Thursday Thirteen #3 ~ California!

A big thank-you to Happy Momma to Three for my new TT header.

Thirteen Facts about California. This is the state I was born in and that I find myself living in once more…

1. The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was accidentally discovered at Sutter’s Mill, on the South Fork of the American River in Coloma, near Sacramento.

2. More people live in California than in any other state in the U.S. In 2001, there were more than 34 million.

3. The “Eternal God” is a 12,000-year-old redwood tree in the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. It’s the oldest living thing on the planet, but at 238 feet tall it isn’t the biggest tree. That title belongs to a giant sequoia called “General Sherman” in Sequoia National Park, which tops out at 275 feet and measures more than 102 feet around.

4. San Francisco Originals: blue jeans and fortune cookies.

5. The San Andreas Fault line runs 650 miles up the California coast, marking the collision of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. Thousands of small earthquakes occur in California every year; historically, a major quake has hit the southern region every 150 years. The last big one hit in 1857. (I guess this source doesn’t consider the last biggest one I experienced, the Sylmar quake in 1971 or the one that caused so much damage, the Northridge quake in 1994)

6. Hollywood began in 1908, when a few independent New York filmmakers moved west to set up shop. The town’s first full-length motion picture was filmed in 1915.

7. East finally met west in 1869, when the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads were connected.

8. The hottest day ever in America was in California’s Death Valley on July 10, 1913. It was a sweltering 135 degrees F!

9. Hewlett-Packard was the first tech company in Silicon Valley. In 1938, Stanford University engineers Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started it in a garage with $1,538.

10. Los Angeles is moving eastward at an estimated rate of one-fifth of an inch per year.

11. Mel Blanc, the voice behind Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig, is buried in Hollywood Memorial Park. His headstone reads, “That’s all, folks!”

12. Each October, Pacific Grove, California, becomes home to thousands of Monarch butterflies, who travel up to 2,000 miles to winter and mate there. It’s a misdemeanor to harm a Monarch in Pacific Grove since 1939.

13. California’s stint as a republic, after declaring freedom from Mexico on June 14, 1846, lasted one month. It then spent four years as a U.S. territory before officially becoming a state on September 9, 1850.

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