Facts are decided by a group. Like how the Academie Francaise (sorry for the lack of accents, I know they're missing but I can't figure it out on my Mac) decides on what is actually part of the French language. A group of people together decide what words go into the dictionary and what are official French words.
Facts are facts because a group of people decide that something is true.
For instance, the fact that orange is orange came up a long time ago and someone assigned those sounds to the a bright color that's a mixture of red and yellow, and then later applied that group of sounds to a round fruit of the same color as its namesake.
A fact becomes a fact and not an opinion when it becomes the common belief instead of the belief of a few. Often times the opinion becomes a fact because someone is providing solid evidence of this fact, like the idea that fire is hot and ice is cold.
If I think of anything else I'll probably change this.
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The fact that ice is cold and fire is hot may not be so factual as you suppose. Coldness and heat are by their nature relational ("matters of degree") more than, say, graniteness and schistness are fixed "fact", and yet any rock has been something else and is likely to be something else, just like the fire and the ice.
"Orange" as the name of the fruit "in fact" predates the assignment of the color name to the color of the fruit. However, I understand your point about assignments of name.
Conventionality of symbol as the defining feature of fact is a useful realization.
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