40 Fun Facts About Daytona Beach

Which beloved public television host was born in Daytona Beach and later spent twenty years in the Air Force?

Bob Ross found painting at a USO art class while stationed in Alaska. Its snowy peaks became the mountains he later painted for viewers on The Joy of Painting.

Which activity, a Daytona Beach tradition since the early 1900s, is still allowed on stretches of its hard-packed sand?

Driving cars on the sand is capped at 10 mph today. The same beach once hosted land speed record runs at more than 270 mph.

Which baseball pioneer played an integrated spring training game in Daytona Beach a year before his major league debut?

Jackie Robinson took the field on March 17, 1946, after Jacksonville and Sanford had locked their stadiums rather than let him play. The Daytona Beach ballpark now carries his name.

Which driver nicknamed the King holds the record with seven Daytona 500 victories, the last of them in 1981?

Richard Petty won his seven between 1964 and 1981, three more than anyone else. He later voiced a race car called the King in the Pixar film Cars.

Which educator opened a Daytona Beach school for Black girls in 1904 that grew into a university bearing her name?

Mary McLeod Bethune began with five girls and her own son as pupils. Her statue now stands for Florida in the US Capitol, where it replaced one of a Confederate general.

Which Tom Cruise film shot racing scenes in Daytona Beach and ends with his character winning the city's biggest race?

Days of Thunder was filmed in and around Daytona Beach and Charlotte. Cruise had already tested a stock car at the Speedway alongside Paul Newman in 1987.

The Daytona 500, the finale of February's Speedweeks, is often called stock car racing's version of which event?

Super Bowl comparisons suit a race that carries by far the largest purse in the sport. Even so, it awards the same championship points as any other race.

Which sitting US president flew to Daytona on July 4, 1984, and watched a stock car legend take his 200th win?

Ronald Reagan gave the command to start engines by phone from Air Force One, then landed and watched the finish. No sitting president had attended a NASCAR race before.

Daytona Beach's minor league baseball team, based on an island in the river, takes its Spanish name from which animal?

Turtles in Spanish are tortugas, the name the club chose after two decades as the Daytona Cubs. The change came when its link with Chicago's Cubs ended.

Which Swiss watchmaker became title sponsor of Daytona's 24-hour sports car race and gives its winners a timepiece?

Rolex names its racing chronograph the Daytona after the Speedway. Winning drivers in every class of the 24-hour race take one home.

Which seven-time champion, known as the Intimidator, finally won the Daytona 500 in 1998 on his twentieth attempt?

Dale Earnhardt drove to victory lane past crew members from every team, who lined pit road to shake his hand. Crashes and breakdowns had cost him the race for nineteen years.

Which former IndyCar race winner became the first woman to take pole position for the Daytona 500, in 2013?

Danica Patrick was a rookie that year and went on to finish eighth. No woman had placed in the top ten of the race before.

Which Formula One world champion and Indianapolis 500 winner also won the Daytona 500, back in 1967?

Mario Andretti led 112 laps that day, including the last 33. It stayed the only win of his career in stock car racing's top series.

Which Japanese company released Daytona USA, the 1994 arcade racing game modelled on the Florida speedway?

Sega mapped the real track for the game but skipped a NASCAR licence to save money, so it has no real drivers or sponsors. It became one of the highest-grossing arcade games ever.

Which Italian carmaker's 365 GTB/4 was nicknamed the Daytona after a 1-2-3 finish in the city's 24-hour race?

Ferrari never gave the car that name itself; the press did, after three of its prototypes crossed the banked finish line side by side in 1967.

Which Southern rock group was founded by Duane and Gregg, who spent their teenage years in Daytona Beach?

Allman Brothers Band founders Duane and Gregg moved to Daytona Beach from Nashville in 1959. Gregg graduated from Seabreeze High School there six years later.

Which NBA slam dunk champion and Toronto Raptors star was born in Daytona Beach and attended Mainland High School?

Vince Carter led Mainland to its first state title in 56 years. He was also offered a college scholarship for playing the saxophone.

Embry-Riddle, the university that moved to Daytona Beach from Miami in 1965, specializes in teaching which field?

Aviation and aerospace are the university's whole focus, and its campus sits beside the city airport with its own aircraft ramp. Its training fleet includes dozens of Cessna Skyhawks.

Which cable channel brought its Spring Break shows to Daytona Beach in 1986 as Fort Lauderdale turned students away?

MTV arrived after the mayor went on national television to invite college students to town. The city cut its ties with the channel in 1993, once he had lost re-election.

Which sport, the subject of a Netflix docuseries, holds its college national finals at Daytona Beach's Bandshell?

Cheerleading has no professional league, so the Daytona finals are the highest level a college squad can reach. Netflix followed Navarro College's team there in Cheer.

