100 Fun Facts About Nebraska

What is Nebraska's most populous city, sitting on the Missouri River?

Omaha is Nebraska's largest city by a wide margin: the 2020 census counted about 486,000 residents inside the city limits, well ahead of any other city in the state.

Nebraska became the 37th state on March 1 of which year?

Nebraska was admitted as the 37th state on March 1, 1867, two years after the Civil War ended, after Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson's veto of the statehood bill.

The name Nebraska comes from Otoe and Omaha words meaning what?

Flat water is the meaning of the Otoe and Omaha words behind the state's name; both describe the wide, shallow river that crosses the whole state from west to east.

What makes the Nebraska Legislature unique among US state legislatures?

It is unicameral and nonpartisan: voters approved a 1934 amendment merging the house and senate, which cut the membership from 133 to 43, and the single chamber first met in 1937.

What title do all 49 members of Nebraska's state legislature hold?

Senator is every member's title, and with only 49 of them Nebraska has the smallest legislature of any state, so a bill can pass with just 25 votes, though ending a filibuster takes 33.

Which soft drink, invented in Hastings in 1927, is Nebraska's official state soft drink?

Kool-Aid was created by Edwin Perkins in Hastings in 1927, when he dried his bottled fruit syrup into a powder to cut shipping costs; Nebraska later named it the official state soft drink.

What was the liquid concentrate that Kool-Aid was developed from?

Fruit Smack was Edwin Perkins's bottled fruit syrup; in 1927 he dehydrated it into a powder sold in paper packets, far cheaper to ship than glass bottles that often broke in transit.

Which holiday was founded in Nebraska City by J. Sterling Morton?

Arbor Day was proposed by J. Sterling Morton, a Nebraska City newspaper editor, and first held on April 10, 1872, when prizes for the most trees planted helped put an estimated million in the ground.

Roughly how many trees were planted in Nebraska on the first Arbor Day in 1872?

One million trees is the figure usually given for that first Arbor Day, April 10, 1872, when prizes were offered to the counties and individuals that planted the most.

Nebraska and which other state split electoral votes by district in the 2024 election?

Maine has split its electoral votes by congressional district since 1972 and Nebraska since 1992, yet Nebraska's first actual split came only in 2008, when Barack Obama won a single district's vote.

Which time zone or zones does Nebraska observe?

Central and Mountain: most of Nebraska runs on Central Time, but the Panhandle and a strip beside it keep Mountain Time, and the line cuts Cherry County in two, leaving it on two clocks.

Warren Buffett paid about how much for his longtime Omaha house in 1958?

$31,500 bought Warren Buffett his Omaha house in 1958, and he never traded up: he went on living there for decades after becoming one of the richest people in the world.

As of 2025, which Fortune 500 railroad had its headquarters in Omaha?

Union Pacific was chartered in 1862 to build the eastern leg of the first transcontinental railroad and laid its first rails in Omaha in 1865, meeting the Central Pacific in Utah four years later.

Which annual NCAA championship event has made its home in Omaha?

The College World Series moved to Omaha in 1950 after two years in Kalamazoo and one in Wichita, and has stayed ever since, trading Rosenblatt Stadium for a new downtown ballpark in 2011.

Which of these sandwiches is claimed as an Omaha invention?

The Reuben is said to have been created at Omaha's Blackstone Hotel in the 1920s and named for grocer Reuben Kulakofsky, a regular at the hotel's weekly poker game.

Which US president spoke at Omaha's Trans-Mississippi Exposition, a world's fair, in October 1898?

William McKinley came for 'President's Day' on October 12, 1898, and about a hundred thousand people packed the plaza to hear him; the fair drew more than 2.6 million visitors in five months.

Which US Air Force organisation moved to Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha in 1948?

Strategic Air Command moved its headquarters from Andrews in Maryland to Offutt in November 1948, picked because the base sat in the middle of the continent, beyond the reach of the bombers of the day.

