15 Incredible, Almost Unbelievable Facts About Oklahoma
By Ashley|Published November 10, 2015
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Ashley
Author
Ashley has lived in Oklahoma for 30 years and is the Oklahoma staff writer for onlyinyourstate.com. When she isn't writing about Oklahoma, she enjoys visiting the beach and exploring new areas.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
