The Beach Boys popularized the notion that California has the most beautiful girls in the world in 1965, and Hugh Hefner ran with it, launching his famous Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 1971. While beauty is only skin deep some say, California is a land of superlatives and we're running with that!

When you go to the beach this summer, be prepared-sure you will see the most beautiful women you've ever seen, but don't light up a smoke or pop open a bottle of beer or cocktail as you watch. Why? California, the most populated state in the nation, has the most regulations against smoking, glass bottles on beaches, and drinking alcoholic beverages on the silicon sand.

Speaking of silicon, California is the home to San Jose's Silicon Valley but it also has the most people in the world (per capita) with plastic & cosmetic surgery. Silicon and other types of breast implants, eye jobs, nose jobs, face lifts, hair implants and tummy tucks are the most popular enhancements to California's best face.

If you think that Californians are the most shallow people on the planet, think long and hard. The state has the largest body of intelligence in one place that includes inventors, engineers and scientists.

Among California's claims to fame are many treasures and some shames. California has the world's biggest tree, the tallest tree and oldest. It has the hottest place on earth at Death Valley, the tallest mountain peak in the continental U.S., and many rare plants & flowers, and endangered animals, birds and insects. Hopefully humans are not on the endangered list just yet, because California also has a demographic of children with the highest levels of PBDE chemicals (used as flame retardants) of any place in the world-and that's not good!

We're the fast food capital of the world, the car capital, the freeway capital, the trash-producing capital, and a leader in getting ourselves out of this mess we've created. As the world's top food producer and largest fertilizer & chemicals consumer, California feeds the hungry masses, but we also pollute our lands while we do it.

Livermore, Calif. has the world's largest landfill-to-fuel plant and Blythe Solar Power Project in Mojave Desert will soon have the world's largest solar farm to generate enough clean electricity for over 300,000 homes.

Californians are trying to fix our mess, a legacy of bad habits that continued after immigrants settled in a place with more native Americans than any state. One particular tribe, the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians, has built the largest casino in the Western U.S., where you'll find the Great Oak standing 96 feet tall and more than 1,500 years old. Not without its battles, the tree's very fate hinged on a congressional act to disallow San Diego Gas & Electric Co. to tear it down to make way for a high-voltage power line.

And so it goes in the land of Milk and Honey, which California has been called. Here are some more statitstics that include California city claims to fame, and the state's own personal brags.