99 Fun Facts About Americana

Route 66 ran from Chicago to which West Coast city?

Santa Monica: the highway reached the Pacific at Santa Monica after a 1936 extension from downtown Los Angeles, having crossed eight states over about 2,448 miles.

Which novel popularised Route 66's nickname 'the Mother Road'?

The Grapes of Wrath (1939): Steinbeck gave Route 66 the name as his Joads join the Dust Bowl migrants heading west on it to California, and the nickname outlived the highway itself.

Which animated film centres on a small town bypassed by the interstate that replaced Route 66?

Cars (2006): Radiator Springs, the town Lightning McQueen is stranded in, was modelled on real Route 66 towns left fading after Interstate 40 bypassed them.

Which president signed the act creating the interstates that eventually replaced Route 66?

Dwight Eisenhower had seen Germany's autobahns as a wartime general and wanted such roads at home; his 1956 act funded the interstates that bypassed Route 66, the last stretch in Arizona in 1984.

The 1960s TV series Route 66 followed two young men travelling the country in which car?

A Chevrolet Corvette convertible carried Tod Stiles and his travelling partner, first Buz Murdock and later Linc Case; Chevrolet supplied the vehicles, upgrading to the new model each season.

The word 'motel' was coined for a 1925 lodging in which California town?

San Luis Obispo: architect Arthur Heineman is said to have cut 'Milestone Motor Hotel' down to 'Mo-Tel' because the full name would not fit on the roof sign; it opened in December 1925.

The Holiday Inn chain was named, as a joke, after a 1942 musical film starring which singer?

Bing Crosby starred in Holiday Inn with Fred Astaire; a decade later the man drawing up Kemmons Wilson's first Memphis motel put the film's title on the plans, and it stuck.

The first patented drive-in theater opened in 1933 in which state?

New Jersey: Richard Hollingshead tested the idea at home with a projector on his car's hood and a screen nailed to trees, then opened his Park-In Theater near Camden in June 1933.

Where were the earliest coin-operated phonographs, the ancestors of the jukebox, first installed in 1889?

A San Francisco saloon: Louis Glass installed a coin-operated Edison phonograph at the Palais Royale on 23 November 1889; patrons listened through listening tubes.

The 'juke' in jukebox probably comes from which language's word for wicked?

Gullah, the Creole of the Georgia and Carolina coast, has 'juke' or 'joog' for wicked or disorderly; the word probably named rowdy roadside juke joints first, and the machines that played in them took it.

The 1946 Wurlitzer Model 1015 jukebox is better known by what nickname?

The Bubbler, named for the bubble tubes in its illuminated arches; Paul Fuller's design sold more than 56,000 units and offered 24 selections.

The first crude 'diner' of 1872 was a horse-drawn wagon serving workers at which city's Journal newspaper?

Providence, Rhode Island: Walter Scott cut windows into a covered wagon and sold sandwiches and coffee to Providence Journal pressmen working the night shift.

Which painter's canvas Nighthawks shows late-night customers at a diner counter?

Edward Hopper's Nighthawks shows three customers and a counterman in a diner with no visible door; Hopper said that, 'unconsciously, probably', he was painting the loneliness of a large city.

Coca-Cola was first sold in 1886 at a pharmacy in which city?

Atlanta: it went on sale at Jacobs' Pharmacy on 8 May 1886 at five cents a glass, a price that held until 1959, partly because Coke's vending machines took only nickels.

John Pemberton based his famous 1886 soft drink on which of his earlier products?

A French coca wine: Pemberton's French Wine Coca lost its alcohol when local prohibition laws banned wine in 1886, and the reworked syrup, mixed with soda water, became Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola's 1915 bottle brief wanted it recognisable in the dark, or even when what?

Broken on the ground: the brief wanted a bottle known by touch or from its pieces, and the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute won with a ribbed shape copied from a library picture of a cocoa pod.

Tailor Jacob Davis first riveted work trousers in which city, later nicknamed 'The Biggest Little City in the World'?

Reno, Nevada: Jacob Davis ran a tailor's shop there and wrote to his cloth supplier, Levi Strauss, in 1872, offering to share the patent because he could not afford the fee alone.

What did Levi's copper rivets originally reinforce?

Pocket corners: Davis hammered copper rivets into the corners of the pockets and the base of the fly, the stress points where work trousers kept tearing.

What lot number was assigned in 1890 to Levi's famous copper-riveted waist overalls?

501: Levi Strauss & Co. gave its riveted waist overalls the lot number 501 in 1890, the year the rivet patent expired and competitors could copy it.

What was the Ford Model T's popular nickname?

