70 Fun Facts About Cincinnati

Cincinnati sits on the Ohio River directly across from which state?

The city's airport, CVG, is actually in Hebron, Kentucky, and is one of the busiest cargo airports in the country.

Which of these is a nickname of Cincinnati?

Longfellow immortalised the name in his 1854 poem 'Catawba Wine'; the others belong to Dayton, Cleveland and Akron.

Cincinnati was nicknamed 'Porkopolis' in the 19th century because of which industry?

The city later embraced the joke with public 'Flying Pig' sculptures and the Flying Pig Marathon.

Cincinnati is named after a society honouring which Roman, who saved Rome and returned to his farm?

The Society of the Cincinnati was an order of Revolutionary War officers, and George Washington was its first president general.

What was Cincinnati's original name when it was settled in 1788?

Surveyor John Filson built the word from French and Latin syllables meaning 'town opposite the mouth of the Licking'.

Because of its grand 19th-century architecture, Cincinnati was once nicknamed the what of America?

Music Hall, the Cincinnatian Hotel and the Roebling bridge earned it the comparison.

Which immigrant group most shaped 19th-century Cincinnati, founding many of its institutions?

Their neighbourhood was Over-the-Rhine, named because workers crossed a canal nicknamed 'the Rhine' to reach it.

The Over-the-Rhine neighbourhood is named for a waterway immigrants crossed to reach it. Which one?

OTR is now among the largest and most intact urban historic districts in the United States.

Which Cincinnati company, founded in 1837 by a candlemaker and a soap maker, gave the radio serial genre its name?

Sponsoring daytime dramas from 1932 onward is why they are called soap operas.

Which quality of Ivory soap, launched in 1879, became its first slogan?

The other famous slogan, '99 and 44/100 percent pure', came from an independent lab test Harley Procter commissioned.

Which supermarket giant was founded in Cincinnati in 1883 by a 23-year-old with $372 in savings?

It is now the city's largest employer, with more than 20,000 local staff, and was the first grocery chain with its own bakery.

Which stackable potato chip has its origins with a Cincinnati consumer-goods giant?

Grippo's chips are also a local brand, but the ones in the tube were invented by the soap company.

Cincinnati chili, the city's best-known dish, is traditionally served over what?

It was developed in the 1920s by Macedonian immigrants and is spiced with cinnamon, allspice and clove.

In Cincinnati chili parlour lingo, what does a 'three-way' add on top of a 'two-way'?

A four-way adds onions or beans under the cheese, and a five-way piles on both.

The Kiradjieff brothers named their 1922 Cincinnati chili business after which neighbouring building?

Later chili parlours copied even the location strategy, opening next to theatres.

Skyline Chili, founded in 1949, was named for what?

Founder Nicholas Lambrinides had cooked at the original Empress before opening in Price Hill.

Goetta, a Cincinnati breakfast staple, is a sausage-like mush of ground meat and which grain?

It came from German settlers stretching meat over several meals, much like scrapple in Pennsylvania.

Cincinnati's Graeter's is known for which method that makes unusually dense ice cream?

Oprah Winfrey called it the best ice cream she had ever tasted in 2002.

Findlay, founded in 1852 in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine, is Ohio's oldest continuously operating what?

Its Opening Day parade for the Reds is an annual city tradition.

In what year did the Cincinnati Red Stockings become baseball's first all-professional club?

The team also fixed red as the city's colour, and its players went on to found the Boston Red Stockings.

How many World Series titles have the Cincinnati Reds won?

They came in 1919, 1940, 1975, 1976 and 1990, the last a sweep of the heavily favoured Oakland A's.

The Reds' first World Series win, in 1919, was tainted because which opponents threw the series?

The Black Sox scandal saw eight Chicago players banned for life.

Which Major League Baseball milestone happened at Cincinnati's ballpark in 1935?

It was also the first baseball fireworks night, and Reds owner Powel Crosley made radios and refrigerators.

Which Reds pitcher is the only man in major league history to throw back-to-back no-hitters, in 1938?

