96 Fun Facts About Cincinnati

Cincinnati sits on the Ohio River directly across from which state?

Kentucky even holds Cincinnati's airport: CVG sits across the river near Hebron, and its code comes from Covington, the nearest city when the airport opened.

Which of these is a nickname of Cincinnati?

The Queen City was a title Cincinnatians took up in the early 19th century as their river port boomed; the Gem City is Dayton, the Forest City is Cleveland and the Rubber City is Akron.

Which meat trade made 1840s Cincinnati the largest processing centre in the United States?

Pork packing earned Cincinnati the nickname 'Porkopolis', in print by about 1840; Chicago later took over both the trade and the nickname.

Who was first president general of the Society of the Cincinnati, the city's namesake order?

George Washington was the Society of the Cincinnati's first president general, from 1783 until his death in 1799; the Continental Army officers' order took its name from the Roman farmer-dictator Cincinnatus.

What was Cincinnati's original name when it was settled in 1788?

Losantiville was surveyor John Filson's invention, pieced together from scraps of several languages to mean 'town opposite the mouth of the Licking', the river that meets the Ohio there; the name was dropped in 1790.

In the late 19th century, Cincinnati was widely nicknamed the what of America?

Paris: the 'Paris of America' label is credited to a judge's speech, and it stuck in 1878 when the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper took it up and the city's boosters made it a catch-line.

Which immigrant group most shaped 19th-century Cincinnati, founding many of its institutions?

German immigrants built much of Over-the-Rhine, the district named for the canal they crossed each day and jokingly called 'the Rhine'; in German it was 'über den Rhein'.

Over-the-Rhine is named for which waterway that immigrants crossed to reach the neighbourhood?

The Miami and Erie Canal, which ran along the route of today's Central Parkway, was nicknamed 'the Rhine' by the immigrants living beyond it; crossing it took you 'over the Rhine'.

Which company, founded in Cincinnati in 1837 by a candlemaker and a soap maker, gave the radio serial genre its name?

Procter & Gamble, founded in 1837 by candlemaker William Procter and soap maker James Gamble, sponsored radio serials such as 'Ma Perkins' from 1933, which is why the genre is called soap opera.

Which quality of Ivory soap, launched in 1879, became a famous advertising slogan?

'It floats' became an Ivory slogan because air whipped into the soap kept the bar on top of the bathwater. Its other famous line, '99 44/100% pure', came from lab analyses the company commissioned.

Which supermarket giant was founded in Cincinnati in 1883 by a 23-year-old with $372 in savings?

Kroger began when Barney Kroger put his savings into a grocery at 66 Pearl Street; in 1901 he started baking his own bread, reasoning it would cut his costs and give shoppers a fresher, cheaper loaf.

Which potato chip brand was created by a Cincinnati consumer-goods giant better known for soap?

Pringles came from a 1956 assignment at Cincinnati's soap-and-detergent giant to cure broken, greasy chips: pressed from potato dough into identical saddle shapes, they stack unbroken in a tube.

Cincinnati chili, the city's best-known dish, is traditionally served over what?

Spaghetti is the base of Cincinnati chili, a thin meat sauce spiced with cinnamon, allspice and clove that Macedonian immigrants created in 1922 and ladled over a plate of pasta.

In Cincinnati chili parlour lingo, what does a 'three-way' add on top of a 'two-way'?

Cheese, a mound of shredded cheddar, makes a three-way; a four-way slips onions or beans under it and a five-way has both. Locals eat it like a casserole, cutting each bite with the side of a fork.

Which Cincinnati chili parlour, where the dish began, took its name in 1922 from the burlesque theatre next door?

Empress Chili was the Kiradjieff brothers' name for the hot dog stand they opened beside the Empress theatre; it was the city's biggest chili chain until a former employee started Skyline in 1949.

Skyline Chili takes its name from the city view at its first restaurant, opened in 1949 in which Cincinnati neighbourhood?

Price Hill is where Greek immigrant Nicholas Lambrinides, who had cooked at another chili parlour, opened his own diner on Glenway Avenue with three of his sons.