Tin Lizzie: nobody is sure where the Model T's nickname came from; Ford dropped his other models to build this one car and sold about 15 million between 1908 and 1927.

Henry Ford said the idea for his moving assembly line came from which Chicago industry?

Meatpacking: Ford credited the overhead trolleys on which Chicago packers took carcasses apart; run in reverse for the Model T, the idea cut assembly from over twelve hours to 93 minutes.

Which car surpassed the Model T's sales record in 1972?

The Volkswagen Beetle, ordered by Hitler as a 'people's car', reached full production only after the war, when the British Army restarted the bombed factory; car number 15,007,034 passed the Model T on 17 February 1972.

The Ford Mustang was introduced in April 1964 at which event?

The New York World's Fair: Ford unveiled the Mustang there on 17 April 1964, selling more than 400,000 in the first year and naming the 'pony car' class.

Grant Wood's American Gothic depicts a farmer and his daughter in front of a house in which state?

Iowa: Wood spotted the little farmhouse in Eldon, Iowa, in 1930; its pointed upstairs window is in a style called Carpenter Gothic, which gave the painting its name.

Who modelled for the man in American Gothic?

The Wood family dentist: Byron McKeeby of Cedar Rapids posed for the farmer, while Wood's sister Nan, in a colonial-print apron, was the woman.

Norman Rockwell painted covers for which magazine for nearly five decades?

The Saturday Evening Post ran more than 300 Rockwell covers across 47 years, the last in 1963; his later civil-rights paintings appeared in Look instead.

Rockwell's The Problem We All Live With shows which six-year-old walking to school past federal marshals?

Ruby Bridges entered William Frantz Elementary in New Orleans in November 1960; she was the only pupil in her class all year, taught alone by Barbara Henry, a teacher from Boston.

The 'We Can Do It!' poster later associated with Rosie the Riveter was originally made for which company?

Westinghouse displayed it only in its own factories in February 1943; the poster was then forgotten until it resurfaced in the 1980s and spread to T-shirts and mugs.

James Montgomery Flagg based the stern Uncle Sam of his 1917 'I Want You' poster on whose face?

His own: Flagg posed for Uncle Sam himself rather than hire a model, and the picture first ran as a 1916 Leslie's Weekly cover before the Army borrowed it.

Before Uncle Sam, which male figure personified the American populace?

Brother Jonathan, a sharp-witted rustic of plays and cartoons, stood for the American people before Uncle Sam, whose look was drawn from his.

'Yankee Doodle' is the official state song of which state?

Connecticut made 'Yankee Doodle' its state song in 1978; the 'macaroni' of its verse is not pasta but 18th-century slang for a dandy who aped foreign fashions.

Who was 'Yankee Doodle' originally written to mock?

Colonial troops: British army surgeon Richard Shuckburgh is said to have written it around 1755 to mock the ragged colonial militia serving alongside the redcoats.

What is the national bird of the United States?

The bald eagle, on the Great Seal since 1782, was formally declared the national bird by a law signed in December 2024; it came off the endangered list in 2007.

The Statue of Liberty was designed by which Frenchman?

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed the copper figure, and Gustave Eiffel engineered the iron skeleton inside, flexible enough to let the statue give a little in the harbour winds.

What lies at the Statue of Liberty's feet, half-hidden by her robe?

A broken chain and shackle lie at her feet, out of sight from the ground; they mark the end of slavery in America, which the statue's French backers set out to celebrate.

The Liberty Bell cracked on its first test ring after arriving from which city?

London: the Whitechapel foundry cast the bell, and after it cracked on its first test ring, local founders Pass and Stow melted it down and recast it; the famous crack came decades later.

Which group gave the Liberty Bell its name?

Abolitionists seized on its inscription, 'Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof', and began calling the old State House bell the Liberty Bell in the 1830s.

Mount Rushmore was first proposed as a carving of Old West heroes such as Red Cloud; who insisted on presidents instead?

The sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, argued the carving needed national rather than local significance; state historian Doane Robinson had pictured Western heroes to draw tourists to the Black Hills.

How tall are the presidents' heads on Mount Rushmore?

60 feet from chin to crown; the figures were meant to be carved to the waist, but work stopped in October 1941, months after Gutzon Borglum died, when the money ran out.

Mount Rushmore was named after a New York attorney who came to the Black Hills to do what?

Confirm mining land claims: Charles E. Rushmore visited in 1885 to check legal titles on tin-mining claims for a New York company, and locals jokingly named the peak for him.

Wall Drug in South Dakota first drew crowds by advertising what to travellers?

