California Facts

Larry Walters tied 42 weather balloons to his lawn chair and rose to 16,000 feet over Los Angeles.

Los Angeles's original name from 1781 was 'El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río Porciúncula' - a 55-character mouthful that Spanish settlers thankfully shortened over time.

During the Gold Rush in 1849, some people paid as much as $100 for a glass of water!

In 1982, a high school student from Los Angeles, California unscrambled the Rubik's Cube in 22.95 seconds.

A couple that were out walking on their property in Sierra Nevada discovered a canister containing $10 million in gold coins.

There's a road in Lancaster, CA that has grooves carved in such a way that when you drive over them at 55 MPH, they will play a part of Rossini's "The William Tell Overture."

There is a county in California called Yolo.

In 1850, only 8% of the people in California were women.

The Power Rangers Command Center was filmed at a real building called the House of the Book, located at the Brandeis-Bardin Campus in Simi Valley, California.

A neighbor's dog attacked 4-year-old Jeremy Triantafilo in his Bakersfield driveway, biting his leg and dragging him. His cat Tara streaked across the frame, body-slammed the dog, and chased it off the property. Jeremy needed 10 stitches. The security footage went viral with over 21 million views in days.

On Labor Day 2021, five men from a halfway house spotted a burning car on Interstate 8 in Lakeside, California - and pulled over while everyone else drove past. Ken and Joan Williamson, ages 92 and 90, had been rear-ended and were trapped inside as the flames spread. The car exploded during the rescue. Every single one of them stayed.

After 31 years at Liberty Mutual, senior case manager Joy Slagel was fired the day she returned from medical leave - over a paperwork mix-up on a Disney social media investigation. A Los Angeles jury awarded her $103 million in December 2025, the largest age discrimination verdict in US history. The jury found Liberty Mutual had acted with "malice or oppression."

A California couple were walking their dog in February 2013 when the woman spotted a rusty tin can sticking out of the soil on their property. They dug it out - and found it packed with 19th-century gold coins. Eight canisters total, containing 1,427 Gold Rush-era coins dated 1847-1894. Face value: $27,980. Market value: $10 million.

Nancy Valla, Dignity Health's Chief Nursing Officer, reported expired anesthesia machines, outdated defibrillators, and unsterilized surgical instruments at her hospital. Her reward: being replaced while on medical leave. A California jury awarded her $27.5 million.

Angela Hernandez was driving Highway 1 in Big Sur when she swerved to avoid a small animal and her Jeep plunged 200 feet off the cliff to the rocky shore below. She survived the crash, broke out of her partially submerged car, and spent seven days alone on the beach - using a 10-inch hose from the wreck to siphon fresh water dripping from cliff moss. Two hikers spotted the crushed Jeep and found her alive.

Barbra Streisand sued a photographer for $50 million to remove an aerial photo of her Malibu mansion. Before the lawsuit, it had been downloaded 6 times. After: 420,000 views in a single month. She lost the case and paid $177,000 in legal fees. The phenomenon is now called the Streisand Effect.

At Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, rocks weighing up to 700 lbs slide across cracked mud on their own - leaving trails hundreds of feet long. Nobody caught them moving for nearly 100 years. Scientists finally solved it in 2014: rare winter ice forms overnight, cracks into floating panels at sunrise, and a light breeze pushes the panels against the rocks, skating them silently across the playa.