May 26, 2018 Slideshows » News

20 Useless San Antonio Facts Everyone Should Know to Impress Out-of-towners 

By San Antonio Current Staff
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Mostly pointless, but still interesting, tidbits make for great conversation. Wow your guests with these random San Antonio facts.
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If you want to get technical, it’s illegal to flirt or respond to someone’s advances with the eyes or hands in San Antonio. Not sure what that means? Neither do we, but it’s law here in SA.


Photo via Facebook / Sexology Institute and Boutique

San Antonio’s Martin Luther King Jr. March is the largest in the country.


Photo by Jaime Monzon

San Pedro Springs Park is the second oldest park in the entire country, and the oldest in Texas. During the Civil War, it was used as a camp for prisoners of war. Today you’ll find the San Pedro Library, a swimming pool, a skate plaza and more than 60 hiking trails.


Photo via Instagram / jovansview

The dirt at the SA Stock Show & Rodeo is the same 2,160 tons of dirt that’s been used since 1988. It’s sifted through, of course.


Photo via Instagram / sanantoniorodeo

In 1923, high school teacher Ellen Schultz wanted to start a museum in San Antonio. Along with other local residents and students, she helped raise funds by selling bluebonnets and cakes. They raised enough money to acquire the well-known H.P. Attwater natural history collection, the Witte Museum’s first collection.


Photo via Instagram / vexconference

You can actually take the stairs at the Tower of the Americas. It’ll only take you 952 steps to reach the top of the 750-foot-tall structure.


Photo via Instagram / stackztx

Bracken Cave, not too far from Natural Bridge Caverns, is home to the world’s largest bat colony.


Photo via Instagram / midoriflowers

In 2011, the West Side community gathered at Lanier HS to set a Guinness World Record of the most tamales ever made. During the 10-hour giant tamalada, 1,300 students and volunteers made 17,106 tamales.


Photo via Instagram, viedfinder

Before his days in the White House, former president Theodore Resident recruited his famous Rough Riders over at the Menger Hotel. There’s even some memorabilia on display at the hotel today. The hotel, built in 1859, itself is the oldest continuously operating hotel west of the Mississippi River.


Photo via Instagram / bigyeti1981

Katherine Stinson, the namesake for Stinson Middle School, was the fourth woman to receive a pilot’s license in the U.S. She lived in San Antonio in the early 1900s and was the first woman to perform a loop-the-loop maneuver. Stinson Municipal Airport is named after her family, full of pilots, and is the second oldest municipal airport in the country.


Photo via Instagram / annasenno
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San Antonio is also home to the oldest church in Texas – the San Fernando Cathedral. In the heart of downtown, the cathedral dates back to 1738.


Photo via Instagram / barbarannekelly

Gatorade was invented by San Antonio native Robert Cade.


Photo via Instagram / gatorade

San Antonio was the first city in the U.S. to have an air-conditioned office building – the Milam Building – back in 1928. Imagine surviving summer without one.


Photo via Instagram / ushistorytoday

San Antonio’s Original Mexican Restaurant, which is still open today, opened in 1900 to become the first Mexican restaurant in the country.


Photo via Instagram / munchkintiff

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church is the home to quite a bit of history. President Lyndon B. Johnson married Lady Bird Johnson here in November 1934 after only dating for less than 3 months. The bell at the church was cast from a bronze cannon, most likely from the Alamo. It was found buried in a backyard not too far from the Alamo.


Courtesy of LBJ Library

The Alamo Mission's original name – Mission San Antonio de Valero – honors St. Anthony of Padua and the Spanish viceroy to New Spain, Baltasar de Zúñiga, the Marquis of Valero, who granted permission to build the mission.


Photo via Instagram / awesomebrandi

The first-ever Church’s Chicken was in San Antonio – actually right across from the street from the Alamo back in 1952.


Photo via Instagram / churchschicken

The Southwest School of Art, the only independent art school in Texas, is housed at the former Ursuline Academy, a Catholic school for girls opened in 1851.


Photo via Instagram / southwestschoolofart

Known as the “Sporting District” in the early 20th century, SA was home to the largest red-light district in the state and third largest in the U.S. Although prostitution was illegal in the city, the mayor at the time allowed prostitutes to work inside a 10-block radius near Market Square.


Photo via Instagram / marketsquaresa

The Texas-shaped pool at Six Flags Fiesta Texas contains a half-million gallons of water.


Photo via Instagram / photos.by.jac
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If you want to get technical, it’s illegal to flirt or respond to someone’s advances with the eyes or hands in San Antonio. Not sure what that means? Neither do we, but it’s law here in SA.


Photo via Facebook / Sexology Institute and Boutique
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