97 Fun Facts About Pittsburgh

The Ohio River, formed at Pittsburgh's Point, flows 981 miles to join which river?

The Mississippi takes in the Ohio at Cairo, Illinois, and gets more water from it than from any other tributary, the far longer Missouri included.

Pittsburgh's tallest skyscraper, the U.S. Steel Tower, wears a Cor-Ten steel skin designed to do what?

Rust on purpose: Cor-Ten grows a dark brown coat that seals the metal, so it never needs paint, but as the new tower weathered the run-off turned the sidewalks below a rusty brown.

Where does Pittsburgh's so-called 'fourth river' flow?

Underground: the 'fourth river' is really an aquifer of sand and gravel about 55 feet below the Point, and it was tapped to feed the fountain in Point State Park.

Which British general, namesake of the Pirates' old ballpark, named Pittsburgh in 1758?

John Forbes took the abandoned enemy fort at the forks in November 1758, named the place for the British statesman William Pitt, and died just four months later.

In which 1983 film does Jennifer Beals play a Pittsburgh welder who dreams of becoming a dancer?

Flashdance was shot largely on location around Pittsburgh on a modest budget, then took nearly $93 million at US cinemas, more than all but two other films of 1983.

A 2006 count of 446 bridges lets Pittsburgh boast of outnumbering which European city?

Venice is the usual yardstick, but the boast is disputed: the 446 comes from Bob Regan's 2006 book, which added footbridges and rail spans, and Venice's own tally runs from about 400 to over 470.

Pittsburgh's two surviving 'inclines', which carry riders up its steep hillsides, are what type of transport?

Funiculars, known locally as inclines, were built for people housed on the bluffs who were tired of climbing steep footpaths from the riverside mills; these two are the last still running.

Pittsburgh's downtown business core is widely known by what nickname?

The Golden Triangle is the wedge of land where two rivers meet; its tip, filled with warehouses and railroad yards by the 1930s, was cleared in the 1950s to create Point State Park.

What primary industry dominated Pittsburgh's economy before the widespread rise of steel manufacturing?

Iron and coal came first: the War of 1812 set the town's forges and foundries booming, decades before steelmaking began there.

Which part of downtown Pittsburgh is home to Heinz Hall and the Benedum Center?

The Cultural District was a seedy red-light quarter until a trust founded in 1984 began buying its faded movie palaces and adult theaters and turning them back into playhouses.

Which singer, raised in Pittsburgh's North Hills, won the Best New Artist Grammy in 2000?

Christina Aguilera beat her former 'Mickey Mouse Club' castmate Britney Spears to the award with only one album out.

Which Pittsburgh-born artist has his own museum among the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh?

Andy Warhol, the son of Rusyn immigrants, left for New York soon after graduating from Carnegie Tech in 1949; his museum opened back home in 1994, seven years after his death.

Which Frank Lloyd Wright house was built in the 1930s as a weekend retreat for Pittsburgh retailer Edgar Kaufmann?

Fallingwater stands about 70 miles southeast of the city on Bear Run; Kaufmann had expected a house looking up at the stream's waterfall, and Wright set it directly on top instead.

Which University of Pittsburgh building holds the Nationality Rooms?

Cathedral of Learning funds came partly from children: in a 1925 'Buy a Brick for Pitt' drive, each schoolchild who mailed in a dime got a certificate for one brick in the 42-story tower.

Pittsburgh's three near-identical suspension bridges over the Allegheny downtown share what nickname?

The Three Sisters went up in the 1920s because the War Department ordered three mismatched older bridges replaced to give river traffic more clearance; eyebar chains hold them up in place of cables.

Kennywood, the Pittsburgh area's classic amusement park, is located in which suburb?

West Mifflin's Kennywood opened in 1898 as a trolley park: a trolley company owned by the city's leading banking family built it as an attraction at the far end of its line.

What unique contemporary art museum in Pittsburgh is known for its site-specific installations?