Free ice water: Dorothy Hustead suggested highway signs offering it to thirsty travellers, and business at the struggling drugstore in Wall was brisk from then on.

The World's Only Corn Palace is in which South Dakota town?

Mitchell built its first Corn Palace in 1892 to show off South Dakota's rich soil and draw settlers; the murals of corn and other grains are stripped and redesigned every year.

Cadillac Ranch, a row of Cadillacs buried nose-first, stands outside which city?

Amarillo: the Ant Farm art collective buried the Cadillacs nose-down beside old Route 66 in 1974 as a tribute to the evolution of the tail fin, using models from 1949 to 1963.

What do visitors to Cadillac Ranch leave on its Cadillacs?

Graffiti: spray-painting is welcome on the ten Cadillacs that patron Stanley Marsh 3 paid the Ant Farm collective to plant nose-down in his field, and their original colours are long gone.

Burma-Shave's rows of small roadside signs were famous for spelling out what, one line per sign?

A rhyming jingle: each set of six small signs carried one line apiece, with the brand name on the last, so drivers kept reading to reach the punchline.

Burma-Shave's signs came down after 1963, when the brand was sold to which maker of Marlboro cigarettes?

Philip Morris bought the Burma-Vita company in 1963 and began removing the signs, which faster traffic on the new interstates had already made too hard to read.

Which agency introduced Smokey Bear in 1944?

The US Forest Service, with the War Advertising Council, launched Smokey on 9 August 1944; the living Smokey, a cub rescued from a New Mexico fire in 1950, later got his own ZIP code.

In 2001 Smokey Bear's long-running slogan was changed by swapping 'Forest Fires' for what?

Wildfires: in 2001 the line became 'Only You Can Prevent Wildfires' to cover grass and brush fires too; the 1944 original promised care would prevent nine of ten forest fires.

Which American folk hero became a household name through a company's advertising pamphlets in the 1910s?

Paul Bunyan was a logging-camp tale until adman William Laughead drew him for the Red River Lumber Company's pamphlets, which made the giant lumberjack and his blue ox famous nationwide.

Which American folk hero was in real life a travelling Swedenborgian missionary on the Ohio and Indiana frontier?

Johnny Appleseed, born John Chapman, was a missionary for the Swedenborgian New Church, spreading its teachings along with the apple seedlings he raised for settlers moving west.

By tradition, Cracker Jack made its public debut at what 1893 event?

The Chicago World's Fair: Frederick Rueckheim's popcorn-and-peanut snack is traditionally said to have debuted at the 1893 exposition; the 1908 song 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game' later tied Cracker Jack to baseball.

Which toy sold out its first 400 at a Philadelphia department store demonstration in November 1945?

Slinky: naval engineer Richard James got the idea when a spring he knocked off a shelf 'walked' down instead of falling, and his Gimbels demonstration sold every one of the first 400.

Radio Flyer's little red wagon was created in Chicago in 1917 by Antonio Pasin, an immigrant from which country?

Italy: Pasin, a cabinetmaker's son, bought used woodworking tools, rented a one-room Chicago workshop and built his first wagons there, calling them Liberty Coasters after the Statue of Liberty.

Which lighter with a lifetime guarantee has been made in Bradford, Pennsylvania, since the 1930s?

Zippo: George Blaisdell began making the lighters in 1933, and a flame that held in the wind made them essential kit for American GIs in the Second World War.

Which brand builds its riveted-aluminium travel trailers in Jackson Center, Ohio?

Airstream: founder Wally Byam built his first trailer in the late 1920s, by the company's telling because his wife refused to sleep on the ground; the aluminium Clipper followed in 1936.

The Marlboro Man campaign of 1954 was created to sell what kind of cigarette to men?

Filtered: Marlboro had been marketed to women with the slogan 'Mild as May', so Leo Burnett used rugged cowboys to sell its new filter-tip version to men.

Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest is held every July 4 in which neighbourhood?

Coney Island: the contest takes place outside Nathan's original stand at Surf and Stillwell Avenues in Brooklyn; Takeru Kobayashi nearly doubled the record with 50 on his 2001 debut.

A 2005 survey found which condiment to be Americans' favourite on a hot dog?

Mustard topped the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council's 2005 survey, ahead of ketchup; the council's etiquette guide tells adults not to put ketchup on a hot dog.

Which US barbecue region made slow-smoked beef brisket its signature dish?

Texas: German and Czech butchers who settled Central Texas in the mid-1800s smoked the meat they could not sell fresh, and their markets grew into the state's beef barbecue tradition.

Which president moved Thanksgiving a week earlier to lengthen Depression-era Christmas shopping?