Omaha hosted the first official performance of whose Wild West Show in 1883?

Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West opened in Omaha in 1883 and came back for a 'Cody Day' at the city's 1898 world's fair; the show's animals wintered at his Scout's Rest Ranch near North Platte.

What was the state capital called before it was renamed for the assassinated president?

Lancaster was a tiny village when a three-member commission scouting sites south of the Platte chose it for the new capital in 1867; the renamed city still sits in Lancaster County.

What does the statue atop Nebraska's State Capitol depict?

A sower: the bronze figure scatters seed from the top of a 400-foot tower that Nebraska built in stages over ten years, paying as it went, so the capitol was free of debt when it was finished.

Which Japanese company opened a motorcycle assembly plant in the state capital in 1974?

Kawasaki opened the Lincoln plant in 1974 to assemble motorcycles for North American buyers, and the site later took on building rail cars as well.

Which regional fast-food chain, known for its bread-pocket sandwiches, began in the state capital?

Runza opened its first stand in Lincoln in 1949, selling the bread pocket stuffed with beef, cabbage and onions that founder Sally Everett adapted from a German-Russian family recipe.

How many national championships have the Nebraska Cornhuskers won in football?

Five: 1970 and 1971 under Bob Devaney, then 1994, 1995 and 1997 under Tom Osborne, the last shared with Michigan after the AP and coaches' polls split.

As of 2025, which streak had Nebraska football kept alive since 1962?

Home sellouts: every home game since 1962 has officially sold out, a run of more than 400 that survived the lean seasons with the help of bulk sales of unsold tickets to donors and sponsors.

What is Nebraska's football defense nicknamed?

The Blackshirts name dates to 1964, when Bob Devaney's staff began giving the first-team defense black pullover practice jerseys so coaches could tell them apart from the offense.

Which three Cornhuskers have won the Heisman Trophy?

Johnny Rodgers, Mike Rozier and Eric Crouch won in 1972, 1983 and 2001, while Tommie Frazier, quarterback of two national champions, finished only runner-up to Ohio State's Eddie George in 1995.

The 1971 Nebraska-Oklahoma clash, won by top-ranked Nebraska, is remembered by what name?

The Game of the Century was played on Thanksgiving Day 1971 in Norman; a first-quarter punt-return touchdown put Nebraska ahead and Jeff Kinney's fourth score sealed a 35-31 win in the final minutes.

Which Oregon Trail landmark appears beside a covered wagon on Nebraska's 2006 state quarter?

Chimney Rock, a spire rising about 300 feet above the North Platte valley, was recorded in many emigrant journals; erosion and lightning have since left it shorter than the pioneers saw it.

What is Carhenge, near Alliance?

A Stonehenge replica built from old cars: Jim Reinders and his family assembled the grey-painted vehicles to match Stonehenge's dimensions and dedicated it at the summer solstice in 1987.

How many cars make up Carhenge's circle?

39 vehicles make up the circle, about 96 feet across, with a Cadillac standing in for the heel stone; three foreign cars are buried on site beneath a mock epitaph.

The Sandhills of north-central Nebraska are the largest what in the Western Hemisphere?

Grass-covered sand dune region: the Sandhills cover about 19,300 square miles, roughly a quarter of Nebraska, and the dunes are held in place by mixed-grass prairie that is grazed rather than farmed.

Which aquifer, named for a Nebraska town, underlies eight states?

Ogallala water irrigates much of the High Plains, but it is pumped far faster than rain can replace it: once drained, the aquifer would need about 6,000 years to refill.

Which bird gathers by the hundreds of thousands on Nebraska's central Platte River each spring?

The sandhill crane: the central Platte valley is the birds' most important migration stopover, where they fatten for weeks on waste grain left in the corn fields before flying north to nest.

Bailey Yard in North Platte holds what world record?

Largest rail classification facility: Bailey Yard covers 2,850 acres and runs eight miles, and its two humps let gravity roll freight cars, about four a minute, onto the right track for their next train.

