99 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?

The Queen City nickname was in print by 1819, when a local newspaper hailed Cincinnati as 'the fair Queen of the West'; the Gem City is Dayton, the Forest City Cleveland and the Rubber City Akron.

Which meat trade made 1840s Cincinnati the largest processing centre in the United States?

Pork packing earned Cincinnati the nickname 'Porkopolis': by the 1840s it slaughtered and packed more hogs than any other American city, a lead it lost after the Civil War.

Who was first president general of the Society of the Cincinnati, the city's namesake order?

George Washington was the Society of the Cincinnati's first president general, from 1783 until his death in 1799; the Continental Army officers' order took its name from the Roman farmer-dictator Cincinnatus.

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

Losantiville was surveyor John Filson's 1788 coinage: 'L' for the Licking River, Latin 'os' (mouth), Greek 'anti' (opposite) and French 'ville' (town), meaning 'town opposite the mouth of the Licking'. It was renamed in 1790.

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

Cincinnati was called the 'Paris of America' for its 19th-century grandeur: Music Hall (1878), the Cincinnatian Hotel (1882) and the John A. Roebling bridge (1866) earned the comparison.

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

German immigrants shaped 19th-century Cincinnati: by 1850 more than a quarter of its residents were German-born, and their Over-the-Rhine district took its name from the canal they crossed, nicknamed 'the Rhine'.

Over-the-Rhine is named for which waterway that immigrants crossed to reach the neighbourhood?

The Miami and Erie Canal, which ran along the route of today's Central Parkway, was nicknamed 'the Rhine' by the immigrants living beyond it; crossing it took you 'over the Rhine'.

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

Procter & Gamble, founded in 1837 by candlemaker William Procter and soap maker James Gamble, sponsored radio serials such as 'Ma Perkins' from 1933, which is why the genre is called soap opera.

Which quality of Ivory soap, launched in 1879, became a famous advertising slogan?

'It floats' became Ivory's best-known slogan because air whipped into the mix makes the bar float; its other slogan, '99 44/100 percent pure', came from an 1882 chemical analysis.

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

Kroger began in 1883 when 23-year-old Bernard 'Barney' Kroger opened a grocery at 66 Pearl Street with his $372 savings; in 1901 it became the first grocery chain to run its own bakeries.

Which potato chip brand was created by a Cincinnati consumer-goods giant better known for soap?

Pringles was developed in the 1960s by Cincinnati's soap-and-detergent giant; the saddle-shaped chips are pressed from dehydrated potato dough rather than sliced from whole potatoes, which is why they stack neatly in a tube.

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

Spaghetti is the base of Cincinnati chili, a thin meat sauce spiced with cinnamon, allspice and clove that Macedonian immigrants created in 1922 and ladled over a plate of pasta.

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?

A burlesque theatre called the Empress stood next to the Kiradjieff brothers' downtown stand, so they named their 1922 business Empress Chili, the original Cincinnati chili parlour.

In which Cincinnati neighbourhood did Skyline Chili open its first restaurant in 1949?

Price Hill was home to the first Skyline Chili, opened on Glenway Avenue in 1949 by Greek immigrant Nicholas Lambrinides, who named it for the downtown skyline visible from the spot.

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

Steel-cut oats, also called pinhead oats, are simmered with ground pork and beef to make goetta; immigrant families used the grain to stretch meat across several meals, much as scrapple uses cornmeal.

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

The French pot process freezes just a few gallons at a time in a spinning chilled pot, folding in very little air, which gives Graeter's its dense texture; Oprah Winfrey praised it in 2002.

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

Findlay is Ohio's oldest continuously operating Public market: its iron-framed market house was begun in 1852 and opened in 1855, and its Opening Day parade to the Reds' home opener is a city tradition.

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

In 1869 the Cincinnati Red Stockings, managed by Harry Wright, went undefeated on a national tour as the first openly all-salaried team; after the club folded, Wright took his core players to Boston in 1871.

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

The Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 Series for gamblers; eight players, including 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson, were banned for life in the Black Sox scandal.

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

The first night game in the majors was played on 24 May 1935, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a button at the White House to switch on the lights and the Reds beat Philadelphia 2-1.

Which Reds pitcher threw no-hitters in consecutive starts in June 1938?

Johnny Vander Meer no-hit the Boston Bees 3-0 on 11 June 1938 and the Brooklyn Dodgers 6-0 four days later, consecutive starts that produced two no-hitters.

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

The Big Red Machine, with Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Pérez and Pete Rose, won back-to-back World Series in 1975 and 1976 under manager Sparky Anderson.

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

Pete Rose finished with 4,256 hits, passing Ty Cobb's career total in Cincinnati on 11 September 1985; he was banned from baseball in 1989 for 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'?

Dibble, Charlton and Myers — Rob Dibble, Norm Charlton and Randy Myers — were the Reds' 'Nasty Boys' bullpen of 1990; Dibble and Myers shared NLCS MVP honours before the team swept Oakland in the World Series.

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

Riverfront Stadium opened in 1970 and was renamed Cinergy Field in 1996; the Reds shared it with the Bengals through 1999 and played there until 2002, before Great American Ball Park opened next door in 2003.

Which legendary coach founded the Cincinnati Bengals in 1967?

Paul Brown, fired by Cleveland owner Art Modell in 1963, founded the Bengals as an AFL expansion team in 1967 and coached them through 1975; he chose the same shade of orange his old team wore.

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

The San Francisco 49ers beat the Bengals 26-21 in Super Bowl XVI (January 1982) and 20-16 in Super Bowl XXIII (January 1989), the latter on Joe Montana's last-minute drive; the Bengals lost again to the Rams in 2022.

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

Ickey Woods, a rookie in 1988, ran for 1,066 yards and 15 touchdowns and celebrated each score with the Ickey Shuffle, helping the Bengals reach Super Bowl XXIII.

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

FC Cincinnati played its first MLS season in 2019 after three seasons in the USL, where record crowds at Nippert Stadium won it an expansion franchise; it moved to TQL Stadium in 2021.

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

The second oldest zoo in the United States, it opened in September 1875, a year after Philadelphia's; its 1875 Reptile House, originally the Monkey House, is the country's oldest surviving zoo building.

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

Passenger pigeon Martha died on 1 September 1914, ending a species that once numbered in the billions; the zoo also housed Incas, the last Carolina parakeet, who died there in 1918.

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

Fiona arrived on 24 January 2017, six weeks premature and weighing 29 pounds, far below the 55-pound minimum for a newborn hippo; Cincinnati Children's Hospital staff helped place an IV that kept her alive.

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

Harambe was a Western lowland gorilla, the most numerous of the four gorilla subspecies; born at Texas's Gladys Porter Zoo in 1999, he moved to Cincinnati in 2014 to join a new social group.

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

Longest suspension span in the world at 1,057 feet when it opened, the bridge was John A. Roebling's prototype for the Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883 under his son Washington.

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

The Hall of Justice, the Justice League's headquarters in the 1973 cartoon Super Friends, was modelled by Hanna-Barbera artist Al Gmuer on the terminal's Art Deco facade; the building houses the Cincinnati Museum Center.

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

The rotunda's Semi-dome, 180 feet wide and 106 feet high, is the largest in the Western Hemisphere; Winold Reiss's glass-mosaic murals of Cincinnati workers and industry curve along its walls.

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

A pauper's cemetery, the potter's field of the old Commercial Hospital, lay beneath the site; remains turned up during construction and later excavations, feeding the ghost stories at the hall built in 1878 for the May Festival.

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

Carew Tower, a 49-storey Art Deco landmark completed in 1930, reigned until the 665-foot Great American Tower opened in 2011; its hotel, shops and offices made it an early mixed-use 'city within a city'.

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

The Genius of Water is the crowning figure, a woman with outstretched hands raining water; Henry Probasco had the fountain cast in Munich by Ferdinand von Miller as a memorial to his brother-in-law Tyler Davidson.

