123 Fun Facts About New York State

What is the capital of New York State?

Albany. New York's first capital was Kingston, which the British burned in 1777, and Albany became the permanent capital in 1797.

What is New York State's best-known nickname?

The Empire State. Nobody knows who coined it, and the Manhattan skyscraper that opened in 1931 borrowed the state's nickname, not the other way round.

Which mountain is the highest point in New York State?

Mount Marcy. A survey party made the first recorded climb in 1837 and named the peak for William Marcy, the governor who had ordered their survey.

Which county is the borough of Brooklyn?

Kings County. Five of the state's 62 counties are the city's boroughs, and Brooklyn stayed a separate city until 1898, after its voters had narrowly backed joining New York.

Which essays urged New York to ratify the Constitution?

The Federalist Papers. Hamilton, Madison and Jay wrote all 85 under one pen name, Publius, yet New York ratified only 11th, and by just three votes.

What was Henry Hudson seeking when he sailed up New York's Hudson River in 1609?

A passage to Asia. The Dutch East India Company had sent him east around the top of Russia; when that route failed, he ignored his orders and crossed the Atlantic to look for a western way through instead.

What was the name of the Dutch colony that England seized and renamed the Province of New York in 1664?

New Netherland. The colonists refused to fight the English fleet, and the colony was renamed for its new owner, the king's brother James, Duke of York.

Who was director-general of the Dutch colony from 1647 until it was ceded to England?

He expanded New Amsterdam beyond the southern tip of Manhattan before surrendering it in 1664.

Which governor championed the Erie Canal, which opened in 1825?

DeWitt Clinton. Opponents ridiculed the canal as 'Clinton's Folly', but in 1825 he rode the first boat from Lake Erie to New York City and emptied a keg of lake water into the sea.

What moved boats along the original Erie Canal when it opened in 1825?

Mules and horses. Teams walked a towpath beside the water, towing boats along all 363 miles, and the old towpath is now a cycling trail across the state.

Which 1777 New York battle persuaded France to ally with the American revolutionaries?

Saratoga. Benedict Arnold was wounded in the leg leading the decisive assault, three years before he turned traitor, and General Burgoyne surrendered his whole army.

Which northern New York stronghold was captured by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold on May 10, 1775?

Fort Ticonderoga. The raiders surprised the sleeping garrison, and the fort's captured cannons helped drive the British out of Boston the following spring.

The women's rights convention that produced the Declaration of Sentiments met in which New York town?

Seneca Falls. Elizabeth Cady Stanton modeled the text on the Declaration of Independence, and only one signer, Charlotte Woodward, lived to see women win the vote in 1920.

In which city was Susan B. Anthony arrested in 1872 for voting?

Rochester. She was fined $100 for casting a ballot in the 1872 presidential election and never paid a cent of it.

Harriet Tubman spent her later years in which New York city?

Auburn. She opened a home for the elderly beside her farm there and spent her own last two years as one of its patients.

The 1969 Woodstock festival was actually held on a dairy farm in which town?

Bethel. Wallkill banned the festival about a month before showtime, so dairy farmer Max Yasgur rented the promoters his fields instead.

Which village in Otsego County is home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame?

Cooperstown. The village was chosen on the strength of a legend, later discredited, that Abner Doubleday invented baseball there in 1839.

Which New York village hosted the Winter Olympics in 1932 and 1980?

Lake Placid. Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt opened the 1932 Games there, nine months before he was elected president.

The spicy wings named for a western New York city were reportedly invented where in 1964?

Anchor Bar. In one of several rival stories, co-owner Teressa Bellissimo cooked up wings in hot sauce as a late-night snack for her son and his friends.

Which sweet treat was born in Le Roy, New York, in 1897 and still has a museum there?

Jell-O. Carpenter Pearle Wait trademarked the name in Le Roy, and the dessert was made there until the factory left for Delaware in 1964.

A now-discredited legend credits the potato chip's invention to a cook in which New York resort town?

Saratoga Springs. The tale has cook George Crum frying paper-thin slices to spite a fussy diner, whom later retellings turned into the tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Cayuga, Keuka and Skaneateles all belong to which group of central New York lakes?

The Finger Lakes. Ice-age glaciers deepened a row of north-south river valleys, and the long, skinny lakes left behind fan out across the map like fingers.

