50 Fun Facts About Hull

Hull's independent phone network, unique in the UK, is famous for telephone boxes of which colour?

Cream kiosks are the mark of KCOM, which began in 1902 as a telephone department of the city council and left Hull as the only place in the UK not served by BT.

The George Hotel in Hull's Old Town is known for having what may be the world's smallest what?

The window is a mere slit in the wall, which the George Hotel's gatekeeper once used to look out for arriving stagecoaches and customers.

Which band of two University of Hull students took its name from a local furniture shop's slogan?

Everything but the Girl was a slogan used by Turner's Furniture on Beverley Road, and Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt borrowed it when they met as students in the city.

Which Hull-born pilot became the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia, in 1930?

Amy Johnson flew 11,000 miles from Croydon to Darwin in a second-hand Gipsy Moth she had named Jason, after her father's business trademark.

Which anti-slavery campaigner was born in Hull in 1759 and became the town's MP at the age of 21?

William Wilberforce led the parliamentary fight against the slave trade for 20 years, and died three days after hearing that the act abolishing slavery itself was assured.

Hull's Scale Lane footbridge was the world's first to let pedestrians do what while it swings open?

Stay on and ride it: the apostrophe-shaped span rotates to let boats pass on the River Hull, and people can even walk on and off while it is moving.

In 2010, forty giant models of which animal lined Hull's streets in tribute to a local poet?

Toads were chosen because the poet had made the creature his image for the daily grind of work; the fibreglass sculptures were later auctioned for charity.

Hull Fair, one of Europe's largest travelling funfairs, takes over Walton Street in which month?

October has been Hull Fair's month for centuries: the fair holds a royal charter from 1279 and is opened by the Lord Mayor, normally at 5 pm on a Friday.

Which Hull band topped the UK chart in 1986 with an a cappella cover of Caravan of Love?

The Housemartins named their debut album London 0 Hull 4, a football-score nod to singer Paul Heaton's claim that they were only the fourth best band in their home city.

Which poet ran the University of Hull's library for thirty years and wrote The Whitsun Weddings?

Philip Larkin produced the greater part of his published work while university librarian in the city, and turned down the post of Poet Laureate in 1984.

Hull City's black and amber striped shirts gave the football club which animal nickname?

The Tigers were founded in 1904, after rugby league's popularity in the city had foiled earlier attempts to start a football club, and played their first matches at a rugby ground.

Hull-born guitarist Mick Ronson found fame in the Spiders from Mars, the backing band of which singer?

David Bowie recruited Ronson from the Rats, then Hull's top local band, and the two went on to produce Lou Reed's album Transformer together.

Norman Cook, who played bass in a chart-topping 1980s Hull band, later became famous under which DJ name?

Fatboy Slim was the name Cook settled on after moving to Brighton to pursue dance music, having first founded Beats International, Pizzaman and Freak Power.

In 1642 Hull's governor Sir John Hotham shut the town gates on which king, helping to spark civil war?

Charles I wanted the weapons stored in the town; Hotham kept him out at Beverley Gate, yet was later executed by Parliament for treachery to its own cause.

Which arts title, awarded once every four years, did Hull hold throughout 2017?

UK City of Culture went to Hull as only the second holder, after Derry, and the year opened with a firework display watched by a crowd of 25,000.

What kind of visitor attraction is The Deep, the Terry Farrell-designed landmark on Hull's waterfront?

The Deep is an aquarium holding 2.5 million litres of water, built as a Millennium project on Sammy's Point, a site once partly occupied by Hull Castle.

Hull's deep-sea trawling industry went into decline after the 1970s Cod Wars, fought against which country?

Iceland came out on top, and the terms that ended the dispute began the port's economic decline; in 1976 the Hull trawler Arctic Corsair rammed an Icelandic patrol vessel.

Which Hull-born logician gave his name to the overlapping-circle diagrams used in logic and set theory?

John Venn also built, with his son, a machine that could bowl a spinning cricket ball; in 1909 it bowled out one of the Australian team's star batsmen.

Which nautical name did Hull Brewery give the strong export beer it launched in 1949 for ships' provisions?

Anchor Export was designed to keep and travel well at sea and was sold in bottles and cans; the brewery itself was taken over by Northern Dairies in 1972.

Which metaphysical poet, author of To His Coy Mistress, attended Hull Grammar School and became the town's MP?

Andrew Marvell came to the town as a boy when his father was appointed lecturer at Holy Trinity Church, and was first elected its MP in 1659.

Which poet, born on De La Pole Avenue in Hull, is best known for Not Waving but Drowning?

Stevie Smith left the city at the age of three, when her mother moved the family to Palmers Green in north London, where she lived for almost the rest of her life.

Hull-born Ebenezer Cobb Morley is regarded as a father of which sporting body, whose first laws he drafted in 1863?

The Football Association grew out of an 1863 meeting at which Morley, a solicitor who had founded Barnes Football Club the year before, was elected its first secretary.

Which Hull-born actress became a household name as Beatie in British Telecom's 1980s television adverts?

Maureen Lipman first played the doting grandmother in 1987, and the role was still being referred to by politicians 25 years later.

Which Hull-born actor, the son of a fish-dock boat painter, starred in Billy Liar and Doctor Zhivago?

Tom Courtenay earned an Oscar nomination for Doctor Zhivago, and had first played Billy Liar on the London stage, taking over the title role from Albert Finney.

Which Deputy Prime Minister under Tony Blair represented Hull East in Parliament for 40 years?

John Prescott held the seat from 1970 to 2010, having worked as a ship's steward and as a National Union of Seamen official before entering Parliament.