The Mattress Factory is named for its home: sculptor Barbara Luderowski bought a derelict Stearns & Foster mattress warehouse on the North Side in 1975 and opened it to artists two years later.

Which family has owned Pittsburgh's NFL team since founding it in 1933?

The Rooneys trace back to Art Rooney, who paid $2,500 for the franchise in 1933; the league's Rooney Rule, which makes teams interview minority candidates for top jobs, is named for his son Dan.

Which slugger won two National League MVP awards in Pittsburgh before leaving for San Francisco after 1992?

Barry Bonds's last act for the club was a throw home that came too late to stop Sid Bream scoring the run that lost the 1992 NLCS; 20 straight losing seasons followed.

Pitt's football rivalry with West Virginia, first played in 1895, goes by what name?

The Backyard Brawl is named for how close the rivals are: the two campuses sit only about 75 miles apart along Interstate 79.

Which Hall of Famer, 'The Flying Dutchman', played most of his career for the Pittsburgh Pirates?

Honus Wagner earned the nickname for his speed and German heritage; he played in the very first World Series in 1903 and won the Pirates' first title in 1909.

Which writer, famed for her Paris salon and 'a rose is a rose is a rose', was born near Pittsburgh in 1874?

Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, now Pittsburgh's North Side, but her family left for Vienna and Paris while she was a small child; her salon at 27 rue de Fleurus later drew Picasso, Matisse and Hemingway.

Which biologist from Springdale, near Pittsburgh, warned the world about pesticides in a 1962 book?

Rachel Carson grew up on a small family farm in Springdale; her 'Silent Spring' stirred such public alarm over pesticides that the United States cancelled almost all uses of DDT in 1972.

Which iconic actor and dancer, known for musicals like 'Singin' in the Rain,' was raised in Pittsburgh?

Gene Kelly studied economics at the University of Pittsburgh and for several years ran a successful dancing school in the city, leaving for New York and a Broadway chorus part only in 1938.

Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie arrived in the Pittsburgh area as a boy from which country?

Scotland's Dunfermline, his birthplace, fell on hard times when factories undercut handloom weavers like his father, so the family sold up and sailed in 1848; the boy started work in a cotton mill.

Which future TV host worked the puppets on WQED Pittsburgh's 'The Children's Corner' in the 1950s?

Fred Rogers left NBC in New York in 1953 to help start WQED, then stayed off camera for years, voicing puppets such as Daniel Striped Tiger while Josie Carey hosted.

Which entrepreneur and investor, known from 'Shark Tank,' was born and raised in Pittsburgh?

Mark Cuban grew up in suburban Mt. Lebanon, sold garbage bags door to door at 12 and ran newspapers in from Cleveland during a Post-Gazette strike before his Broadcast.com fortune.

Which Catholic school in Pittsburgh's Bluff neighborhood was long home to the Tamburitzans troupe?

Duquesne became the troupe's home in 1937, when its founder stopped in Pittsburgh on tour and struck a deal for work scholarships; the Eastern European folk ensemble went independent in 2016.

Pittsburgh's economy has diversified from its industrial past to focus on which sectors?

Healthcare and education took up the slack after the steel industry collapsed around 1980, a recovery the White House chose to showcase by bringing the 2009 G20 summit of world leaders to the city.

Pittsburgh's Washington's Landing recalls which 1753 mishap of George Washington's on the Allegheny?

Falling off a raft: Washington, 21, was thrown into the icy river and scrambled onto an island, a neighbouring one and not the one that now bears his name.

In 1979 Carnegie Mellon founded the world's first academic department devoted entirely to what?

Robotics got its own institute at Carnegie Mellon with a $3 million grant from Westinghouse, and industrial automation went on to become one of the high-tech fields that replaced the city's lost mill jobs.

Which Pittsburgh rowhouse neighborhood of revitalized industrial buildings, birthplace of Stephen Foster, borders the Allegheny River?

Lawrenceville was laid out in 1814 by William Foster, the songwriter's father, who named it for Captain James Lawrence, the War of 1812 naval hero remembered for 'Don't give up the ship'.

