Texas Facts

In Corpus Christie, Texas, it is illegal to raise alligators in your home.

The city of Houston, Texas is built on a swamp and is slowly sinking!

The 'King Ranch' in Texas is bigger than the state of Rhode Island.

The United States produces enough plastic film annually to cover the entire state of Texas.

Every person in the world can fit in Texas and be given over 1000 sq ft in which to live.

In 2011, a couple bought a box of textbooks for $10. Inside, they found a 25-cent bill signed by the president of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston, and subsequently sold it for $63,250.

Phil Collins fell in love with the Alamo at age 5, watching Disney's Davy Crockett on TV in London. The Genesis drummer spent decades secretly building the world's largest private collection of Alamo artifacts, more than 430 pieces worth tens of millions. In 2014 he gave every single one to Texas, for free.

In 2021, KPMG offered accountant Scott Ruskan a full-time job. He said no and joined the Coast Guard instead. On his very first mission as a rescue swimmer - the July 2025 Texas rising waters - he saved 165 people at a summer camp. He was the only rescuer on scene for four hours.

Shaquille O'Neal has quietly rebuilt basketball courts for 30 years. The first was in Orlando, where Marquis Daniels grew up. Daniels made the NBA and told O'Neal: "Because you fixed it up, I'm here." O'Neal has since rebuilt six more courts - he's still doing it, one court at a time.

Reveille, Texas A&M's collie mascot, outranks every cadet on campus. She holds the rank of Cadet General, with five diamonds - the Corps Commander only wears four. It started in 1931, when cadets hit a stray dog near Navasota and hid her in the dorm. She barked at the bugler's reveille call the next morning, and the name stuck. The rule stands: if she falls asleep on a cadet's bed, that cadet sleeps on the floor.

In 1997, a 23-year-old French con artist convinced a Texas family he was their missing teenage son — despite having brown eyes instead of blue, a heavy French accent, and being a completely different person. He lived with them for months before a private investigator uncovered the truth.

Big Tex is the 55-foot cowboy who greets everyone at the State Fair of Texas. He wasn't always a cowboy. In 1949, tiny Kerens, Texas, built a 49-foot Santa Claus to save its Christmas shopping season. Dallas bought him in 1951 and turned him into a cowboy. He debuted in 1952 wearing size-70 boots and a 75-gallon hat. He's greeted fairgoers with "Howdy, folks!" since 1953.

During Hurricane Harvey, a woman in Houston went into labor. Floodwater surrounded her home. Neighbors waded into waist-deep water and formed a human chain so she could use them as guardrails to reach a flatbed truck waiting on higher ground. The truck drove her to the hospital. She gave birth safely. A neighborhood of strangers became a delivery room.

Joan Ginther won the Texas lottery four times between 1993 and 2010, collecting $20.4 million. The odds of one person doing that by chance - roughly 1 in 18 septillion. Investigators later discovered she had a PhD in statistics from Stanford and had been studying scratch-off distribution patterns.

Tommy Lee Jones has a USPA 2-goal handicap, an official rating for competitive polo players. He breeds his own polo ponies on his 3,000-acre ranch in San Saba County, Texas. He funds two full polo teams, six professional players and about 50 horses. In 2007, at age 60, he competed in the Stanford U.S. Open at Palm Beach.

A brutal freeze hit the Texas coast in January 2026. Sea turtles went stiff and floated like they were dead. It's called cold-stunning, and it happens when the water drops below 50 degrees. This time it hit 42 degrees. Rescue crews combed the coast for days and found 1,126 turtles still alive. Vets warmed them slowly. Crowds later gathered on a Galveston beach to watch over 100 of the survivors swim free.