118 Fun Facts About Oklahoma

Which president signed the 1907 proclamation that made Oklahoma the 46th state?

Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Oklahoma a state on November 16, 1907, merging Oklahoma Territory with Indian Territory, whose leaders had petitioned to enter the Union separately.

The name Oklahoma comes from two words in which Native American language?

Choctaw: okla means 'people' and humma 'red'. Choctaw chief Allen Wright proposed the name in treaty talks after the Civil War, decades before there was a state to wear it.

Oklahoma's state nickname comes from settlers who did what during the 1889 land opening?

Slipped in before the start: the cheats hid on the land, then popped up once the run began to stake their claims, and in 1908 the state university's football team took their nickname as its own.

At what time of day did the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 begin?

High noon on April 22, 1889: by sundown Oklahoma City and other townsites, empty prairie that morning, held thousands of people living in tents.

Which 1835 agreement gave the Cherokee two years to move to Indian Territory before removal?

New Echota: a minority faction signed it at the Cherokee capital in Georgia without Principal Chief John Ross's authority, and Ross gathered thousands of Cherokee signatures against it.

What is the forced Cherokee march of 1838–39 to present-day Oklahoma called?

The Trail of Tears: in 1838 soldiers forced the Cherokee from their homes at gunpoint, held them in camps, then marched them west on a journey that killed an estimated 4,000.

Which president signed the 1830 Indian Removal Act that sent the southeastern tribes to Indian Territory?

Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act on May 28, 1830, but he had left office by the time troops drove the Cherokee west in 1838 on the orders of his successor, Martin Van Buren.

In 1905 Indian Territory leaders drafted a constitution for a state to be named after which man?

Sequoyah, inventor of the Cherokee syllabary, gave his name to the state proposed at Muskogee; voters backed it about six to one, but Congress refused even to consider the bill.

What left Guthrie for Oklahoma City on the day of the 1910 capital vote?

The state seal left Guthrie on June 11, 1910, the very day of the vote, even though the act of Congress that created the state had fixed the capital at Guthrie until 1913.

Which state gave up the future Oklahoma Panhandle so slavery could stay legal within its borders?

Texas entered the Union as a slave state, and federal law barred slavery north of 36°30', so in the Compromise of 1850 it gave up the strip, which sat ownerless as No Man's Land until 1890.

Which Oklahoma county is the only one in the United States that borders four different states?

Cimarron County fills the western tip of a Panhandle only about 34 miles tall, so Colorado and Kansas lie along its north edge and New Mexico along its west, with a fourth neighbour to the south.

Oklahoma's highest point is on which landform at the western tip of the Panhandle?

Black Mesa is a basalt lava flow that ran in from a volcano in southeastern Colorado, and nowhere else in Oklahoma is there evidence of volcanic activity so recent.

Which panhandle town was accidentally bombed by a U.S. B-17 crew on a training flight in July 1943?

Boise City was hit by six practice bombs after a B-17 crew from a nearby air base mistook the lights of its town square for their target; nobody was hurt.

Which of these mountain ranges is in Oklahoma?

The Arbuckle Mountains are among the oldest ranges in the United States, so worn down by erosion that their highest ground now stands only about 1,400 feet above sea level.

In 1907 the Bronx Zoo sent 15 animals by train to Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains to restart a vanished herd of what?

Bison had been hunted almost to extinction, so their return drew a crowd: Comanche leader Quanah Parker came out with many others to welcome the animals.

Which month brings Oklahoma the most tornadoes on average?

May averages about 24 tornadoes in Oklahoma, roughly double April's count, because the peak of the season moves north through the year and crosses the southern Plains in late spring.

The Storm Prediction Center, which issues US tornado watches, is based in which Oklahoma city?

Norman has housed the forecasters since 1997, when they left Kansas City to work alongside the National Severe Storms Laboratory, whose researchers had made the same move in 1964.

Which Oklahoma City suburb was struck by top-rated tornadoes in both 1999 and 2013?