The Thousand Islands dot which river on New York's northern border?

St. Lawrence River. On one island, hotel magnate George Boldt was building a castle for his wife; when she died he stopped all work at once, and it stood empty for some seventy years.

Which river's valley carried the Erie Canal west through the Appalachians?

Mohawk. Its valley is a natural break in the Appalachian barrier, so pioneers bound for the Great Lakes, and later the canal itself, all funnelled through it.

Which New York park, created in 1892, is bigger than Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier and Grand Canyon combined?

Adirondack Park. About half the land inside its boundary is private, towns and all, while the state constitution keeps the public half 'forever wild'.

Who campaigned in the 1880s to make the land around Niagara's falls a public park?

Frederick Law Olmsted. His plans and years of lobbying persuaded New York to buy the privately held land around the falls and turn it into a public reservation.

Which of the three Niagara waterfalls straddles the international border?

Horseshoe Falls. It carries about nine-tenths of the river's water and is often called the Canadian Falls, since only a small part of it lies on the New York side.

Why did 63-year-old schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor ride a barrel over Niagara's falls in 1901?

To make her fortune. She took the plunge on her 63rd birthday and came out battered but alive, yet the fame cooled fast and the money never came.

In March 1848, what reduced the mighty falls at Niagara to a trickle?

An ice jam. Ice from Lake Erie plugged the river's mouth around midnight, the water-powered mills fell silent, and hundreds came to stare at the trickle that was left.

What is New York's official state bird?

Eastern bluebird. Missouri claims it too, and the species rebounded from a mid-century slump once volunteers lined roadsides and backyards with bluebird houses.

What is New York's official state tree?

Sugar maple. Its sap runs when freezing nights give way to thawing days, which is why maple syrup is a late-winter harvest of the cold north.

What is New York's official state motto, shown in Latin on the state flag?

Excelsior. Usually rendered 'Ever Upward', it stood alone until 2020, when the state budget added a second line beneath it: E pluribus unum.

Which insect, New York's official state insect since 1989, went unseen in the state for decades until 2011?

Nine-spotted ladybug. With no sighting since 1982, lawmakers tried in 2006 to swap in another species, then in 2011 a volunteer found one on a Long Island farm.

Which food was named New York's official state snack in 2014?

Yogurt. A class of elementary schoolchildren pitched the idea to their state senator, and at the time upstate plants such as Chobani's made New York the nation's top yogurt producer.

Who designed the I Love New York logo, reportedly in the back of a taxi with a red crayon?

Milton Glaser. He did the job for free, and the scrap of paper with his first crayon sketch now sits in the Museum of Modern Art's collection.

Which fast-food staple is credited to Robert Baker of New York's Cornell University?

Chicken nugget. He never patented his breaded 'chicken stick'; he published the method in a free Cornell bulletin, well over a decade before the McNugget went on sale.

Which white grape became upstate New York's signature wine after Konstantin Frank proved European vines could survive there?

Riesling. Frank arrived from Ukraine in 1951 with no English and washed dishes to get by, then planted the European vines that local experts insisted the winters would kill.

New York has shores on two Great Lakes: Erie and which other?

Lake Ontario. Water leaving Lake Erie plunges over Niagara's falls to reach it, then drains on to the Atlantic along New York's northern edge.

Which is the second-most populous city in New York State?

Buffalo. It counted 278,349 residents in 2020, about 17,000 more than a decade earlier; the city first boomed in 1825 as the western end of the Erie Canal.

Which town on Long Island is the most populous town in the state, with more than 700,000 residents?

Hempstead. With roughly three-quarters of a million residents it outnumbers every city in the state except New York City, yet it is run as a single town.

Kodak's home town pairs its Flour City nickname with which other nickname?

Flower. When the wheat trade and its millers moved west, the city turned to nurseries and mail-order seeds, and a simple respelling kept the old nickname alive.

Which president was born in Kinderhook, New York, where his father kept a tavern?

Martin Van Buren. He grew up watching and learning from the travellers and locals who passed through the tavern, and later used that feel for people as a political organizer.

Which president was born in a log cabin in what is now Moravia, in central New York?

