Texas Trivia & Tidbits - Page 20

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

Lake Sam Rayburn, with a shoreline of 560 miles, is the largest inland lake in Texas. The lake near Jasper (pop. 8,247) covers 114,500 acres and is almost 56 miles long.

first appeared: 3/10/2002

Cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley performed the first successful U.S. heart transplant at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston in 1968. Born in Houston in 1920, Cooley founded The Texas Heart Institute in 1962.

first appeared: 3/3/2002

A monument to the orange and its health benefits can be found in Houston, thanks to the work of the late folk artist Jefferson Davis McKissack. Between 1956 and 1979, McKissack used concrete, brick, steel, gears, wagon wheels, and other items he found to build The Orange Show, a 3,000 square-foot salute to his favorite fruit. The monument is designed like a maze and includes an oasis, pond, stage, and museum. It is also a showplace for folk art from around the country.

first appeared: 2/24/2002

Juneteenth, the celebration of the date when the last slaves in America were freed, has its roots in Galveston. Although President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect in 1863, many slaves did not know they had been freed until Union forces entered Galveston more than two years later—on June 19, 1865.

first appeared: 2/17/2002

Paris, Texas, (pop. 25,898) is home to one of the world’s largest replicas of the Eiffel Tower. The 65-foot monument was “Texanized” in 1998 when a large red cowboy hat was placed on its top.

first appeared: 2/10/2002

The country’s first fully air-conditioned high-rise building was erected in San Antonio in 1928. The 21-story Milam Building used a system of pipes to carry chilled water past fans, which circulated the cool air.

first appeared: 2/3/2002

In 1896, the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad intentionally ran two railroad engines into each other as part of a publicity stunt. The locomotives, manned by engineers who jumped out of the trains, started at opposite ends of a 4-mile stretch of track. The trains collided at the fictional town of “Crush,” a site near Waco named for the passenger agent who proposed the idea.

first appeared: 2/3/2002

Golfing great and Olympic Gold Medalist Mildred Didrickson Zaharias (1911-1956) earned her nickname “Babe” as a child playing baseball in Port Arthur. She hit so many home runs her friends gave her the nickname because they thought she batted like Babe Ruth. In the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, she won gold medals in the hurdles and javelin toss.

first appeared: 1/27/2002

Midland, once home to the largest bombardier training base of World War II, now has the world’s largest collection of operating World War II aircraft. The American Airpower Heritage Museum collection has more than 100 combat aircraft from the United States, Germany, and Japan. Other displays include a look at the “nose art” of American aircraft in World War II.

first appeared: 1/20/2002

Almost 100 years after archaeologists first started excavating the ruins known as the “Buried City” near Perryton (pop. 7,774), they still don’t know exactly who inhabited the area between A.D. 800 and A.D. 1500. Researchers say the ruins found along a 5-mile stretch of Wolf Creek are different from those left by other American Indian cultures in the area. Study of the ruins has continued, off and on, since 1907.

first appeared: 1/13/2002

In 1964, Houston surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey performed the first coronary bypass operation in the United States. As a medical student, DeBakey invented a part of the heart-lung machine that made open-heart surgery possible.

first appeared: 1/6/2002

The state’s only natural lake was helped along by man. Caddo Lake near Marshall (pop. 23,935) is the only lake in the state not created by damming a river. But in 1914, an artificial dam was erected at Caddo for flood control.

first appeared: 12/30/2001

El Paso claims to have held the first Thanksgiving celebration in North America on April 30, 1598. Don Juan de Onate led 400 colonists from Santa Barbara, Mexico, headed for Santa Fe. After four months, the party reached the banks of the Rio Grande near what is now El Paso. Onate ordered the colonists to put on their best clothing for a feast of thanksgiving.

first appeared: 12/23/2001

Residents of Nacogdoches (pop. 29,914) staged three revolutions—in 1812, 1819, and 1826-27—in their efforts to create a country independent of Mexico. Texas declared itself an independent nation in 1836 and joined the United States in 1845.

first appeared: 12/16/2001

Weatherford (pop. 19,000) may be a fair piece from Neverland, but Peter Pan watches over it anyway. The life-size statue of the boy who never grew up is a salute to actress Mary Martin, the Weatherford native who was known for the role on Broadway and film.

first appeared: 12/16/2001

Big Tex, a 52-foot statue, has welcomed visitors to the Texas State Fair since 1952. Big Tex began talking in 1953, and in 1977 the cowboy started waving.

first appeared: 12/9/2001

In 1990, when the town of Baird (pop. 1,623), didn’t have a single antique business, an effort was launched to have it declared the “Antique Capital of West Texas.” The Legislature did so in 1993, when only a handful of shops had opened. Today the town boasts of more than 20 antique malls and shops representing more than 100 dealers.

first appeared: 12/2/2001

The rare and endangered Houston Toad is no longer found in the city that gave the amphibian its name. The toad, which grows to a length of about 3 inches, is found only in a small area of pine or oak forests in south-central Texas.

first appeared: 11/25/2001

San Angelo was the site of the world’s largest water balloon fight. Some 386 children armed with more than 4,400 water-filled balloons spent an afternoon soaking each other in June 2000 to gain recognition in The Guinness Book of World Records.

first appeared: 11/25/2001

Oveta Culp Hobby, born in Killeen, Texas, on Jan. 19, 1905, became the first director of the Women’s Army Corps in 1942. In 1953, President Eisenhower named her the first secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953. She died in 1995.

first appeared: 11/18/2001

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