California, a western U.S. state, stretches from the Mexican border along the Pacific for nearly 900 miles. Its terrain includes cliff-lined beaches, redwood forest, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Central Valley farmland and the Mojave Desert.
- 1 out of every 8 Americans is from California, the most populous state, with 39.9 million people as of 2019.
- If it were a country, California would be the 8th economy in the world and the 35th most populous.
- California has been the birthplace of the film industry, the hippie counterculture, the Internet, and the personal computer.
- California 's official state animal, the California grizzly bear, is extinct.
- California has more than 130,000 people in prison.
- LSD was legal in California until 1966.
- California contains both the highest point (Mount Whitney) and the lowest point (Death Valley) in the contiguous United States.
- California was the first U.S. state that banned Marijuana a century ago.
- Los Angeles, California, is the second most populous city in the U.S.
- The five worst cities in the U.S. for air pollution are all in California.
- Antarctica was once as warm as modern-day California.
- Air pollution in China increases snowfall in California.
- California has built 23 prisons since 1980. In the same period, the University of California system has opened just one new campus.
- In 1818, the argentine pirate Hippolyte Bouchard attacked Monterey, California. After an hour of combat, Argentina's flag flew over it.
- There's a town named "Cool" and another called "Squabbletown" in California.
- In California and 3 other U.S. states, "Ladies' Night" are against the law because they are gender discrimination.
- California is the world's 5th largest supplier of food.
- There's a coast-to-coast hiking trail that stretches from Delaware to California.
- City of Industry, California, has a population of 219 but is home to 80,000 jobs.
- California holds 12% of the U.S. population and produces 6.9% of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions. Texas has 8.5% of the population and produces 12.8%.
- Southern California has about 10,000 earthquakes each year, though most are so small that they are never felt.
- Latinos now outnumber whites in California since 2015.
- California uses inmates to fight forest fires. Prisoners take the jobs because it reduces their sentence, gets them outside, and pays better than typical prison jobs.
- In 2010, some schools in southern California banned a dictionary for including a definition of oral sex.
- Every 2 weeks, on average, someone jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge.
- A light bulb that hasn't been turned off since 1901 still shines at a fire station in California.
- 3 of the world's largest 20 firms by revenue (Apple, Chevron, and McKesson) are headquartered in California.
- There's a microwaveable Burrito Vending Machine at a gas station in Hollywood, California.
- In January 2014, a woman was beaten to death in California over an accidental photobomb.
- California's interconnected water system is the world's largest, managing over 40,000,000 acre feet of water per year.
- The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans.
- Although only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest
- output of any U.S. state.
- California produces 80% of the world's almonds.
- Earthquakes are common in California because of the state's location along the Pacific Ring of Fire.
- California banned the sale of horse meat for human consumption in 1998.
- The tallest tree and the largest tree in the world are both in California.
- A man in California got a personalized license plate that said "No Plate" and received more than 2500 parking tickets.
- It is illegal to distribute "revenge porn" (video or photos of your ex) in California since 2016.
- On the California side of the U.S.-Mexico border, there's a town called Calexico, and on the opposite side there's a town called Mexicali.
- The most disproportionately common physical injury diagnosis in California is "Motor vehicle accident."
- California's economy has surpassed Russia and Italy to become the eight-largest in the world.
- In 1846, California was ruled by Mexico and the settlers in protest declared the territory an independent country for only one month.
- When California joined the Union, the capital was San Jose, then they tried to move to Vallejo and finally settled on Sacramento in 1854.
- In California, you're about as likely to be shot by a toddler than die in an earthquake.
- The California Gold Rush was the largest mass migration in U.S. history. There were more than 300,000 new arrivals in just a few years.
- Instagram data shows that Californians post the most driving selfies of any state population,
- while Mississippians post the least.
- California generates so much solar power that at times the state will pay Arizona to take it.
- In order to fight discrimination, California law requires certain entertainment websites like IMDB to remove an actor's age or birthday upon request.
- Housing a prisoner in California costs $75,560. That's more than a year at Harvard.
- 200 years ago, 80 to 90 languages were spoken in what is now California.
- Texas, New York and California all have economies bigger than Russia.
- California accounted for nearly half of the U.S. solar electricity generating capacity in 2015.
- In California, the word people most often google ‘how to spell' is ‘Beautiful'.
- California was named after a fictional island in a 16th-century romance novel.
- On January 1st, 2018, recreational marijuana will be legal in California.
- Facebook is headquartered in 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, California.
- In 2010, the Merriam-Webster dictionary was banned from certain schools in California on account of its "sexual" content.