The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act let settlers in the two new territories vote on what?

Whether to allow slavery was left to the settlers themselves, an idea called popular sovereignty; it scrapped the Missouri Compromise line and set off the violence known as Bleeding Kansas.

Which famous mail service ran through Nebraska along the Platte in 1860-61?

The Pony Express carried mail between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, from April 1860 to October 1861, following the Platte across Nebraska until the transcontinental telegraph made it obsolete.

Which Illinois-born politician represented Nebraska in Congress and ran for president three times?

William Jennings Bryan won his first nomination at 36 with the 'Cross of Gold' speech, lost in 1896, 1900 and 1908, then quit as Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State over a stern note sent after the Lusitania sinking.

Which future US president was born in Nebraska but moved away shortly after birth?

Gerald Ford was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. in Nebraska's largest city on July 14, 1913; his mother left his abusive father within weeks and raised him in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

As of 2020, Nebraska, the 37th state admitted, also ranked 37th among the states in what?

Population: the 2020 census counted 1,961,504 Nebraskans, 37th among the states, even though Nebraska is the 16th-largest state by area.

Which outdoor retailer had its national headquarters in Sidney, Nebraska?

Cabela's began in 1961 when Dick Cabela advertised $45 worth of fishing flies in a newspaper; it grew into an outdoor-gear giant based in Sidney until Bass Pro Shops bought it in 2017.

Which Nebraska fort rose on the bluff Lewis and Clark had recommended in 1804?

Fort Atkinson went up in 1820 near present-day Fort Calhoun, on the Council Bluff where the explorers had met Otoe and Missouria leaders, a name the Iowa city of Council Bluffs later borrowed.

Which home for homeless youth did Father Edward Flanagan found in Omaha in 1917?

Boys Town began as a home for homeless boys in Omaha, moved to a farm west of the city in 1921, and became famous through the 1938 film that won Spencer Tracy an Oscar for playing Flanagan.

Nebraska holds which unique geographic distinction among US states?

Only triply landlocked state: reaching any ocean, gulf or bay means crossing at least three states or provinces, yet since 1931 its governors have named honorary admirals of a 'Great Navy of the State of Nebraska'.

What does a rural Nebraska license plate's leading number show?

County: in 1922 each one was numbered by how many vehicles it had registered, the busiest getting 1, and the codes survive everywhere except the three most populous, which use letter-and-number plates.

How high is Panorama Point, Nebraska's highest point?

5,424 feet is the long-cited elevation of Panorama Point, a gentle rise on a private bison ranch in Kimball County at the state's southwest corner, a short drive from the Colorado and Wyoming lines.

Grand Island, Hastings and Kearney are known collectively as what?

The Tri-Cities are central Nebraska's three mid-size hubs; Kearney took its name from nearby Fort Kearny and owes its extra 'e' to postal workers who kept misspelling it.

Which tool did blacksmith William Petersen invent in De Witt, Nebraska, in 1924?

Vise-Grip pliers, which clamp onto a part and stay shut, came out of Petersen's De Witt blacksmith shop; the town kept making them until the plant's work moved to China in 2008.

Which Sandhills cattle operation is one of Nebraska's oldest and largest?

Spade Ranch was founded in 1888 by Bartlett Richards in the Sandhills near Ellsworth and grew to run tens of thousands of cattle; it was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Which novelist, raised in Red Cloud, set My Ántonia on the Nebraska prairie?

Willa Cather moved from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, aged nine, and drew on the Red Cloud area for O Pioneers! and My Ántonia; she won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours.

Which state lies directly north of Nebraska?

South Dakota is one of six states touching Nebraska, and the line between them moved in 1882, when a strip of Dakota Territory north of the Keya Paha River was handed to Nebraska.

Which convenience food did Omaha's Swanson family company develop in 1953 and make a household name?

