40 Fun Facts About Trenton, New Jersey

The glowing slogan on Trenton's Delaware River bridge boasts about the city's role as a center of what?

Manufacturing is the boast, coined by lumberman S. Roy Heath for a 1910 Chamber of Commerce contest. Neon letters went up on the present bridge in 1935.

John Roebling, who moved his wire rope mill to Trenton in 1848, designed which famous New York span?

Brooklyn Bridge designer Roebling died of tetanus in 1869, after a ferry crushed his foot at the site. He is buried in Trenton's Riverview Cemetery.

Which New Jersey breakfast meat did John Taylor of Trenton develop in 1856 and first sell as a "Prepared Ham"?

Pork roll lost the word ham after the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 set a legal definition it failed to meet. North Jersey still calls it Taylor ham, a naming feud that divides the state.

When Trenton served as capital of the United States for two months in 1784, where did Congress meet?

A tavern hosted the Congress of the Confederation from November 1 to December 24. Northern states wanted the city as the permanent capital, but the southern states held out for a site farther south.

Trenton composer George Antheil developed a frequency-hopping torpedo guidance system with which Hollywood actress?

Hedy Lamarr and Antheil used a code on punched paper tape to keep the transmitter and receiver changing frequency together, so the torpedo's radio control could not be jammed.

Chase, the Trenton Thunder baseball team's famous bat-fetching dog from 2002 to 2013, was which breed?

Golden Retriever Chase handed the job on to his son Derby and his grandson Rookie, making three generations of bat dogs at the riverside ballpark.

Which rebounding specialist, a winner of five NBA championships, was born in Trenton in 1961?

Dennis Rodman got his nickname, the Worm, from his mother, for the way he wiggled while playing pinball. He grew up in Dallas and worked as an overnight airport janitor before turning professional.

Who raised the money in the 1990s to regild the dome of the New Jersey State House in Trenton?

Schoolchildren paid for it through the Dimes for the Dome drive, with each of the 48,000 pieces of gilding costing one dollar. The dome was rededicated in honor of the state's children.

On which holiday night in 1776 did George Washington's army begin crossing the icy Delaware River to attack Trenton?

Christmas night's crossing let the army surprise the Hessian garrison the next morning. A second battle was fought in the town a week later, on January 2, 1777.

Which disease drove federal government offices out of Philadelphia to temporary quarters in Trenton in 1799?

Yellow fever was sweeping the capital for the fourth time that decade. From August to November the Department of State worked out of the New Jersey State House.

Which inventor gives his name to the Trenton state university that enrolls adult students from around the country?

Thomas Edison suits a university for adult learners: he lived in New Jersey for most of his adult life and built his encyclopedic knowledge through self-directed learning.

Which major league club had the Trenton Thunder as its Double-A farm team from 2003 until 2020?

New York Yankees stars on the mend filled the ballpark: Derek Jeter's rehab start in July 2011 drew a paid crowd of 9,212, a new attendance record at the time.

Which general, born in Trenton in 1934, commanded all coalition forces in the Gulf War against Iraq?

Norman Schwarzkopf was the son of the founding superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, a lead investigator in the 1932 Lindbergh baby kidnapping case.

Which future US president nearly bled to death from a musket ball wound at the Battle of Trenton?

James Monroe, then a lieutenant, was hit in the left shoulder while leading the charge down King Street. The ball severed an artery, and he was carried from the field bleeding badly.

Which landscape architect designed Cadwalader Park, Trenton's largest city park, in the late 1800s?

Frederick Law Olmsted, best known for New York's Central Park, planned it after the city bought the Ellarslie estate in the 1880s. The mansion at its center now houses the Trenton City Museum.

Which Supreme Court justice, appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1986, was born in Trenton to an Italian American family?

Antonin Scalia was the first Italian American on the court, confirmed unanimously by the Senate. Samuel Alito, a later justice, was born in the same city.

Which bounty hunter heroine of Janet Evanovich's bestselling mystery novels lives and works in Trenton?

Stephanie Plum is a laid-off lingerie buyer who starts chasing bail jumpers to make ends meet. Katherine Heigl played her in the 2012 film One for the Money, set in the Chambersburg neighborhood.

Which Trenton style of thin-crust pizza puts the mozzarella and toppings on first and the sauce on top?

Tomato pie in this style goes back to Joe's, which opened in 1910. Papa's followed two years later, started by a cook who had learned the trade at Joe's.

Which religious group, persecuted in England, founded the first European settlement at Trenton in 1679?

Quakers led by Mahlon Stacy of Sheffield settled a spot then called the Falls of the Delaware. Stacy's family later sold much of the land to William Trent, whose name the town took.

Which Trenton-born actress played advertising executive Angela Bower on the long-running sitcom Who's the Boss?

Judith Light arrived from the daytime soap One Life to Live, where her role as Karen Wolek had won her two Daytime Emmy Awards in a row.

Trenton-born pitcher Al Downing gave up the record-breaking 715th career home run of which slugger in 1974?