Goetta, a Cincinnati breakfast staple, is a sausage-like mush of ground meat and which grain?

Steel-cut oats, also called pinhead oats, are simmered with ground pork and beef to make goetta; immigrant families used the grain to stretch meat across several meals, much as scrapple uses cornmeal.

Cincinnati's Graeter's is known for which method that makes unusually dense ice cream?

The French pot process freezes just a few gallons at a time in a spinning chilled pot, folding in very little air, which gives Graeter's its dense texture; Oprah Winfrey praised it in 2002.

Findlay, founded in 1852 in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine, is Ohio's oldest continuously operating what?

Public market: Findlay is the last survivor of nine public markets that once served Cincinnati; its iron-framed market house went up in 1852 but, after disputes with the contractors, did not open until 1855.

The Reds' first World Series title, in 1919, was tainted because which opponents lost on purpose?

The Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 Series for gamblers; eight players, including 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson, were banned for life in the Black Sox scandal.

Which Major League Baseball milestone happened at Cincinnati's ballpark in 1935?

The first night game in the majors was played on 24 May 1935, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a button at the White House to switch on the lights and the Reds beat Philadelphia 2-1.

Which Reds pitcher threw no-hitters in consecutive starts in June 1938?

Johnny Vander Meer's second no-hitter came four days after his first and ended on a knife-edge: bases loaded, two out in the ninth in Brooklyn, before Leo Durocher's fly ball was caught. No pitcher has matched it.

What nickname was given to the dominant Reds teams of the mid-1970s?

The Big Red Machine took its final shape when a 1971 trade brought Joe Morgan from Houston to join Johnny Bench, Tony Pérez and Pete Rose; it won the World Series in 1975 and again in 1976.

Which relief trio helped the Reds sweep the 1990 World Series and were nicknamed 'the Nasty Boys'?

Dibble, Charlton and Myers, relievers Rob Dibble, Norm Charlton and Randy Myers, did not let heavily favoured Oakland score against them in nearly nine innings; Dibble and Myers had already shared the NLCS MVP award.

Great American Ball Park replaced which venue the Reds shared with the Bengals?

Riverfront Stadium, renamed Cinergy Field in 1996, lost much of its outfield seating in 2001 to make room for Great American Ball Park rising next door, and was imploded at the end of 2002.

Which legendary coach founded the Cincinnati Bengals in 1967?

Paul Brown, fired by Cleveland owner Art Modell in 1963, founded the Bengals as an AFL expansion team in 1967 and coached them through 1975; he chose the same shade of orange his old team wore.

Which team beat the Bengals in the Super Bowl in both 1982 and 1989?

The San Francisco 49ers beat the Bengals 26-21 in Super Bowl XVI (January 1982) and 20-16 in Super Bowl XXIII (January 1989), the latter on Joe Montana's last-minute drive; the Bengals lost again to the Rams in 2022.

Which Bengals running back was famous for an end-zone dance called 'the Shuffle' in the late 1980s?

Ickey Woods, a rookie in 1988, ran for 1,066 yards and 15 touchdowns and celebrated each score with the Ickey Shuffle, helping the Bengals reach Super Bowl XXIII.

Before TQL Stadium opened in 2021, FC Cincinnati drew record crowds at which venue?

Nippert Stadium, the University of Cincinnati's football ground, was FC Cincinnati's home from 2016 to 2020; the club broke the USL attendance record there in its first season, and MLS awarded it a franchise in 2018.

The Cincinnati Zoo, opened in 1875, bills itself as which of these among American zoos?

The second oldest is the zoo's own billing, counting only Philadelphia's, opened in 1874, as older; menageries in New York's Central Park and Chicago's Lincoln Park date from the 1860s.

Martha, the last of which extinct bird species, died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914?

Passenger pigeon Martha died on 1 September 1914, ending a species that once numbered in the billions; the zoo also housed Incas, the last Carolina parakeet, who died there in 1918.

