20 Cool and Surprising Facts About Alaska – Part 2

A giant snowman named Snowzilla is created every year in Anchorage, Alaska. In 2008, the city attempted to stop the creation of Snowzilla, and on Christmas morning there were sign-carrying snowmen "protesting" that attempt in front of city hall.

Every resident of Alaska gets an annual “oil royalty check” - a payment representing their share of the revenue from Alaskan oil. In 2008 the payout reached a high of $2,069, or $8,276 for a family of four people.

In Anchorage, Alaska, many large animals, such as moose, are often hit by vehicles. While motorists get first rights to roadkill; Charity groups sign up to collect large roadkill and the meat is donated to the needy.

Alaska is not only the northernmost and westernmost state in the United States but is also technically the easternmost as well because it crosses the 180° meridian of longitude.

To be inducted into the ‘40 Below Club’ of Fairbanks, Alaska you have to stand in front of the University of Alaska Fairbanks sign which reads the current temperature (that has to be at least -40°F), all while posing half naked.

There is a town named Whittier in Alaska where almost everyone lives and/or works under one roof. A single 14-story high-rise is home “to most of the town’s residents as well as its post office, grocery store, health clinic, laundromat, and church.”

In Alaska, some snowplow trucks use heads-up displays that show where the road is under the snow, allowing workers to continue plowing roads in zero visibility, white-out conditions.

In 1972, the Alaska Legislature passed legislation mandating that if "a [school is attended] by at least 15 pupils whose primary language is other than English, [then the school] shall have at least one teacher who is fluent in the native language."

Denali mountain in Alaska is both the tallest mountain in North America and taller than Mount Everest measuring from base to summit. Everest reaches a higher altitude however since it’s on an approximately 17,000 feet plateau.

In the 1880s, in Alaska, there were wolves larger than the Dire Wolf. The Kenai Peninsula Wolf measured 4.5 feet tall(shoulder),7feet long(excluding the tail), with an estimated max weight of 200-250 pounds.