Many of Pittsburgh's stand-alone hillside stairways are legally classified as what?

Streets: stairways that stand alone instead of running beside a road are classed as city streets, though too steep ever to carry traffic, which is why locals call them 'paper streets'.

Which future designer of the Brooklyn Bridge built an earlier Smithfield Street Bridge in Pittsburgh in the 1840s?

John Roebling's wire-rope suspension bridge replaced a wooden one lost in 1845; when Gustav Lindenthal built today's lens-shaped trusses in 1883, he set them on Roebling's stone piers.

What colours, drawn from William Pitt's coat of arms, do Pittsburgh's flag and all its major teams share?

Black and gold came late to two of the teams: the Pirates wore red and blue until 1948, and the Penguins blue and white until January 1980, when they switched to match the city flag.

Which Pittsburgh park, the city's largest, grew from woodland that a coke and steel magnate left the city in 1919?

Frick Park began with 151 acres that Henry Clay Frick willed to the city, keeping a promise to his daughter Helen, who had asked for a park as her debutante wish; Mac Miller named an album after its blue slide.

What levelled over a thousand buildings across some twenty-four blocks of downtown Pittsburgh in 1845?

The Great Fire of April 10, 1845 started from a washerwoman's fire near Ferry Street and burned about a third of the city in a few hours; the rebuilding remade downtown.

Pittsburgh's Duquesne Incline was originally powered by what?

Steam drove the cars at first, hauling cargo before passengers; when the worn-out incline shut in 1962, local residents raised the money to restore it, and their nonprofit has run it since 1963.

Which Pittsburgh neighborhood beside the Allegheny grew up as the city's wholesale produce market?

The Strip is a half-square-mile ribbon of land along the river; the shipping lines built for its early mills and foundries drew produce, meat and poultry wholesalers in by the early 1900s.

Pittsburgh's Senator John Heinz History Center is an affiliate of which national body?

The Smithsonian Institution tie reshaped the museum: it added a Smithsonian wing in 2004 with a gallery built to take travelling exhibitions.

Which director shot 'Night of the Living Dead' and most of his other films around Pittsburgh?

George A. Romero, born in the Bronx in 1940, came to Pittsburgh for Carnegie Tech and stayed, shooting the 1968 'Night of the Living Dead' around Evans City north of the city.

Britain won control of the river forks where Pittsburgh stands during which war?

The French and Indian War began over these very forks: a 1754 skirmish led by the young George Washington at nearby Jumonville Glen opened a conflict that spread worldwide as the Seven Years' War.

Which Pittsburgh neighborhood holds the University of Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Museum of Art?

Oakland became Pitt's home after two fires and several relocations; the state legislature gave the school its current name in 1908.

What kind of Cold War vessel is USS Requin, moored beside Pittsburgh's Kamin Science Center?

A submarine: Requin was just days from her first war patrol when World War II ended, so she missed the fighting and the Navy rebuilt her as a radar picket instead.

Which Pittsburgh-born drummer led the Jazz Messengers for decades?

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers ran for some 35 years as a training ground for young players: Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard and Wynton Marsalis all came up through the band.

Which Pittsburgh restaurant is famous for piling fries and coleslaw inside its sandwiches?

Primanti Bros., open since 1933, is said to have designed the sandwich for Depression-era truck drivers, who could eat a whole meal one-handed on the job instead of sitting down at a counter.

Which coming-of-age novel did Pittsburgh native Stephen Chbosky set in the city's suburbs?

The Perks of Being a Wallflower follows a shy freshman at a suburban Pittsburgh high school; Chbosky, raised in Upper St. Clair, later wrote and directed the 2012 film version himself.

During the 1763 siege of Fort Pitt, the garrison gave Delaware envoys two blankets from a hospital treating which disease?

Smallpox: trader William Trent recorded the gift in his diary and hoped it would 'have the desired effect'; historians have reached no clear verdict on whether the attempt worked.

Which quarterback led Pittsburgh to four Super Bowl wins in six seasons in the 1970s?

