49 Fun Facts About Kansas City

Kansas City claims only Rome has more of the feature that gives it which nickname?

The City of Fountains began practically: its first fountains were 1890s drinking troughs for horses, and in 1992 the city officially added the title to its emblem.

Which Kansas City team plays its home games at Arrowhead Stadium?

The Chiefs got a football-only home because the city scrapped plans for a single multi-purpose dome and built separate football and baseball stadiums side by side.

The Kansas City Royals take their name from the American Royal, which began in 1899 as what?

A cattle show: it opened as the National Hereford Show in a tent at the Kansas City Stockyards, and only later added the horse shows, rodeo and barbecue contest it is known for.

Which greeting-card company has been based in Kansas City since its founder arrived in 1910?

Hallmark began when teenager Joyce Hall stepped off a train from Nebraska carrying two shoeboxes of picture postcards to sell.

Along with brown sugar and tomatoes, which ingredient defines thick, sweet Kansas City-style barbecue sauce?

Molasses sweetness is relatively modern: Henry Perry's original sauce was described as harsh and peppery, and the thick, sweet style only took over from the late 1970s.

Burnt ends, the Kansas City barbecue delicacy, are cut from the point of which smoked meat?

Beef brisket's charred edges were once pushed aside at the counter for customers to take free, until a famous magazine rave led restaurants to start selling them.

Which political boss ran Kansas City from 1925 to 1939 and launched a future president's career?

Tom Pendergast seized control through a 1925 city charter that reformers had written to end boss rule, and he held it until a 1939 tax-evasion case sent him to prison.

Which future president ran a Kansas City haberdashery and was elected a Jackson County judge in 1922?

Harry S. Truman was no courtroom judge: the county court was an administrative board, and he spent many years paying off the debts of his failed shop.

Before moving to Kansas City in 1963, Lamar Hunt's AFL team spent three seasons where?

Dallas was home to Hunt's Texans, who won the AFL title in their third season and then moved anyway, leaving the city to the NFL's Cowboys.

Kansas City's NFL team is named for the nickname of which figure, who lured it from Texas?

Mayor H. Roe Bartle got the nickname as a Boy Scout executive, and after he talked owner Lamar Hunt into moving, it won out in a name-the-team contest.

Which team did Kansas City beat 23-7 in Super Bowl IV, the last before the AFL-NFL merger?

Minnesota Vikings were heavy favourites, so the upset evened the Super Bowl series between the two leagues at two wins each just before they merged.

Arrowhead Stadium's crowd reclaimed the record for the loudest roar in 2014 from which team's fans?

Seattle Seahawks fans had taken the record from Arrowhead only weeks after it was first set there, so the home crowd went back and hit 142.2 decibels against the Patriots.

Which team did the Royals beat to win the 2015 World Series?

The Mets lost in five games, and the clincher needed twelve innings before the Royals broke it open with five runs to win 7-2.

Which pharmaceutical executive founded the Royals in 1969 and now has the ballpark named after him?

Ewing Kauffman first ran Marion Laboratories out of his basement, naming it with his middle name so customers would not guess it was a one-man operation.

Which major-league team played in Kansas City from 1955 to 1967 before moving to California?

The Athletics' move under owner Charlie Finley brought such legal pressure that the American League answered by awarding Kansas City an expansion team, the Royals, for 1969.

Under what name did Kansas City's Major League Soccer club begin play in 1996?

A trademark dispute turned the Wiz into the Wizards after one season; the club became Sporting Kansas City with its 2010 rebrand.

Which NBA franchise played in Kansas City from 1972 to 1985 before leaving for California?

The Kings arrived from Cincinnati as the Royals, a name Kansas City's baseball team already had, so they took a new one and spent three seasons as the Kansas City-Omaha Kings.

The NHL's Kansas City Scouts moved to Denver in 1976, then east in 1982 to become which team?

New Jersey Devils: the franchise lost so steadily in Kansas City and Denver that its first winning season came only in 1988, before it went on to win three Stanley Cups.

Which bebop pioneer, nicknamed 'Bird', was born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1920?

Charlie Parker grew up across the state line in Kansas City, Missouri, and got the name on tour with Jay McShann's band, in one telling after their car hit a chicken, a 'yardbird'.

Which pianist joined Bennie Moten's Kansas City orchestra in 1929 before leading his own famous big band?

Count Basie formed his own group from Moten's men after the bandleader died in 1935, and a radio broadcast from Kansas City drew producer John Hammond, who helped launch them nationally.

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum shares its 18th and Vine building with a museum devoted to what?

Jazz fills the other half of the Museums at 18th and Vine: the American Jazz Museum keeps a working club, the Blue Room, that stages live shows several nights a week.

Which future Brooklyn Dodger played shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1945?

Jackie Robinson played only that one season for the Monarchs before Branch Rickey chose him as the player who would integrate the major leagues with Brooklyn.

Which cartoonist ran Kansas City's Laugh-O-Gram Studio until it went bankrupt in 1923?

Walt Disney's studio went under when a distributor failed to pay for its fairy-tale cartoons, but its last film, Alice's Wonderland, became the pilot for his first Hollywood series.

Which novelist spent six months as a cub reporter at The Kansas City Star before joining the Red Cross in WWI?

Ernest Hemingway later called the paper's stylebook, which opens 'Use short sentences', the best rules he ever learned for the business of writing.

The 1933 Kansas City massacre led Congress to let agents of which agency carry guns and make arrests?

The FBI lost an agent in the ambush, which also killed three policemen and the prisoner they were escorting; until then its men had no legal power to carry guns or make arrests.

Which Kansas City landmark, dedicated in 1926, did Congress name the country's official World War I museum in 2004?