Millard Fillmore. Apprenticed to the cloth trade as a teenager with almost no schooling, he got himself released from the contract and trained as a lawyer instead.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's Springwood estate is in which Hudson Valley town?

Hyde Park. Roosevelt was born in the house, called it home all his life and chose to be buried on its grounds, where Eleanor was later laid beside him.

Who became New York's first female governor in 2021?

Kathy Hochul. She had been lieutenant governor since 2015 and stepped up on August 24, 2021, when her predecessor resigned in the middle of his term.

Which four-term governor greatly expanded the State University of New York system?

Nelson Rockefeller. Governor from 1959 to 1973, he also built the vast government plaza beside the State Capitol, which now carries his name.

Founded in 1802, which institution on the Hudson is the oldest of America's five service academies?

West Point. Two decades before the first cadets arrived, its commander Benedict Arnold plotted to hand the fortress to the British, then fled when the scheme was exposed.

Sing Sing prison is located in which Hudson River village?

Ossining. The village was itself called Sing Sing until 1901, when residents chose a new name to put some distance between their home and the notorious prison.

A 1971 inmate uprising at which New York state prison left 43 people dead?

Attica. Thirty-nine of them, hostages as well as inmates, were shot by state police and guards in the assault that ended the four-day standoff.

What nickname was given to the Jewish summer resort region that thrived northwest of New York City in the mid-20th century?

The Borscht Belt. The name salutes the beet soup that was a fixture of the hotels' menus, and their stages were where a generation of American comedians learned the trade.

Rip Van Winkle sleeps for 20 years in which mountains?

The Catskills. He nods off a loyal subject of King George III and wakes to find George Washington's portrait in the king's place, having slept through the whole Revolution.

Chittenango, New York, has yellow brick sidewalks in honour of which author, born there in 1856?

L. Frank Baum. When the main street was rebuilt in 2007, the new pavements were stamped and coloured to mimic the yellow brick road, and Munchkin actors from the 1939 film cut the ribbon.

Lucille Ball was born in 1911 in which western New York city?

Jamestown. Ball died in Los Angeles in 1989, but in 2002 her children moved her ashes to the family plot back home, honouring her wish to rest beside her mother.

The Book of Mormon was first published in 1830 in which New York village?

Palmyra. Farmer Martin Harris mortgaged his land to guarantee printer E. B. Grandin's bill for an ambitious first run of 5,000 copies, then had to sell up when the books sold slowly.

Samuel Wilson, the meatpacker said to be the original Uncle Sam, lived and worked in which New York city?

Troy. His beef barrels for the army in the War of 1812 were stamped 'U.S.', and the story goes that soldiers joked the letters meant Uncle Sam Wilson; Congress endorsed the tale in 1961.

Which New York village hosted Formula One's United States Grand Prix every year from 1961 to 1980?

Watkins Glen. Racing began there in 1948 on a 6.6-mile circuit of ordinary public roads, and a permanent track on a nearby hilltop took over in 1956.

Which New York track, where racing began in 1863, is often called the oldest major US sporting venue?

Saratoga Race Course. A former bare-knuckle boxing champion staged that first meet, and in 1919 the great Man o' War suffered the only defeat of his career there, to a colt named Upset.

The oldest state fair in the United States is held near which New York city?

The first fair took place there in 1841 and settled permanently in 1890; it now draws over a million visitors a year.

A farmer found which New York cave system in 1842 after noticing his cows gathering at one cool spot?

Howe Caverns. Lester Howe traced the cool air his cows were enjoying to a hidden opening, and by 1843 he was leading paying visitors on torch-lit tours lasting eight hours or more.

The 1955 Tappan Zee Bridge was replaced in 2017 by a span officially named for which former governor?

Mario Cuomo. His son Andrew, governor at the time, signed the name into law, and more than 100,000 people petitioned to bring back 'Tappan Zee'.

Which spy, hanged in Manhattan in 1776, is remembered for regretting he had only one life to give?

Nathan Hale had volunteered to slip behind British lines disguised as a schoolmaster, his own job before the war; he was caught and hanged at 21.

Which Frenchman designed the iron skeleton inside the Statue of Liberty?

Gustave Eiffel got the job only after the statue's first engineer died in 1879, and he replaced a planned masonry core with a flexible iron frame that lets the copper skin move.

