I'm not a lawyer. But, I did finish law school and I recently sat for a bar exam and will soon be sitting for a bar exam in a second state. I did take a copyright law class and I did copyright law research for a professor.
At any rate, this is not legal advice.
But, there are a lot of things to consider about your post:
1) Distinguishing fact vs. expression. It's not always a clear cut line.
2) Is a "fact" from a true crime book (for instance) actually a fact? (Sometimes, these are fabrications or slight fabrications that may involve some degree of originality of expression, hence potential copyrightability.)
3) Facts may be protectible if what you copy is the selection and arrangement of the facts, if the selection and arrangement of the "facts" which you pulled from a certain text involved some sort of creativity. Feist v. Rural Telephone.
4) Facts may be protectible under state law (law of misappropriation).
5) Bare facts are not, in and of themselves, standing alone, copyrightable; it's when they are creatively ordered that they may be copyrightable.
Source:
Understanding Copyright Law, Third Edition, Marshall Leaffer, pp. 67-91 (Matthew Bender Publishing).
Also, consider:
The application of the fair use doctrine: while a person may have committed copyright infringement, the fair use doctrine will legally excuse his infringement.
Source: Id., Chapter 10 (fair use and other defenses to copyright infringement).
==
Copyright law is really, really complex. Otherwise, you would not have treatises like the Matthew Bender treatise or the Nimmer treatise on copyright law -- volumes and volumes of stuff.
But, it's safe to say that you can copy one fact and it's not subject to copyright infringement (so long as it truly is a fact -- like something you could find in an almanac). However, where the collection of facts rise to the level of creative expression, that's where difficulties may arise.
Sorry, no straight answer, but the Copyright Act is very vague. There are inconsistent cases on point. One court may rule differently from the other. There are a few very distinct and clear cut concepts in copyright law, but not many. Hence the need for a lot of litigation and academic scholarship on the subject.