Fiona, a Cincinnati Zoo celebrity since her premature birth in January 2017, is what kind of animal?

Hippopotamus Fiona arrived six weeks early weighing 29 pounds, about half the lightest birth weight then on record for her species, and clinicians from Cincinnati Children's Hospital helped keep her alive.

Which Cincinnati Zoo gorilla was shot in 2016 after a three-year-old boy climbed into his enclosure?

Harambe, a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla born in Texas, grabbed and dragged the boy, and a zoo worker shot him fearing for the child's life; his death made him the subject of memes, songs and a statue.

What world record did John Roebling's Cincinnati–Covington bridge hold when it opened on 1 January 1867?

Longest suspension span in the world at 1,057 feet: while it rose, John Roebling was already planning the Brooklyn Bridge, leaving his son Washington to supervise the Ohio River work from 1865.

Cincinnati Union Terminal, finished in 1933, inspired which fictional building?

The Hall of Justice, the Justice League's headquarters in the 1973 cartoon Super Friends, was modelled by Hanna-Barbera artist Al Gmuer on the terminal's Art Deco facade; the building houses the Cincinnati Museum Center.

Cincinnati Union Terminal's main concourse boasts the largest what in the Western Hemisphere?

The rotunda's Semi-dome, 180 feet wide and 106 feet high, is the largest in the Western Hemisphere; its arch carries sound so well that two people at the drinking fountains on either side can talk in whispers.

Cincinnati Music Hall (1878) is reputedly among America's most haunted buildings because it was built over what?

A pauper's cemetery, the potter's field of the old Commercial Hospital, lay beneath the site; remains turned up during construction and later excavations, feeding the ghost stories at the hall built in 1878 for the May Festival.

Which building was Cincinnati's tallest from 1930 until 2011?

Carew Tower, a 49-storey Art Deco landmark, was announced just as the Great Depression set in and built regardless, a 'city within a city' of offices, shops and a hotel; Great American Tower passed it in 2011.

The bronze Tyler Davidson Fountain on Fountain Square, dedicated in 1871, is also known by what name?

The Genius of Water is the crowning figure, a woman with outstretched hands raining water; Henry Probasco had the fountain cast in Munich by Ferdinand von Miller as a memorial to his brother-in-law Tyler Davidson.

Which Cincinnati-born president is the only person to have also served as chief justice?

William Howard Taft, born in Cincinnati in 1857, prized the court far above the White House: as chief justice he wrote, 'I don't remember that I ever was president.'

Which blockbuster film director was born in Cincinnati in 1946?

Steven Spielberg was born in Cincinnati on 18 December 1946; his family moved to New Jersey in 1952 and to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1957, where he made his first amateur films.

After leaving NASA in 1971, which astronaut taught aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati?

Neil Armstrong, born near Wapakoneta, Ohio, taught at Cincinnati from 1971 to 1979, choosing it over other universities, his own Purdue among them, because its aerospace department was small.

Cincinnati-born funk bassist Bootsy Collins rose to fame playing with which singer before joining Parliament-Funkadelic?

James Brown hired 18-year-old Bootsy Collins, his brother Catfish and their Cincinnati band in March 1970, after most of his own musicians walked out over pay; they cut 'Sex Machine' and 'Super Bad' and left within a year.

The University of Cincinnati was the first to introduce which model of study in 1906?

Co-operative education began at the University of Cincinnati in 1906, when engineering professor Herman Schneider alternated classroom weeks with paid work in local industry; the model spread to universities worldwide.

Cincinnati's Xavier University is the fourth-oldest US university run by which Catholic order?

Jesuits took over in 1840 at the bishop's request and renamed the school, founded in 1831 as the Athenaeum, after the missionary St. Francis Xavier.

Which flood-prone riverside resort was replaced by the Mason, Ohio park (home of The Beast) that opened in 1972?

Coney Island, on the Ohio River, flooded so often that its new owners moved most of the rides north in 1972; a public contest named the new park Kings Island, after nearby Kings Mills and the old resort.