Daytona Beach lies in which Florida county, whose seat of government is the inland city of DeLand?

Volusia County has been run from DeLand since 1887, even though Daytona Beach is far better known. Before that the seat was the small settlement of Enterprise.

Which tidal waterway, part of the Intracoastal Waterway, splits Daytona Beach between its mainland and its beachside?

Halifax River honours a British nobleman, the same one Nova Scotia's capital is named for. The British renamed it while they held Florida in the 1700s.

Which Standard Oil tycoon bought the railway into Daytona in 1889 and made it part of his Florida East Coast line?

Henry Flagler kept pushing his rails down the coast until they reached Key West in 1912. His trains and hotels turned Florida's Atlantic shore into a winter resort.

Which British racer set the last land speed record on Daytona's sand in 1935, at more than 276 mph?

Malcolm Campbell took his car, Blue Bird, to Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats later that year and became the first driver to pass 300 mph. Record chasers never returned to the beach.

Which city just north of Daytona calls itself the Birthplace of Speed after timed sand runs in 1903?

Ormond Beach also drew John D. Rockefeller, who spent the winters of his last years at an estate there called The Casements.

Which interstate crosses Florida from Tampa through Orlando and ends where it meets I-95 at Daytona Beach?

I-4 is about 132 miles long and never leaves Florida. Between Tampa and Orlando, its median was once set aside for a high-speed rail line that was later cancelled.

Ponce de Leon Inlet, home of Florida's tallest lighthouse near Daytona Beach, was named until 1927 after which insect?

Mosquito Inlet was the old name, and the surrounding county was once called Mosquito County too. The 175-foot lighthouse on its north shore was completed in 1887.

Which drinks brand's memorabilia, given by a bottling family, fills a gallery at Daytona Beach's main museum?

Coca-Cola got its contoured bottle from the Root Glass Company, and the Root family's collection here includes the original moulds and patents for it.

Daytona Beach's Museum of Arts and Sciences displays North America's most complete skeleton of which Ice Age animal?

Giant ground sloth remains were dug up in Daytona Beach itself. The species, Eremotherium, is also known from fossil sites as far away as Brazil.

Which network aired the 1979 Daytona 500, the first shown live from start to finish, as a snowstorm kept viewers home?

CBS caught a last-lap crash between the leaders and the fistfight that followed it in the infield. With much of the Northeast snowed in, a far bigger audience than usual saw it happen.

Which driver won the 1976 Daytona 500 by limping across the line after crashing with his great rival on the last lap?

David Pearson crawled across the line in his wrecked car after both leaders spun into the infield grass just yards from the finish. His rival's car would not fire again.

The Daytona 500 winner's trophy is named for which General Motors design chief, credited with creating the Corvette?

Harley Earl was a friend of the Speedway's founder, who named the trophy as a mark of respect. The car on top of it is modelled on his Firebird I concept.

Which Daytona Beach filling station owner founded NASCAR in the 1940s and later built the city's Speedway?

Bill France had moved down from Washington, D.C., and finished fifth in the first stock car race on the beach in 1936. He took over running the course two years later.

Which shape, chosen to give fans better sight lines, describes the 2.5-mile track at Daytona International Speedway?

Tri-oval was a revolutionary layout when the track opened. Its turns are banked at 31 degrees, so steep that the paving machines had to be anchored to bulldozers.

Which Daytona Beach hotel, opened in 1941, hosted the rooftop bar meeting that led to the founding of NASCAR?

The Streamline is recognised as the birthplace of stock car racing's governing body. Drivers, owners and promoters met in its Ebony Bar in December 1947.

The old Daytona Beach Road Course sent stock cars up the sand and back along which paved coastal Florida highway?

A1A follows the Atlantic shore for the length of the state. In 2024 the whole route was designated the Jimmy Buffett Memorial Highway.

Junior Johnson won the 1960 Daytona 500 in a slower, year-old car by exploiting which aerodynamic trick?

Drafting, tucking in behind a faster car to be pulled along, was barely understood at the time. Rivals copied it so quickly that it became a standard tactic.

Which Cuban ruler kept a home in Daytona Beach during the 1940s, between his two spells as president?

Fulgencio Batista split those years between Florida and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. He went home to run for president in 1952 and took power in a coup instead.

Which women's professional tour was wooed to Daytona Beach in the late 1980s and built its headquarters there?

LPGA headquarters sit beside two courses that carry the tour's name. The first, designed by Rees Jones, opened in 1994.

Which stock car star won the 1962 Daytona 500 from pole in a black and gold Pontiac?

Fireball Roberts got the name as an American Legion pitcher with a fierce fastball, not from his driving. He also won the Speedway's July race that year.