Terry Bradshaw, the first pick of the 1970 draft, was so erratic early on that he lost his starting job for a spell in 1974, the very season that ended with his first title.

With which club did Pittsburgh's NFL team merge for the 1943 season?

The Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh became the 'Steagles' because so many players had left for military service that neither could field a team; they wore Eagles green and went 5-4-1.

Pittsburgh's NFL team is alone in wearing its helmet logo in only one place: where?

On the right side only: equipment manager Jack Hart was told to apply the new logo to one side as a test of how it looked, and the lopsided result proved so popular that it stayed.

Which Pittsburgh broadcaster invented the Terrible Towel?

Myron Cope dreamed up the towel as a radio gimmick for a 1975 playoff game, then in 1996 gave the rights to a school for people with disabilities, which has earned millions from its sales.

The Immaculate Reception beat which team in a December 1972 playoff game?

The Oakland Raiders lost 13-7 on Franco Harris's catch of a deflected pass; they argued for years that it had bounced off Frenchy Fuqua alone, which the rules of the day made an incomplete pass.

The 'Steel Curtain', named in a 1971 radio contest, originally meant which unit of Pittsburgh's NFL team?

The defensive line of Joe Greene, L.C. Greenwood, Ernie Holmes and Dwight White came first; the name, a Cold War pun sent in by 17 different entrants to a WTAE contest, soon covered the whole 1970s defense.

Which coach won four Super Bowls in Pittsburgh without ever losing one?

Chuck Noll's first Pittsburgh team went a miserable 1-13 in 1969; he rebuilt through the draft, starting with Joe Greene that same year, and went on to win all four titles within six seasons.

Which Pittsburgh station broadcast the Harding–Cox election returns on November 2, 1920?

KDKA began as a way to sell radios: Westinghouse saw the following its engineer Frank Conrad drew by playing records over the air from home, and built a station in time for election night.

Which Czech winger won the Stanley Cup in his first two Pittsburgh seasons?

Jaromír Jágr was the first Czechoslovak player drafted without having to defect; he wears 68 for the Prague Spring of 1968 and for his grandfather, who died in prison that year.

Mario Lemieux is the only man with his name on the Stanley Cup as a player and as what?

Owner: owed millions in deferred salary by the bankrupt club, he converted much of the debt into equity in 1999, then came out of retirement to play for the team he owned.

Which 21-year-old captained Pittsburgh to the 2009 Stanley Cup?

Sidney Crosby, the youngest captain in NHL history to win it, grew up in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, where the family clothes dryer behind his practice net took a famous battering from his shots.

Pittsburgh's old Civic Arena was better known by what nickname?

The Igloo owed its dome to opera, not hockey: the arena was built in 1961 for the Civic Light Opera, with a retractable roof that slid open so audiences could sit under the stars.

A rival official called Pittsburgh's 1891 signing of Lou Bierbauer what?

The Alleghenys grabbed second baseman Lou Bierbauer after the Philadelphia Athletics left him off their reserve list; the 'piratical' jibe stuck and the club became the Pirates.

Who hit the only Game 7 walk-off home run in World Series history, for Pittsburgh in 1960?

Bill Mazeroski's ninth-inning homer off Ralph Terry won Game 7 10-9 on October 13, 1960, even though the Yankees outscored Pittsburgh 55-27 across the Series.

Roberto Clemente died in 1972 flying relief supplies to earthquake victims in which country?

Clemente chartered the DC-7 himself after hearing that earlier shipments to Managua, Nicaragua, were being diverted by corrupt officials; it crashed off Isla Verde, Puerto Rico, on New Year's Eve 1972.

Pittsburgh's 1979 World Series champions adopted which disco hit as their anthem?

Captain Willie Stargell urged the team to adopt Sister Sledge's 'We Are Family', then won MVP of both the NLCS and the World Series, plus a share of the NL MVP.

What happened to Three Rivers Stadium on February 11, 2001?

It was imploded after three decades as a shared home for baseball and football, making way for two purpose-built stadiums, PNC Park and Heinz Field, which both opened later in 2001.