The Beast, opened at Kings Island in 1979, set records as the tallest, fastest and longest what?

Wooden roller coaster The Beast was designed and built in-house by Kings Island's own staff over more than three years, sprawling across 35 acres of wooded hills; as of 2026 no wooden coaster is longer.

The Cincinnati Open, played since 1899 and now staged in suburban Mason, is a leading tournament in which sport?

Tennis: billed as the oldest US tournament still played in or near its first city, it began on clay at the Avondale Athletic Club and in 1974 was nearly dropped from the calendar before a last-minute move indoors.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra gave the world premiere of which famous Aaron Copland piece?

Fanfare for the Common Man was one of the wartime fanfares conductor Eugene Goossens asked American composers for; he set its premiere for 12 March 1943, and Copland said he was all for honouring the common man at income-tax time.

The 1978-82 sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati was set at what kind of business?

A radio station, the struggling AM outlet WKRP, is the setting; new programme director Andy Travis flips its format from easy listening to rock and roll in the 1978 pilot.

Which character in WKRP in Cincinnati was played by Howard Hesseman?

Dr. Johnny Fever, the burned-out host who had been fired elsewhere for saying 'booger' on air, was Howard Hesseman's role; Tim Reid played Venus Flytrap and Loni Anderson receptionist Jennifer Marlowe.

Cincinnati voters approved a subway system in 1917; what became of it?

It was abandoned unfinished: wartime delays and post-war inflation doubled the cost, and when the money ran out in 1927 the tunnels had been dug but no track laid. They remain beneath Central Parkway.

Cincinnati's riverfront Freedom Center, opened in 2004, is a museum devoted to which chapter of American history?

The Underground Railroad made Cincinnati a hub because escaping slaves crossed the Ohio River there to reach free soil; the centre's main exhibit is a two-storey log slave pen from 1830 that held people bound for auction.

Which singer and actress, the star of 'Pillow Talk', was born in Cincinnati in 1922?

Doris Day was born Doris Mary Kappelhoff in Cincinnati on 3 April 1922; she sang with Les Brown's band before Hollywood, and 'Pillow Talk' (1959) brought her an Academy Award nomination.

What was the Reds' ballpark called from 1934 to 1970?

Crosley Field took the name of Powel Crosley Jr., the radio maker who bought the Reds in 1934; after the last game in June 1970, home plate was dug up and the mayor flew it by helicopter to the new stadium.

Which architect designed Cincinnati Music Hall, opened on Elm Street in 1878?

Samuel Hannaford's firm won the Music Hall job in 1876 with the lowest bid, $1,500; the hall opened two years later facing Washington Park, and he went on to design City Hall.

The 2001 Cincinnati riots began after police shot which unarmed 19-year-old in Over-the-Rhine?

Timothy Thomas, wanted on 14 non-violent misdemeanour counts, 12 of them traffic citations, was shot on 7 April 2001 as police tried to arrest him; the four days of unrest that followed were then the largest in the US since 1992.

Which September festival celebrates Cincinnati's Bavarian-style beer and food heritage?

Oktoberfest Zinzinnati, first held in 1976, bills itself as America's largest Oktoberfest; its Running of the Wieners sends dachshunds in hot-dog costumes down a 75-foot course.

Which of these Ohio companies is headquartered in Cincinnati?

Fifth Third Bank, named for a 1908 merger of two numbered banks, is based on Fountain Square; Wendy's sits in Dublin, Goodyear in Akron and Sherwin-Williams in Cleveland.

Cincinnati's skyline stood in for fictional Monticello in the opening of which soap opera?

The Edge of Night, a crime-driven serial that ran from 1956 to 1984, opened on a shot of Cincinnati's skyline; in its later years the Los Angeles skyline took its place.

With 309,317 residents at the 2020 census, Cincinnati ranks where among Ohio's cities by population?

Third place: Columbus (905,748) and Cleveland (372,624) were larger at the 2020 census, though Cincinnati's tri-state metro area of about 2.2 million was the largest in the state.

