Highlands County’s little-known fun facts
By Pallavi Agarwal, Highlands Today, Sebring, Fla. | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
The 12 Hours of
As part of its ongoing series, Highlands Today has compiled a list of things you may not know about the county.
Raceway 'facts' straddle the bizarre, believable
Every longtime institution has its urban legends and so it goes with the
The raceway has done some fact checking on things it has heard about itself over the years and the result is a fairly voluminous list of fact and fiction trivia on its web site -- from the colorful to the bizarre.
Since this article is about facts of
Here are some fun facts that did happen.
Six drivers of reserve entries, unhappy they were not allowed to start, did sneak on the track during the first lap, do one of two laps and then get off. It happened in 1955.
It's also true that remnants of a Ford GT, driven by
Belligerent drivers were not the only ones who snuck on the track one year. A spectator was able to race in a street car during a supporting event at
Portions of the 1975 movie "The Great Waldo Pepper" were filmed at the
Another celebrity,
And here is the fact that may actually sound like fiction but is not.
Drivers would actually get lost at night on the old 5.2-mile circuit, some recording laps over 10 minutes trying to find the circuit.
The old runway portions of the circuit were nearly impossible to negotiate at night, and many cars wandered aimlessly trying to orient themselves back on the proper line, the raceway says.
To check out the complete list, go to http://www.sebringraceway.com/track-info/sebring-urban-legends
Not tropical enough for the pineapple
Since it's a tropical fruit, the pineapple don't take well to frost, and
The Florida Agriculture, in a 1892 report, mentions one such new, self-proclaimed "frost-proof" pineapple cultivated in
It appears around that time, the
The name Pabor came from its founder,
Small pineapple plantations were "part of the scenery" in
The agricultural journal's rather grim predications on how "it's a costly business to actualize tropical dreams in a semi-tropical climate" and how "
Insects, diseases and the freeze of
The pineapple's future in
Chamber of commerce as Realtor?
It's not clear why and to what extent, but one of the groups involved in the establishment of
When
According to conversations he has had with folks, the chamber actually sold lots out of its office, and appears to be involved in some capacity from the late 1950s to the 1970s.
Pollard has come across chamber ads for lots in at least one edition of the
Apparently, at least part of what is now
It's fairly unusual, at least in modern times, for a chamber of commerce to be involved in real-estate deals. Why
"There are big holes in here and it's hard to find stuff," he said.
There are some things we know.
Buyers had to purchase a minimum of two lots, each one 4,000 square feet, and they sold for
What's big in
Nearly half of the students in the
Of these campuses, the one with the highest students was
To put it into perspective, their individual student population counts were more than any of the four middle schools, which typically get students from more than one elementary school.
Ironically,
As of June,
While students categorized as white continue to lead the student count, with 5,500 students, Hispanic students have out-raced the number of black students and now are close to 3,910.
At the high school level, there are 909 students listed as Hispanics and 1,564 as white. At the elementary school level, however, the gap is much narrower. There are 2,587 white elementary school students. The number of Hispanic students from kindergarten to fifth-grade and some pre-K classes? 2,142, the enrollment count shows.
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