Which large lake shared by New York and Vermont is sometimes called the sixth Great Lake?

Lake Champlain even held the title by law for 18 days in 1998: a line in a federal funding bill declared it a Great Lake before the status was rescinded.

Where on Long Island was New York State's first lighthouse built in the 1790s?

Montauk's tower was finished in 1796 as the landfall light for ships from Europe bound for New York Harbor.

Which Rochester company began in 1906 as Haloid, a maker of photographic paper?

Xerox took its name from xerography, a word coined from the Greek for dry, the copying process Haloid bought the rights to in the 1940s.

Which supermarket chain started in western New York in 1916 as a family produce business?

Wegmans began as John Wegman's fresh-produce pushcart, and his brother Walter was soon working beside him.

The Christian commune founded near Oneida in 1848 evolved into a company famous for what?

Silverware came late: steel animal traps first made the commune's money, and when the community broke up its businesses carried on as Oneida Limited.

Which two Long Island counties lie outside New York City?

Nassau and Suffolk. Nassau is the newcomer: it was carved out of Queens County in 1899, a year after the western part of Queens joined New York City.

Which Dutch fort, built in 1624, grew into the city that is now New York's capital?

Fort Orange replaced Fort Nassau, a trading post abandoned after repeated spring floods; both were named for the Dutch House of Orange-Nassau.

Which explorer sailed into New York Harbor in 1524?

The New York bridge named for Giovanni da Verrazzano spelled his name with a single z for more than 50 years, until a 2018 state law added the second.

Which two Iroquois nations sided with the Americans in the Revolutionary War?

Oneida and Tuscarora support for the Patriots split the confederacy: at Oriskany in 1777, Oneida warriors fought Mohawk and Seneca on the British side.

Which New York City borough is the only one that lies mostly on the US mainland?

The Bronx is the only borough mostly on the mainland, though one Manhattan neighborhood, Marble Hill, sits there too, attached to the Bronx.

Which Israeli institute partnered with Cornell on a graduate campus on New York City's Roosevelt Island?

Technion and Cornell won the city's 2011 contest after the favorite, Stanford, which had bid for the same island, withdrew shortly before the decision.

A 1998 Supreme Court ruling gave most of which New York Harbor landmark to neighbouring New Jersey?

Ellis Island grew with landfill, and the justices decided only the original natural island is New York's, leaving the reclaimed majority to New Jersey.

New York adopted an official state muffin in 1987, made with which fruit from its orchards?

Apple muffins are official in New York, while Minnesota honours the blueberry muffin and Massachusetts the corn muffin.

Which Hudson Valley village dropped the name North Tarrytown in 1996 to match a Washington Irving ghost story?

Sleepy Hollow had been North Tarrytown since the 1870s, a name picked to borrow the fame of its commercially successful neighbour to the south.

Lombardi's, which opened on Manhattan's Spring Street in 1905, has long been billed as America's first what?

Pizzeria number one is the Pizza Hall of Fame's verdict on Lombardi's, though later research turned up rivals that opened more than a decade earlier.

Which technology giant was formed in 1911 at Endicott, New York, as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company?

IBM got its modern name in 1924 because its boss Thomas Watson never liked the clumsy hyphenated original and borrowed the title of the Canadian division.

Which animal, trapped by the tens of thousands for the Dutch fur trade, is New York's official state mammal?

Beaver numbers tell the story: around 80,000 a year were taken from the Hudson River and western New York between 1630 and 1640.

Who founded Kodak in upstate New York and put roll-film cameras in amateur hands in 1888?

George Eastman sold the first Kodak camera already loaded with enough roll film for 100 exposures, and he made up the word Kodak himself.

The world's largest tennis stadium, at Flushing Meadows in Queens, is named for which US Open champion?

Arthur Ashe won the inaugural US Open in 1968, the first in which professionals could compete, and the stadium bearing his name seats 23,771.

George Washington took the first presidential oath in 1789 on the balcony of which Wall Street building?

Federal Hall also housed the First Congress, which made New York City the young nation's first capital, but the original building was gone by 1812.

Which salad is credited to maître d' Oscar Tschirky, who created it at a Manhattan hotel in the 1890s?