Franklin D. Roosevelt moved it up a week in 1939; many states refused to follow, and Congress ended the confusion in 1941 by fixing the fourth Thursday of November.

Which cracker starred in the mock apple pie recipe that its own maker promoted?

Nabisco's Ritz: the crackers stand in for the fruit under a lemon-and-cinnamon syrup, a trick far older than the brand, since a cracker 'apple pie' was in print by the 1850s.

Which Disney park area was inspired by Walt Disney's hometown of Marceline, Missouri?

Main Street, U.S.A. at Disneyland (1955) was modelled on the idealised small town of Disney's boyhood in Marceline around 1900, built with forced perspective so its upper floors look taller.

Despite the Cooperstown legend, baseball's long-celebrated first recorded match of 1846 was played in which city facing Manhattan?

Hoboken: the Knickerbocker club ferried across the Hudson from Manhattan to play on the spacious Elysian Fields, where its 1846 match was long counted as baseball's first official game.

Harley-Davidson, founded in 1903, is headquartered in which city?

Milwaukee, Wisconsin: William Harley and the Davidson brothers built their first motorcycle in a backyard shed there in 1903, and the company kept its headquarters in the city.

Barbie, introduced by Mattel in 1959, was based on which German doll?

Bild Lilli, a doll based on a risqué cartoon in the Bild newspaper, was bought by Ruth Handler in Europe in 1956; Mattel later purchased the rights and ended its production.

The Twinkie was invented in 1930 with what original filling?

Banana cream: James Dewar created the Twinkie in 1930 to use idle shortcake tins out of strawberry season; the filling switched to vanilla during the wartime banana shortage.

Elvis Presley was born in which Mississippi town?

Tupelo: Elvis Aaron Presley was born there on 8 January 1935 in a two-room house his father helped build; his twin brother, Jessie Garon, was stillborn, so Elvis grew up an only child.

The Frisbee took its name from a New England company that made what?

Pies: Yale students tossed the tins of the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, and Wham-O adopted the name in 1957 for Walter Morrison's Pluto Platter.

Monopoly descends from The Landlord's Game, created in 1903 by which anti-monopolist?

Lizzie Magie designed The Landlord's Game to teach Henry George's single-tax ideas and patented it in 1904; Charles Darrow later sold a derived version to Parker Brothers as Monopoly.

Parson Weems's biography invented the tale of six-year-old George Washington damaging what with his hatchet?

A cherry tree was the victim in a story Weems credited only to an unnamed elderly relative, and it led Americans to mark Washington's birthday with cherry dishes.

Whose flamboyant autograph on the Declaration of Independence made his name American slang for any signature?

John Hancock signed as president of the Continental Congress, and his was the only delegate's name printed on the first broadside of the text.

The 1908 waltz 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game' is traditionally sung by baseball crowds during which break?

The seventh-inning stretch is when fans stand and sing it, yet neither of the song's two writers had ever attended a ball game when they wrote it.

Which groundhog emerges at Gobbler's Knob each February 2 while men in top hats announce his weather forecast?

Punxsutawney Phil has made his forecast since 1887, and the club president says he understands his 'Groundhogese' with the help of an ancient acacia cane.

Which children's modelling compound was first made in 1930s Cincinnati to clean coal soot off wallpaper?

Play-Doh began as a wallpaper cleaner made at a grocer's request. When demand shrank after the war, a nursery school teacher's craft idea turned the putty into a toy.

James Naismith nailed up which makeshift goals for the first game of basketball, played with a soccer ball in 1891?

Peach baskets were what the janitor brought when Naismith asked him for a pair of boxes, and that first match was played nine against nine.

Since Louis Meyer started the custom in 1936, the Indianapolis 500 winner celebrates in victory lane by drinking what?

Milk became the victory drink after Meyer asked for buttermilk, which his mother had told him to have on hot days; the custom lapsed after the war until dairy sponsors revived it by 1956.

Which frontiersman's five-part 1950s Disney television serial set off a nationwide craze for coonskin caps?

Davy Crockett, played by Fess Parker, sold the caps at up to 5,000 a day, and Americans had bought over $300 million of his merchandise by the end of 1955.

The Hollywood Sign went up in 1923 with four extra letters to advertise what kind of venture?

A housing development called Hollywoodland was what the thirteen giant letters were built to sell; the last four came down in 1949, leaving the name of the district.

Budweiser's Clydesdale horses first paraded before the American public in April 1933 to celebrate the end of what?

Prohibition had just been lifted for beer, and the horse-drawn hitch went on to deliver a case of the newly legal brew to the capital.

