The golden state of California stretches almost 900 miles along the Pacific from the Mexican border on up. It’s unique in that because of it’s size and location it has such a wide variety of terrains such as mountains, the beach, valleys, farmland, desert, and the redwood forest.

Strange as it may sound, one out of every eight American people are actually from California.

California sure is beautiful, but five of its major cities rank as the highest polluted cities in the country.

California is a big producer of almonds, and about 80 percent of the countries almonds come out of the state. Overall California is the world’s fifth largest food supplier.

Over a century ago California was actually the first state to ban marijuana, although LSD was legal until 1966.

Some areas of California snow, and those levels of snow are actually affected by the pollution levels in China.

There’s a lot of nightlife in California, but technically “ladies night” is banned statewide because if gender discrimination. That does not mean however, that many women don’t still get in bars and drink for free, it just can’t be marketing as an event.

Twelve percent of the U.S. population lives in California, and it produces 6.9 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the country. To put that in comparison, Texas 12.8 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions but only has 8.5 percent of the population. More turkeys are raised in California than in any other state in the country. One town in California called Castroville is considered the artichoke capital of the world. In 1947 a girl was named the first artichoke queen of the town…a girl named Norma Jean who grew up to be Marilyn Monroe.

California has a ton of earthquakes, however most of them are so small that they are generally not felt. In southern California there can be as many as 10,000 each year, which is multiple earthquakes each day.

In the 1500’s early Spanish explorers thought that California was an island ruled by Amazon women. In 1542 Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was the first European to actually spot the state.

The first McDonald’s to open in the entire world actually opened in California, in San Bernardino in 1940.

A lot of interesting things have been invented in California, including fortune cookies, Disneyland, Apple computers, the frisbee, the Barbie doll, and blue jeans.

There is a tree in California’s White Mountains that is estimated to be 4,650 years old which makes it the oldest standing tree on its own in the entire world.

California was the first state to become a trillion dollar economy in gross state product. If the state was a country it would have a similar GDP as Italy, making it the eighth largest economy in the world.

The nickname the golden state came from the gold rush of 1849, which started after a foreman named James Marshall spotted a piece in Coloma, California in the American River in 1848. Many gold seekers rushed out to get their own fix, earning the name the 49ers.