Liberty Memorial was paid for by the public: a 1919 fund drive raised more than $2.5 million in about ten days, and President Coolidge came to dedicate the finished tower.

Which French marshal joined Pershing and three other Allied commanders to dedicate the site of Kansas City's WWI monument in 1921?

Ferdinand Foch stood beside Pershing, Britain's Beatty, Italy's Diaz and Belgium's Jacques before a crowd of more than 100,000, and the monument's Dedication Wall now carries bronze portraits of all five.

The Country Club Plaza (1923) was built in Baroque and Moorish Revival style echoing which Spanish city?

Seville's Giralda tower is copied at half scale as the Plaza's tallest building, and in 1967 the resemblance became official when the two were made sister cities.

On which night each year are Kansas City's Country Club Plaza holiday lights switched on?

Thanksgiving night's switch-on began as just 16 lights hung over a single doorway; the official ceremony dates from 1930, and a guest of honour now flips the switch for a crowd of thousands.

Giant sculptures of what object have stood on the lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art since 1994?

Shuttlecocks: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen imagined the museum as a badminton net and its lawn as the court, placing four birdies as though they had just landed on either side.

Which two of Kansas City's oldest barbecue restaurants trace their roots to Henry Perry's pit?

Bryant's and Gates both grew from his staff: Charlie Bryant took over Perry's restaurant in 1940 and brother Arthur renamed it, while Perry's cook Arthur Pinkard helped found Gates in 1946.

Which Kansas City-born essayist called a local rib joint 'the single best restaurant in the world'?

Calvin Trillin made the claim in a 1972 Playboy article, and the praise drew presidents and film stars to a counter-service joint with Formica tables.

Henry Perry, father of Kansas City barbecue, migrated from near which other barbecue capital?

Memphis-area native Perry worked as a cook on Mississippi riverboats before settling in Kansas City, where he sold ribs wrapped in newspaper for 25 cents a slab.

Which Kansas City barbecue sauce, created by a child psychiatrist in 1977, was sold to bleach-maker Clorox in 1986?

KC Masterpiece began as 'K.C. Soul Style' sauce; creator Rich Davis kept the restaurant rights when he sold the brand, but every restaurant under the name has since closed.

Which French fur-trading family founded Kansas City's first permanent settlement in 1821?

The Chouteaus' post had to be rebuilt on higher ground after an 1826 flood, but François Chouteau's French settlers stayed, and he is remembered as the founder of Kansas City.

Under what name was the future Kansas City first incorporated in 1850?

The Town of Kansas became the City of Kansas in 1853 and Kansas City only in 1889, a change meant to set it apart from the neighbour that shared its name.

Octave Chanute, builder of Kansas City's 1869 Missouri River bridge, later mentored whom?

The Wright brothers wrote to him in 1900; he pointed them toward the breezy Atlantic coast, visited their Kitty Hawk camp and traded hundreds of letters with them.

Which Civil War battle in today's Kansas City on 23 October 1864 ended Sterling Price's Missouri raid?

Westport was decisive: the Union victory sent Price's army into a retreat it never recovered from, and Missouri stayed under Union control for the rest of the war.

Landscape architect George Kessler gave Kansas City more boulevards than any city except which one?

The system, 132 miles of boulevards and parkways, is why the city was nicknamed 'Paris of the Plains' and was named a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1974.

Which Kansas City park, more than twice the size of New York's Central Park, holds the zoo and Starlight Theatre?

Swope Park was a gift: in 1896 Thomas Swope handed the city more than 1,300 acres, on the condition that it stay a public park bearing his name for ever.

Two suspended walkways collapsed during a 1981 tea dance in which Kansas City hotel, killing 114?

The Hyatt Regency's walkways fell because a change to the hanger rods left one connection carrying two walkways instead of one; the engineers approved it unchecked and later lost their licences.

Which steamboat, sunk in the Missouri River in 1856, was dug out from under a Kansas farm field in 1988?

The Arabia lay 45 feet down and half a mile from the water because the river had shifted course; its 200 tons of frontier cargo now fill a Kansas City museum.

Kansas City, Kansas is the county seat of which county?

Wyandotte County is named for the Wyandot people, who were forced to sell their lands in Ohio and move there in 1843; since a 1997 vote, city and county have shared one government.

Which NASCAR track anchors the Village West development next to KCK's Legends shopping district?

Kansas Speedway opened in 2001, and the racetrack then drew a casino, a soccer stadium and a vast shopping district to its doorstep.

Which craft brewery was founded in Kansas City in 1989 with a used Bavarian brewhouse?

Boulevard Brewing's founder, John McDonald, set up in a converted old building, and the first keg of his Pale Ale went to a restaurant just down the road; the company was later sold to Belgium's Duvel.

Kansas City's airport code is MCI rather than KCI because the airport opened under which name?

Mid-Continent International was the original name, and the code outlived it: codes beginning with K were then set aside for radio call signs, so KCI was not on offer.

Kansas City and St. Louis make Missouri the only state with two of what?

Federal Reserve Banks went to both cities in 1914, and some critics at once asked why one state got two of the twelve, pointing to the many Missouri politicians then in office.

At Kansas City's 1976 Republican convention, President Gerald Ford narrowly beat which challenger for the nomination?

Ronald Reagan arrived so close behind in delegates that Ford spent the week courting the uncommitted, and won on the first ballot only narrowly.

Which club plays at CPKC Stadium, billed in 2024 as the first stadium built for a women's professional team?

Kansas City Current owners built the riverfront ground for the women's team alone; an earlier women's soccer stadium near Atlanta, opened in 2010, was a partnership shared with a university.