The Pony Express went bankrupt after just 18 months when which faster rival finished linking the coasts?

The telegraph line was joined up in October 1861 and the mail riders announced their closure two days later, never a financial success despite a heavy subsidy.

In L. Frank Baum's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which colour are Dorothy's magic shoes, made red on screen?

Silver was Baum's choice in 1900. The 1939 film turned the shoes red to show off its three-strip Technicolor process, an idea credited to screenwriter Noel Langley.

Which showman marched 21 elephants across the Brooklyn Bridge in 1884, helping to ease doubts about its strength?

P. T. Barnum put Jumbo, his star attraction, at the front of the parade, a year after a stampede on the bridge's stairway had killed at least twelve people.

Lincoln Logs took their interlocking design from an earthquake-proof hotel Frank Lloyd Wright built in which country?

Japan's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo rested on interlocking beams, and the architect's son John, working there with him, turned the idea into a toy around 1916.

Which toy of 1952 became the first ever advertised on television, in a campaign aimed directly at children?

Mr. Potato Head was sold as loose plastic parts to push into a real potato. A plastic body was only added in 1964, after complaints about rotting vegetables.

Woody Guthrie wrote 'This Land Is Your Land' in 1940 as a retort to which patriotic radio hit?

God Bless America, sung by Kate Smith, was on the radio so often that a weary Guthrie first gave his reply a sarcastic title echoing it.

The first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise opened in 1952 not in Kentucky but in which western state?

Utah got there first because Colonel Sanders licensed his recipe to a friend, Pete Harman, who ran one of the largest restaurants in South Salt Lake.

Ray Kroc discovered the McDonald brothers' California hamburger stand in the 1950s while working as a salesman of what?

Milkshake mixers were his line, and he grew curious when the brothers' single restaurant bought eight of the machines.

Francis Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892 for school ceremonies marking 400 years since whose voyage?

Christopher Columbus had landed four centuries earlier, and a children's magazine printed the new pledge for a nationwide school celebration of the anniversary.

Which name did American GIs scrawl across World War II beside a doodle of a long-nosed man peeking over a wall?

Kilroy turned up in so many unlikely places that he became a wartime legend, and nobody knows whether a real person inspired the name.

Katharine Lee Bates wrote 'America the Beautiful' after an 1893 visit to which western summit?

Pikes Peak gave Bates, an English professor on a summer teaching trip, the sweeping view of the Great Plains that found its way into her poem.

Which Pittsburgh Pirates star, the 'Flying Dutchman', made his 1909 T206 baseball card rare by halting its production?

Honus Wagner stopped the print run, so fewer than 60 authenticated copies exist. His reason is still debated, since he used tobacco himself.

The Golden Gate Bridge's famous colour, picked over a Navy idea for black and yellow stripes, has what official name?

International Orange was the personal pick of consulting architect Irving Morrow, who felt it suited the natural surroundings and showed up well in fog.

Which powdered drink, made in 1927 by drying out a concentrate called Fruit Smack, is Nebraska's official soft drink?

Kool-Aid was Edwin Perkins's way of cutting shipping costs, and Hastings, where he invented it, still throws a Kool-Aid Days festival every August.

Which Finnish-American architect won the 1948 competition to design the Gateway Arch in St. Louis?

Eero Saarinen was up against his own father, Eliel, who was mistakenly sent the finalist's telegram and, once corrected, opened champagne to toast his son.

Which Kansas City Chiefs owner coined the name 'Super Bowl', likely with his children's bouncy Super Ball toy in mind?

Lamar Hunt first used the term in the merger meetings of the mid-1960s, and a vintage example of the toy is now displayed at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The 1969 Woodstock festival was actually held in Bethel, well away from the town of Woodstock, on what kind of property?

A dairy farm owned by Max Yasgur hosted the crowds, and he refused to rent it out for a 1970 revival, saying he was going back to farming.

Which youth organisation's members were toasting 'Some Mores' in the 1920s, before the name shrank to s'mores?

The Girl Scouts were eating them by 1925, when a newspaper described the graham cracker, chocolate and toasted marshmallow; some swapped in apples or peanut butter.

Cawker City in Kansas and Darwin in Minnesota both draw road-trippers to their rival giant versions of which object?

A ball of twine in Darwin was rolled by one man for four hours a day over 29 years, while Cawker City's keeps growing at an annual 'Twine-a-thon'.

Francis Scott Key wrote the future national anthem after watching the British bombard which Baltimore stronghold?

Fort McHenry's flag was still flying at dawn, a sight Key took in from a truce ship after sailing out to negotiate the release of a civilian prisoner.