Trivia Proofing

* The Wikipedia pages that list demographics for really TINY towns are hilarious because you can pretty much suss out who exactly lives there. For example, Marineland, FL? There were 6 people living there in 2000. 1 household had a couple plus their two kids. The other two households in the town were individuals, one of which was older than 65 and the other was aged between 45 and 65.

* Bell, FL, has a population of 456 yet its middle/high school has 750 students.

* Wewahitchka, FL, takes its name from a Native American word meaning “water eyes,” since two lakes on the edge of town look like eyes.

* Bristol, FL, is claimed to be the site of the Garden of Eden.

* Ocean Breeze, FL, and Briny Breezes are the only two towns in Florida where all residents live in a mobile home park with the same name as the town.

* Golf, FL, was founded by people from Golf, IL. It was originally a planned community on a golf course.

* Colonel William G. Butler blamed the city of Helena for his son’s death in 1884. He shouted, “All right! For that, I’ll kill the town that killed my son!” He arranged for a local railway to bypass Helena. The train would pass seven miles away from Helena. Later, the county seat moved to Karnes City and Helena became a ghost town.

* In the early 1900s, Kenedy, TX, had a reputation for gunfighting, to the extent it was nicknamed “Six Shooter Junction.”

* In the 1870s, there was a community called Baby Head in Llano County, TX. The local legend went that a small girl had been killed by Native Americans and her remains were left on a local mountain. The mountain was then called “Baby Head Mountain.” The community no longer exists today.

* In a small Texas town circa 1912, there was a huge dispute. What happened? Did people want a different design for the church’s new steeple? Did people want a different preacher? Were church members fighting over land? We’ll never know. No matter what happened, a little boy at the scene said, “I’m going to cut around the corner and shoot through the bushes in a minute!” The town became Cut and Shoot. 

* The “Cheeseburger Capital” of Texas has only three places in the town that sell cheeseburgers, other than its annual festival.

* In 1890, a man named George Nickel set up the first post office in the area in his dugout. The neighbors let George name the office, so he decided on Shamrock, since his Irish mother always said those brought luck. Then George’s dugout mysteriously burned down and he never got to open his post office. Guess he didn’t have that much luck after all!

* The singer Roy Orbison used to live in Wink, TX, as a child. Later, he described it as  "football, oil fields, oil, grease and sand." He said it was home at one point and also said he was happy to leave at another point.

* Gail, TX, is named for the inventor of condensed milk.

* Ding Dong, TX, was named after two brothers (named Bell) hired an artist to paint a mural for their store. Under a picture of two bells, the artist painted the brothers’ initials, then “Ding” and “Dong” under each of the bells.

* Groom, TX, inexplicably has a huge cross.

* There’s an unincorporated community in Texas called Tubbs Corner.

* Pecan Gap, TX, was named for the gap between two pecan trees. But the second tree was destroyed by a tornado in 1963.

* It’s a modern Truth or Consequences, NM, only in Texas! In exchange for renaming their town DISH, the residents got free cable for ten years plus a free DVR. 

* Ponder, TX, according to local legend, had a bank that was the target of an attempted robbing by Bonnie and Clyde. However, the bank had gone broke the week before.

* Before being renamed, Alanreed, TX, was once named Gouge Eye in honor of a memorable saloon brawl.

* Emily Rose Morgan, the Yellow Rose of Texas, was so called because she was mixed race and “high yellow.” A few cities in Texas are named in her honor.

* There’s a city named Uncertain in Texas.

I know this blog is now over, but along the way, I ran into some factoids that my research turned up absolutely nothing on. I marked those “difficult to determine” because I couldn’t find enough information to determine whether or not those factoids were true or false. I suspect the vast majority of them are false.

Well. This is it. The end.

At the end of my sophomore year of college, I decided I wanted something that would improve my research skills and prove to people that I could carry out and complete a long-term project. And this has been very long-term- starting in June of 2011 (technically- the blog really took off that September) and completing five years later. So I’ve spent quite a while working on this thing. At first, it was hard to keep up. I often got behind on entries because I was also keeping up with upperclassman and honors classes.

Eventually, I built up enough of a buffer that I could relax. I remember sitting on the couch with my laptop, patiently uploading two hundred entries at a time. I got far enough into entries that I wrote some up to a year before they were published. I’m currently writing this entry on December 3, 2015, but it will be the summer of 2016 before it’s published. I worked in libraries for over two years, and I now have a job working with research. This blog legitimately helped me get at least two of the jobs on my current resume. I started this blog in a college in Washington, DC, and now I’m completing it in a library in the greater Denver area, Colorado. I’ve come a long, long way.

I’ve definitely learned a lot from this project. I’ve learned to communicate with people in various methods and be patient when someone doesn’t quite get my question. Yeah, this project has baffled a few people. I had this asshole in New York refuse to help me on one factoid but I managed to find other sources, thankfully. When I asked one lady about a statistic involving suicide, she was horrified and said that they didn’t cover that kind of thing anymore! I’ve also learned that a lot of research is about knowing exactly where to look and what keywords will help you get there.

It’s also exhausting, finding factoids that date back as recently as forty years ago. This book has a ton of really, really old factoids that the original author must’ve dug out of some library’s moldering century-old book elsewhere. (At one point, I envisioned the author with a scrapbook full of old ads, newspaper articles and trivia.) I’ve had to be flexible with researching, learning a lot and teaching myself as I went. Not all colleges will hold old research, for example- you have to look for a more up-to-date study.

What’s next for this blog? I think the trivia debunking part is pretty much over, but you’re welcome to send in any trivia you want me to check out! Other than that, I might post trivia I happen to come across, but that will be very intermittent.

Overall, it’s been a good journey and I thank you all for following this blog, hopefully learning a little more. If you’re interested in more typical Tumblr blogging from me, message me. 

True, approximately.