The TV dinner began as a Thanksgiving-style plate of turkey, cornbread stuffing, peas and sweet potatoes, and the brand name stuck to frozen meals in general.

Which title character of a famous 1900 novel is revealed to be a circus performer from Omaha, Nebraska?

The Wizard of Oz is a conman who painted the letters OZ, his own initials, on his hot-air balloon and drifted into a land that happened to share them.

Which B-29 bomber, built at the Martin plant in Bellevue, Nebraska, dropped the first atomic bomb used in war?

Enola Gay was named by its pilot, Paul Tibbets, after his mother, who had herself been named for the heroine of a novel.

Which civil rights leader, assassinated in New York City in 1965, was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925?

Malcolm X spent only his first months in Omaha: threats from the Ku Klux Klan over his father's activism forced the family to flee to Milwaukee in 1926.

Which sport drew 92,003 fans to Lincoln's Memorial Stadium in 2023, setting a US record for a women's event?

Volleyball took over a stadium that has hosted Cornhusker football since 1923, and the day needed more than 3,300 staff to run.

Which Stephen King short story strands a quarrelling couple in the eerily empty farm town of Gatlin, Nebraska?

Children of the Corn first appeared in a 1977 magazine before King collected it in Night Shift, and it went on to spawn a long-running horror film franchise.

Which rock musician recorded the stark 1982 album Nebraska alone on a four-track tape machine in his bedroom?

Bruce Springsteen meant the tapes as demos for the E Street Band but released them as they were; the title track is told in the voice of spree killer Charles Starkweather.

Which animals, killed by volcanic ash some 12 million years ago, are the star finds at Nebraska's Ashfall Fossil Beds?

Rhinoceroses of a squat, hippo-like kind died around a waterhole after ash drifted in from an eruption in what is now Idaho, nearly 1,000 miles away.

Nebraska is the only US state where every home and business buys which service from publicly owned utilities?

Electricity became all-public in Nebraska in 1946, when the newly formed Omaha Public Power District took over the last privately owned power company in the state.

Which NFL quarterback's trademark pre-snap shout of Omaha later gave its name to his own production company?

Peyton Manning co-founded Omaha Productions in 2020, and the studio makes Peyton's Places, his documentary show about football.

Which Big Bang Theory character comes from a small town outside Omaha, Nebraska, and moved to California to act?

Penny spends most of the show waiting tables at The Cheesecake Factory while her acting career stalls, and at one low point considers moving back home.

Which longtime Tonight Show host grew up in Norfolk, Nebraska, where he first performed as a teenage magician?

Johnny Carson made his debut at 14 as The Great Carsoni, earning $3 a show, and later gave money to a cancer center and a school theater in his adopted hometown.

Which Nebraska-born star of 12 Angry Men was coaxed onto the stage by Marlon Brando's mother in Omaha?

Henry Fonda was 20 when Dodie Brando, a friend of his own mother, suggested he try out for a part at the Omaha Community Playhouse.

Which Hollywood song-and-dance star was born in Omaha in 1899, the son of an immigrant brewery worker?

Fred Astaire left Nebraska as a small boy, when his family moved to New York City in 1905 to launch a vaudeville act for him and his older sister Adele.

Which future US vice president was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1941 before growing up in Casper, Wyoming?

Dick Cheney was the son of a Department of Agriculture employee and a mother who had been a softball star in the 1930s.

Which Irish-born priest founded Boys Town in Omaha in 1917 and was played on screen by Spencer Tracy?

Edward Flanagan watched an MGM crew film at Boys Town for ten days in 1938, and Tracy won an Academy Award for playing him.

Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo keeps which habitat beneath a giant glazed geodesic dome that opened to visitors in 2002?

A desert fills the dome, one of the largest indoor ones in the world, and beneath it sits Kingdoms of the Night, a vast nocturnal exhibit with an indoor swamp.

Which songbird represents Nebraska as state bird, an honor it also holds in Kansas, Oregon and three other states?