Waldorf salad began as a three-ingredient dish with no nuts; the walnuts arrived by 1928, long after its debut at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Which red gemstone, found in record-sized crystals at a Gore Mountain mine, is New York's official state gem?

Garnet from the open-pit Barton mine forms single crystals up to 35 centimetres across, and harder varieties of the mineral are ground into abrasives.

Eurypterus remipes, New York's official state fossil, belonged to which group of extinct water-dwelling predators?

Sea scorpions baffled the collector who found the first Eurypterus fossil in 1818: he took its appendages for barbels and classed it as a catfish.

President William McKinley was fatally shot in 1901 while visiting which world's fair in western New York?

Pan-American Exposition crowds had gathered to greet McKinley at the Temple of Music, and the shooting there is now what the fair is chiefly remembered for.

Theodore Roosevelt lived from 1885 until his death in which house near Oyster Bay on Long Island?

Sagamore Hill served as the Summer White House for seven summers of his presidency, though Roosevelt first planned to call it Leeholm after his wife Alice.

Which Lancashire-born artist founded the Hudson River School of American landscape painting?

Thomas Cole arrived from England with his family in 1818, settling first in Ohio, and went on to shape painters such as Frederic Edwin Church.

Which New York official, never elected to any office, built Jones Beach State Park and the state parkway system?

Robert Moses did try the ballot box once: he ran for governor in 1934, lost in a landslide to Herbert Lehman, and never sought public office again.

The New York State Thruway is officially named for which governor, who twice lost races for the White House?

Thomas Dewey was governor when the first stretch opened in 1954; once finished, the toll road was the longest in the world, and the legislature put his name on it in 1964.

The 1792 agreement that organised stock trading on Wall Street is named for which kind of tree?

Buttonwood is an old name for the American sycamore: one stood outside 68 Wall Street where the 24 brokers traded, and their pact became the founding document of the New York Stock Exchange.

Who guided the Brooklyn Bridge to completion for over a decade after her engineer husband was left bedridden?

Emily Roebling took over when caisson disease, the decompression sickness of the bridge's underwater work chambers, struck chief engineer Washington Roebling.

Boldt Castle, left unfinished in 1904 when its hotel-magnate builder's wife died, stands on which Thousand Islands isle?

Heart Island was sold in 1977 for one dollar to the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority, which pledged all the castle's revenue to restoring it.

How many counties make up New York State, a number that also happens to match its count of cities?

62 is the answer twice over: New York has 62 counties and 62 cities, and five of those counties double as the five boroughs of New York City.

Staten Island, which holds the southernmost point in New York State, is coextensive with which county?

Richmond was also the borough's legal name until 1975, when the Borough of Richmond officially became the Borough of Staten Island.

Which county, with no permanent traffic lights and only about 5,000 residents, is the least populous in New York State?

Hamilton County is the only one in the state with fewer than 10,000 residents, and much of it has no cell phone service either.

Which suburban county directly north of New York City has White Plains as its county seat?

Westchester was established in 1683 among the colony's first counties and was named after the English city of Chester.

Kodak's headquarters city is the seat of which western New York county, formed in 1821?

Monroe County took its name from James Monroe, who was in the White House when it was carved out of two older counties.

Which county, the southernmost on the west bank of the Hudson, is New York's smallest by area outside New York City?

Rockland gets its name from the phrase rocky land, a nod to the Palisades cliffs that line its Hudson River shore.

Vassar College and the Culinary Institute of America's main campus both sit in which Hudson Valley county?

Dutchess is an archaic spelling of duchess, kept since the county was named for Mary of Modena, Duchess of York.

The town of Woodstock, which gave a famous 1969 rock festival its name but not its site, lies in which county?

Ulster was one of twelve shires created in 1683 and honours the Duke of York, later King James II, who was also Earl of Ulster.

Cornwall County, one of the Province of New York's twelve counties in 1683, covered land in which modern state?

Maine east of the Kennebec River had been granted to the Duke of York, which made it a New York county before the land passed to Massachusetts in 1692.

Binghamton, known as the Carousel Capital of the World, is the seat of which Southern Tier county?

Broome County was named for John Broome, the lieutenant governor when it was created; shoe magnate George F. Johnson donated the six antique carousels found in and around its seat.

The glassmaking city of Corning lies in which Southern Tier county, named for a general who drilled Washington's army?

