Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

LadyFish · Nov 28, 2004

Since we have members from all over the world, I thought it would be interesting to list 10 things the place we live is either famous for, interesting facts about it, or things that just make where we live special. Galveston Island, Texas 1. Galveston Island has been occupied since the early 1500's, serving as a home to Akokisa Indians (once thought to be the Karankawa Indians), the infamous pirate Jean Lafitte, "little Ellis Island," "the Wall Street of the Southwest," the richest city in Texas. 2. Galveston Island is the site of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history--the 1900 Storm. 3. In 1836, four ships of the Texas Navy made headquarters on the Island and protected the Texas coast from harassment by the Mexican Navy. These ships prevented supplies and men from reaching Santa Anna, insuring victory for Sam Houston's army at San Jacinto, 22 miles northwest of Galveston. 4. Congress made Galveston a port of entry in 1837 and appointed Gail Borden as Collector of Customs; the first customs house had been opened in Galveston in 1825. 5. Between 1838 and 1842, 18 newspapers were started. The Galveston News, founded in 1842, is the only surviving newspaper now published as The Galveston County Daily News. It is the oldest daily newspaper in the state. 6. Galveston opened the first post office in Texas in 1836. 7. Galveston is the site of the first first naval base in Texas in 1836. 8. Galveston had the first military company in Texas in 1841. 9. Galveston island is 28 miles long and 3 miles wide at its widest point. 10. On the Island, you can watch the sun rise over the Gulf of Mexico and the sun set over Galveston Bay.

NYMINUTE · Nov 29, 2004

Re: Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

Fort Wayne, Indiana 1. Dave Thomas' home (Wendy's), Oh yeah he's dead now. 2. Shelly Long's home, WHO?? Remember Diane on CHEERS 3. Major Flood area 1983 Ron Reagan helped sandbag. 4. Home to North American Van Lines, WOW 5. St. Marys, Maumee, And St. Joseph Rivers meet here, all are filthy. 6. Has more streets with Multiple names than anywhere in th US 7. Too small to think BIG, Too BIG to think small. 8. 125 miles from Lake Michigan, 130 from Erie 9. Has no permanent time zone. Eastern OCT-APR. Central MAY-SEPT. 10. Eating out is #1 sport. There is really nothing that says LIVE HERE, I was forced by my occupation. YUCH

one more cast · Nov 29, 2004

Re: Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

Greig, NY 1.No traffic lights 2.No traffic 3.Lots of wild life 4.Clean air 5.Friendly neighbors 6.Clean streams 7.Good fishing 8.Good hunting 9.Quiet 10.Famous for nothing

JB · Nov 29, 2004

Re: Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

1. Whitt, TX was a thriving town prior to a 1906 tornado that destroyed most of the town. 2. The "Halfway House", which still stands as a private residence, was a stagecoach stop and rooming house in the late 19th century. Gen Sherman stopped there just before being attacked by Commanches in 1878. 3. The stone building locally known as "Rock Church" was built as Whitt Academy, the first college in the area, in 1870. It is the oldest stone building in Parker County. 4. The community that is now Whitt was originally named "Fort Greasy" after a famous fight in which local women and children fought off a Commanche attack. The Indians killed all of the swine in a sty and set it on fire. The heat cooked the pigs and a rivulet of fat ran out onto the ground. When the local men returned from their expedition in search of the Indians who had attacked while they were gone they named the cabin where the women and children had held out "Fort Greasy". 5. When Fort Greasy applied for a Post Office about 1875, the U.S. Post Office refused the name, so the community tried the name of of Caleb Whitt, a prominent farmer. The Name of Whitt was accepted. 6. Before the 1906 tornado, Whitt had several hotels and boarding houses, Doctors Offices, Dentist, 2 Drug Stores, 2 Grocery and "Notions" stores, Whitt College, a grain mill (on what is now The Hideout) and several other commercial enterprises. All shut down or moved to other towns after the storm. 7. Whitt was the site of a lynching in the early 1870s. After a gunfight in which all of the men in a local family were killed by local men, the surviving women, mother and daughter, attacked the group. The mother was killed and the daughter was taken to a local creek and hanged to a tree there. The family were northerners and provoked bitter fights with Confederate veterans. 8. There are no traffic lights or commercial enterprises other than ranching in the Whitt community. 9. Whitt is the center of a thriving and growing community of cutting horse ranches and professional rodeo cowboys, including several immigrants from NZ and OZ. Whitt calls itself the cutting horse capital of the world. 10. In the 2000 election the polling place in Whitt voted 95% for GW Bush. In the 2004 election it was 97%.

