Extra, extra, read all about it—it being Texas

I just found out that for a limited time the Texas State Historical Association is giving away free digital downloads of the 2014–15 Texas Almanac. In this Texas-sized (752-pages) book you’ll learn, if you didn’t already know, that pecan pie was named the state pie by the 83rd Legislature in 2013; that the monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus,

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was designated the state insect by the 74th Legislature in 1995; and that Texas purple sage, Leucophyllum frutescens,

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was designated the state native shrub by the 79th Legislature in 2005. You can also confirm that, according to the 41st Legislature in 1930, the word Texas, or Tejas, was the Spanish pronunciation of a Caddo Indian word meaning ‘friends’ or ‘allies’; and that Texas is by far the state with the most land in farms (130,400,000 acres). And while we’re talking about land, did you know that in the Compromise of 1850 Texas gave up territory that now forms portions of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming?

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman