49 Fun Facts About Columbus, Ohio

Columbus was founded in 1812 at the confluence of the Olentangy River and which other river?

Scioto and Olentangy meet at what was dense forest in 1812, used only as a hunting ground: the legislature picked the spot for a brand-new capital because it lay near the centre of the state.

Which Olympic gymnastics champion was born in Columbus in 1997 and raised in Texas by her grandparents?

Simone Biles left Columbus as a small child when her grandparents adopted her and her sister; in Spring, Texas, a day-care field trip to a gym at six started her career.

Which city was Ohio's first state capital and served again as capital until the government moved to Columbus in 1816?

Chillicothe hosted the government twice, with a two-year spell in Zanesville in between, before lawmakers tired of the back-and-forth and ordered a new capital built near the centre of the state.

At the 2020 census, Columbus was the third most populous US state capital, behind Phoenix and which other city?

Austin had about 962,000 residents to Columbus's 906,000. The Ohio capital owes its rank to decades of annexing its suburbs, which had to join the city to get its water and sewer lines.

Which Columbus mayor of the 1940s went on to serve four terms as governor of Ohio?

Jim Rhodes was elected mayor at 34 and governor in 1962. His darkest day in that office came on 4 May 1970, when Ohio National Guard troops shot four students dead at Kent State.

Columbus earned the nickname 'The Arch City' from what?

Wooden arches spanning High Street first went up in 1888 to light the way for a huge reunion of Union army veterans, then stayed on to carry the power lines for the city's streetcars.

The Great Flood of 1913, which killed more than 90 people in Columbus, devastated which neighbourhood?

Franklinton, on low ground west of the river, was engulfed when the levees gave way; a seven-mile floodwall finished in 2004 finally lifted the building limits that had held the neighbourhood back.

Which Columbus camp held thousands of Confederate prisoners and still has one of the largest Confederate cemeteries in the North?

Camp Chase was named for Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's Treasury secretary; three decades on, a wounded Union veteran, William Knauss, led the drive to mark the graves of the 2,000-odd Confederates buried there.

The Ohio Statehouse is famous for lacking what feature that visitors expect on a capitol building?

A dome was in every early design, but the builders capped the cupola with a low conical roof instead. Work once stopped for eight years, and the buried foundations were grazed as pasture.

Which workforce built the foundation and ground floor of the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus?

Prison inmates from the Ohio Penitentiary did the early work, until skilled tradesmen objected that convicts were taking well-paid jobs and the hiring was changed for the rest of the build.

Ohio State University was founded in 1870 under what original name?

Agricultural and Mechanical College was the name on its land-grant charter; once trustees chose to teach far more than farming, the legislature renamed it The Ohio State University in 1878.

Which 1965 hit by the McCoys, a staple of the Ohio State marching band, is Ohio's official rock song?

Hang On Sloopy fell flat when the band first tried it, on a rainy day in 1965, after an arranger had begged the director to play it; within weeks fans were chanting 'We want Sloopy!'

As of 2025, which Ohio State running back is the only player to have won the Heisman Trophy twice?

Archie Griffin, a Columbus native, fumbled his only carry in his first game as a freshman, then ran for a school-record 239 yards in his second.

In the Ohio State marching band's Script Ohio, which instrument's player traditionally dots the 'i'?

Sousaphone players were not the first choice: the opening dot, in 1936, went to a cornet player, and the director switched to the band's biggest horn the following year to make it stand out.

The Columbus Blue Jackets' name and logos are inspired by Ohio's contribution to what?

The Civil War link honours a state that sent a larger share of its people into the Union army than any other; the club chose the name over 'Justice' after a contest that drew 14,000 entries.

Which sports pioneer owned the Columbus Crew and paid for its 1999 stadium, the first built for an MLS team?

Lamar Hunt paid for it privately, setting off a wave of soccer-only grounds across the league; decades earlier he had given American football the name 'Super Bowl'.

Where did the Columbus Crew play home games from 1996 to 1998, before their own ground opened?