Moore took direct hits both times, and in 2014 its council answered with a stricter building code that required new homes to withstand 135 mph gusts.

Tulsa, the 'Oil Capital of the World' for most of the 20th century, sits on which river?

The Arkansas River runs beside downtown Tulsa, where a 1901 strike at nearby Red Fork drew the oil companies whose boom-years money raised the city's Art Deco towers.

In the 1930s, working oil wells stood on the grounds of which Oklahoma landmark?

The State Capitol sits above the Oklahoma City field, opened in 1928 just south of town; within a few years derricks had spread across the city and onto the Capitol's own grounds.

Oklahoma's State Capitol opened in 1917 without which feature, finally added in 2002?

A dome was ruled out on cost, but the building was engineered to carry one, and 85 years later the state finally built it, topped by a 22-foot bronze figure called The Guardian.

Which Oklahoma town, the 'Pipeline Crossroads of the World', is the pricing point for US benchmark crude?

Cushing boomed after a 1912 gusher and became a refining town; the refineries are gone, but the tanks and pipelines stayed, which is why the country's benchmark crude is priced there.

The 1897 Nellie Johnstone, Oklahoma's first commercial oil well, sat capped until Bartlesville got what?

A railroad reached Bartlesville in 1899 and finally gave the oil a way to outside markets; until then the well, named for a partner's daughter, sat capped.

Which architect designed Bartlesville's Price Tower, 'the tree that escaped the crowded forest'?

Frank Lloyd Wright first drew the design in the 1920s for apartment towers in New York City that were never built; three decades later it rose instead as a pipeline firm's headquarters in a small Oklahoma town.

The Tulsa race massacre of 1921 destroyed which neighborhood, known as 'Black Wall Street'?

Greenwood lost more than a thousand homes and businesses in about 18 hours, yet residents began rebuilding within days and restored the district themselves, against official pressure to move elsewhere.

Undercover agents from which agency broke the Osage murders case retold in Killers of the Flower Moon?

The FBI, then the Bureau of Investigation, sent agents undercover after local authorities had rarely looked into the deaths, and their case earned rancher William Hale a life sentence.

The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing destroyed a federal building named after which judge?

Alfred P. Murrah was orphaned as a boy yet became a federal judge at just 32, and he stayed on the bench until his death in 1975.

At the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which 168 objects each stand for one person killed?

Empty chairs, each bearing one name, stand on the footprint of the destroyed building in nine rows, one row for each of its nine floors.

The Survivor Tree at the Oklahoma City National Memorial is what kind of tree?

Elm: this American elm shaded a parking lot across from the building, lived through the blast, and was then nearly cut down so investigators could recover evidence lodged in its branches.

Which street fixture made its world debut in downtown Oklahoma City in July 1935?

The parking meter was newspaperman Carl Magee's answer to downtown curbs jammed with cars; two engineers built him a working timer, and the first meters went in on July 16, 1935.

Sylvan Goldman, owner of Oklahoma's Humpty Dumpty supermarkets, introduced which invention in 1937?

The shopping cart began as Goldman's 'folding basket carrier'; he patented it, set up his own company to build it, and the carts made the Oklahoma City grocer a multimillionaire.

The Oklahoma City-based Sonic chain opened its first location in 1953 under what name?

Top Hat was a Shawnee root beer stand where Troy Smith wired intercoms to each car stall and promised 'Service with the Speed of Sound'; when the name proved taken, the slogan supplied Sonic in 1959.

Which Tulsa businessman, called the 'Father of Route 66', launched the campaign to create the highway?

Cyrus Avery sat on the federal board that mapped the first numbered highways in 1925, which let him steer the Chicago-to-Los Angeles road through his own Tulsa; in 1927 he helped found the association that promoted it.

Hugh Davis built Oklahoma's giant Blue Whale beside Route 66 in the early 1970s as a gift for whom?

His wife, Zelta, collected whale figurines, so Davis surprised her with an 80-foot concrete one in the family pond as an anniversary present; it soon became a public swimming hole.

