug-in, a hunt for the first mud dauber each spring, and the July 4th picnic, often attended by Nelson. Luckenbach is about 10 miles southeast of Fredricksburg (pop. 8,911).

first appeared: 3/23/2003

To hide her poor typing at her secretarial job in Dallas, artist Bette Nesmith Graham blended white paint and dabbed the typos with a watercolor brush. Other secretaries asked for the correcting fluid, and Graham began bottling batches of her Mistake Out in 1956. She patented the mixture, changed the name to Liquid Paper and sold the business for $47.5 million to Gillette Corp. in 1979. Her son, Michael Nesmith, was guitarist for the made-for-TV band, The Monkees, in the 1960s.

first appeared: 3/16/2003

A massive mural depicting the Pentecost as described in the Bible and peopled by more than 200 biblical figures is on display at the Biblical Arts Center in Dallas. The Miracle at Pentecost, which is 124 feet long and 20 feet tall, is one of the many religious pieces of art found at the center.

first appeared: 3/9/2003

The historic Stagecoach Inn in Salado (pop. 3,475) opened in the 1860s and was restored in 1945. George Armstrong Custer, Robert E. Lee, and Sam Houston were among those who slept at the inn on the Chisholm Trail.

first appeared: 3/2/2003

The state Legislature named the lightning whelk the state shell of Texas in 1987. The shell’s inhabitant, called a whelk, eats clams and grows its spiral shell up to 15 inches.

first appeared: 3/2/2003

The first flag of Texas independence flew above Goliad (pop. 1,975) in 1835. The flag, raised by colonists who had taken over a military fort and the town, showed a red arm holding a red sword.

first appeared: 2/23/2003

For more than 100 years, Collins Bakery in Corsicana (pop. 24,485) has been making and shipping one of the Christmas season’s main delights. Since 1896, fruitcake has been sold at the bakery and is shipped by mail across America and to customers in 196 nations.

first appeared: 2/23/2003

The highest and lowest recorded temperatures in Texas are more than 140 degrees apart. The record high, 120 degrees, was recorded in June 1936 in the town of Seymour (pop. 2,908) and in August 1994 in Monahans (pop. 6,821). The record low of 23 degrees below zero occurred in February 1899 in Tulia (pop. 5,117) and in February 1933 in Seminole (pop. 5,910).

first appeared: 2/16/2003

Dr. Michael DeBakey, world-famous pioneering heart surgeon at Methodist Hospital in Houston, also developed the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M.A.S.H.) concept for the military, first used during the Korean War.

first appeared: 2/16/2003

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