Which company's name replaced Heinz on Pittsburgh's football stadium in 2022?

Acrisure, a Michigan-based insurance company, bought the naming rights in July 2022 after Kraft Heinz declined to renew a deal that dated from the stadium's opening in 2001.

Which researcher developed the first successful polio vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh?

Jonas Salk tried the vaccine on volunteers including himself and his own family, and he never patented it; asked on television who owned it, he said, 'Could you patent the sun?'

Charles Martin Hall's Pittsburgh Reduction Company, founded in 1888, turned which once-precious metal into an everyday material?

Aluminum had cost more than silver until Hall's process cut its price roughly 200-fold; the Pittsburgh firm renamed itself the Aluminum Company of America in 1907, later shortened to Alcoa.

What was the first product sold under Heinz's original Anchor Brand?

Horseradish, bottled to his mother Anna's recipe, came first, soon followed by sauerkraut, vinegar and pickles; ketchup arrived only after that first firm went bankrupt in 1875.

Henry Heinz said the 5 in '57 Varieties' was his lucky number and the 7 was whose?

His wife's, in one telling; he also credited the 'psychological influence' of 7, and the number was never a count, since the firm already sold more than 60 products when he coined the slogan in 1896.

Strikers at Carnegie's mill fought agents from which detective agency on July 6, 1892?

Pinkerton men, about 300 of them hired by Carnegie's chairman, came up the river on barges early in the morning and surrendered after a day of gunfire; the governor then sent 8,500 troops, who secured the Homestead mill.

Washington rode at the head of 13,000 militiamen toward Pittsburgh in 1794 to crush what?

The Whiskey Rebellion grew from a 1791 federal excise on distilled spirits that western farmers refused to pay; reviewing the militia at Carlisle made Washington the only sitting president to lead troops in the field.

Which Pittsburgh incline is the oldest still operating in the United States?

The Monongahela Incline opened in 1870 because factories had filled the flat riverbank, leaving their workers to live on the steep slopes above with no easy way down to work.

Which architect designed PPG Place, downtown Pittsburgh's glass Gothic complex?

Philip Johnson and partner John Burgee clad the 1984 complex in 19,750 pieces of PPG glass and topped it with 231 spires, the tallest 82 feet.

Which architect, namesake of an American Romanesque style, designed Pittsburgh's Allegheny County Courthouse?

H. H. Richardson, of 'Richardsonian Romanesque', died in 1886 at just 47, two years before the courthouse and jail were finished; they rank among the finest buildings in his style.

Mr. Yuk, the scowling green face created in Pittsburgh in 1971, appears on stickers warning children about what?

Poisons: paediatrician Richard Moriarty, founder of the Pittsburgh Poison Center, felt the old skull and crossbones no longer worked on children, who linked it with adventure instead of danger.

George Westinghouse moved to Pittsburgh in 1868 and developed which railway invention there?

Westinghouse came for cheaper steel to make railroad frogs and patented the air brake in 1869, founding the Westinghouse Air Brake Company; his 1886 electric company went on to champion alternating current.

Playwright August Wilson was born in which neighborhood, the setting of most of his plays?

Wilson was born in the Hill District in 1945 and set nine of his ten Pittsburgh Cycle plays there; his family later moved to mostly white Hazelwood, where bricks were thrown through their window.

Pittsburghese speakers are called 'Yinzers' after their word for what?

You (plural): 'yinz' is a contraction of 'you ones', a form brought by the Ulster settlers of western Pennsylvania; the same dialect has 'nebby' for nosy and 'gumband' for a rubber band.

Which Pittsburgh Negro league team did Gus Greenlee buy in 1931?

The Crawfords got more than a new boss in Greenlee: he built them Greenlee Field, one of the few ballparks built for and owned by a Negro league club, and founded a new Negro National League in 1933.

Which inventor of a famous 1893 Chicago ride died in Pittsburgh in 1896?