Oklahoma's official state monument, a 76-foot golden statue in Tulsa, depicts what kind of worker?

A driller: the Golden Driller began as a supply company's showpiece at Tulsa's petroleum trade show, proved a hit, and returned as the permanent statue for the 1966 show, one hand on a real derrick.

The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joads, Oklahoma tenant farmers driven west during which crisis?

The Dust Bowl frames the novel, yet Steinbeck put the Joads near Sallisaw on the state's eastern side, far from the Panhandle counties where the worst dust storms actually raged.

Which Okemah-born folk singer wrote 'This Land Is Your Land'?

Woody Guthrie wrote it in 1940 as a retort to 'God Bless America', which he was tired of hearing on the radio, and at first sarcastically titled it 'God Blessed America for Me'.

Rodgers and Hammerstein's first musical, Oklahoma!, was based on which 1931 play?

Green Grow the Lilacs came from Lynn Riggs, who grew up near Claremore; the musical version was called Away We Go! until its rousing number 'Oklahoma' prompted a new title.

Will Rogers and Wiley Post died in a plane crash near Point Barrow, in which territory?

Alaska was the first leg of a jaunt toward Siberia in a hybrid floatplane Post had built himself; it proved unstable, and he lost control moments after lifting off a lagoon in poor weather.

To take his Winnie Mae to extreme altitudes in the 1930s, one-eyed Oklahoma pilot Wiley Post helped invent what?

The pressure suit let Post fly his unpressurized plane far higher, where his flights proved the worth of the jet stream; the gear worn by later test pilots and astronauts descends from it.

Jim Thorpe won gold at the 1912 Olympics in which two events?

Pentathlon and decathlon were both his in Stockholm, but officials took the golds back in 1913 because he had played semi-pro baseball; only in 2022 was he restored as sole champion of both.

Mickey Mantle, born in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, earned what nickname from the town where he grew up?

The Commerce Comet grew up in a lead-and-zinc mining town, where his miner father taught him to switch-hit by pitching to him right-handed while his grandfather threw left-handed.

Garth Brooks attended Oklahoma State University on a track scholarship, competing in which event?

Javelin won Brooks his track scholarship to Stillwater, where he worked nights as a bar bouncer and played in bands.

Before moving to Oklahoma City in 2008, the Thunder franchise played in which city?

Seattle lost its SuperSonics after 41 seasons; Oklahoma City had already proved itself an NBA town by hosting the New Orleans Hornets for two seasons after Hurricane Katrina.

The Thunder won their first NBA title in Oklahoma City in 2025 by beating which team in seven games?

The Indiana Pacers led Game 7 at half-time despite losing star guard Tyrese Haliburton to an Achilles injury minutes in; the Thunder then pulled away to win 103-91 behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

What are the two white ponies that pull Oklahoma's touchdown Conestoga wagon named?

Boomer and Sooner pull a scaled-down covered wagon across the field after every score; the first pony is named for the 'Boomers' who campaigned in the 1880s to open the territory to settlers.

The Bedlam football game between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State ended after 2023 when Oklahoma joined which conference?

The SEC move in 2024 took Oklahoma off its neighbor's schedule; Oklahoma State won the last scheduled game, in Stillwater in November 2023.

Oklahoma State has won more than 30 NCAA team titles, far more than any rival, in which sport?

Wrestling took root in Stillwater under Ed Gallagher, an engineering graduate who studied leverage to devise hundreds of holds and coached the first of those title teams in 1928.

Which of these birds has been Oklahoma's official state bird since 1951?

The scissor-tailed flycatcher was picked because Oklahoma sits at the centre of its nesting range and it eats farm pests such as grasshoppers; in flight it opens and shuts its long forked tail like shears.

Which parasitic plant has been Oklahoma's official floral emblem since 1893?

Mistletoe is the oldest of the state's symbols, adopted by the territory in 1893, fourteen years before statehood. It kept the floral emblem title even after a rose was named state flower in 2004.

Oklahoma's official state meal, adopted in 1988, features which of these among its dozen dishes?