Reckitt & Sons, founded in a rented Hull starch mill, launched which antiseptic brand in the 1930s?

Dettol was launched in the same year that the firm bought Harpic, and the company that started with starch in 1840 went on to own Nurofen, Strepsils and Durex.

Which electrical chain began in Hull in 1933 as a business recharging the batteries of wireless radios?

Comet began with founder George Hollingbery and one employee charging batteries for a small weekly fee; the chain had 240 stores when it closed in 2012.

Which band did Paul Heaton form in 1988 after his first Hull group split, reaching number two with Song for Whoever?

The Beautiful South was a sarcastic name, chosen by Heaton and Dave Hemingway as a comment on their own staunch Northern roots.

Hull Kingston Rovers, the rugby league club from the east of the city, are known by which bird nickname?

The Robins take their name from the club's traditional red and white colours, and in their early days the team were nicknamed the redbreasts.

Which High Street pub, licensed since 1729, is regarded as Hull's oldest licensed premises?

Ye Olde Black Boy was a Victorian wine merchant's until a 1926 refit turned the old office into the front smoke room, a layout the pub still keeps.

Ye Olde White Harte, a Hull pub said to be haunted, displays which macabre object of unknown origin in its bar?

A skull of unknown provenance is kept on show in the bar, in a building where two residents died in accidents, one in 1806 and one in 1912.

Hull Brewery survived the Blitz intact, possibly because German bomber pilots used which of its features as a landmark?

Its chimneys may have been too useful to destroy, although many of the company's pubs were damaged or wrecked in the raids; brewing on the site carried on until 1985.

With Hull Fair suspended in the Second World War, its site became a training ground for which military machines?

Tanks trained on the fairground, which also served as a military vehicle park and a mooring point for barrage balloons until the fair came back after 1945.

Local tradition says a Hull mob rioted for the return of their fair's lost eleven days after which 1750s reform?

The new calendar skipped eleven days, and the story goes that the protest worked: the fair's opening has been tied to the same date ever since.

The Lord Line building, once a trawler company's offices, was built beside which old home of Hull's fishing fleet?

St Andrew's Dock opened in 1883 and was meant for coal exports, but took the trawlers instead until it closed in 1975; its western end was later filled in for a retail park.

After three Hull trawlers sank in 1968, Lillian Bilocca's safety campaigners were nicknamed after which garment?

Headscarves gave the fishermen's wives their nickname, the headscarf revolutionaries; their safety petition drew 10,000 signatures and ministers granted their demands.

Which king acquired the port from Meaux Abbey in 1293 and renamed it King's Town upon Hull?

Edward I went on to use the port as a base during the First War of Scottish Independence, and his charter of 1299 is still kept in the Guildhall archives.

Which narrow street in Hull's Old Town shares its curious name with a 1927 Winifred Holtby novel?

Land of Green Ginger has no agreed origin: the name may recall ginger sold or stored there in the Middle Ages, or be a mangled version of a Dutch family name, Lindegreen.

Hull City scored twice in the opening ten minutes of their first FA Cup final, in 2014, yet lost to which club?

Arsenal levelled by the end of normal time and won 3–2 when Aaron Ramsey scored in extra time, after James Chester and Curtis Davies had put the underdogs two up.

Whose Wembley goal in the 2008 play-off final took hometown club Hull City into the top flight for the first time?

Dean Windass, born in the city and by then 39 years old, scored the only goal of the game against Bristol City in the first half.

Which Welsh winger, who played for both Hull rugby league clubs, was Great Britain's first black captain in any sport?

Clive Sullivan led Great Britain to the Rugby League World Cup title in 1972, and the main A63 road into the city now carries his name.

Which future Poet Laureate taught English at the University of Hull in the late 1970s?

Andrew Motion had his first volume of poetry published while teaching in the city, and went on to hold the laureateship from 1999 to 2009.

Which poet of The Scaffold, the trio behind the 1968 number one Lily the Pink, studied at the University of Hull?

Roger McGough read French and Geography in the city, then went home to Merseyside and formed the trio with John Gorman and Mike McGear, the stage name of Mike McCartney.

Which Scottish poet's debut collection Terry Street, published in 1969, portrayed life on a working-class Hull street?

Douglas Dunn studied in the city and then worked in its university library, and the book won him a Somerset Maugham Award.

Chemist George Gray's research at the University of Hull made which now-everyday screen technology possible?

LCD screens became practical because Gray developed stable, long-lasting liquid crystal materials during a career of more than 40 years at the university.

Which medical-equipment multinational began in 1856 as a dispensing chemist's shop in Hull?

Smith & Nephew took its name in 1896, when founder Thomas James Smith was joined in the business by his nephew, Horatio Nelson Smith, a few months before he died.

Which Hull-born flour heir founded the film company whose pictures opened with a muscular man striking a gong?

J. Arthur Rank was a devout Methodist who came to cinema by showing religious films at Sunday school; his famous gong was only a prop made of plaster or papier-mâché.

Hull's Maritime Museum holds Europe's largest collection of scrimshaw, a legacy of which former local industry?

Whaling peaked in the port in the early 19th century, and the museum gives it a whole gallery that also holds Inuit artefacts, including a kayak.

Which paprika-and-salt seasoning, said to be inspired by American diners, was invented in Hull in the 1970s?

Chip spice was introduced by a local couple, the Wilsons, and the American Chip Spice brand belongs to the firm that bears their name, Wilson's Seasonings.

The Hull pattie, sold in the city's fish shops as a cheap alternative to fish, is a fried cake of what?

Mashed potato is mixed with onion and seasoned with sage, then floured and fried; the result is sometimes served in a buttered breadcake as a filling snack.