Which Northwest Territory governor gave Cincinnati its name in 1790, two years after its founding?

Arthur St. Clair renamed the two-year-old settlement in 1790 to honour the Society of the Cincinnati, the Revolutionary officers' order of which he was a member.

Which poet ranked Cincinnati's sparkling wine above French champagne in the poem 'Catawba Wine'?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow dedicated the poem to Cincinnati vintner Nicholas Longworth, declaring his Ohio Valley Catawba 'more divine' than the French Verzenay and Sillery.

The Bearcats–Musketeers college basketball rivalry between Cincinnati and Xavier is known as what?

The Crosstown Shootout boiled over in 2011, when the game ended in a brawl and eight suspensions; it was moved to a neutral arena for the next two seasons.

Founded in 1881, the Cincinnati Art Museum was the first purpose-built one west of which mountains?

The Alleghenies: when the Eden Park building opened in 1886, it was the first purpose-built art museum west of them, capping a campaign the Women's Art Museum Association began in 1877.

By river, Cincinnati lies midway between Pittsburgh and which Illinois city at the Ohio's mouth?

Cairo stands where the Ohio ends its 981-mile run from Pittsburgh and meets the Mississippi; Cincinnati grew up near the halfway point as an inland port for steamboat cargo.

Which children's modelling compound began in 1930s Cincinnati as a putty for cleaning wallpaper?

Play-Doh was born when nursery teacher Kay Zufall read that the putty worked for art projects, just as washable vinyl wallpaper was killing demand for the cleaner.

Which future tabloid talk-show host served as mayor of Cincinnati in 1977, when he was just 33?

Jerry Springer was picked by fellow council members for the one-year post, then became the city's top-rated TV news anchor before his talk show launched in 1991.

The crown on Cincinnati's Great American Tower, opened in 2011, was inspired by a tiara worn by whom?

Princess Diana was pictured wearing it in a book that architect Gyo Obata was flipping through; the finished tower ended an older skyscraper's 81-year reign as the city's tallest.

During the 1950s Red Scare, the Cincinnati Reds officially changed their team name to what?

Redlegs was announced in April 1953 so that nobody would tie the ball club to communism, and the old name only came back for the 1959 season.

After finishing his Cincinnati river crossing in 1867, John Roebling designed which famous New York landmark?

Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883 with a central stretch of about 1,595 feet, roughly half as long again as the 1,057 feet he had bridged over the Ohio River.

Albert Sabin spent thirty years in Cincinnati developing an oral vaccine against which disease?

Polio outbreaks in Cincinnati stopped after 78,476 of the city's schoolchildren were given his live-virus drops in April and May 1960.

Which novel did Harriet Beecher Stowe base partly on what she witnessed while living in Cincinnati?

Uncle Tom's Cabin drew on a slave auction she watched on a trip across the Ohio River in 1833, a year after she moved to the city aged 21.

Sarah, clocked at 5.95 seconds over 100 metres at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2012, was what kind of animal?

Cheetah Sarah was already 11 years old when she set the mark, touching 61 miles an hour; one onlooker said she looked like a polka-dotted missile.

In which 1988 film does Tom Cruise's character travel to Cincinnati and discover a brother he never knew?

Rain Man spent nine weeks shooting in and around Cincinnati and went on to win four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

In 1853 Cincinnati became the first American city to set up a fully paid, professional what?

Fire department chief number one was Miles Greenwood, whose own ironworks had burned the year before, a loss that pushed him to find better ways of fighting fires.

Which quarterback did the Cincinnati Bengals draft first overall in 2020 after his Heisman season at LSU?

Joe Burrow used his Heisman speech to highlight hunger in his Ohio hometown, and the Athens County food bank soon received $450,000 in donations.

Which Cincinnati Bengals receiver legally changed his surname to Ochocinco in 2008 to match his jersey number?

Chad Johnson wore number 85, later teased a switch to Hachi Go, the Japanese equivalent, and finally took his old surname back in 2012.

