When discussing interesting facts about Oklahoma City, one tragic incident stands out among the rest. Oklahoma City experienced its darkest day on April 19, 1995, when a bomb exploded in a truck outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
Of the 168 people who died as a result of the bombing, 19 were children. The victims and survivors are remembered at a museum on the site of where the building once stood.
The Oklahoma City bombing remains a large piece of the city's recent past, but it is just one part of an intriguing story that dates back to 1889.
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Here are five facts about Oklahoma City you may not know:
1. Oklahoma's capital acquired a professional basketball team in 2008, when the Seattle Supersonics relocated to Oklahoma City. The team was renamed to the Oklahoma City Thunder and qualified for the NBA playoffs in its second season. The team's most famous player is forward Kevin Durant. The Washington, D.C. native was drafted by the Thunder out of the University of Texas.
2. The Oklahoma City capitol building is the only state capital in the world that has been surrounded by working oil wells. One of the wells carries the nickname Petunia #1 because it was drilled in the middle of a flowerbed. Public tours are offered daily of the capitol.
3. Dating to 1917, the capital building encompasses 11 acres of interior floor space. The Greco-Roman structure was meant to be topped off with a dome, a feature that was not added to the building until 2002. A veterans' memorial on the grounds honors those who fought in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
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4. Settled during the Land Run of April 22, 1889 — when new settlers were allowed to claim unassigned acreage as their own under the Homestead Act — Oklahoma City's population grew to 10,000 in a single day. The current population of the state capital was estimated in 2013 at 610,000,
according to the United States Census Bureau.
5. The severely damaged Murrah building, the site of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was demolished about a month after the incident. The entire 3.3-acre site has been replaced by an outdoor memorial and a 30,000-square-foot museum that tells visitors the story of the bombing and its aftermath.
The federal building had been built in 1977 for $14.5 million and had been named after federal judge Alfred P. Murrah, an Oklahoma native. The Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum does not receive any government funding and is self-sustaining financially thanks to private donations and funding.
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