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

William Howard Taft, born in Cincinnati's Mount Auburn in 1857, was president from 1909 to 1913 and chief justice from 1921 to 1930; his boyhood home is a National Historic Site.

Which blockbuster film director was born in Cincinnati in 1946?

Steven Spielberg was born in Cincinnati on 18 December 1946; his family moved to New Jersey in 1952 and to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1957, where he made his first amateur films.

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

Neil Armstrong, born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, taught aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati from 1971 to 1979, insisting on being treated as an ordinary professor and avoiding publicity.

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

James Brown hired Cincinnati teenagers Bootsy Collins and his brother Catfish for the J.B.'s in 1970, recording 'Sex Machine' and 'Super Bad'; Collins joined Parliament-Funkadelic in 1972 and later led Bootsy's Rubber Band.

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

Co-operative education began at the University of Cincinnati in 1906, when engineering professor Herman Schneider alternated classroom weeks with paid work in local industry; the model spread to universities worldwide.

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

Jesuits have run Xavier since 1840; founded in 1831 by Bishop Edward Fenwick as the Athenaeum, it ranks behind only Georgetown, Saint Louis and Spring Hill among Jesuit universities by age.

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

Coney Island, on the Ohio River east of downtown, flooded so often that its owners moved the rides to Kings Island in 1972; The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch both filmed episodes at the new park.

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

Wooden roller coaster The Beast opened in April 1979 with a 7,359-foot track, then the longest of its kind in the world; its 135-foot first drop and 65 mph top speed were also wooden-coaster records.

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

Oldest still held in its original city: the tournament began in September 1899 on the clay courts of the Avondale Athletic Club, and Cincinnati has hosted it longer than any other American city has kept a tennis event.

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

Fanfare for the Common Man was premiered by the Cincinnati Symphony under Eugene Goossens on 12 March 1943, one of 18 wartime fanfares Goossens commissioned from American composers.

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

A radio station, the struggling AM outlet WKRP, is the setting; new programme director Andy Travis flips its format from easy listening to rock and roll in the 1978 pilot.

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

Dr. Johnny Fever, the burned-out morning DJ who had been fired elsewhere for saying 'booger' on air, was Howard Hesseman's role; Tim Reid played Venus Flytrap and Loni Anderson receptionist Jennifer Marlowe.

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 Freedom Center opened in August 2004 on the riverfront between the two stadiums; it stands where the Ohio River divided free soil from slave territory, a crossing point for thousands of freedom seekers.

Which singer and actress, the star of 'Pillow Talk', was born in Cincinnati in 1922?

Doris Day was born Doris Mary Kappelhoff in Cincinnati on 3 April 1922; she sang with Les Brown's band before Hollywood, and 'Pillow Talk' (1959) brought her an Academy Award nomination.

What was the Reds' ballpark called from 1934 to 1970, after its radio-magnate owner?

Crosley Field was the new name of Redland Field after Powel Crosley Jr., maker of Crosley radios and founder of WLW, bought the Reds in 1934; the club played its last game there on 24 June 1970.

Which architect designed Cincinnati Music Hall, opened on Elm Street in 1878?

Samuel Hannaford designed Music Hall in High Victorian Gothic style; it opened in 1878 facing Washington Park, and Hannaford's firm later designed Cincinnati City Hall, completed in 1893.

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

Timothy Thomas was shot on 7 April 2001 while fleeing a police officer over misdemeanour warrants; the four days of unrest that followed were the largest US urban disturbance since 1992 and led to the 2002 Collaborative Agreement reforming policing.

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

Oktoberfest Zinzinnati, held downtown each September since 1976, bills itself as America's largest Oktoberfest and opens with the 'Running of the Wieners' dachshund race.

Which of these Ohio companies is headquartered in Cincinnati?

Fifth Third Bank, named for a 1908 merger of two numbered banks, is based on Fountain Square; Wendy's sits in Dublin, Goodyear in Akron and Sherwin-Williams in Cleveland.