Chicken fried steak shares the menu with barbecued pork, fried okra, grits, cornbread, black-eyed peas and pecan pie. Legislators built the spread in 1988 to show off what the state's farms produce.

Which fruit is, unusually, Oklahoma's official state vegetable?

Watermelon became the state vegetable in 2007, two years after the strawberry had taken the state fruit title. Rush Springs, the self-styled capital of the crop, has held a festival for it since the 1940s.

Oklahoma's flag shows an Osage war shield with seven eagle feathers on a field of what colour?

Sky blue replaced the red field of the 1911 flag, which carried a white star and the number 46. After the Red Scare a red banner looked radical, so a 1924 design contest produced the shield flag adopted in 1925.

Which town is capital of both the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band?

Tahlequah became the Cherokee capital in 1839, and within five years it had a Supreme Court building and a national newspaper, the Cherokee Advocate. The Keetoowah Band has its headquarters there too.

Which justice wrote the 2020 McGirt ruling that the Muscogee (Creek) reservation in eastern Oklahoma still exists?

Neil Gorsuch wrote for a 5-4 majority that Congress had never dissolved the reservation, so most of Tulsa remains Indian country for federal criminal law. 'We hold the government to its word,' he wrote.

Which novel of rival teenage gangs did S. E. Hinton write while still a Tulsa high-school student?

The Outsiders grew out of the real rivalry between greasers and Socs at Hinton's own school, and she wrote most of it as a junior. It was published in 1967.

Which Oklahoma City-born author won the 1953 National Book Award for Invisible Man?

Ralph Ellison went to Tuskegee in 1933 to study music, not writing, and left without a degree. Invisible Man, published in 1952, was the only novel he finished; a second was pieced together from his papers after his death.

Reba McEntire was discovered singing the national anthem in 1974 at which Oklahoma City event?

The rodeo finals were family ground: her father and grandfather were champion steer ropers and she raced barrels. Singer Red Steagall heard her anthem there and helped her towards a record deal.

Which Hollywood star was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, in 1963 before his family moved to Missouri?

Brad Pitt grew up in Springfield, Missouri, and quit the University of Missouri just short of a degree to try acting in Hollywood. A small part in Thelma & Louise in 1991 made his name.

Which James Earle Fraser sculpture, made for a 1915 San Francisco fair, greets visitors at Oklahoma City's cowboy museum?

End of the Trail spent about fifty years weathering in a Visalia, California, park before the museum took the deteriorating plaster in 1968, restored it and sent the park a bronze replica.

Oklahoma holds the highest number in the nation of what kind of water body?

Artificial reservoirs number more than 200 in Oklahoma, more than in any other state, thanks to a post-war dam-building drive championed by Senator Robert S. Kerr.

Which nonprofit owns Oklahoma's Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, the largest protected tallgrass prairie left on earth?

The Nature Conservancy bought the ranchland near Pawhuska in 1989 and sets it alight on purpose, patch by patch, using controlled burns to restore the prairie's health.

WinStar World, at Thackerville in southern Oklahoma, bills itself as the world's biggest what?

Casino is the claim: WinStar packs more than 10,000 electronic games into city-themed gaming plazas, and its profits help fund Chickasaw health care and education.

Which airline's global maintenance headquarters in Tulsa is the world's largest such base?

Aerospace makes up more than 10 percent of the state's industrial output.

Which Tulsa venue, Bob Wills's 1930s base, is the 'Carnegie Hall of Western Swing'?

Cain's Ballroom began in 1924 as a garage before Bob Wills made it his home stage, broadcasting Western swing almost daily over Tulsa's KVOO radio.

The Oklahoma City Museum of Art holds one of the world's largest public collections of which glass artist's work?

Dale Chihuly's glass opened the museum's downtown home, and the show proved so popular that the museum bought the whole collection.

ESPN called Oklahoma City the centre of which sport's universe in 2020?

Softball's Women's College World Series has been played in Oklahoma City nearly every year since 1990, and organisers of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics chose the city to host the sport.

