40 Fun Facts About Akron, Ohio

Which worldwide recovery fellowship began in Akron in 1935, when a visiting New York businessman met a local surgeon?

Alcoholics Anonymous dates its birth to 10 June 1935, the day surgeon Bob Smith took his last drink. Members mark the anniversary in Akron each June as Founders Day.

Which youth championship moved its national finals from Dayton to Akron in 1935?

The Soap Box Derby held just one national final in Dayton before Akron's central location and hilly terrain won it over. Its purpose-built track, Derby Downs, has hosted the finals since 1936.

Which NBA superstar opened the I Promise School for at-risk children in his hometown of Akron in 2018?

LeBron James backs the public school through his family foundation, and its graduates are promised free tuition at the University of Akron.

Which future NBA MVP, raised in Charlotte, was born in Akron in 1988 while his father played for Cleveland?

Stephen Curry was born during his father Dell's single season with the Cavaliers. Months later an expansion draft sent the family to the brand-new Charlotte Hornets.

Which Akron tire giant is named after the inventor of vulcanized rubber, who died decades before it was founded?

Goodyear was founded by Frank Seiberling in 1898, 38 years after Charles Goodyear's death, and flew its first advertising blimp in 1925.

What kind of Navy craft was the USS Akron, which was lost in a thunderstorm off New Jersey in 1933?

An airship built in its namesake city, the USS Akron could launch and recover fighter planes in mid-flight. The 1933 crash killed 73 of the 76 people aboard.

Which new wave band from Akron, named for a theory that humanity is regressing, had a 1980 hit with Whip It?

Devo grew out of a joke among Kent State art students that turned serious after the 1970 campus shootings. Whip It was the band's only top 40 hit.

Which formerly enslaved abolitionist gave her best-known speech on women's rights at an 1851 convention in Akron?

Sojourner Truth spoke without notes at Akron's Old Stone Church. The version most people know was published 12 years later by convention organizer Frances Gage.

Which Ohio-born actor, later crowned the King of Hollywood, worked in an Akron tire factory as a teenager?

Clark Gable quit his father's farm for the tire plant. At 17, a performance of the play The Bird of Paradise convinced him to become an actor.

Which Akron-born Pretenders frontwoman wrote the 1982 song My City Was Gone about the changes to her hometown?

Chrissie Hynde returned to find old South Howard Street, the historic heart of downtown, leveled for skyscrapers and parking decks. The song first appeared as a B-side.

Which blues-rock duo recorded the 2004 album Rubber Factory inside a former tire plant in their hometown of Akron?

The Black Keys, guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney, grew up a couple of houses apart and both dropped out of the University of Akron.

Which abolitionist, later the leader of the raid on Harpers Ferry, managed sheep flocks in Akron during the 1840s?

John Brown moved to Akron in 1844 and earned a reputation as an expert in fine sheep and wool. His house is preserved as a city landmark.

Which famous inventor became the son-in-law of Akron industrialist Lewis Miller by marrying his daughter Mina in 1886?

Thomas Edison's father-in-law was an inventor himself: Lewis Miller devised the Akron Plan for Sunday school buildings and co-founded the Chautauqua Institution.

Akron-born astronaut Judith Resnik, the second American woman in space, died aboard which space shuttle in 1986?

Challenger was only her second shuttle. Her first flight, in 1984, was the maiden voyage of Discovery, on which she operated the robotic arm.

Which language gave Akron its name, taken from a word for the high point the city sits on?

Greek was a learned choice for a frontier town: the founders laid Akron out in 1825 at the highest point on the new waterway's route.

Which river, notorious for catching fire in Cleveland in 1969, turns sharply north near Akron on its crooked course?

The Cuyahoga flows south toward Akron before doubling back north. Its 1969 fire helped spur the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Which small toy did Samuel Dyke's Akron factory become the first in America to mass-produce, using clay?

Marbles became an Akron specialty: in 1903 local inventor Martin Christensen turned out the first machine-made glass ones on a machine he patented.

The famous logo of Akron's best-known tire company was inspired by a statuette of which Roman god?

Mercury's winged foot became the emblem after founder Frank Seiberling was inspired by a statuette of the messenger god, patron of travel and commerce.

The Akron Pros went unbeaten in 1920 to become the first champions of which major American sports league?

The NFL began in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, and the minutes of its founding meeting were kept on Akron Pros stationery.

Akron hosted the World Series of which sport from 1962, when only three star players were invited to compete?