Ohio State's Horseshoe was a poor fit: most of its 90,000 seats were closed off, the pitch was cramped and night games needed rented lights, so the club built a ground of its own.

As of 2025, the Columbus Clippers are the Triple-A affiliate of which MLB team?

Cleveland Guardians prospects have come through Columbus only since 2009; from 1979 to 2006 the Clippers were the top farm club of the New York Yankees, winning seven league titles.

Jack Nicklaus's Memorial Tournament is held at Muirfield Village in which Columbus suburb?

Dublin got the course when Nicklaus, born in Columbus, set out to build a tournament of his own; he named it after Muirfield in Scotland, where he won his first Open in 1966.

Which film star hosts the annual Columbus sports festival that grew out of a bodybuilding contest?

Arnold Schwarzenegger first triumphed in Columbus as a bodybuilder, winning the 1970 Mr. World title there; he came back in 1989 to launch the contest that grew into the festival.

Before founding Wendy's in Columbus, Dave Thomas revived four failing local restaurants of which chain?

KFC it was: against Colonel Sanders's own advice, Thomas took on the four Columbus outlets, trimmed the menu and put up a sign like a revolving chicken bucket, then sold his stake in 1968, the year before Wendy's opened.

Which bestselling children's horror writer was born in Columbus and edited Ohio State's humour magazine as a student?

R. L. Stine began with jokes, not scares: he typed joke books on an attic typewriter from the age of nine, ran Ohio State's Sundial for three years and wrote as Jovial Bob Stine long before Goosebumps.

Which burger chain, founded in Wichita in 1921, has kept its headquarters in Columbus since the 1930s?

White Castle, often called the first fast-food chain, sold its burgers for five cents; co-founder Billy Ingram bought out his partner in 1933 and moved the head office to Columbus the next year.

Nationwide, one of the city's Fortune 500 companies, began in 1926 as an insurer for which group?

Farm Bureau Mutual was set up because farmers were paying the same car-insurance rates as city drivers despite having fewer accidents; it took the name Nationwide in 1955 as it grew beyond farm country.

Battelle Memorial Institute's development of Chester Carlson's dry-copying idea led to which company?

Xerox was the long shot that paid off: more than twenty companies turned Carlson down before Battelle took on his process in 1944 and a small firm called Haloid bought the rights.

Which Columbus retail magnate bought the fledgling Victoria's Secret chain in 1982?

Les Wexner had opened his first shop, The Limited, in 1963 with $5,000 borrowed from his aunt; he took Victoria's Secret into the malls and to some 350 stores within a decade.

Columbus has long been used by national restaurant and retail chains as what?

A test market: its mix of incomes, backgrounds and city, suburb and countryside makes Columbus a cross-section of the nation, so a new burger has to win over diners there before it goes national.

Which Columbus museum moved in 1999 into a riverfront building made from the old Central High School?

COSI, short for Center of Science and Industry, soon found its new home costly: after voters turned down a funding levy in 2004, it closed the south wing and the planetarium to cut costs.

Columbus's Topiary Park recreates which famous painting in clipped shrubbery?

Seurat's La Grande Jatte grows here as what its sculptor, James T. Mason, called 'a landscape of a painting of a landscape': clipped shrub figures stand around a pond that plays the Seine.

Which Columbus-born New Yorker cartoonist and humorist has a museum in his family home there?

James Thurber lived in the house as an Ohio State student, and an eerie night there in 1915 gave him his story 'The Night the Ghost Got In'; the museum now offers ghost investigations.

Which World War I flying ace's boyhood home in Columbus is a National Historic Landmark?

Eddie Rickenbacker was a racing driver before he was a pilot: he competed in the Indianapolis 500, then scored 26 aerial victories to become America's leading ace of the war.

Which director took charge of the Columbus Zoo in 1978 and became a regular on national television?

Jack Hanna started with a local show called Hanna's Ark, then took zoo animals onto David Letterman's stage and Good Morning America, which turned a little-known zoo into a national name.

Colo, born at the Columbus Zoo in 1956, was the first of which animal ever born in captivity?