Which Tulsa-area harbour, at the head of the McClellan-Kerr system, is one of the most inland US ports?

Catoosa's port sits at the top of a 445-mile staircase of locks and dams, so barges loaded near Tulsa can float down to the Mississippi and on to the Gulf.

Which American road sign was first put up in Tulsa in 1950, the design of police officer Clinton Riggs?

Yield signs began in America with Riggs, who invented only the sign and not the right-of-way rule behind it; his first version was keystone-shaped, not the familiar triangle.

In 1917 teenagers in Muskogee, Oklahoma, held the first known sale of which fundraising treat?

Girl Scout cookies stayed home-baked for years after that Muskogee sale: the organisation did not begin licensing commercial bakers until 1936.

Tulsa's BOK Tower, completed in 1976, resembles a half-size copy of which New York landmark?

World Trade Center architect Minoru Yamasaki designed the Tulsa tower for the Williams Companies, whose executives joked that his firm had simply cut the plans in half.

The Oklahoma Panhandle town of Beaver hosts an annual world championship in throwing which objects?

Cow chips are sun-dried cattle dung, and the contest has given Beaver its proud nickname, the Cowchip Throwing Capital of the World.

Which Apache leader died a prisoner of war at Oklahoma's Fort Sill in 1909 and is buried there?

Geronimo spent his last 15 years at Fort Sill, and on the train ride there tourists paid 25 cents apiece for buttons he cut from his shirt.

Which Oklahoma City-based craft chain began with a $600 loan to make miniature picture frames in a garage?

Hobby Lobby founder David Green started the frame business in 1970 while managing a TG&Y variety store, then opened his first shop in Oklahoma City two years later.

Scientists traced Oklahoma's surge of earthquakes in the 2010s mainly to which oil-industry practice?

Wastewater disposal, not fracking itself, was the main trigger: water that comes up with the oil was injected deep underground, and the quakes eased once injection was cut back.

A 60-foot bronze sculpture at the entrance to Tulsa's Oral Roberts University depicts which subject?

Praying hands weighing 30 tons were cast in Mexico in 1980 and first stood in front of the university's medical towers, moving to the campus entrance in 1991.

Which formerly enslaved lawman made more than 3,000 arrests as a deputy U.S. marshal in Indian Territory?

Bass Reeves policed the territory for more than 32 years, and in 1902 he had to arrest his own son, who was later convicted of murder.

Which discount-store founder was born in 1918 at Kingfisher, Oklahoma, where his parents had a farm?

Sam Walton left the Kingfisher farm as a small boy, but he came back to Oklahoma in 1983 to open the very first Sam's Club in Midwest City.

Oklahoma's official state rock, a reddish cluster of barite crystals, is named after which flower?

Rose rocks formed about 250 million years ago, when a shallow sea covered western and central Oklahoma, and the largest one on record weighs 125 pounds.

Before joining Oklahoma Territory in 1890, the future Oklahoma Panhandle was commonly called what?

No Man's Land filled with thousands of squatters who held no legal title; in 1890 it became Oklahoma Territory's Seventh County, soon renamed Beaver County.

Oklahoma's Great Salt Plains is the world's only place to dig hourglass-marked crystals of which mineral?

Selenite is a crystalline form of gypsum, and here it grows around grains of sand in the refuge's 11,000 acres of salt flats, which leaves the hourglass inside.

Ed Galloway built a 90-foot concrete version of what near Foyil, Oklahoma, billed as the world's largest?

Totem pole builder Galloway set his tower on the back of a concrete turtle, and beside it he raised an eleven-sided Fiddle House for the fiddles he carved himself.

Which singing cowboy has had an Oklahoma town, formerly called Berwyn, named after him since 1941?

Gene Autry had worked as a telegraph operator near Berwyn and bought a ranch on its edge in 1939, so the town decided to honour him by taking his name.

Which American Idol winner was raised on her parents' farm in the small Oklahoma town of Checotah?