Western meadowlark honors run to six states in all, and only the northern cardinal, chosen by seven, is a state bird in more.

Which late-summer wildflower, also the state flower of Kentucky, has been Nebraska's floral emblem since 1895?

Goldenrod of the giant species is the one Nebraska honors, a plant that can top six feet and has become highly invasive across Europe and Asia.

Which president's veto did Congress override to admit Nebraska, the only state ever to join the Union that way?

Andrew Johnson lost to a supermajority in both houses of a Congress that had set one condition for statehood: the vote could not be denied to non-white men.

Which 1862 law is commemorated near Beatrice, Nebraska, on some of the first acres successfully claimed under it?

The Homestead Act let any qualified person claim up to 160 acres in return for five years of living on and improving the land; Daniel Freeman filed his claim to this ground on January 1, 1863.

Which Ponca chief won an 1879 Omaha court ruling that Native Americans are persons with the right of habeas corpus?

Standing Bear had been arrested for leaving Indian Territory to keep a promise: he was travelling north to bury his eldest son in the tribe's old homeland.

Which Lakota war leader, a victor at the Little Bighorn, was fatally bayoneted at Camp Robinson, Nebraska, in 1877?

Crazy Horse had surrendered there only four months earlier, leading his Oglala band in along a column two miles long.

Which religious group, driven out of Nauvoo, Illinois, spent the winter of 1846–47 at Winter Quarters in north Omaha?

Mormons numbering about 2,500 waited there for better conditions before trekking west, and the settlement above the Missouri River stayed populated until 1848.

Which coast-to-coast highway runs beneath the Archway, a museum built across the road near Kearney, Nebraska?

Interstate 80 drivers pass under the arch, which opened in July 2000 with an exhibit on the part the Platte River valley played in the development of America.

Which study guides were launched in 1958 from a basement in Lincoln, Nebraska, starting with sixteen Shakespeare titles?

CliffsNotes grew out of a Canadian line called Coles Notes, whose US rights Clifton Hillegass bought; he sold more than 58,000 copies in his first year.

Which ski-resort invention did a railroad engineer develop in Omaha in 1936, borrowing from banana-loading conveyors?

The chairlift swapped banana hooks for seats, and the world's first three went up at Sun Valley, Idaho, a resort the railroad then owned.

Which Iowa city has sat on the Nebraska side of the Missouri River since an 1877 flood shifted the channel?

Carter Lake was awarded to Iowa by the US Supreme Court in 1892, on the reasoning that a river which suddenly jumps its bed does not carry the border with it.

Valentine, Nebraska, re-mails thousands of cards for its February postmark, yet the town is named after which figure?

A US congressman, Edward K. Valentine, gave the town its name when the railroad arrived in the 1880s; the post office's holiday postmark simply plays on the coincidence.

Which reservoir, held behind Kingsley Dam on the North Platte River, is the largest in Nebraska?

Lake McConaughy is named for Charles McConaughy, a grain merchant and mayor of Holdrege who promoted the irrigation project but did not live to see it finished.

Which Nebraska river, a National Scenic River since 1991, flows past Smith Falls, the state's highest waterfall?

The Niobrara is protected for 76 miles east of Valentine, and Smith Falls, which plunges into a cool, narrow canyon on its south side, is only 63 feet tall.

Which Oregon Trail landmark in western Nebraska is named for a fur-company clerk who died beside it in 1828?

Scotts Bluff recalls Hiram Scott of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and more than 250,000 westward emigrants passed it between 1843 and 1869.

Which Cornhuskers football coach won three national titles in the 1990s and was later elected to Congress?

Tom Osborne coached Nebraska for 25 seasons, entered the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999 and won a seat in the US House the following year.

Which Omaha university's Bluejays play in the Big East and produced the NBA sharpshooter Kyle Korver?

Creighton saw Korver's three-point shooting push opponents into box-and-one defenses built to stop him, and its teams are cheered on by a mascot named Billy Bluejay.