The second of them came in the first night game ever played at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field.

What nickname was given to the dominant Reds teams of the mid-1970s?

The line-up included Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Pérez and Pete Rose, and won back-to-back titles in 1975 and 1976.

Cincinnati native Pete Rose holds the MLB career record for hits with how many?

He was banned from baseball in 1989 over betting on games, including his own team's.

Which relief trio helped the Reds sweep the 1990 World Series and were nicknamed 'the Nasty Boys'?

That 1990 team led the NL West wire to wire, the only National League team ever to do so.

Great American Ball Park replaced which venue the Reds shared with the Bengals?

The old venue had been renamed Cinergy Field, and the Reds shared it with the Bengals for 30 years.

Which legendary coach founded the Cincinnati Bengals in 1967 after leaving the Cleveland Browns?

He even chose the exact shade of orange used by his old team, possibly as a jab at Browns owner Art Modell.

Which team beat the Bengals in the Super Bowl in both 1982 and 1989?

The third loss came in 2022 to the Rams, 23-20, in Joe Burrow's second season.

Which Bengals running back was famous for an end-zone dance called 'the Shuffle' in the late 1980s?

His nickname came from a little brother who could not pronounce his first name, Elbert.

Cincinnati's Major League Soccer club, FC Cincinnati, began MLS play in which year?

It started life in 2016 as a USL club and drew crowds big enough to earn promotion to the top flight.

The Cincinnati Zoo, opened in 1875, holds which distinction among American zoos?

Its Reptile House, built in 1875, is the oldest surviving zoo building in America.

Martha, the last of which extinct bird species, died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914?

The zoo also housed Incas, the last Carolina parakeet, and keeps a memorial to both.

Fiona, the Cincinnati Zoo's celebrity hippo, was born prematurely in January of which year?

She was the first Nile hippo ever imaged by ultrasound before birth, and Cincinnati Children's Hospital helped keep her alive.

Harambe, shot at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016 after a child fell into his enclosure, was which subspecies?

He had come to Cincinnati from Texas in 2014 to learn adult behaviour in a new social group.

What world record did John Roebling's Cincinnati–Covington bridge hold when it opened on 1 January 1867?

John Roebling used it as a rehearsal for his Brooklyn Bridge, finished in 1883.

Cincinnati Union Terminal, finished in 1933, inspired which fictional building?

The Justice League HQ first appeared in the 1970s cartoon Super Friends; the real building now houses the Cincinnati Museum Center.

The Rotunda of Cincinnati Union Terminal boasts the largest what in the Western Hemisphere?

It was considered the largest in the world until the Sydney Opera House went up in 1973.

Cincinnati Music Hall (1878) is reputedly among America's most haunted buildings because it was built over what?

It is home to the symphony, the opera, the ballet and the May Festival it was built to house.

Which building was Cincinnati's tallest from 1930 until 2011?

The 49-storey Art Deco tower was finally topped by Great American Tower at Queen City Square.

The bronze Tyler Davidson Fountain on Fountain Square, dedicated in 1871, is also known by what name?

Businessman Henry Probasco went to Munich to commission it as a memorial to his brother-in-law.

Which Cincinnati-born president is the only person to have also served as chief justice?

His childhood home in Mount Auburn is now a National Historic Site.

Which blockbuster film director was born in Cincinnati in 1946?

His family left for New Jersey when he was six and Arizona when he was ten.

After leaving NASA in 1971, which astronaut taught aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati?

He was an Ohio native, born in Wapakoneta, and rarely gave interviews during his teaching years.

Funk bassist Bootsy Collins rose to fame playing with which singer before joining Parliament-Funkadelic?

He later led his own P-Funk side project, Bootsy's Rubber Band.

The University of Cincinnati was the first university to introduce which educational model in 1906?

Its medical college also developed a live polio vaccine and the antihistamine diphenhydramine.

Cincinnati's Xavier University is the fourth-oldest US university run by which Catholic order?