Johnny Bench, a two-time National League MVP with the 1970s Cincinnati Reds, played which position?

Catcher Johnny Bench won ten straight Gold Gloves behind the plate and twice led the National League in home runs, rare power for the position.

Cincinnati-born Pete Rose earned which nickname from Whitey Ford after sprinting to first base on a walk?

Charlie Hustle began as a derisive jab from the Yankees pitcher during a spring training game, yet it stuck to Rose for life.

Which future NBA star led the University of Cincinnati to two Final Fours before turning professional in 1960?

Oscar Robertson, the Big O, averaged 33.8 points a game for the Bearcats and later became the first NBA player to average a triple-double over a whole season.

Which media mogul, the founder of CNN, was born in Cincinnati in 1938 to a billboard magnate?

Ted Turner took over the family billboard firm in 1963 and built a media empire that also owned baseball's Atlanta Braves, World Series winners in 1995.

Which singing cowboy, billed as the King of the Cowboys, was born Leonard Slye in Cincinnati in 1911?

Roy Rogers was a baby when his father built a houseboat from salvaged lumber and floated the family up the Ohio River to Portsmouth in 1912.

Which Cincinnati toy company, named after a street, made the first Star Wars action figures?

Kenner won the licence in 1976 after Mego turned it down, and its 3.75-inch figures became the toy industry's standard size.

Which playing-card brand did a Cincinnati firm that once printed circus posters begin producing in 1885?

Bicycle became the firm's most popular line; the cards were made in Norwood, Ohio, until 2009, when the factory moved across the river to Erlanger, Kentucky.

Margaret Garner's 1856 escape across the frozen Ohio River to Cincinnati inspired which Toni Morrison novel?

Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize; the real Garner crossed during the coldest winter in 60 years, and nine others in her party got away to Canada.

Which former president presided over the cornerstone ceremony for the Cincinnati Observatory in 1843?

John Quincy Adams, then 76, made the long journey west for the ceremony, and the hilltop site, Mount Ida, was renamed Mount Adams in his honour.

Cincinnati Observatory director Cleveland Abbe used telegraphed reports to pioneer what kind of daily bulletin?

Weather forecasts earned him the nickname Old Probability for their reliability, and he was soon recruited by the national weather service Congress created in 1870.

Which architect, later the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, designed Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center?

Zaha Hadid beat Rem Koolhaas and other famous names to the job, and had completed only a handful of buildings when she took architecture's top award a year after it opened.

Cincinnati's 16-storey Ingalls Building of 1903 was the world's first skyscraper made from which material?

Reinforced concrete had never gone above six storeys, and many engineers expected the tower to collapse under wind loads or even its own weight.

Incas, the last known member of which American parrot species, died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918?

Carolina parakeet Incas died within a year of his mate, Lady Jane; the last known wild bird had been killed in Florida in 1904, and extinction was declared in 1939.

Which slugger, a graduate of Cincinnati's Moeller High School, was traded home to the Reds by Seattle in 2000?

Ken Griffey Jr. switched from number 24 to 30, the number his father had worn for the Reds, because 24 was already retired in honour of Tony Pérez.

Which shortening did a Cincinnati soap company launch in 1911 as the first made entirely from vegetable oil?

Crisco, a name trimmed from the phrase crystallized cottonseed oil, took off when its makers gave away cookbooks in which every recipe called for it.

Cincinnatus, the Roman statesman whose name lives on in Cincinnati, famously gave up power to return to what?

His farm was where, by tradition, messengers found him at the plough in 458 BC; he took supreme command, won within sixteen days and promptly resigned.

Which sitcom family visited Kings Island amusement park in the 1973 episode titled The Cincinnati Kids?

The Brady Bunch followed The Partridge Family, which had filmed an episode at the newly opened park the year before; both shows aired on ABC.

The Cincinnati Royals, an NBA team that left Ohio in 1972, play on as which modern franchise?

Sacramento Kings is the name they reached by way of Kansas City, where Royals became Kings to avoid confusion with the local baseball team.