Which Omaha-born Cardinals pitcher posted a 1.12 earned run average in 1968, known as the Year of the Pitcher?

Bob Gibson overcame childhood illness and briefly played basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters before choosing baseball, then won two Cy Young Awards with St. Louis.

Which sport's US Olympic trials were staged inside a downtown Omaha arena four times in a row from 2008?

Swimming needed pools built from scratch each time: 200 workers assembled them in two weeks, and the fire department filled them from hydrants around the building.

Which nickname did University of Nebraska football teams carry in the 1890s, before a sportswriter coined Cornhuskers?

Bugeaters recalled an 1870s drought in which hungry farmers purportedly ate insects; Lincoln writer Cy Sherman hated the name and began using Cornhuskers in 1899.

Which goods did Rose Blumkin, known in Omaha as Mrs. B, sell in the store Warren Buffett's company bought in 1983?

Furniture made her fortune from a $500 start in the basement of her husband's shop; after selling up she retired, then returned within three months to open a rival store.

Which single fossil led scientists in 1922 to announce Nebraska Man, an early ape later traced to an extinct peccary?

A tooth found by rancher and geologist Harold Cook was the whole case; it was so badly weathered that it misled the experts, though nobody had set out to stage a hoax.

Which Nebraska senator of thirty years is honored by a Tennessee Valley Authority dam that carries his name?

George Norris is best known as the man behind the creation of the TVA in 1933, and he also wrote the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution.

Which official nickname did Nebraska give up in 1945, when lawmakers decided to honor Cornhuskers instead?

Tree Planters' State was the official nickname the 1945 law replaced; since then Nebraska has been known, in the statute's words, in a popular sense as the Cornhusker State.

Which 19-foot bronze figure by sculptor Lee Lawrie crowns the gold-tiled dome of the Nebraska State Capitol?

The Sower stands for agriculture and for sowing nobler ideas of living, and it is the only free-standing sculpture among the building's exterior carvings.

Which future general taught military science at the University of Nebraska in the 1890s and earned a law degree there?

John J. Pershing mentored a cadet drill society that renamed itself the Pershing Rifles in 1895, and he stayed close to the group for the rest of his life.

Which Omaha-born director made the 2013 black-and-white road film Nebraska, starring Bruce Dern?

Alexander Payne thought of Dern as soon as he read the script, but the studio wanted a bigger star and several other veteran actors were shortlisted first.

Which 1932 book did Nebraska poet laureate John Neihardt base on the visions of an Oglala Lakota holy man?

Black Elk Speaks grew from conversations translated on the spot by the holy man's son Ben, and psychologist Carl Jung later urged its translation into German.

Which Ice Age giant is Nebraska's state fossil, with a record-size mounted skeleton on show in a Lincoln museum?

The mammoth on show is nicknamed Archie; he stands in the Elephant Hall of the University of Nebraska State Museum, and a life-size bronze of him guards the entrance.

Which state borders Nebraska to the southwest, cutting the corner that leaves the Panhandle jutting out to the west?

Colorado sits to the southwest, with Wyoming due west and Kansas due south, while Nebraska's eastern neighbors, Iowa and Missouri, lie across the Missouri River.

Which Nebraska county, the largest in the state, covers more land than the whole of Connecticut?

Cherry County is named for Samuel Cherry, an Army lieutenant killed in 1881, and it touches 11 other counties, four of them across the line in South Dakota.

Which NBA franchise split its home games between Kansas City and Omaha, Nebraska, from 1972 to 1975?

The Kings had been the Cincinnati Royals, and dropped that nickname on moving to avoid confusion with Kansas City's baseball team of the same name.

Which fast-growing tree, also the state tree of Kansas and Wyoming, has represented Nebraska since 1972?

Cottonwood was praised by Kansas lawmakers as the prairie's pioneer tree, and in rich river bottoms it has been seen to add 10 to 15 feet of height in a year.