Carrie Underwood graduated second in her class at Checotah High School in 2001, four years before she won the show's fourth season.

Which Oscar-winning director, born in Duncan, Oklahoma, in 1954, started out as an actor?

Ron Howard was the son of two actors, and from 1960 he played Opie Taylor, the sheriff's young son, on The Andy Griffith Show.

Which 2020 Democratic presidential candidate was born in Oklahoma City and won a state debating title there?

Elizabeth Warren starred on the debate team at Northwest Classen High School and won a debate scholarship to George Washington University at 16.

Which cattle trail, named for a trader of Cherokee and Scottish descent, crossed Indian Territory to Kansas?

Chisholm laid out his wagon road around 1864, and when the great cattle herds followed it, tribes along the way demanded a toll of ten cents a head.

Which bank robber, raised in Akins, Oklahoma, was hailed by locals as the Robin Hood of the Cookson Hills?

Pretty Boy Floyd drew between 20,000 and 40,000 mourners to his burial in 1934, which is still the largest funeral in Oklahoma history.

Oklahoma entered the Union in 1907 with a constitutional ban on what, which stayed in force until 1959?

Alcohol crept back in stages: weak 3.2% beer was allowed from 1933, full repeal waited until 1959, and bars could not pour liquor by the drink until a 1984 vote.

Which cavalry officer led the 1868 daybreak attack on Black Kettle's village on Oklahoma's Washita River?

George Custer and his 7th Cavalry struck a camp whose chief had been seeking peace; the ground near the town of Cheyenne is now a national historic site.

Which Cherokee leader was the last Confederate general to surrender, at Doaksville, Indian Territory, in 1865?

Stand Watie was the only Native American to become a Confederate general, and he also served as principal chief of the Confederate-aligned Cherokee from 1862.

Which dancer, born in Fairfax, Oklahoma, in 1925, became America's first major prima ballerina?

Maria Tallchief, whose father was Osage, was also the first Native American to hold the rank, and she danced the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Firebird for George Balanchine.

Which astronaut from Weatherford, Oklahoma, commanded Apollo 10 and the American half of Apollo–Soyuz?

Tom Stafford's Apollo 10 was only the second crewed mission to orbit the Moon, and his hometown now houses the Stafford Air & Space Museum.

Which eastern Oklahoma site, tunnelled by 1930s treasure hunters, has been called an American King Tut's Tomb?

Spiro Mounds lost so much to the diggers of the Pocola Mining Company that Oklahoma's legislature passed a law protecting the site, which shut the company down.

Which Oklahoma cattle empire near Ponca City launched a touring Wild West show and holds Bill Pickett's grave?

101 Ranch founder George Washington Miller started the spread in 1893, and it later became one of the early focal points of the oil rush in north-eastern Oklahoma.

Which fuel brand was launched in 1927 by an oil company based in Bartlesville, Oklahoma?

Phillips 66 got its name, the company's own story goes, because the test car reached 66 miles an hour on Route 66 and the fuel's specific gravity was close to 66.

Picher, now a ghost town in north-eastern Oklahoma, boomed as the centre of a field mining which two metals?

Lead and zinc worth over $20 billion came out of the Picher field between 1917 and 1947, but the toxic waste piles left behind led to a government buyout that emptied the town.

Which 1996 storm-chasing blockbuster was filmed across Oklahoma and has its own museum in the town of Wakita?

Twister made tiny Wakita a stop for film fans: the museum opened a few months before the release, and bricks from buildings demolished for the shoot went into Twister Park.

The widest tornado ever recorded, about 2.6 miles across, passed just south of which Oklahoma city in 2013?

El Reno's rain-wrapped giant killed four storm chasers, the first chasers known to have been killed by a tornado itself.

A mobile radar scanning the 1999 Bridge Creek tornado in Oklahoma captured the all-time world record for what?

Highest wind speed ever recorded, 321 mph, came from a Doppler on Wheels unit beside the storm; its first estimate of 301 mph was revised upward in a 2021 reanalysis.