NYMINUTE · Nov 29, 2004

Re: Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

Had to add this. Last year at my granddaughters open house at school they were required to list 10 things they about Indiana that they like. Here are a few they listed: 1. Easy to spell 2. Close to Ohio 3. No Hurricanes 4. Notre Dame 5. Close to Michigan 6. No pesky hills to climb 7. Don't have to reset the clocks. My favorite: My Papa lives here.

gaugeguy · Nov 29, 2004

Re: Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

I don't know if I can get 10, but I'll try... Hopkinton, New Hampshire 1. established 1736 2. Hopkinton consists of 3 villages along the Contoocook River, (Contoocook, Hopkinton and W. Hopkinton, I live in W. Hop) 3. There are 3 wooden covered bridges in the town 4. We have the Hopkinton State Fair 5. We host the "Highland Games". 6. The Army Corps of Engineers own 40% of the land in town to divert water during floods. 7. Population 5300 8. The town next to us is Henniker, which is the only Henniker on earth (yeah, I'm stretching it here) 9. The Governor-elect is from Hopkinton 10. There is a granite marker with a plaque on it marking the spot the first "white man-child" was born in Hopkinton in 1730 a few hundred yards from my house.

KennyKenCan · Nov 29, 2004

Re: Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

Long Island, NY A) 12,500 years ago - First Indian Tribes begin to settle on Long Island, and they named it Algonquian, meaning, "Land Surrounded By Sea". 1) 1637 - First settlers arrive in Southold and Southampton, Long Island, from Connecticut and Massachusetts, where they establish the nations first industry, whaling. The town of Sag Harbor was a whaling port from this time until as recently as the early 1920's! 2) August 27th, 1776 - Battle of Long Island takes place during the American Revolution. 3) 1792 - President George Washington commissions the U.S. Governments first public works project, the construction of the Montauk Point Lighthouse. 4) July 11th, 1813 - Battle of Sag Harbor during The War of 1812 5) 1819 - Poet Walt Whitman is born in Huntington, Long Island 6) 1848 - Nations first commuter railroad established, the Long Island RailRoad, with its run from Greenport, Long Island to Long Island City, Queens, NY. 7) 1908 - First concrete highway from Lake Ronkonkoma, Long Island to Sunnyside, Queens, NY, is built for the 1908 Vanderbilt Cup Races. Roadway still exists today, and is know as "Vanderbilt Motor Parkway". Although the race does not exist anymore, the Vanderbilt Cup, is still given as the championship trophy in World Rally Championship (WRC)! 8) May 12, 1927 - Aviator Charles Lindberg takes off from Mitchel Field, in Mineola, Long Island, on his historic solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. 9) July 20, 1969 - The Lunar Module "Eagle", built by Grumman Corporation in Bethpage, Long Island, and piloted by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrich, lands in the Sea of Tranquility, on the surface of the moon, when the world heard, "Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed." 10) 1972 - "Cold Spring Harbor" a rock and roll album, is first released by Hicksville, Long Island native, Billy Joel.

spratt · Nov 29, 2004

Re: Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

Washington State et al: - Bill Gates (world's richest man) has both his home and the world's largest software company located in Redmond...not a great thing, but interesting... - Starbucks Coffee Company is home based here, and it is pretty hard to n ot find a coffee shop within walking distance at any given time... - You can watch the sun rise over teh Cascade mountain range, with a fantastic view of Mount Rainier, ~14,000 feet high and snowd over all year... -Sunset can be seen over the Olympic mountain range, with some fantastically beautiful mountains to be seen, especially after the year's first snowfall at higher altitudes - I live here I guess that is enough to make this a great state, but there is a lot more, and I have no doubt Link and others will have more input

eeboater · Nov 29, 2004

Re: Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

Milwaukee, WI - Beer. - Crappy Baseball. - High Taxes. Sean

jtexas · Nov 29, 2004

Re: Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

Arlington, Texas 1. Home of the original Six Flags (Six Flags Over Texas). 2. Home of the Texas Rangers. 3. Earlier this month, voted to foot half the cost of a new retractable-roof stadium for the Dallas Cowboys. 4. Seventh largest city in Texas, but the largest among cities with no public transportation. 5. Right smack in the middle between Dallas and Fort Worth. 6. The elementary & junior high schools are all named for retired teachers; the high schools are named for heroes of the Texas revolution. 7. Escalades and Suburbans are assembled here. 8. Founded in 1876. 9. Calls itself "Fun Central" 10. If you don't like the weather, wait ten minutes.

