| Rodeo is the
official state sport of
Texas, though High School
Football is more popular.
In the mid 1980s, the employee cafeteria at Motorola in Austin had to
stop serving food that contained poppy seeds because people showed
false positives for opium when they were drug tested. Since then, the
company reintroduced poppy seeds, and added Valium and several
anti-depressants to a list of things not to bother testing for.
Early Spanish missionaries in
Texas
hoped to encourage the spread of European values by offering flannel
underwear to Native Americans.
People who moved to Lockhart,
Texas in the 1950s are still
considered by natives of the town to be newcomers.
In 1964, Austin writer John Morthland
became the first person in America to interview the Rolling Stones.
John, who was a high school junior in San Bernardino,
California,
interviewed the band when they arrived for the maiden U.S. tour for
his school's paper.
There are stalactites and stalagmites
in the breezeway at the University of
Texas
Law School.
For $150 you can become a
licensed dead animal hauler in
Texas.
Fifty years ago, you could have been
jailed for giving out or discussing information on birth control.
The world's largest oatmeal cake was
baked and built in Bertram,
Texas
during Labor Day weekend 1991. The 33-layer cake stood more than 3
feet tall, weighed 333 pounds, and served 3,333 people.
Dallas' corner of Elm and Houston
streets has a sordid history. The building completed there in November
1898 was struck by lightning and burned to the ground in May 1901. By
the fall of 1901 it was rebuilt. In that same building 62 years later,
Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot President Kennedy from the sixth
floor.
Seventy-five percent of the world's
Snickers bars are made in Waco at the M&M/Mars plant.
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