Its Musketeers and the UC Bearcats meet every year in the Crosstown Shootout basketball rivalry.

Which flood-prone riverside resort was replaced by the Mason, Ohio park (home of The Beast) that opened in 1972?

The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family both filmed episodes there in its first two years.

The Beast, opened at Kings Island in 1979, set records as the tallest, fastest and longest what?

The park's Eiffel Tower is a one-third scale replica of the Paris original.

The Cincinnati Open tennis tournament, dating from 1899, holds what distinction in the United States?

The first event was played on clay described as 'crushed brick dust' at the Avondale Athletic Club.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra gave the world premiere of which famous Aaron Copland piece?

Under Eugene Goossens it also premiered Copland's Lincoln Portrait and gave the US premiere of Mahler's Third.

The 1978-82 sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati was set at what kind of business?

New programme director Andy Travis flips the format from easy listening to rock and roll.

Which character in WKRP in Cincinnati was played by Howard Hesseman?

Loni Anderson played receptionist Jennifer Marlowe and Tim Reid was Venus Flytrap.

Cincinnati voters approved a subway system in 1917; what became of it?

World War I shortages, rising costs and the Depression killed it; the streetcar that opened in 2016 runs above the empty tunnels.

Cincinnati's modern streetcar, the Connector, opened in which year?

The city grew up on streetcars: horse-drawn cars ran from the 1870s and went electric in 1889.

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center opened on Cincinnati's riverfront in which year?

The city sat on the border of free Ohio and slave-holding Kentucky, and thousands crossed the river there to freedom.

What is the name of the Cincinnati Zoo's famous white Bengal tiger exhibit that opened in 1975?

The Bengals football team's name partly nods to the zoo's rare white tigers.

What was the Cincinnati Reds' ballpark called from 1912 to 1970, renamed for the radio magnate who bought the team?

Powel Crosley also started WLW, the Reds' flagship radio station.

How many of these call Music Hall's Springer Auditorium home: Symphony, Pops, Ballet, Opera, May Festival?

The May Festival is the older tradition; the hall was built in 1878 to give it a permanent home.

The 2001 Cincinnati riots began after police shot which unarmed 19-year-old in Over-the-Rhine?

They were the largest urban disturbance in the US since the 1992 Los Angeles riots and led to a police reform agreement.

Which September festival celebrates Cincinnati's Bavarian-style beer and food heritage?

Bockfest and the Taste of Cincinnati are the city's other big food festivals.

Which of these Cincinnati-founded businesses is a Fortune 500 company headquartered there?

Kroger, P&G, Cintas and Western & Southern are among the others; the rest are based in Columbus, Akron and Cleveland.

Cincinnati's skyline stood in for Monticello in the opening of which soap opera until 1980?

Its producer, a Cincinnati soap-maker, was naturally based in the city.

With 309,317 residents at the 2020 census, Cincinnati ranks where among Ohio's cities by population?

Only Columbus and Cleveland are larger, but Cincinnati anchors a tri-state metro spanning Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

Which Northwest Territory governor renamed Losantiville as Cincinnati two years after its founding?

He was then president of the Society of the Cincinnati, the Continental Army officers' group the city honours; surveyor Israel Ludlow may have suggested it.

Which poet immortalised the 'Queen City' nickname in the 1854 poem 'Catawba Wine'?

The nickname itself dates from an 1819 newspaper article; the 'City of Seven Hills' tag came from an 1853 magazine piece.

The Bearcats–Musketeers college basketball rivalry between Cincinnati and Xavier is known as what?

The 2011 edition ended in an on-court brawl that brought multiple suspensions.

Founded in 1881, the Cincinnati Art Museum was the first purpose-built one west of which mountains?

Its Eden Park home holds more than 67,000 works spanning 6,000 years, one of the Midwest's most comprehensive collections.

By river, Cincinnati lies midway between Pittsburgh and which Illinois city?

Downtown sits at the mouth of the Licking, the confluence where the first settlers landed in 1788.