May is Arkansas Heritage Month

by Pat Laster

 

Here are some facts and figures on Arkansas gathered from my readings during the past several years.

* Alice Walton, 61, daughter of Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, in mid-2011, was worth $21 billion––the 9^th richest person in the US.

* An Arkansas law of 1930 provided that prayer ‘may’ be offered, making such action permissive and neither requiring nor prohibiting it. (Other Days – 1961, Arkansas Democrat Gazette)

* The Arkansas Gazette was 172 years old before being sold in 1986 to the Arkansas Democrat.

* Arkansas is in the St. Louis district of the Federal Reserve, which has 12 districts.

*Arkansas cannot be sued in the state’s courts (sovereign immunity). But people can file with the Claims Commission.

* Arkansas’s 175^th birthdate (1836), the 25^th state in the Union, was celebrated on June 15, 2011.

* Arkansas State University-Jonesboro is the state’s second largest public university with about 13,920 students.

*Before integration, the Gethsemane public school system with Merrill High School existed in Pine Bluff. Also in 1951, there were Gurdon Colored Schools.

* Boxing was legalized by the Arkansas legislature in 1929. Before that, even movies of boxing matches had been banned in the state.

* The Brown Dense lying beneath parts of South Arkansas (Smackover field fallow since the 1920s) is a shale formation that companies are hoping produces oil through horizontal drilling and fracking. Fracking is the process of blasting millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals into a well to break up rock and release trapped oil and natural gas.

* The Bureau of Legislative Research used 10.4 tons of paper during the 2009 legislative session.

* There is a California Township in Faulkner County with 5 eligible voters (5.20.12)

* The Callery pear tree is an invasive (to Arkansas) species.

            * Camp Magnolia in southern Arkansas was where religious conscientious objectors were housed during WWII.

            * Cellular-phone service in greater Little Rock began July 2, 1986 with Alltel Mobile. Phones cost $1500-$2000.

            * Charter Schools: as of mid-November 2011, there were 17 open-enrollment, publicly-funded, independently-operated charter schools in Arkansas. Charter Schools have to meet twenty standards.

[To be continued. Sometime. Maybe.]