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

The Edge of Night, the crime-flavoured CBS and later ABC serial that ran from 1956 to 1984, opened on a shot of downtown Cincinnati standing in for its fictional Monticello.

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

Third place: Columbus (905,748) and Cleveland (372,624) were larger at the 2020 census, though Cincinnati's tri-state metro area of about 2.2 million was the largest in the state.

Which Northwest Territory governor gave Cincinnati its name in 1790, two years after its founding?

Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory, renamed the settlement Cincinnati in January 1790 in honour of the Society of the Cincinnati, the Revolutionary officers' order of which he was a member.

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow praised Cincinnati's Catawba wine in 1854, calling the city 'the Queen of the West, in her garlands dressed'; the nickname itself dates from an 1819 newspaper article.

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

The Crosstown Shootout, first played in the 1927-28 season between campuses about three miles apart, is one of college basketball's fiercest city rivalries; the December 2011 game ended in a bench-clearing brawl and eight suspensions.

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

The Alleghenies marked the frontier of the old East, and the museum's 1886 Eden Park building was the first purpose-built art museum west of them; its collection of more than 67,000 works spans 6,000 years.

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

Cairo, at the Ohio's mouth on the Mississippi, is 981 river miles below Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati sits near mile 470, almost exactly halfway; the city faces the Licking River's mouth on the opposite bank.

Which children's modelling compound began in 1930s Cincinnati as a putty for cleaning wallpaper?

Play-Doh was born when nursery teacher Kay Zufall read that the putty worked for art projects, just as washable vinyl wallpaper was killing demand for the cleaner.

Which future tabloid talk-show host served as mayor of Cincinnati in 1977, when he was just 33?

Jerry Springer was picked by fellow council members for the one-year post, then became the city's top-rated TV news anchor before his talk show launched in 1991.

The crown on Cincinnati's Great American Tower, opened in 2011, was inspired by a tiara worn by whom?

Princess Diana was pictured wearing it in a book that architect Gyo Obata was flipping through; the finished tower ended an older skyscraper's 81-year reign as the city's tallest.

During the 1950s Red Scare, the Cincinnati Reds officially changed their team name to what?

Redlegs was announced in April 1953 so that nobody would tie the ball club to communism, and the old name only came back for the 1959 season.

After finishing his Cincinnati river crossing in 1867, John Roebling designed which famous New York landmark?

Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883 with a central stretch of about 1,595 feet, roughly half as long again as the 1,057 feet he had bridged over the Ohio River.

Albert Sabin spent thirty years in Cincinnati developing an oral vaccine against which disease?

Polio outbreaks in Cincinnati stopped after 78,476 of the city's schoolchildren were given his live-virus drops in April and May 1960.

Which novel did Harriet Beecher Stowe base partly on what she witnessed while living in Cincinnati?

Uncle Tom's Cabin drew on a slave auction she watched on a trip across the Ohio River in 1833, a year after she moved to the city aged 21.

Sarah, clocked at 5.95 seconds over 100 metres at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2012, was what kind of animal?

Cheetah Sarah was already 11 years old when she set the mark, touching 61 miles an hour; one onlooker said she looked like a polka-dotted missile.

In which 1988 film does Tom Cruise's character travel to Cincinnati and discover a brother he never knew?

Rain Man spent nine weeks shooting in and around Cincinnati and went on to win four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

In 1853 Cincinnati became the first American city to set up a fully paid, professional what?

Fire department chief number one was Miles Greenwood, whose own ironworks had burned the year before, a loss that pushed him to find better ways of fighting fires.

Which quarterback did the Cincinnati Bengals draft first overall in 2020 after his Heisman season at LSU?

Joe Burrow used his Heisman speech to highlight hunger in his Ohio hometown, and the Athens County food bank soon received $450,000 in donations.

Which Cincinnati Bengals receiver legally changed his surname to Ochocinco in 2008 to match his jersey number?

Chad Johnson wore number 85, later teased a switch to Hachi Go, the Japanese equivalent, and finally took his old surname back in 2012.