snapperbait · Nov 29, 2004

Re: Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

1. Palm Beach County is the largest of Florida s sixty-seven counties... 2. The Countys 2,268 square miles include 2,023 square miles of land and 245 square miles of surface water, making it the largest county east of the Mississippi River .. 3. The county has 45 miles of oceanfront shoreline. 4. Average annual rainfall for the P.B.C. area is 61.7 inches. 5. Palm Beach was home to Henry Flagler for some time.. Flagler, one of the founders of Standard Oil, built The Palm Beach Inn in 1896, later to be expanded and re-named named The Breakers Hotel... The Breakers was twice burnt to the ground and re-built, once in 1903, and again in 1925... The Breakers, along with Flaglers home "Whitehall", are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. 6. Palm Beach International Airport had its beginning in 1936 when it was known as Morrison Field.. In 1940, the U.S. Army Air Corps began converting Morrison Field for military purposes and activated it for military use in 1941... A month after Pearl Harbor, when the allied nations built up forces to invade France, Morrison Field processed 6,200 planes and 45,000 fliers. Many of them took off from Morrison Field for the D-Day invasion of Normandy... Morrison Field was deactivated as a military air base in 1947, only to be reactivated in September, 1951, during the Korean War.. Nearly 23,000 airmen trained in West Palm Beach during the Korean conflict... 7. Built in 1961, John F. Kennedy's emergency fallout shelter is located on Peanut Island.. The shelter is located minutes away from the former Kennedy estate thats sometimes refered to as "the Winter Whithouse"

.... 8. How did Palm Beach get it's name?.. In 1878, a storm forced the Spanish ship "Providencia" to founder, scattering its cargo of coconuts... Coastal residents planted the flotsam in hopes of making money from the harvest, and a forest of trees sprang up, giving the area its name and distinctive appearance... 9. Lake Worth, the body of water that separates West Palm Beach from Palm Beach, was originally a freshwater lake. When settlers succeeded in opening it to the ocean (for easier navigation), it was transformed into a saltwater lagoon. In the 1920s, an inlet to the sea was dredged and the soil deposited in the lake created what has now become Peanut Island. Today, the Intracoastal Waterway runs through Lake Worth, and you'll often hear the body of water referred to by both names. 10. Palm Beach County has 493,880 acres dedicated to agriculture which represents 39% of the total land mass in the county.. Some of whats grown here includes sugar, rice, bell peppers, radishes, lettuce, corn, celery, and of course oranges & grapefruit...

Drowned Rat · Nov 29, 2004

Re: Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

Arizona 1. The 48th state. 2. Home of the Grand Canyon. 3. Phoenix, AZ is the fastest growing metropolitan area in the US. 4. Nearly half of the state is owned by a government agency. Almost a full quarter is native american reservation. 5. State Bird "Cactus Wren" Tree "Palo Verde" Flower "Saguaro Blossum" Mammal "Ringtale Cat" 6. The Lowell observatory in Flagstaff discovered Pluto. 7. Arizona has several thousand man-made lakes and only one natural one. 8. We share the largest dam in North America with Nevada. Hoover Dam. 9. Tourism is the leading industry in Arizona by far. 10. Most of the rivers in Arizona only carry water in them for a few days out of the year.

Dunaruna · Nov 29, 2004

Re: Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

Hmmmm, all U.S. states so far, come on international i-boaters - what ya waiting for? Melbourne, Victoria. Australia. 1. Pop about 4 million. On the banks of Port Phillip Bay with the Yarra river snaking through its centre (sorry, center

). LOTS of fish. 2. Excellent restaurant culture with every cousine catered for. Very fresh, locally grown produce. Probably best know for wine with the Yarra Valley about a 30 minute drive (where I live!). 3. Voted best city to live in (cost of living, clean water etc) numerous times (often vie for first place with Vancouver). 4. Water supply is reputed (I have never seen facts published) to be the cleanest of any populated area. What comes out of our taps is 'mountain stream' clean. Our maintain areas are often used for bottled water sold overseas. 5. Sports, sports and more sports. Everything catered for and within easy reach. 6. Permanent fairy penguin colony which attract plane loads of tourists (especially Japanese), I've never been to see them. 7. Temperate climate, rarely get a freeze and summers are long and warm. Lots of beaches and lakes. The only natural diasters that plague us is bush fires, we get 2 or 3 big ones every 10 years or so. 8. Very multi-cultural, numerous religions and ethnic populations. Melbourne is the second largest greek city OUTSIDE of greece. 9. Too many nasty bugs and animals to mention - suffice to say that you don't wanna come here is you are arachnophobic

. 10. Did I mention the food? Aldo

Weekly Q&A 11/28-12/5

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