Steuben County honours Baron von Steuben, the Prussian who fought on the American side, though the county's name is not pronounced the way his was.

Which county on New York's eastern edge is named for a Dutch patroon family that bought its land in 1630?

Rensselaer recalls Kiliaen van Rensselaer, a jeweler and merchant from the Netherlands who folded the purchase into his patroonship of Rensselaerswyck.

Double-pointed quartz crystals sold as 'diamonds' are named for which central New York county?

Herkimer County is itself named for General Nicholas Herkimer, who died of his wounds after the Battle of Oriskany in 1777.

Which central New York county shares its name with the nation known as Keepers of the Fire of the Haudenosaunee?

Onondaga sits at the centre of the Five Nations' figurative longhouse, which is why the league's council has traditionally met there.

Fort Drum, the Army post that is home to the 10th Mountain Division, lies in which northern New York county?

Jefferson County dates from 1805, when Thomas Jefferson was in the White House as third president, which is how it came by its name.

The resort village of Lake George lies in which county, named for a Revolutionary hero of Bunker Hill?

Warren County was split off from Washington County in 1813 to honour General Joseph Warren, and its first officials met in a Lake George coffee house.

Gloversville, once the hub of American glove making, is the largest city in which New York county?

Fulton County is named for steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton, and the lawyer who engineered its creation was married to one of his cousins.

Tryon County, named for a royal governor, was renamed in 1784 to honour which general killed at the Battle of Quebec?

Montgomery replaced the name of colonial governor William Tryon once independence was won; Richard Montgomery had fallen at Quebec in 1775.

Geneseo is the seat of which county, named for a statesman who helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase?

Livingston County honours Robert R. Livingston, who also helped draft the Declaration of Independence; Avon and Lakeville lost out to Geneseo as its seat.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy recalls her husband's boyhood near Malone, the seat of which northern county?

Franklin County honours Benjamin Franklin, and the novel follows young Almanzo Wilder rising before 5 am each day to milk cows and feed stock there.

Which college town at the southern end of Cayuga Lake is home to Cornell University?

Ithaca also claims the ice cream sundae, said to date from 1892, when a fountain shop owner topped his minister's vanilla ice cream with cherry syrup.

Elisha Otis's company opened the world's first elevator factory in which Hudson River city bordering New York City?

Yonkers kept its Otis works until 1983, after wartime years spent turning out tanks, and the old plant later assembled railcars for Kawasaki.

The Walkway over the Hudson, an 1889 rail bridge reborn as a footpath, links Highland with which city?

Poughkeepsie's bridge lost its trains after a fire damaged the deck in 1974, then reopened to walkers in 2009 as a state historic park.

Mark Twain married in and is buried in which Southern Tier city, where he spent more than 20 summers?

Elmira holds his wife Olivia's family plot, and the Clemens family summered there at her sister's Quarry Farm, where many of his classic novels took shape.

Thomas Edison moved his machine works in the 1880s to which city, soon the headquarters of General Electric?

Schenectady was also home to the American Locomotive Company, which ranked second in the United States in building steam locomotives.

Which Hudson Valley city became New York's first state capital in 1777 and was burned by the British that October?

Kingston was the Dutch village of Wiltwijck until the English renamed it in 1669, and its old Stockade District still stands uptown.

Chicken riggies, a spicy rigatoni dish, comes from which central New York city named for an ancient city in Tunisia?

Utica is also where Frank Woolworth opened his very first store in 1879, and one account says the city's name was drawn from a hat of 13 suggestions.

Construction of the Erie Canal began on July 4, 1817, at which central New York city, home of Fort Stanwix?

Rome grew up around the portage that Fort Stanwix guarded, and the first 15 miles of canal dug from there opened in 1819.

George Washington kept his longest wartime headquarters, for more than 16 months, in which Hudson River city?

Newburgh's Hasbrouck House was bought by New York in 1850, making it the first property any US state acquired and preserved for historic reasons.

Little Trees, the pine-shaped car air fresheners, were invented in 1952 in which northern New York city?

Watertown is where chemist Julius Sämann, a refugee from the Nazis, created them, and the city also claims the five-and-dime: Frank Woolworth hit on the idea while clerking there in 1878.