Oklahoma's deadliest tornado killed 107 people in which north-western city on 9 April 1947?

Woodward lost more than 100 city blocks to the F5 storm, which struck without warning at night and killed at least 116 people across Oklahoma.

Which north-eastern Oklahoma town recorded the state's all-time low of −31°F on 10 February 2011?

Nowata, whose name is said to come from a Lenape word for 'welcome', was anything but welcoming that morning: no colder reading has ever been taken in Oklahoma.

What is the Oklahoma Mesonet, run jointly by the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University?

A weather station network of about 120 automated sites, the Mesonet keeps at least one in every Oklahoma county and collects readings every five minutes.

Gusty, Oklahoma's official state cartoon, was drawn live on Tulsa TV each night by a man with which job?

Weatherman Don Woods sketched a new Gusty during his forecast from the mid-1950s until 1989, and one of the drawings is in the Smithsonian.

Which Oklahoma City TV meteorologist was first to warn viewers of a tornado using commercial Doppler radar?

Gary England also helped invent the First Warning map, the small on-screen graphic that shows weather alerts without interrupting a programme.

Which nickname did 1980s Oklahoma researchers give the instrument barrel they tried to set in a tornado's path?

TOTO, short for TOtable Tornado Observatory, weighed up to 350 pounds and was retired after 1987 because hauling it in front of a tornado proved too slow and too risky.

Which federal research body, formed in Oklahoma in 1964, pioneered the Doppler radar behind the NEXRAD system?

National Severe Storms Laboratory engineers took over a surplus Air Force radar in 1969, and their research with it led to the NEXRAD system that now covers the country.

What name was given to 14 April 1935, when a vast cloud of blowing soil swept across the Oklahoma Panhandle?

Black Sunday's storm hit the Panhandle first and then rolled south, and people in several plains states had to take cover from what they called a black blizzard.

Which nickname for the central Plains, Oklahoma included, began as the title of a 1952 Air Force study?

Tornado Alley was coined by Air Force forecasters Ernest Fawbush and Robert Miller, the same pair who had made history's first successful tornado forecast in 1948.

What do forecasters call the boundary of moist Gulf air and desert air that sets off Oklahoma's thunderstorms?

Dry line storms usually break out on the moist side of the boundary, which is also known as a dew point line or a Marfa front.

Which urgent alert did Oklahoma forecasters invent on the night of the 1999 Bridge Creek outbreak?

Tornado emergency was wording improvised that evening as an F5 storm bore down on the Oklahoma City area, and it went out as a statement separate from the original warning.

Which 2007 tropical storm regained strength and grew an eye-like centre over Oklahoma, far inland?

Erin's remnants suddenly spun back up to 60 mph winds a short distance west of Oklahoma City, with gusts above 80 mph and a spiral rainband.

What kind of winter weather cut power to more than 600,000 Oklahoma homes and businesses in December 2007?

Ice storm damage left about 40% of Oklahomans without electricity, the largest power outage in the state's history.

On 11 November 1911 a fierce cold front gave Oklahoma City which pair of weather records on the same day?

Record high and low readings of 83°F and 17°F fell on the same date as the front, remembered as the Great Blue Norther, swept through.

A 1973 tornado at which Oklahoma town was the first in history to be observed by Doppler weather radar?

Union City's storm was also the first that researchers managed to intercept directly, and their data led to the discovery of the tornado vortex signature.

Which storm nickname did University of Tulsa teams take in 1922 because Georgia Tech had their first choice?

Golden Hurricane replaced Golden Tornadoes, the football coach's first pick, once the school learned that Georgia Tech had been using that name since 1917.

Which history teacher led NAACP Youth Council members in the 1958 sit-in at Katz Drug Store in Oklahoma City?

Clara Luper had written to the store for 15 months without an answer before she walked in with her own son and daughter among the young protesters.

Which animal, able to sprint upright on its hind legs, is Oklahoma's official state reptile?

Collared lizards are known in Oklahoma as mountain boomers, and they rear up to run on two legs when escaping predators.