Hank Aaron's blast on April 8, 1974, broke the all-time record set by Babe Ruth. Downing, an All-Star in 1967, pitched in the major leagues from 1961 through 1977.

The Trenton Nationals were the first champions of the first professional league in which sport, founded in 1898?

Basketball was only seven years old when the six-team league began play. The Nationals took the first title with a record of 18 wins and 2 losses.

Which Trenton-born politician won the 1989 election to become the first African American mayor of New York City?

David Dinkins moved to Harlem as a child, came back to Trenton for high school, and served with the Montford Point Marines, the first African Americans in the Marine Corps.

The River Line, whose trains start beside Trenton Transit Center, runs down the Delaware to which New Jersey city?

Camden is the southern end of the route, which follows part of the old Camden and Amboy Railroad. That railroad's arrival in the 1830s helped turn Trenton into a factory town.

Trenton's Old Barracks, now a museum, were built in 1758 to house British soldiers during which conflict?

French and Indian War troops had been quartered on local households until colonists complained. The stone building later sheltered Hessians, and is the only colonial barracks left in New Jersey.

Which reformer founded New Jersey's first public mental hospital in Trenton in 1848 and later lived out her days there?

Dorothea Dix toured every county, jail and almshouse in New Jersey in 1844 to make her case for the hospital. She moved into it in 1881 and spent her last six years there.

Which man was executed at the state prison in Trenton for kidnapping and killing Charles Lindbergh's baby son?

Bruno Hauptmann went to the electric chair there in April 1936, protesting his innocence to the end. The prison has operated on the same Trenton site since 1798.

John Fitch, a Trenton silversmith honored in the name of a city parkway, ran America's first service of which vehicle?

Steamboat trials on the Delaware began in 1787, watched by delegates to the Constitutional Convention. British troops had destroyed Fitch's Trenton workshop during the Revolution.

Trenton singers Sarah Dash and Nona Hendryx joined Patti LaBelle in the trio behind which 1974 disco hit?

Lady Marmalade followed the group's switch to glam rock and space-age costumes. Dash and Hendryx had first sung together in a Trenton group called the Del-Capris.

Scores of pottery factories earned Trenton a nickname as the American version of which English county?

Staffordshire of America was the tag from the 1850s to the 1950s, when ceramics was the city's largest industry. American Standard ran its largest bathroom fixture plant there.

Which Civil War general, later governor of New Jersey, lies under the tallest monument in Trenton's Riverview Cemetery?

George McClellan, who ran against Lincoln for president in 1864, rests there beside his wife. The cemetery overlooks the Delaware and grew out of a graveyard used in the 1670s.

With under eight square miles of land, Trenton is the second-smallest US state capital; which capital is smaller still?

Annapolis, Maryland's capital, is the only one with less land. Trenton covers 7.58 square miles of it, and the geographic center of New Jersey lies just five miles to the southeast.

Trenton is one of only two US state capitals that touch another state's border; which western capital is the other?

Carson City's limits run west across the Sierra Nevada to the California line in the middle of Lake Tahoe. Trenton faces Pennsylvania across the Delaware, with bridges into Morrisville.

Until 1920 the Calhoun Street crossing at Trenton carried which pioneering coast-to-coast auto road into Pennsylvania?

Lincoln Highway traffic moved to the Lower Free Bridge in 1920, after that crossing dropped its tolls. The 1884 span at Calhoun Street went on carrying trolleys until 1940.

John H. Duncan, architect of the Trenton Battle Monument, also designed which landmark on Manhattan's Riverside Drive?

Grant's Tomb architect Duncan gave Trenton a granite column about 150 feet tall, topped by a statue of George Washington. It was built with an elevator to an observation deck.

The Mercer Automobile Company, formed in Trenton in 1909, is best remembered for which sports car of the 1910s?

The Raceabout, launched for the 1911 model year, was the idea of Washington A. Roebling II of the wire rope family. The firm set up its factory in a disused brewery in neighboring Hamilton.

The former site of Trenton Speedway, in neighboring Hamilton Township, is now home to which visitor attraction?

Grounds for Sculpture stands where Mario Andretti and Bobby Allison once raced. The oval closed in 1980, and the state fairgrounds around it shut three years later.

Which small soup accompaniment does a long-standing Trenton claim credit to local baker Adam Exton in the 1840s?

Oyster cracker honors are disputed: a Vermont firm says it has baked them since 1828. Exton, who arrived from Lancashire in 1842, opened his Trenton bakery in 1846.

Which university, now in nearby Lawrence Township, was founded in 1865 as the Trenton Business College?

Rider began moving its campus out of Trenton in 1959. The College of New Jersey also started in the city, in 1855, before moving out to Ewing.

Which Texan racing driver won twelve Indy car races at Trenton Speedway before the track closed in 1980?

A. J. Foyt's dozen wins came on an oval later stretched into a kidney bean shape with a right-hand dogleg. Janet Guthrie made her first Indy car appearance there in 1976.