Golf's Big Three of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player made up the entire first field. Nicklaus, then 22, took home a then-staggering $50,000.

What kind of animal is Zippy, the University of Akron mascot adopted by the student council in 1953?

A kangaroo represents the Zips, whose name is short for Zippers, a brand of rubber overshoes once made in the city.

Akron tire maker Harvey Firestone spent years vacationing as one of the self-styled Vagabonds with which carmaker?

Henry Ford had chosen Firestone to supply tires for his cars in 1906. Their traveling party also included naturalist John Burroughs and, at times, presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover.

America's first astronauts traveled to Akron to be fitted for silver spacesuits made by which tire company?

BFGoodrich engineer Russell Colley, saluted as the father of the spacesuit, had built a pressure suit back in 1934 for record-chasing pilot Wiley Post.

Guests at Akron's former Quaker Square hotel slept in round rooms carved out of which old industrial structures?

Grain silos built by Quaker Oats in 1932, 36 of them and each 120 feet tall, were converted into a Hilton that opened in 1980 with 196 completely round rooms.

On which waterway did the first boat leave Akron in 1827, passing through 41 locks to reach Cleveland?

The Ohio and Erie Canal carried that first boat 37 miles and over three aqueducts in two days. By 1832 the route reached the Ohio River at Portsmouth.

Akron is the seat of which Ohio county, formed in 1840 from pieces of three older neighboring counties?

Summit County was named for the highest elevation on the old waterway that built the city. Its land was carved out of Medina, Portage and Stark counties.

Akron lies within the Western Reserve, frontier land that was once claimed by which New England state?

Connecticut held on to a strip of what is now northeast Ohio after the Revolution, then sold most of it to a company of land speculators for $1,200,000.

Which name did Akron's minor-league baseball team, long known as the Aeros, adopt in 2013 to honor local industry?

The RubberDucks name salutes the city's days as the Rubber Capital of the World. The franchise had moved up the road from Canton in 1997.

In which sport did the University of Akron Zips win the NCAA Division I national championship in 2010?

Soccer had already made the Zips the first Mid-American Conference team in any sport to be ranked number one in the nation.

Which Akron mansion, built for tire magnate Frank Seiberling, ranks among the largest houses in the United States?

Stan Hywet Hall takes its name from Old English words for stone quarry, a nod to the abandoned quarries on the estate grounds.

Which emergency vehicle made its world debut in Akron in 1899 as an electric wagon that could reach 16 mph?

The police car's first assignment was to pick up a drunken man at a downtown street corner. It could travel 30 miles before its battery needed recharging.

What did Native American travelers carry between two rivers on the overland trail through today's Akron?

Canoes were hauled about eight miles along the Portage Path, the dry link in a water route from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River. The trail later marked the nation's western boundary.

Which coach, later the namesake of college football's top trophy, led Akron's Buchtel College team in the 1890s?

John Heisman coached both football and baseball at Buchtel, the school now known as the University of Akron, early in a career that took him to eight colleges.

Which general and land agent, who lived out his life in Warren, co-founded Akron with Paul Williams in 1825?

Simon Perkins and his partner founded the town by donating 100 lots of land to the state. He had also set up the Western Reserve Bank in 1813.

Which Akron-born poet won a 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Thomas and Beulah, based on her grandparents' lives in the city?

Rita Dove went on to serve as the nation's Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995, the first African American appointed since the post took that name.

Which protest tactic did Akron rubber workers use in 1936 to force recognition of the United Rubber Workers union?

The sit-down strike came to the tire plants from a ballpark: workers got the idea from a strike at a baseball game between union members of different factories.

Which future Republican presidential nominee led a 1925 drive to oust Klan members from Akron's school board?

Wendell Willkie had come to Akron in 1919 to run a legal office for Firestone workers. As the 1940 nominee he lost to Franklin Roosevelt.

Which Akron newspaper was the original flagship of the chain that John S. Knight built into Knight Ridder?

The Beacon Journal won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 1970 Kent State shootings, three years after Knight himself won one for editorial writing.

Which New York Yankees captain, born in Akron, died in 1979 while practicing landings in his own plane near Canton?

Thurman Munson had been named captain in 1976, the team's first since Lou Gehrig, and led the Yankees to two World Series titles before the crash.

Which Ohio drive-in chain, born on Akron's South Hawkins Avenue in 1934, is famous for its Galley Boy?

Swensons stayed a single stand until its founder sold up in 1949. The new owner opened a second location in 1952, and the chain later spread across Ohio and into Indiana.