George Ferris died of typhoid in a Pittsburgh hospital aged just 37, three years after his wheel's triumph, and his ashes sat unclaimed at a crematorium for more than a year.

Which McDonald's sandwich did Pittsburgh-area franchisee Jim Delligatti introduce at his Uniontown restaurant in 1967?

The Big Mac went on sale in Uniontown on April 22, 1967; Delligatti later said he had not so much invented it as copied the double-decker burger of the rival Big Boy chain.

Which cabinet post did Pittsburgh banker Andrew Mellon hold from 1921 to 1932?

As Secretary of the Treasury, Mellon served Harding, Coolidge and Hoover through the boom and the crash, then gave his collection to found the National Gallery of Art in 1937.

Which Pitt running back won the 1976 Heisman Trophy as the Panthers took the national title?

Tony Dorsett chose Pitt after Notre Dame's coach judged him too small, then ran for 303 yards against the Irish as a junior and led the nation with 1,948 in his Heisman season.

Pittsburgh International Airport's own power grid, switched on in 2021, runs on solar panels and what else?

Natural gas from Marcellus Shale wells on airport property feeds a microgrid that powers the whole airport, and revenue from the drilling also helps pay for the new terminal.

Eat'n Park, the Pittsburgh-area diner chain, is famous for which signature baked good?

The Smiley Cookie began in 1986 with the chain's first bakery: chairman Jim Broadhurst borrowed it, with the baker's blessing, from the Titusville shop where he had bought a cookie every day as a boy.

A Pittsburgh brewery was first to sell beer in which kind of can?

The snap-top can had a pull-tab lid that needed no opener; Pittsburgh Brewing tried it on its flagship lager in 1962, and within a year the national brand Schlitz had followed.

What did the Allegheny Observatory sell to railroads and cities from the 1860s?

Samuel Langley's 'Allegheny Time' service began telegraphing time signals to the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1869, and subscription fees from railroads and cities helped keep the observatory solvent.

Pittsburgh's worst deluge, in March 1936, is remembered by what name?

The St. Patrick's Day Flood peaked at about 46 feet, 21 above flood stage; a bill for nine flood-control reservoirs upstream had passed the House months before and was still stuck in the Senate.

Pittsburgh's light rail system is known locally by what name?

The T is one of North America's few surviving first-generation trolley systems: parts of its South Hills routes date to 1903, though the cars now dive into a subway under downtown.

Which Pittsburgh tunnel opens straight onto the top deck of a double-deck bridge?

The Fort Pitt Tunnel hides downtown behind Mount Washington until the last moment: drivers enter facing a plain hillside and burst out with the whole skyline suddenly in front of them.

Pittsburgh-area actor Michael Keaton was born with which surname?

Born Michael John Douglas in 1951, he grew up around Coraopolis and Robinson Township, the youngest of seven, and took 'Keaton' because Michael Douglas was already an actors' union name.

Which Pittsburgh-raised rapper topped the Hot 100 with 'See You Again'?

Wiz Khalifa, a Taylor Allderdice High graduate, built his stage name from 'wisdom', shortened to Wiz when he was a boy, and khalifa, an Arabic word meaning successor.

A 'Pittsburgh toilet' is a bare flush toilet found in which part of a house?

The basement toilet is usually explained as a place for mill workers and miners to clean up before going upstairs; another theory is that it was put there to catch sewer backups before they reached the living floors.

By population, Pittsburgh is the largest city in which US mountain region?

Appalachia, as the federal Appalachian Regional Commission maps it, has no bigger city: Pittsburgh counted 302,971 people in 2020, less than half its 1950 peak of more than 675,000.

Writer James Parton famously described 1868 Pittsburgh as what?

'Hell with the lid off' was Parton's verdict on the city's smoke and furnace fires; a clean-air drive after World War II finally lifted the pall.

From 1891 to 1911 the federal government spelled the Steel City's name how?

Pittsburg was imposed when the new US Board on Geographic Names ruled that every '-burgh' should drop its final h; the city government never complied, and under pressure from a senator the board reversed itself in 1911.