Johnny Bench, a two-time National League MVP with the 1970s Cincinnati Reds, played which position?

Catcher Johnny Bench won ten straight Gold Gloves behind the plate and twice led the National League in home runs, rare power for the position.

Cincinnati-born Pete Rose earned which nickname from Whitey Ford after sprinting to first base on a walk?

Charlie Hustle began as a derisive jab from the Yankees pitcher during a spring training game, yet it stuck to Rose for life.

Which future NBA star led the University of Cincinnati to two Final Fours before turning professional in 1960?

Oscar Robertson, the Big O, averaged 33.8 points a game for the Bearcats and later became the first NBA player to average a triple-double over a whole season.

Which media mogul, the founder of CNN, was born in Cincinnati in 1938 to a billboard magnate?

Ted Turner took over the family billboard firm in 1963 and built a media empire that also owned baseball's Atlanta Braves, World Series winners in 1995.

Which singing cowboy, billed as the King of the Cowboys, was born Leonard Slye in Cincinnati in 1911?

Roy Rogers was a baby when his father built a houseboat from salvaged lumber and floated the family up the Ohio River to Portsmouth in 1912.

Which Cincinnati toy company, named after a street, made the first Star Wars action figures?

Kenner won the licence in 1976 after Mego turned it down, and its 3.75-inch figures became the toy industry's standard size.

Which playing-card brand did a Cincinnati firm that once printed circus posters begin producing in 1885?

Bicycle became the firm's most popular line; the cards were made in Norwood, Ohio, until 2009, when the factory moved across the river to Erlanger, Kentucky.

Margaret Garner's 1856 escape across the frozen Ohio River to Cincinnati inspired which Toni Morrison novel?

Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize; the real Garner crossed during the coldest winter in 60 years, and nine others in her party got away to Canada.

Which former president presided over the cornerstone ceremony for the Cincinnati Observatory in 1843?

John Quincy Adams, then 76, made the long journey west for the ceremony, and the hilltop site, Mount Ida, was renamed Mount Adams in his honour.

Cincinnati Observatory director Cleveland Abbe used telegraphed reports to pioneer what kind of daily bulletin?

Weather forecasts earned him the nickname Old Probability for their reliability, and he was soon recruited by the national weather service Congress created in 1870.

Which architect, later the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, designed Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center?

Zaha Hadid beat Rem Koolhaas and other famous names to the job, and had completed only a handful of buildings when she took architecture's top award a year after it opened.

Cincinnati's 16-storey Ingalls Building of 1903 was the world's first skyscraper made from which material?

Reinforced concrete had never gone above six storeys, and many engineers expected the tower to collapse under wind loads or even its own weight.

Incas, the last known member of which American parrot species, died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918?

Carolina parakeet Incas died within a year of his mate, Lady Jane; the last known wild bird had been killed in Florida in 1904, and extinction was declared in 1939.

Which slugger, a graduate of Cincinnati's Moeller High School, was traded home to the Reds by Seattle in 2000?

Ken Griffey Jr. switched from number 24 to 30, the number his father had worn for the Reds, because 24 was already retired in honour of Tony Pérez.

Which shortening did a Cincinnati soap company launch in 1911 as the first made entirely from vegetable oil?

Crisco, a name trimmed from the phrase crystallized cottonseed oil, took off when its makers gave away cookbooks in which every recipe called for it.

Cincinnatus, the Roman statesman whose name lives on in Cincinnati, famously gave up power to return to what?

His farm was where, by tradition, messengers found him at the plough in 458 BC; he took supreme command, won within sixteen days and promptly resigned.

Which sitcom family visited Kings Island amusement park in the 1973 episode titled The Cincinnati Kids?

The Brady Bunch followed The Partridge Family, which had filmed an episode at the newly opened park the year before; both shows aired on ABC.

The Cincinnati Royals, an NBA team that left Ohio in 1972, play on as which modern franchise?

Sacramento Kings is the name they reached by way of Kansas City, where Royals became Kings to avoid confusion with the local baseball team.