Did you know?

...The inventor of Furby, the blockbuster toy of the 1980's, lives in Eagle, Idaho and has a new invention called Pleo, named one of the robots "that will change your life" by Time Magazine.

...As much as we love our potatoes, high-technology is actually Idaho's largest industry and dominates its exports' portfolio.

...The LaserJet printer, Hewlett-Packard's most successful product line, was invented in Boise, Idaho.

...The Idaho National Laboratory has been charged with being the nation's premier center for the next generation of nuclear energy research.

...The Napoleon Dynamite movie was filmed in Preston, Idaho.

...Idaho has the nation's oldest and youngest ski resorts (respectively, Sun Valley and Tammarack).

...This highly innovative state is consistently #1 for patents per capita.

...Nearly every town with a population over 20,000 has a college or university.

...University of Idaho cloned the first mule.

...Arco, Idaho was the first city lit by atomic energy - in July 1953.

...The world's first nuclear power plant is located at the Idaho National Laboratory site near Idaho Falls.

...Nearly 85 percent of all the commercial trout sold in the United States is produced in the Hagerman Valley near Twin Falls.

... The world's first alpine skiing chairlift was (and still is) located in Sun Valley. Built by Union Pacific Railroad engineers, it was designed after a banana-boat loading device. The 1936 fee: 25 cents per ride.

... Philo T. Farnsworth of Rigby was just 20 years old when he invented the first all-elecronic television image. Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1984, Farnsworth's first patent, entitled "Television System," was filed January 7, 1927. He also held patents for the cathode ray tube and more than 300 other U.S. and foreign inventions.

... The Statehouse in Boise and dozens of other buildings in the city are geothermally heated from underground hot springs. In fact, Idaho is well sprinkled with public and private hot springs and the country's first geothermal heating district was established in Boise.

...Lake Pend Oreille in North Idaho, over 300 miles from the ocean, is home to the Navy's Acoustic Research Attachment and has been the site of submarine development since WWII.

...The Banner Bank Building in Boise was the first LEED certified building in Idaho and one of the first certified speculative office buildings in the world.

... A company in Idaho (Cascade Toboggan) manufactures most of the rescue toboggans used at ski resorts throughout the United States.

... Backup alarms used on everything from garbage trucks to tractors to delivery trucks were developed and still manufactured in Boise by Preco.

... An Idaho distiller makes the only huckleberry infused vodka in the world.

... Morrison-Knudsen (now The Washington Division of the URS Corp.) helped construct the Hoover Dam, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Trans-Alaska pipeline

...A number of movies have been made in Idaho, including: