Texas

Don't mess with Texas: The facts about the Lone Star state

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1170447/Texas-bid-independence-says-Governor-fury-Obamas-spending-rises.html

The word 'Texas' comes from a Spanish misunderstanding of the Caddo Indian word 'tejas', meaning friend.

Six different flags have flown over the state of Texas since 1519: the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, United States and Confederate. In all, the government has changed hands eight times.
The state declared independence from Mexico in 1836, and joined the Union as the 28th state in 1845. It was an independent state for the years in between.

Texas has seceded from the Union before: in 1861, during the Civil War, when it joined the Confederacy. It was officially readmitted in 1870, after the North's victory in the war.

The state is the second-largest in the U.S after Alaska - it is 267,339 square miles, or 7.4 per cent of the nation's total land mass. The entire United Kingdom is just 94,251 square miles.

The population is 24million (compared to the UK's 61million). In 1850, the population was just 213,000. The cattle population is 16million.

The state sport of Texas is rodeo. It's official dance is the square dance.

It's illegal to put graffiti on another person's cow in Texas. It's also illegal to shoot a buffalo from the second storey of a hotel.

Seventy-five per cent of the world's Snicker's bars are made in a plant in Waco, Texas.
The Dallas-Fort Worth airport boasts the world's largest parking lot.
That icon of America - the hamburger - was invented in Athens, Texas.
Famous Texans include George W Bush, Janis Joplin, Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Simpson, and Anna Nicole Smith.