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gallons of wine a year.
    About 8 percent of all Californians are vegetarians.
    Raisin capital of the world: Fresno. Date capital of the world: Coachella Valley.
    More than 1,200 people have committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.
    In the town of Pacific Grove, near Monterey, you can be fined $500 for “molesting” butterflies.
    Many of California’s redwoods are more than 2,000 years old.
    During the gold rush (1848–52), California’s population grew from 14,000 to more than 200,000.
    Hearst Castle in San Simeon has the most expensive swimming pool in the world—its 1 million tiles are all inlaid with gold.
    World’s largest outdoor ampitheatre: the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
    Willow Creek calls itself the “Bigfoot Capital,” and claims more Bigfoot sightings than anywhere else in the United States.
    California’s economy ranks 10th in the world.
    In 1947, the Castroville Fair’s first Artichoke Queen was a young Marilyn Monroe.
    California’s largest state park (and the second largest in the United States) is the 600,000-acre Anza-Borrego Desert, 90 miles east of San Diego.
    The world’s first movie theater opened in Los Angeles in 1902.

That’s Rich
    Billionaire Warren Buffett once paid $100,000 to caddy for Tiger Woods in a charity event.
    The NFL buys up to 150 Super Bowl rings per year, at a cost of $5,000 each. (Losers also get rings.)
    In 2005, Napoléon Bonaparte’s tooth sold at an auction for $19,400. In 2006, William Shatner’s kidney stone sold for $25,000.
    Estimated earnings of the Rolling Stones’ 2006–7 concert tour: $500 million.
    The Pentagon’s 2008 budget was about $439 billion…which amounts to spending $13,920 per second.
    In 1987, Charlie Chaplin’s bowler hat and cane sold for $150,000.
    First pro golfer to earn over $100,000 in a single year: Arnold Palmer, in 1963.
    In 1965, CEOs earned about 44 times as much as their factory workers did. In 1999: 419 times more.
    Undefeated world heavyweight boxing champ Gene Tunney made more money in one match in the 1920s than baseball player Babe Ruth made in 14 seasons combined.
    America’s first billionaire: John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil.
    On her 2006 Confessions tour, Madonna used a two-ton disco ball with $2 million worth of Swarovski crystals.
    In 1988, Mike Tyson won $20 million in 91 seconds when he defeated Michael Spinks.
    Pablo Picasso’s artworks have fetched more than $1.2 billion at auction houses.
    Bill Gates is richer than the poorest 114 million people in the United States combined.

Trees
    One tree gives off about 260 pounds of oxygen annually, a year’s supply for two people.
    Myrrh is made from dried tree sap.
    Average growing time for Christmas trees to reach proper height: seven years.
    World’s oldest tree: Methuselah, a 4,800-year-old bristlecone pine in California’s White Mountains.
    A mature birch tree makes about a million seeds every year.
    If every reader recycled a single day’s run of the New York Times , it would save about 75,000 trees.
    A mature oak tree can have as many as 400,000 caterpillars living in it.
    Cypress trees have “knees,” mysterious growths on their roots.
    In Florida, gumbo limbo trees are nicknamed “tourist trees”…because they stand in the sun, turn red, and peel.
    Studies show: people in hospitals heal faster if their room’s window looks out on trees.

Ups & Downs
    Fats Domino had 18 songs that sold a million copies each, but he never had a #1 record.
    Tina Turner won a Grammy in 1971, was on food stamps in 1976, and won another Grammy in 1985.
    W. W. Clements started as a delivery-truck driver in 1935 and later became CEO of the Dr. Pepper Company.
    Composer Jan Paderewski was told he’d never be a good pianist because his middle finger was too short.
    As a 5' 11" sophomore, Michael Jordan was cut from his high school’s varsity basketball team.
    In 1983, Billboard magazine declared Madonna a “flash in the pan.”
    In 1977, Ben