I love researching about the Sooner state...especially when I come across a little-known piece of history that isn't taught in history books or a fact about our export business that will have you asking, "Are you serious?" For the most part, these are all incredible and unbelievable, so let's see what my internet browsing skills dug up about Oklahoma.
1. In 2014, Oklahoma was the most seismically active state in the continental United States and recorded 3x as many quakes as California.
2. The first batch of Girl Scout Cookies were sold in Muskogee. They sold their first batch as part of a service project and the trend caught on.
3. More languages can be heard in Oklahoma than in all of Europe.
4. With all of the man-made lakes, there is more shoreline in Oklahoma than the Gulf and Atlantic coasts combined, with over 55,000 miles of shoreline.
5. Oklahoma consumes the 6th LEAST amount of alcohol in the U.S., with an average of 28.9 gallons of alcohol consumed each year, per person.
6. There were actually six tribes that walked the Trail of Tears. One tribe, Chipachawamie, died of famine early on. The tribe was small and only consisted of about 1,000 members. Those that survived were accepted into the Choctaw tribe. For whatever reason, this is largely ignored by history books.
7. Oklahoma has more tornadoes per square mile than any other state.
8. The number one export from Oklahoma is not wheat, wind or natural gas. It’s sperm! Oklahoma houses 300 sperm banks statewide and on a yearly average, Oklahoma generates 200,000 pounds of sperm that is shipped off worldwide.
BUT, since I couldn't confirm this is still true beyond a few sources...here is a piece you CAN talk about around the dinner table: The biggest export from Oklahoma is airplane parts. Tulsa is home to the largest airline maintenance base in the world, which serves as the global maintenance and engineering headquarters for American Airlines.
9. Oklahoma has twice as many women in prison as in other states, and is the female-incarceration capital of the U.S.
10. Oklahoma also has the most people who don’t eat their vegetables.
11. Which might help explain why Oklahoma is the 5th most obese state in the nation.
12. Oklahoma City is the same distance from New York and Los Angeles, approximately 1500 miles from each.
13. Oklahoma has the fastest wind speed ever recorded in history, 318 mph, from a tornado that hit Moore, OK on May 3rd, 1999.
14. The University of Oklahoma ranks number one in the nation among all public universities in the number of National Merit Scholars enrolled, per capita.
15. The Land Run was originally supposed to be a raffle. Maybe the most famous, iconic moment in Oklahoma’s history nearly never happened. The original idea for the land run was to have all interested land runners fill out a form with their desired section of land. If their name was called, the land was theirs.
Tell us some more interesting facts most people don't know about Oklahoma in the comments below!
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