Gorilla births in zoos began with her: rejected by her mother, Colo was hand-raised by keepers like a human baby, in clothes and on bottles of formula, and lived to the age of 60.

Which German Village restaurant's founding family has run the Ohio State Fair's oldest concession stand since 1914?

Schmidt's Sausage Haus is the younger business: the family's meat-packing house opened the fair stand in 1914 as an advert, and the restaurant followed only in the 1960s, when the packing house closed.

Which 555-foot Art Deco skyscraper was the tallest building in Columbus from 1927 to 1974?

LeVeque Tower opened as the American Insurance Union Citadel, but the insurer went under in the Depression, earning its skyscraper the nickname 'IOU Tower' before new owners renamed it.

Which Columbus public market, founded in 1876 on the site of a city graveyard, is now a downtown food hall?

North Market lost its building to fire in 1948; when the city chose not to rebuild, the merchants pooled their money and bought a war-surplus Quonset hut, which housed them until 1995.

As of 2018, Columbus had the largest US community of refugees driven out of which Himalayan kingdom?

Bhutan forced out more than 100,000 of its Nepali-speaking people by the 1990s; after years in camps in Nepal, over 90,000 were resettled in the United States, some 27,000 of them in Columbus.

Columbus's airport, formerly Port Columbus, was renamed in 2016 after which Ohio-born astronaut?

John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, went back 36 years later: in 1998, while still a senator for Ohio, he flew on the shuttle Discovery at the age of 77.

Who was elected in 1999 as Columbus's first African American mayor, going on to serve a record 16 years?

Michael Coleman passed the old record of 14 years in January 2014; on his watch the derelict Ohio Penitentiary site was rebuilt as the Arena District.

ComFest takes over which Columbus green space on the last weekend of June?

Goodale Park hosts a festival with no corporate sponsors: ComFest, first held in 1972, is run entirely by volunteers and pays its way by selling beer in souvenir mugs.

Which Italian city became the first sister city of Columbus, Ohio, in 1955?

Genoa, the explorer's birthplace, marked the tie by shipping over a 22-foot bronze statue of him; it stood outside City Hall for 65 years, until the city took it down in 2020.

Which major sports league kept its head office in Columbus from 1921 to 1939?

The NFL was run from Columbus because its president, Joseph Carr, was a local man who had managed the city's own team, the Panhandles; on taking charge in 1921 he brought the league office home.

A full-size replica of which ship was moored on the downtown Columbus riverfront from 1991 to 2014?

The Santa María replica was built for the 500th anniversary of the explorer's first voyage and trucked into town in two halves; in 2014 it was taken apart again and put into storage in ten pieces.

What stands today on the site of Columbus's Union Station, where the city's last passenger train called in 1977?

The convention center took over the site of what had been the world's first union station, opened in 1851; the last station building came down to criticism of how quietly the demolition was carried out.

The world's first 24-hour car race was held in 1905 at which Columbus venue?

Driving Park began as a horse-racing track, hence the name; cars took over the oval in the 1900s, and the neighbourhood that grew up beside it kept the name long after the racing stopped.

Ohio State students' electric Buckeye Bullet cars set their world speed records at which famous venue?

The Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, a hard salt crust some 12 miles long, gave the student-built streamliners room to top 300 mph; 'Buckeye Bullet' was first the nickname of Ohio State sprinter Jesse Owens.

Which horse breed's 'Congress', billed as the world's largest single-breed show, fills the Ohio Expo Center every October?

Quarter Horse owners first met for a three-day show in 1967 that drew about 5,000 people; it has since swollen into a three-week event that takes over the state fairgrounds.

Which Steven Spielberg film is set in Columbus, though it was not filmed there?

Ready Player One puts its hero in a Columbus of 2045, yet the city on screen is Birmingham, England, whose streets stood in for Ohio during the 2016 shoot.

In 1910 a biplane made the world's first commercial cargo flight, carrying silk to Columbus from which Ohio city?

Dayton, the Wright brothers' home town, was the starting point: one of their exhibition pilots, Philip Parmelee, flew the silk some 65 miles to a Columbus dry-goods store in about an hour.